This research aimed to re-design the flipped learning framework for Business students at undergraduate level. Flipped learning pedagogy appears to be increasingly popular overall the world in the last several years. However, these frameworks might be unsuitable for Business students at different levels. Therefore, we revisited the flipped learning frameworks and amended it according to quantitative and qualitative data received from our Business undergraduates from their last two years of flipped learning. With the possible disruption impact of digital technology on higher education for the next 10-15 years, the shape of business & management education can be dramatically different, as predicted by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (2019). We have tried to utilise these technologies (such as online video, quizzes, discussion forum, social media, integrated learning platforms) to delivery knowledge and information to allow students studying anytime and anywhere, but students' engagement was inconsistent among groups and throughout the year. Consequently, this research provides a new framework focuses on Business undergraduate students, and it can be used to facilitate module leaders to develop teaching plan and activities for students who may require higher level of personalised interactivities.


A conjoined twin is a rarity. It occurs 1 in 50,000 to 1 in 2,00,000 fetuses. Forty percent of the conjoined twins are stillborn and an additional one-third die within 24 h of birth. They result from late twinning events about 14th day after fertilization. We report a case of stillborn conjoined twins sent for autopsy. The bodies of the fetuses were fused from the thorax to the pelvis. There were two heads, three upper limbs and two lower limbs, with fusion of the thoracic, abdominal and pelvic regions. On systemic examination, some organs were fused and some were separate. A multilocular cyst with milky fluid was seen in the pelvic region. This case is reported in view of its rarity.


Nanomaterials functionalized with targeting ligands are increasingly recognized as useful materials for molecular imaging and drug delivery. Here we describe the development and validation of azide–alkyne reactions ("click chemistry") for the rapid, site-specific modification of nanoparticles with small molecules. The facile preparation of stable nanoparticles bearing azido or alkyne groups capable of reaction with their corresponding counterpart functionalized small molecules is demonstrated. The Cu(I)-catalyzed cycloaddition of azides and alkynes is shown to be a highly efficient and selective method for point functionalization of magnetic nanoparticles. Derivatized nanoparticles bearing biotin, fluorochrome, or steroid moieties are stable for several months. Nanoparticle click chemistry will be useful for other nanomaterials, design of novel sensors, and drug delivery vehicles.


Aspergillus fumigatus is a widespread airborne fungal pathogen in humans. However, the functional genes in A. fumigatus that may contribute to its pathogenesis have not yet been fully identified. Vacuolar H+-ATPase is universal in eukaryotic organisms but exhibits specific roles in various species. Here, we identified VmaC as a putative subunit of vacuolar H+-ATPase in A. fumigatus that is widely conserved through evolution. The C-terminal hydrophobic domain of VmaC plays a critical role in its vacuolar localization and growth and conidiation. Deletion or turn-off of VmaC encoding gene-AfvmaC expression is not lethal but leads to a very sick and tiny colony phenotype, which is different from that of yeast with conditional ScvmaC defects. Furthermore, we found that AfvmaC not only participates in maintaining calcium homeostasis and vacuolar acidity but is also involved in cell wall integration pathway regulation, highlighting the importance of the vacuole as a storage organelle associated with many aspects of cellular homeostasis. This study indicates that fungal VmaC is relatively conserved. When compared to that in model yeasts, VmaC in A. fumigatus is required for hyphal growth and conidiation, suggesting that specific motifs in VmaC might be functioned in Aspergilli.


This thesis was concerned with the psychosocial experience of living with a significant change to facial appearance acquired through trauma or disease. The thesis comprises a literature review and a report of an original research study. The review used a meta-ethnography approach to synthesise qualitative literature on the experience of altered facial appearance following cancer. The findings demonstrate the varying experience of changed facial appearance depending on the stage of the disease or treatment, with appearance being more salient at less acute stages of cancer treatment. Changes to appearance lead to experiences of stigma and threatened self-image and self-identity, necessitating a range of coping strategies. Clinical implications and future research needs are outlined. The research study aimed to understand the experience of living with a facial prosthesis using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Findings indicate that a prosthesis could restore normalcy and enable social participation, however the impact of having altered facial appearance continued to pervade the experience and practicalities continued to be problematic. Social support and humour were notable factors contributing to positive adjustment. This research implicates a role for peer support interventions in this population, and further research is needed to explore different stages and levels of adjustment.


. Research in this area is very relevant, the mechanism of public-private partnership in agriculture is very important, it allows, under mutually beneficial conditions, the state and the private sector to increase the resource base and direct unused resources to the stable development of the agricultural sector. The aim of the article is to study theoretical approaches and substantiate empirical recommendations aimed at improving the mechanism of work of public-private partnerships in agriculture in Uzbekistan, and in general.


It has been suggested that ovarian granulosa cell tumors may result from unopposed hyperstimulation, either by excessive gonadotropin stimulation, by activating mutations of the FSH receptor gene, or of the G protein subunits, Gs alpha or Gi alpha2. We have examined the entire open reading frame of the FSH receptor gene in ovarian granulosa cell tumors. In addition, these tumors were evaluated for the known oncogenic G protein mutations Gsp and Gip2. Normal results were obtained in all 23 ovarian granulosa cell tumors. We conclude that mutations of the FSH receptor G protein signaling pathway do not play any major role in the genesis of these tumors.


BACKGROUND
The predictive value of prostate specific antigen for prostate cancer, when levels are between 4 and 10 ng/ml, is low. Within these range of values, some authors recommend the measurement of the free fraction of the antigen to improve its predictive capacity.

AIM
To evaluate the predictive value of the free fraction in subjects with prostate specific antigen values between 4 and 10 ng/ml.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
One hundred and forty subjects with prostate specific antigen between 4 and 10 ng/ml were evaluated. All were subjected to transcrectal ultrasound examination with biopsies and the free fraction of the antigen was measured by enzyme immuno assay.

RESULTS
Cancer was diagnosed in 36 subjects, all others had a benign prostatic hyperplasia. Mean prostate specific antigen values were 7.4 and 7.1 ng/ml in patients with cancer and hyperplasia, respectively. The percentage of free prostatic specific antigen was 9.8 and 19.8% in subjects with cancer and hyperplasia respectively (p < 0.001). Using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, a free prostate specific antigen of 13% was the best cutoff value for predicting prostate cancer.

CONCLUSIONS
In subjects with prostate specific values between 4 and 10 ng/ml, the measurement of the free fraction of this antigen can improve the predictive value of this parameter for the detection of prostate cancer.


Introduction Computerised Tomography Pulmonary Angiogram (CTPA) is routinely used to investigate suspected pulmonary embolism (PE). PEs are clinically difficult to diagnose and associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Clinical concern and the increased availability of CTPA may mean more patients receive unnecessary radiation: a CTPA is approximately 750 chest radiographs[1]. In addition, detection of other pathology by CTPA often has minimal clinical impact[2]. Aims To investigate our compliance with NICE guidelines in ordering CTPAs, and whether detecting alternative diagnoses justifies their use. Methods This prospective study, in a London teaching hospital, reviewed data in all medical and oncology patients who had a CTPA in January 2014. Clinical diagnoses and risk scores were recorded according to national guidelines. Results A CTPA was carried out on 49 patients (66% female); 10 had confirmed PE (20%). In 31 (63%), guidelines were not followed: 27 did not have D-dimers. Of those with PE, 40% were detected despite low Wells Scores. In 19 (39%), an alternative diagnosis explaining the symptoms was shown: 8 on CTPA, but only 6 resulted in a management change. Incidental findings were made in 6 requiring follow-up. Conclusions PEs remain difficult to diagnose. Clinical skills may not be accurate, our detection rate was 20%, and 40% had a low Wells score. A better scoring system may be required. In addition, alternative diagnoses for CTPA do not appear to alter management in the majority. More research is required in diagnosing PE to minimise radiation and contrast risks, and ensure CTPAs are of maximum clinical benefit. [1] BMJ 2011;342:d947 [2] Chest 2013;144(6):1893-9.


The new information and communication technology providers collect increasing amounts of personal data, a lot of which is user generated. Unless use policies are privacy-friendly, this leaves users vulnerable to privacy risks such as exposure through public data visibility or intrusive commercialisation of their data through secondary data use. Due to complex privacy policies, many users of online services unwillingly agree to privacy-intruding practices. To give users more control over their privacy, scholars and regulators have pushed for short, simple, and prominent privacy policies. The premise has been that users will see and comprehend such policies, and then rationally adjust their disclosure behaviour. In this paper, on a use case of social network service site, we show that this premise does not hold. We invited 214 regular Facebook users to join a new fictitious social network. We experimentally manipulated the privacy-friendliness of an unavoidable and simple privacy policy. Half of our participants miscomprehended even this transparent privacy policy. When privacy threats of secondary data use were present, users remembered the policies as more privacy-friendly than they actually were and unwittingly uploaded more data. To mitigate such behavioural pitfalls we present design recommendations to improve the quality of informed consent.


The radial growth and recruitment patterns of trees in subalpine areas are subject to the influence of changing environmental conditions associated with changes in elevation. To investigate responses of fir radial growth and recruitment to climate factors at different elevations, tree-ring width chronologies and age structures of Abies faxoniana were developed from five sampling sites at ~2800–3300 m elevation on the north-western and south-eastern aspects in the Wanglang Natural Reserve on the eastern edge of Tibetan Plateau. Statistical characteristics of the chronologies indicated that expressed population signal and signal-to-noise ratio increased with increasing elevation in the north-western aspect; the reverse was observed on the south-eastern aspect. Correlation analysis between chronologies and climate variables showed that fir radial growth was negatively correlated with previous growing season mean temperatures and was positively correlated with January precipitation in all plots. The amount of precipitation in the growing season (June and July) greatly influenced radial growth in the two lower sites of both the aspects. The three plots on the north-western aspect were characterised by significant rates of tree recruitment in the past five decades. There were multi-decadal periods of heightened recruitment over the past three centuries in the two south-eastern plots. Widespread disturbances after 1920s were not observed in any plots and the infrequent small-scale disturbances that occurred were not the main factors influencing recent recruitment in any plots. Correlation analysis between recruitment residuals and climate variables showed that fir seedling recruitment in the north-western aspect plots was mainly controlled by spring–summer temperatures. But recruitment was greatly restricted by competition with dense bamboos and other tree species in the south-eastern aspect. Overall, previous August mean temperature and January precipitation were the dominant factors determining fir radial growth in all plots, and recruitment was sensitive to spring–summer temperatures in the plots with sparse bamboo cover.


Metabolic rate is not routinely assessed in healthcare for the general population, nor is it a measure commonly recorded for in-patients (incorrect feeding can slow post-operation recovery rate). For the general community, this lack of knowledge prevents the accurate determination of calorific need and is a factor contributing towards the onset of an overweight and an increasingly obese population. In the UK alone, obesity costs the National Health Service a staggering £5 billion annually. In this thesis a novel low-cost hand-held breath analyser is presented in order to measure human energy expenditure (EE). A unique optical CO2 sensor was developed, capable of sampling exhaled breath with a fast response time ~1 s and resilience to a humidity range of ~30 % to near saturated. The device was tested in a laboratory gas testing rig and a detection limit of ~25 ppm CO2 was measured. A low power metal oxide sensor (~100 mW) was developed to detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the breath, for disease detection and investigation of the variation of inter-individual metabolism processes. The device was sensitive to acetone (100 to 300 ppm, which is a biomarker for type-I diabetes). Other VOCs, such as NO2 were tested (10 to 250 ppb). Further work includes investigating the inter-individual variance of metabolism processes, for which the metal oxide sensor would be well-suited. Software was developed to operate the gas testing rig and acquire sensor output data in real-time. An application was written for smartphones to enable EE measurements with the breath analyser, outside of a laboratory environment. Three hand-held analysers were constructed and tested with a trial of 10 subjects. A counterpart (benchmark) unit with medical grade commercial sensors (cost of ~£2500) and hospital respiratory rooms (reference) were included in the trial. The newly developed analysers improved upon the performance of the benchmark system (average EE measurement error +2.4 % compared to +7.9 %). The affordable device offered far greater accuracy than the traditional method often used by practitioners (predictive equations, error +41.4%). It is proposed a set of periodic (hourly) breath measurements could be used to determine daily EE. The EE analyser and associated low-cost sensors developed in this work offer a potential solution to halt the growing cost of an obese population and provide point-of-care health management.


In this paper, we report experimental results aimed at the quantitative description of bacterial inactivation using a low-energy (<100 kV) pulsed-electron beam. The initial step was to demonstrate the feasibility of a secondary emission electron gun (SEEG) on the area of sterilization/decontamination, which is quantitatively related to the survival characteristics of bacteria. The survival characteristic of most common type of bacterium Escherichia coli JM 109 (E. coli) was studied in an atmospheric pressure decontamination chamber under the increased gun voltage as well as varied pulsed-electron-beam parameters such as current density, pulse width, and repetition rate. A complete inactivation of E. coli was achieved by a single-electron-beam pulse at an accelerating gun voltage of 85 kV in time duration of 5 /spl mu/s or by five electron beam pulses of the same time duration at a voltage of 77 kV. Several inherent advantages including an efficient bacterial inactivation have been provided as a basis for utilization of SEEG (or low-energy electron beam in general) as a decontamination tool in various biological and medical applications.


to the participants were minimal or negligible, and that parents and children were free to decide whether they wanted to participate in the study and free to withdraw from the study at any time, even after signing a consent form. The scientific merit of the research is an important criterion to consider in addition to honest information, minimal distress to participants, and freedom to withdraw from the study at any time. Professor Cockbum's commentary may be interpreted as if we were challenging the Department of Health's circular on local research ethics committees (1991)2 and the MRC document on the ethical conduct of research in children (1991).3 Neither document was available when we planned the pilot study and came to our attention after the pilot study was carried out in May 1992. In my judgment we did not contravene the MRC document because they explicitly include 'to obtain blood specimens' as an example of activity associated with negligible risk. It is worth commenting that for a long time we were reluctant to include venepuncture as part of our nutritional monitoring system. However, as the Department of Health was keen to harmonise, as far as possible, the information obtained from the range ofhealth


The pass-through from exchange rate changes to inflation differs depending on the underlying shock. This paper quantifies the conditional exchange rate pass-through (CERPT) to prices, i.e. the change in prices relative to that in the exchange rate following a certain exogenous shock, with a structural econometric approach using data for Sweden, a small economy that is very open to trade. We find that the pass-through to consumer prices following an exogenous exchange rate shock is rather small. Importantly, this shock is not the most important driver of exchange rate uctuations, unlike what standard structural macroeconomic models would indicate. For Sweden, the CERPT is negative not only for domestic but also for global demand shocks. The estimated combination of shocks with positive and negative CERPT implies that the average pass-through to consumer prices is roughly zero.


Anggraeni, Devi Ayu. 2018. Environmental Wisdom in Nh. Dini's Langit dan Bumi Sahabat Kami (Ecocritical Literary Review). Essay. Strata 1 Program in Indonesian Literature. Semarang. Faculty of Humanities. Diponegoro University. Thesis Advisor: Drs. Mulyo Hadi Purnomo, M. Hum.

This study aims to describe the novel structures, including themes, characters and characterizations, settings, and plot and to interpret the ecocritical literature by expressing the form of environmental wisdom of Nh. Dini's Langit dan Bumi Sahabat Kami.
The method which is applied to collect the data is library research by reading, listening, and recording data or facts related to the objective of the research. The primary data is the data obtained from original source of Langit dan Bumi Sahabat Kami by Nh. Dini published by PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama. The data collected from the primary data is the data related to the research problems, which is finding the form of environmental wisdom.
The results show the existence of human relationship with the environment. Based on the results, the characterization, the setting of place, and the plot of the story are known, and hence the interaction between characters and environment is also can be seen. Dini's family are the dominant characters in bringing the plot of the story. They are struggling to survive in a time of bitter warfare. Environmental wise behavior is built because they experience the difficulty of food, the difficulty of water, the gardens and rivers which are not maintained, the livestock which are threatened, and others. This wise environmental behavior is carried out by Dini's family for a life which does not harm each other. The environmental wisdom includes the attitude of respect for nature, the attitude of responsibility towards nature, the principle of compassion and caring, the principle of not harming nature, and the principle of simple living and in harmony with nature.

Keywords: novel, structure, ecocriticism, environment, environmental wisdom


The increasing adoption of technology to augment or even replace traditional face-to-face learning has led to the development of a myriad of tools and platforms aimed at engaging the students and facilitating the teacher's ability to present new information. The IMapBook project aims at improving the literacy and reading comprehension skills of elementary school-aged children by presenting them with interactive e-books and letting them take part in moderated book discussions. This study aims to develop and illustrate a machine learning-based approach to message classification that could be used to automatically notify the discussion moderator of a possible need for an intervention and also to collect other useful information about the ongoing discussion. We aim to predict whether a message posted in the discussion is relevant to the discussed book, whether the message is a statement, a question, or an answer, and in which broad category it can be classified. We incrementally enrich our used feature subsets and compare them using standard classification algorithms as well as the novel Feature stacking method. We use standard classification performance metrics as well as the Bayesian correlated t-test to show that the use of described methods in discussion moderation is feasible. Moving forward, we seek to attain better performance by focusing on extracting more of the significant information found in the strong temporal interdependence of the messages.


Bilateral paramedian thalamic infarcts are characterized by disturbance of consciousness, followed by persisting dementia, decreased spontaneity, apathy, amnesia and paralysis of eye movement. We report a 15-year-old boy with this syndrome, who exhibited transient coma at the onset. In addition to the typical symptoms, he complained of sensory disturbance in the lower extremities and face and the loss of taste sense. MRI showed symmetric paramedian thalamic infarction. There was no lesion in the midbrain. The etiology of infarct in this boy remained unknown despite extensive laboratory and neuroradiological examination. His sensory disturbance in the extremities and face may be due to extensive involvement of the inferolateral area of the thalamus by infarction of the paramedian thalamic artery. This patient illustrates that bilateral paramedian thalamic infarction can occur in a previously healthy child.


During compression molding of sheet molding compounds air bubbles are formed that can deteriorate several properties of the final composite. The story of such bubbles is directly set by the local pressure distribution during pressing. A number of experiments have therefore been performed in order to derive the relation between the pressure and dissolution rate of some gases into relevant resins. The experimental results follow Henry's law up to a pressure of 0.7 MPa and the rate of dissolution is highest for CO 2 in pure polyester. When applying the results to the process in focus it is found that even large bubbles can be dissolved into the liquid resin during manufacturing. Hence, there is a potential to produce parts with very low void content.


A 61-year-old male visited his doctor in October 2000 because of a high fever. Laboratory examination revealed leukocytosis with blast-like cells and thrombocytopenia. He was referred and admitted to our hospital in November 2000. Although he had mild splenomegaly, he had no lymphadenopathy on the first admission. The white blood cell count was 10,520/microliter with 45% blast-like cells and the platelet count was 51 x 10(3)/microliters. Bone marrow aspiration revealed 82% blast-like cells, which were positive for CD5, CD10, CD13, CD19, and CD20. Immunohistochemistry of the bone marrow clot sections revealed blast-like cells were positive for CD5, but negative for TdT, CD23 and cyclin D1. We diagnosed the patient as having de novo CD5-positive diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) with leukemic dissemination. He obtained a complete remission after two courses of CHOP therapy. The third chemotherapy was postponed because of strangulation of the intestine. He relapsed and died in spite of the third chemotherapy. CD5-positive DLBCL is one of the established disease entities that requires an appropriate therapy regimen because it is characterized by elderly onset, extranodal involvement, and a poorer prognosis.


The rarity of malignant phyllodes leads to variability in diagnosis and management. Most of the reported cases in the literature are large malignant phyllodes tumor. Malignant phyllodes tumor was seen in the age group between 35 and 55 years. The youngest age reported was an 11-year-old girl. The eldest reported was an 89-year-old woman. Phyllodes tumors are characterized by a typical rapid growth. Phyllodes tumor are composed of epithelial element and connective tissue stroma with stromal increased cellularity, cellular atypia, and pleomorphism with increased mitosis. The most common path of spread is hematological mostly to the lung, pleura, bone, heart, liver, metastasis to the brain and adrenal have been reported. Palpable axillary lymph node is found in 10%–15% cases; only <1% of them is pathologically positive for malignancy. Surgery in the form of breast conservative or mastectomy remains the primary treatment of malignant breast phyllodes. No literature support axillary lymph node dissection. For breast conservative surgery (BCS), 1 cm free margin is recommended less than that will be associated with higher recurrence rate. Mastectomy is indicated only if tumor-free margin cannot be obtained by BCS. In multivariate analysis, patient with more adverse prognostic factors underwent postoperative radiation therapy (RT). The RT groups were not inferior to non-RT groups on cancer-specific survivor regardless of surgery (mastectomy or BCS). But post-operative radiation therapy for BCS will significantly reduce local recurrence. Post-operative chemotherapy is seeing increased in palliation of metastatic cases.


Full depth structural concrete overlays are commonly used in bridge deck repair and rehabilitation. Beneficial structural effects, such as increase in structural depth, can only be considered in the design if monolithic action of the overlaid slab can be assured beyond the flexural ultimate limit state of the bridge deck. A three phase experimental program to study the effect of different surface preparations and dowels between the "old" deck and the overlay on the overall bridge deck behavior under service loads (monotonic, cyclic, dynamic), overloads and ultimate limit state loads is presented in this report. The three test phases comprised triplet shear block tests, full scale transverse deck slab panel test (simply supported and continuous) as well as the full scale prototype testing of a 60 ft long highway bridge section (Gepford Overhead) which had been in service for 25 years prior to being repaired and tested under laboratory conditions. Results from the experimental program strongly suggest, that a "clean" and "rough" interlayer surface can ensure monolithic behavior beyond the flexural yield limit state, thus rendering dowel reinforcement ineffective to participate in horizontal shear transfer. A summary of experimental results is presented in this report together with comparative studies and comprehensive design recommendations.


In this study, the effect of the methanol extract of Indigofera pulchra Willd. (Papillionaceae) was investigated against castor oil induced diarrheoa. Its effects on perfused isolated rabbit jejunum and guinea pig ileum were also evaluated. The extract produced a dose-dependent protection against the castor oil-induced diarrheoa in mice with the highest protection (100%), obtained at 200 mgkg-1 comparable to that of loperamide (5 mgkg-1), a standard antidiarrhoeal drug. The extract (0.4 - 6.4 mgml-1) produced a concentration relaxation of the rabbit jejunum. However, no observable effect was noticed when the guinea pig ileum was treated. The extract blocked the contractile effect of acetylcholine (2 × 10-8 gml-1) and histamine (4 × 10-7 gml-1) on both rabbit jejunum and guinea pig ileum. Phytochemical screening revealed the presence of flavonoids, tannins, saponins and steroids. The intraperitoneal median lethal dose (LD50) value for the extract was found to be 2154.0 mgkg-1. The results obtained revealed that the extract possesses pharmacologically active compounds with gastrointestinal relaxant and antidiarrhoeal activities and may possibly explain the use of the plant in traditional medicine for the treatment of gastrointestinal disorder.


The Molecular Lipophilicity Potential (MLP) is a versatile tool in drug design whose present state and potential developments are reviewed here. The MLP offers a three-dimensional representation of lipophilicity as calculated from partition coefficients. The intermolecular recognition forces and intramolecular effects encoded in lipophilicity are presented, followed by the theoretical foundations and validation of the MLP. It is then demonstrated that the MLP allows for the first time to investigate the dependence of lipophilicity on conformation. As a matter of fact, the MLP combined with an exploration of the conformational space of a solute reveals its "chameleonic" behaviour, i.e. its capacity to adapt to the molecular environment. Other applications of the MLP are presented and illustrated, namely its integration into 3D-QSAR (Comparative Molecular Field Analysis, CoMFA) and its interest as a docking tool.


We propose a self-supervised visual learning method by predicting the variable playback speeds of a video. Without semantic labels, we learn the spatio-temporal visual representation of the video by leveraging the variations in the visual appearance according to different playback speeds under the assumption of temporal coherence. To learn the spatio-temporal visual variations in the entire video, we have not only predicted a single playback speed but also generated clips of various playback speeds and directions with randomized starting points. Hence the visual representation can be successfully learned from the meta information (playback speeds and directions) of the video. We also propose a new layer-dependable temporal group normalization method that can be applied to 3D convolutional networks to improve the representation learning performance where we divide the temporal features into several groups and normalize each one using the different corresponding parameters. We validate the effectiveness of our method by fine-tuning it to the action recognition and video retrieval tasks on UCF-101 and HMDB-51. All the source code is released in https://github.com/hyeon-jo/PSPNet.


We show that there are two mechanisms responsible for the net energy exchange between an intense pulsed laser and an electron in vacuum, namely, stimulated Compton scattering and nonlinear Compton scattering(NLCS). For NLCS, being the only effect in a mono-frequency continuous laser beam, its contribution is also independently determined. The characteristics of these two mechanisms in connection with the net energy exchange are studied. For the case of a pulsed laser field, it is found that the maximum net energy exchange by NLCS is approximately proportional to Q02(Q0 ≡ eE0/(me ωc)) for Q0 ≳ 100. In addition, the relative importance of these two mechanisms to the net energy exchange at different intensities is explored.


Data of neutron super monitors and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) have been used to find a relationship between the temporal changes of galactic cosmic rays (GCR) isotropic intensity variations energy spectrum index γ(δD/D(R) ∝ R−γ, where R is the rigidity of GCR particles) and the exponent ( of the power spectral density (PSD) of the IMF's strength fluctuations (PSD ∝ f−ν , where f is the frequency).


While conventional methods for sequential learning focus on interaction between consecutive inputs, we suggest a new method which captures composite semantic flows with variable-length dependencies. In addition, the semantic structures within given sequential data can be interpreted by visualizing temporal dependencies learned from the method. The proposed method, called Temporal Dependency Network (TDN), represents a video as a temporal graph whose node represents a frame of the video and whose edge represents the temporal dependency between two frames of a variable distance. The temporal dependency structure of semantic is discovered by learning parameterized kernels of graph convolutional methods. We evaluate the proposed method on the large-scale video dataset, Youtube-8M. By visualizing the temporal dependency structures as experimental results, we show that the suggested method can find the temporal dependency structures of video semantic.


In this Master's Thesis a new Distributed Award Protocol (DAP) for robot communication and
cooperation is presented. Task assignment (contract awarding) is done dynamically with
contracts assigned to robots based upon the best bid received.
Instead of having a manager and a contractor it is proposed a fully distributed bidding/awarding
mechanism without a distinguished master. The best bidding robots are awarded with contract
for execution. The contractors make decisions locally. This brings the following benefits: no
communication bottleneck, low computational power requirement, increased robustness.
DAP can handle multitasking. Tasks can be injected into system during the execution of already
allocated tasks. As tasks have priorities, in the next cycle after taking into account actual bid
parameters of all robots, tasks can be re-allocated. The aim is to minimize a global cost function
which is a compromise between cost of task execution and cost of resources usage.
Information about tasks and bid values is spread among robots with the use of a Round Robin
Route, which is a novel solution proposed in this work. This method allows also identifying
failed robots. Such failed robot is eliminated from the list of awarded robots and its replacement
is found so the task is still executed by a team. If the failure of a robot was temporary (e.g.
communication noise) and the robot can recover, it can again participate in the next
bidding/awarding process.
Using a bidding/awarding mechanism allows robots to dynamically relocate among tasks. This is
also contributes to system robustness.
DAP was evaluated through multiple experiments done in the multi-robot simulation system. Various scenarios were tested to check the idea of the main algorithm. Different failures of robots (communication failures, partial hardware malfunctions) were simulated and observations were made regarding how DAP recovers from them. Also the DAP
flexibility to environment changes was watched. The experiments in the simulated environment confirmed the above features of DAP.


Reductive catalytic fractionation (RCF) is an efficient and selective way to produce phenolic monomers from lignin. However, this strategy is difficult to scale up due to its high operating pressure. In this work, we investigated RCF reaction at or near atmospheric pressure and without the use of hydrogen. The atmospheric RCF (ARCF) was conducted in acidified ethylene glycol in glass vessels at 185–195 °C catalyzed by 5% Ru/C. The products mainly include propylguaiacol and propylsyringyl (up to 95.6% among the lignin monomers) and do not contain propanolguaiacol, propanolsyringyl, or H monomers. Although the total yield of lignin monomers in ARCF is about one-quarter less than that of RCF, the operation of ARCF is much easier, milder, safer, and cheaper due to the atmospheric condition and the feasibility of the semi-continuous operation.


The study deals with the academic profession in China. Its characteristics and relationship with changing social institutions are explored by a historical approach and from an institutional perspective, which includes two elements of government and organization. The major findings of this study are summarized below. First, in accordance with China's legal framework, public and private higher education institutions are categorized as different legal entities, a difference that leads to favourable conditions for the academic profession in the public sector and to less favourable conditions in the private sector, and which also obstructs personnel flow and competition between the two sectors. Second, the personnel system has changed significantly since 1978, when it was reformed and the policies became more open. This change is largely led by the central government. As regards faculty hiring and promotion, qualification and performance are emphasized over seniority. As regards remuneration and benefits, the egalitarian approach has gradually been replaced by income gains based on performance. Finally, evidence shows that China's higher education institutions has evolved from so-called danwei governed under a planned system to organizations ruled by the market system, which has caused the academic profession to evolve from a danwei profession into a more organizational one.


Abstract— Intraocular glare and simultaneous contrast control appearance in high‐dynamic‐range (HDR) images. This paper describes unique test targets that simulate real images. These targets change the HDR range by 500 times, without significantly changing the veiling glare on the retina. As well, these targets have nearly constant simultaneous contrast. The range of appearances possible from HDR images with different average luminances were measured. The targets displayed a maximum luminance range of 5.4 log units. Using magnitude estimates (MagEst) of appearances, the relationship between luminance and lightness from white to black was measured. With one exception, only small changes in appearance with large changes in dynamic range were found. It was also found that appearance was scene‐dependent. The same dark grays (MagEst = 10) were observed with luminances of 10, 4.2, 1.1, and 0.063, depending on the percentage of white area in the surround. Glare from more white increases the retinal luminance of the test areas. Simultaneous contrast counteracts glare by making the appearance range (white‐black) with a much smaller range of luminances. Appearance is controlled by both the optical scattered light and the spatial processing. A single tone‐scale function of luminance cannot describe appearance controlled by scatter and spatial processing.


A 48 year old woman under went diagnostic coronary angiography for atypical chest pains. During catheterisation the aorta was seen to be in an abnormal anterior position and subsequent cannulation of the coronary circulation proved extremely difficult requiring multiple catheters. Eventually a single coronary artery was cannulated, which was normal.

Subsequent transthoracic and transoesophageal echocardiography was arranged which revealed that the …


Between August 2000 and 14 May 2001 (defined as the 2000-2001 epidemic) bluetongue (BT) was reported in three regions of Italy: Sardinia, Sicily and Calabria. During the 2001-2002 epidemic (between 15 May and 14 April 2002), the disease spread to five additional regions (Puglia, Basilicata, Campania, Latium and Tuscany). In May 2001 the Italian Ministry of Health decided to restrict animal movements and to vaccinate all susceptible domestic ruminant populations in infected and in neighbouring regions. This action was taken to reduce virus circulation with the aim of decreasing direct losses in sheep and goats due to the disease, and indirect losses in cattle populations due to movement restrictions. Furthermore, the Italian authorities implemented an epidemiological surveillance system to monitor the spread of the virus and to provide more effective movement controls. In 2002, the vaccination campaign reached the set goal of vaccinating more than 80% of susceptible domestic ruminants in Abruzzo, Sardinia and Tuscany. The vaccination campaign successfully reduced clinical disease in Sardinia and Tuscany. Before the advent of BT, cattle had always been moved from Sardinia, Sicily and the southern regions for fattening and slaughter in northern Italy. During the tracing of animals that had left infected areas in 2000 it was found that 10 957 cattle had been exported from Sardinia between June and August 2000 and were scattered throughout continental Italy. In addition, most cows selected for culling from the southern regions and the islands were sent to northern Italy for slaughter. However, since August 2000 the animal trade between infected and free areas has come to a complete standstill. Sardinia, in particular, due to the climatic and epidemiological conditions (vectors survive almost throughout the year), was no longer able to export any ruminants to the mainland. Long-term standstill therefore led to heavy economic losses and had even greater social consequences. As farmers are not compensated, it is impossible to enforce these restrictions indefinitely. The Italian authorities and the European Commission thus decided to adopt a policy of risk management allowing some animal movement. This paper presents an analysis that assesses the risk associated with animal movement from restricted areas, according to the level of immunity of susceptible animal populations due to vaccination in the same areas. Results of the analysis indicate that when more than 80% of the susceptible population in the territory of origin is vaccinated, the risk associated with the movement of vaccinated animals to free areas appears acceptable and can be mitigated further by adopting ancillary control measures.


PURPOSE OF REVIEW
Burst wave lithotripsy and ultrasonic propulsion of kidney stones are novel, noninvasive emerging technologies to separately or synergistically fragment and reposition stones in an office setting. The purpose of this review is to discuss the latest refinements in technology, to update on testing of safety and efficacy, and to review future applications.

RECENT FINDINGS
Burst wave lithotripsy produced consistent, small passable fragments through transcutaneous applications in a porcine model, while producing minimal injury and clinical trials are now underway. A more efficient ultrasonic propulsion design that can also deliver burst wave lithotripsy effectively repositioned 95% of stones in 18 human participants (18 of 19 kidneys) and clinical trials continue. Acoustic tractor beam technology is an emerging technology with promising clinical applications through the manipulation of macroscopic objects.

SUMMARY
The goal of the reviewed work is an office-based system to image, fragment, and reposition urinary stones to facilitate their natural passage. The review highlights progress in establishing safety, effectiveness, and clinical benefit of these new technologies. The work is also anticipating challenges in clinical trials and developing the next generation of technology to improve on the technology as it is being commercialized today.


The multi-layer S = 1 2 square lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet with up to 6 layers is studied via various series expansions. For the systems with an odd number of coupled planes, the ground-state energy, staggered magnetization, and triplet excitation spectra are calculated via two different Ising expansions. The systems are found to have long range Néel order and gapless excitations for all ratios of interlayer to intralayer couplings, as for the single-layer system. For the systems with an even number of coupled planes, there is a second order transition point separating the gapless Neél phase and gapped quantum disordered spin liquid phase, and the critical points are located via expansions in the interlayer exchange coupling. This transition point is found to vary about inversely as the number of layers. The triplet excitation spectra are also computed, and at the critical point the normalized spectra appear to follow a universal function, independent of number of layers.


In this paper, the numerical approximation of a Timoshenko beam with boundary feedback is considered. We derived a linearized three-level difference scheme on uniform meshes by the method of reduction of order for a Timoshenko beam with boundary feedback. It is proved that the scheme is uniquely solvable, unconditionally stable and second order convergent in L∞ norm by using the discrete energy method. A numerical example is presented to verify the theoretical results.


As part of a broader methodological reform movement, scientists are increasingly interested in improving the replicability of their research. Replicability allows others to perform replications to explore potential errors and statistical issues that might call the original results into question. Little attention, however, has been paid to the state of replicability in the field of empirical legal research (ELR). Quality is especially important in this field because empirical legal researchers produce work that is regularly relied upon by courts and other legal bodies. In this review article, we summarize the current state of ELR relative to the broader movement towards replicability in the social sciences. As part of that aim, we summarize recent collective replication efforts in ELR and transparency and replicability guidelines adopted by journals that publish ELR. Based on this review, ELR seems to be lagging other fields in implementing reforms. We conclude with suggestions for reforms that might encourage improved replicability.


Recently the association of cellular immunity with pulmonary infiltrates in Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection has been suggested. Guinea pigs infected experimentally with M. pneumoniae developed a cellular hypersensitivity that could be demonstrated in vitro by the macrohage migration inhibition test. Peritoneal exudate cells obtained from guinea pigs sensitized with the organism were inhibited from migrating out of capillary tubes by the whole cell antigen. When the whole cells were extracted with aqueous acetone, the activity was found in the acetone insoluble (lipid-depleted) fraction, but not in lipid fraction. The activity was heat resistant, but diminished by treatment of 0.8 N HC1 at 100 degrees C for 30 min. The antigens responsible for the cellular immunity of M. pneumoniae were separated from the lipid, which had been considered the specific hapten associated with humoral immunity to this organism.


Professor Hill has been known for his imaginative and thorough studies of the effects of political, social and economic developments on religious life and thought in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. In this motif-study on the Antichrist myth he suggestively relates the symbol to the larger process of detachment of religion from politics that occurred in that period. The doctrine that the pope was Antichrist, held by certain medieval heretics; became widely held by early Protestants. It provided a symbolically objective way of representing the issues of the Reformation and helped to maintain vigilance against the external threat to faith and nation. But with growing divisions in the church, the symbol was. applied internally; vague in substance, it could be used against any institution, authority or religious rite that was felt to be oppressive: king, bishops, the whole clergy, vestments and ecclesiastical laws, to name a few. Politically useful in the sixteenth century in consolidating royal power, it became a tool of party propaganda in the Civil War years. The very measure of the shifts involved tells much about the various groups. The millenary dimension became specific, as many attempted to predict the date of Antichrist's fall and the arrival of the new order. But frustration and disillusion in the face of failure and the very ambiguity of the term itself led others to make the final move and turn Antichrist inward: its spirit was in all men. And so, if Antichrist was everywhere, he was nowhere. Other factors contributed to the decline of the symbol after 1660: Restoration censorship, a growing rationalist spirit and its use in satire. Hill notes that both conservatives and radicals had reasons for dropping the term. Those who stressed the continuity of the episcopate found it politic to drop the notion that the pope was Antichrist. The move away from a strongly predestinarian theology contributed to questioning the usefulness and identification of Antichrist. In addition, its political usefulness declined; England's opposition now came from Protestant powers, not Roman Catholic. Although the term persisted, it was essentially marginal to both church and society. The association with antisemitism in continental Europe in this period and later was not part of the English scene. On both narrow and broad aspects of his theme the author has again provided numerous insights into the thought patterns of seventeenth-century England and much material for comparison with continental and American uses of Antichrist. (Marginally, the appendix on America should refer to Anne rather than "Sarah" Hutchinson—p. 183.)


The evolutionary line which leads to the living Sphaeroidinella dehiscens (Parker and Jones) has been divided into two genera, at least six species, and several subspecies. The sequence of forms is discussed here as a temporal cline. Irrespective of nomenclature, the evolutionary forms of Sphaeroidinella s. l. have proved stratigraphically useful in the upper Miocene and younger sediments of Louisiana. Development progressed from a trochospiral form with discrete, inflated chambers and a single aperture, to the living form in which the coiling pattern is obscure, the chambers are merged, and multiple apertures are present. Single aperture forms (Sphaeroidinellopis of Banner and Blow) disappeared at the end of the Pliocene. Late Miocene and earliest Pliocene specimens have a thickened apertural lip at maturity. Pleistocene and Recent specimens resemble irregularly ruptured spheres. The lips of the several apertures tend to be recurved and are never thickened. The coiling spiral becomes lower with time. Whereas ther is a trend in the direction of fewer chambers in the final whorl of stratigraphically younger forms, this feature must be used with great caution as juveniles always have fewer chambers than adults. The safest single index to stratigraphic age is the degree of chamber separation. All stages of gradation between "species" can be observed. End_Page 2165------------------------------ If one uses the Globorotalia fohsi forms to mark time datums, then the stratigraphic ranges of Sphaeroidinella forms in Louisiana are not contemporaneous with their ranges in the Caribbean region. The evolution of Sphaeroidinella is apparently similar in both areas. There is some evidence that Sphaeroidinella dehiscens is a deep-water variant of Globigerinoides sacculifer. Benthonic associates of fossil specimens suggest that Sphaeroidinella did not require great water depths in the past. End_of_Article - Last_Page 2166------------


Objectives To evaluate the application in clinical practice, of the acid dissociation in the patients' monitoring with subtherapeutic serum concentrations of infliximab (IFX), adalimumab (ADL) and etanercept (ETN), using an immmunoassay (ELISA) commercialized (Promonitor®, Proteomika S.L.). Methods For 3 years 499 trough samples were analyzed of 218 patients with different rheumatic pathologies treated with IFX (30 patients, 80 samples), ADL (116 patients, 238 samples) and ETN (72 patients, 181 samples). With the standard technology ADA was detected in 27, 16 and 0% of the patients treated with IFX, ADL and ETN respectively, coinciding always with a level of undetectable drug. 76 samples quantified with detectable but subtherapeutic levels at the standard treatment (26 samples of 20 patients with IFX <2 mg/L, 32 samples of 22 patients with ADL <3 mg/L and 18 samples of 15 patients with ETN <2 mg/L), that were analyzed for ADA after submitting them to an acid pre-treatment. The protocol of acidification consisted of the incubation of the serum during 15 minutes with acetic acid 300 mM and later neutralization with Tris 1 M fitting to a final dilution 1/10. Results With the protocol of acid dissociation anti-ADL antibodies were detected in 55% of the patients with subtherapeutic levels of ADL, which were undetectable with the standard assay (17 samples, 12 patients, middle age: 55 years, 67% women, diagnoses: 8 ankylosing spondylitis (BASDAI:4,8±1,5), 3 rheumatoid arthritis and 1 psoriasic arthritis (DAS28: 3,5±0,2). In 7 cases ADA's detection after acidificatiόn was produced already in the first request of monitoring to 6 months of initiated the treatment. In other 3 cases, ADA's positive after dissociation confirmed a previous positive with the standard assay. Initially the treatment was kept with ADL in 5 patients, which ended up by turning out to be positives with the standard technology between 2 and 6 months after the positive with dissociation. Finally, in 12 patients a change of treatment was necessary for lack of clinical response, being chosen by another anti-TNF before ADA's evidence. ADL's maximum concentration in the samples with a positive result was of 1,8 mg/L and the title of detected antibodies ranged between 35 and 282 UA/mL. Anti-IFX not anti-ETN antibodies were not detected after the acidificaciόn of the samples by subtherapeutic concentrations of these two drugs. Conclusions 1) The acid pre-treatment of the samples increases the sensibility of the test of detection of anti-drug antibodies breaking possible drug-antibody complexes. 2)The monitoring of inmunogenicity in patients with subtherapeutic levels of ADL, following a protocol of acid dissociation, has allowed us to detect in a precocious way ADA's presence in these patients contributing to the optimization of the treatment. 3) On the basis of our experience we recommend its application in case of patients with an ADL trough concentration of lower than 2 mg/L following the standard treatment. Disclosure of Interest : None declared DOI 10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-eular.3700


RECOMBINANT POETICS Interaction with different forms of generative production enables one to dynamically explore emergent meaning. New forms of computer-based art can make it possible for participants to actively become engaged in aspects of the production of the work. Each "user" of a specifically authored computer-mediated system may have a quite different experience emerging through interaction. Yet, emergent systems can also be analogue in nature. There is an interesting commonality to generative literary, artistic, and musical production that is relevant to the OULIPO, Recombinant Poetics [1], as well as techno-audio remix culture. In the following, I will compare and contrast approaches to combinatorics from the perspective of each of these fields of research. OULIPO (Ouvroir de litérature potentielle — The Workshop for Potential Literature) "does not want to be considered a literary school, or to overtly advance specific ideologies or theories, its goals portray an understanding of literature that merits outline and critique" [2]. In his illuminating book entitled OULIPO – A Primer of Potential Literature, Warren F. Motte, Jr., outlines the history of OULIPO, which was conceived at the initiative of Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais:


Abstract:With the increasing public awareness on global warming, the demand for low greenhouse gas emission (GHG) transportation fuel, such as biofuel, is growing rapidly. In the United States, like many other countries, the government is providing monetary incentives for biofuel displacement of fossil fuel. From the standpoint of biofuel proliferation, it is important that biofuel producers utilize these incentives in the most effective way, because better utilizations of incentives will lead to reduced costs for producers, which in turn will lower biofuel retail prices. Currently, however, biofuel producers are not taking full advantage of these incentives. This industry note introduces a new approach that allows US biofuel producers to improve their practice of using an incentive program called the LCFS (California Low Carbon Fuel Standard). Our method, which is relatively simple, is based on a recent research project conducted with a biofuel manufacturing firm, which aimed to maximize the benefit gained from the LCFS incentive program. We show, by performing numerical experiments with realistic settings, that the method matches or outperforms the current practice in terms of maximizing gains extracted from the incentive program, under all conditions.


Background: Patients with vestibular disease have an increased rate of reporting symptoms of depersonalisation/derealisation (DD) and similar symptoms can be provoked in healthy subjects during caloric vestibular stimulation. Objective: To assess the relationship between DD symptoms in patients with peripheral vestibular disease and their ability to update orientation in the environment. Methods: Sixty healthy subjects and 50 patients with peripheral vestibular disease completed a DD questionnaire (Cox and Swinson, 2002) and a General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)-12 (Goldberg and Williams, 1988). This was followed by a test of updating spatial orientation in which subjects were exposed to 10 manually driven whole body rotations of 45°, 90° or 135° in a square room, which contained distinctive features on the walls, in such a way that the features and corners subtended 45° with respect to the subject. After each rotation subjects reported which wall or corner they were facing. Estimation error was calculated by subtracting the reported rotation from the actual rotation. Results: DD scores were significantly higher in vestibular patients than in healthy subjects (p<0.05, t test). In patients, the lowest symptom scores and the lowest estimation errors were found in those with a unilateral canal paresis without balance symptoms whereas the highest scores and largest estimation errors were found in those with bilateral vestibular loss (p<0.05, ANOVA). Across all patients, DD scores were related to estimation errors (adjusted r2 = 0.25, p<0.05, ANCOVA). Conclusions: Patients with peripheral vestibular disease have a deficit in the ability to update orientation on the environment and a high prevalence of DD symptoms, which may imply a high order effect of the vestibular impairment. Derealisation symptoms in vestibular disease may be a consequence of a sensory mismatch between disordered vestibular input and other sensory signals of orientation.


A heuristic "pseudo-steady-state" model of the heat and mass transfer occurring in desiccant dehumidifiers, embodied in the program DESSIM, has been proposed as a conceptually and numerically simple analysis tool (Barlow, 1982). A comparison is made with a finite difference solution to determine the accuracy and limitations of the pseudo-steady-state model. The comparison indicates that the pseudo-steady-state model can produce accurate results of dehumidifier performance relative to the finite difference solution when used carefully, although at greater computational expense. Substitution of the finite difference solution into the overall DESSIM program results in a potentially accurate and useful analysis tool.


Background: U.S. adolescents have short and delayed sleep, which may have metabolic consequences. We hypothesized that shorter sleep duration and later sleep phase are associated with decreased insulin sensitivity (SI) and worse glucose tolerance in overweight youth.
 Methods: We enrolled healthy youth aged 12-21y with BMI ≥80%ile (or ≥23kg/m2 if ≥18y). We obtained 14 days of wrist actigraphy (ActiGraph GT3XP-BTLE), a frequently-sampled 180 min OGTT (fsOGTT) with 10 samples, and administered validated questionnaires to estimate obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) risk. From actigraphy, we derived average sleep duration (SLD), mid-sleep time (MST), and sleep onset (SO). From the fsOGTT, we estimated SI using the OGTT Minimal Model and the disposition index (DI = SI x incremental insulin AUC 180min). We used multivariable linear regression to examine associations between sleep patterns and glycemic outcomes adjusting for confounders.
 Results: To date, we enrolled 24 youth (13F) with a median (IQR) age of 20.6y (19.2, 21.5), BMI of 25.2kg/m2 (24.3, 28.9), and fsOGTT glucoses of: fasting 91mg/dL (86, 95), 1h 141mg/dL (113, 179), and 2h 117mg/dL (78, 144). Participants had a median SLD of 7.3h (6.8, 8.1) per night, with SO of 1:13am (12:27am, 2:09am) and MST of 4:48am (4:23am, 6:01am). Age, race, and sex were not associated with sleep outcomes and not included in regressions. We found that (1) later MST [β=10.3, p=0.01] and SO [β=11.4, p=0.01] were each associated with higher fsOGTT 2h glucose, (2) later SO was associated with lower log-transformed SI [β= -0.27, p=0.04], and (3) later MST trended towards lower log-transformed DI [β= -0.1, p=0.055] adjusting for BMI and OSA risk. SLD was not related to any fsOGTT variables.
 Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first study in overweight youth to show that delayed sleep phase (SO and MST), but not short SLD, was associated with lower SI using the rigorous OGTT minimal model. Further studies are needed to examine if delayed sleep is a modifiable risk factor for diabetes prevention in youth.

 T. A. Hitt: None. D. Stefanovski: None. A. Kelly: None. S. Malina: None. C. X. D. Wang: None. F. P. Sgambati: None. B. S. Zemel: None. J. Jun: None. S. N. Magge: None.

 National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01DK115648); National Institutes of Health (UL1TR001878, UL1TR001079)


The metabolism of mevalonate was studied in 6 dog kidneys and in 5 human tumour-involved kidneys during 6 days of hypothermic perfusion. 14C-mevalonate in the perfusate decreased and was incorporated into the total lipid fraction of the cortex in both human and dog kidneys. 80% of the incorporated radioactivity was found in the non-saponifiable lipids and after separation of that lipid fraction the radioactivity was recovered in cholesterol as well as in the cholesterol precursors lanosterol and squalene. Only very low levels of radioactivity were recovered in the tumour lipids. It is concluded that the kidney utilizes mevalonate for cholesterol synthesis during hypothermic perfusion and that addition of mevalonate may be of importance for preserving the membrane stability. Furthermore, it is suggested that hypothermic perfusion has a more deteriorating effect on the viability of the tumour tissue when compared to normal renal parenchyma.


This paper examines whether and how differences in investors' information environment are related to cross-country differences in the market risk premium volatility. We use the vector-autoregressive and implied cost of capital methods to extract time variation in risk premiums for 41 developed and emerging markets worldwide. Consistent with theoretical predictions, countries with better information environments tend to experience a lower risk premium volatility, even after controlling for various country variables that are potentially associated with variation in risk premiums. Our analysis of two exogenous events, specifically the 1997 Asian financial crisis and 2008 global financial crisis, further corroborates our key finding that the information environment plays an important role in explaining the market risk premium volatility.


Incidence data of thirty cranial nonmetric characters were presented for five Jomon population samples of West Japan as well as for protohistoric Kofun sample of west Japan and modern Kinki, Hokuriku, Okinawa-Amami, Sakhalin Ainu, and Korea-China samples, and data of 19 characters for Sakishima samples. COCHRAN'S tests show significant sex differences for 14 or at least 10 of 30 characters. Interpopulation comparisons were performed by applying metric multidimensional scaling analysis (MMDSA) to mean character differences based on side incidences of cranial nonmetric characters. Among the five Jomon populations, Tsukumo was most derived from other Jomon populations, that is Yoshiko, Inariyama, Hobi and Ota. As a whole, Jomon populations showed marked affinities to Hokkaido Ainu but not to any other population including Sakhalin Ainu or Kofun.


Dear Editor, We read with great interest a most engaging and pragmatic clinical guideline for decreased fetal movements (DFM).1 Between 30– 55% of women who experience a stillbirth retrospectively noted DFM in the preceding week.2 This presumed negative clinical incident has long been perceived as opportunity for intervention. The AFFIRM study, recently published (November, 2018), was to be the first randomised trial involving 409 175 pregnancies that used a similar intervention package as in Norway (subjective perception of DFM by a patient in a contemporaneous setting) and was expected to deliver a 30% reduction in the rate of stillbirths.2 The results of the AFFIRM study have been disappointing to the supporters of intervention for reduced fetal movements. There was no statistically significant reduction in the stillbirth rate but rather an increase in induction and caesarean section rates, and average neonatal length of stay in neonatal intensive care.2 Also, in the intervention group there was a higher rate of post neonatal deaths. In our exuberance to prevent stillbirths, have we violated the principle of nonmaleficence? Alternatively, as suggested by Walker and Thornton, it might be safer to retain our current approach but rather place limits on awareness campaigns to gestations greater than 37 weeks.3 Reflecting upon the negative or null findings of the AFFIRM study, should the local guideline have an immediate addendum to clarify that there is no robust scientific approach to reduced fetal movements while awaiting further evidence?


An efficient one pot asymmetric synthesis of tetrahydropyrano[2,3-c]pyrazoles has been developed. This class of biologically active heterocycles can be obtained via a secondary amine catalyzed asymmetric Michael/Wittig/oxa-Michael reaction sequence. Remarkably, the title compounds were accessible in good to very good yields and very good to excellent enantioselectivities after a single purification step.


In this article, we combine a lattice sequence from Quasi-Monte Carlo rules with the philosophy of the Fourier-cosine method to design an approximation scheme for expectation computation. We study the error of this scheme and compare this scheme with our previous work on wavelets. Also, some numerical experiments are performed.


Given an undirected network with link capacities and a set of commodities with known demands, this paper addresses the problem of determining D (with D=2, 3, 4) hop-constrained node disjoint paths for each commodity while minimizing the average or the maximum number of hops. These paths are defined according to two survivability mechanisms − Path Diversity and Path Protection, the latter guaranteeing total demand protection in the event of n failures (with n<D). We study these problems in the context of a traffic engineering task over pre-dimensioned networks where the real traffic demands are inevitably different from the estimated traffic demands that were assumed in the network dimensioning task. We present two classes of ILP models, disaggregated and aggregated, for both problems, study the relationship between their linear programming relaxations and compare their effectiveness through a set of computational experiments. The results show that, in practice, there is no gain in using the disaggregated models.


Life-history theory predicts that, to optimize their fitness, individuals should increase their reproductive effort as their residual reproductive value decreases. Accordingly, several studies have shown that individuals downregulate their glucocorticoid stress response (a proxy of reproductive investment in vertebrates) as they age, and as the subsequent reproductive value decreases. However, and surprisingly, results appear inconsistent, suggesting that the environmental context or the individual state may affect the relationship between age and reproductive effort. Here, we tested for the first time this hypothesis, and more specifically, whether this attenuation of the corticosterone stress response with advancing age depends on the energetic status of individuals. We compared the influence of age on the corticosterone stress response between fasting and non-fasting breeding snow petrels (Pagodroma nivea), an extremely long-lived bird. As expected, we found that the corticosterone stress response was attenuated in old petrels, but only when they were not fasting. Interestingly, this pattern was not apparent in fasting petrels, suggesting that old birds downregulate their corticosterone stress response and increase their parental investment only when they are in good body condition. At the ultimate level, old individuals may maintain a strong corticosterone stress response when fasting because the survival costs of increased stress resistance and parental effort might then outweigh their reproductive benefits.


In this study, we analyzed how secondary school tracking relates to students' self-beliefs (i.e., their academic self-concepts in different domains and their beliefs regarding their labor market chances) and school disengagement during a time period that has received little attention in educational psychological research on tracking: when students are at the end of schooling and on the verge of entering the labor market. In doing so, we disentangled 2 distinguishing features of tracking: tracks as social contexts (operationalized via track level and the mean achievement of students' schoolmates) and tracks as pathways to different future opportunities (operationalized via educational certificates). Using questionnaire, achievement, and administrative school data from 2,155 students from 29 low-track schools, 23 intermediate-track schools, and 35 comprehensive schools in Berlin, Germany, we found educational certificates to be the most important factor shaping students' self-beliefs and school disengagement. Irrespective of their individual achievement, their schoolmates' achievement, and their track level, students who received the intermediate school-leaving certificate had higher academic self-concepts, believed that their certificate would give them better chances of success in the labor market, and were less disengaged from school than students who received the low school-leaving certificate. In contrast, students' track level did not serve as a predictor for the outcomes considered. The achievement of students' schoolmates (i.e., the big-fish-little-pond effect) was only relevant for students' academic self-concepts and not for students' self-beliefs regarding labor market entry or their school disengagement.


Scientific progress is characterized by important technological advances. Next‐generation DNA sequencing has, in the past few years, led to a major scientific revolution: the microbiome revolution. It has become possible to generate a fingerprint of the whole microbiota of any given environment. As it becomes clear that the microbiota affects several aspects of our lives, each new scientific finding should ideally be analyzed in light of these communities. For instance, animal experimentation should consider animal sources and husbandry; human experimentation should include analysis of microenvironmental cues that might affect the microbiota, including diet, antibiotic, and drug use, genetics. When analyzing the activity of a drug, we should remember that, according to the microbiota of the host, different drug activities might be observed, either due to modification or degradation by the microbiota, or because the microbiota changes the immune system of the host in a way that makes that drug more or less effective. This minireview will not be a comprehensive review on the interaction between the host and microbiota, but it will aim at creating awareness on why we should not forget the contribution of the microbiota in any single aspect of biology.


Marine diatoms are photosynthetic, and thrive in environments where light fluctuates. Like all oxygenic photosynthetic organisms diatoms face a light-dependent inactivation of the Photosystem II complexes that photooxidize water to generate biosynthetic reductant. To maintain photosynthesis this photoinactivation must be countered by slow and metabolically expensive protein turnover, which is light dependent in cyanobacteria and in plants. We tracked daily cycles of the content, synthesis and degradation of Photosystem II, in a small and in a large marine diatom, under low and high growth light levels. We show that, unlike plants, diatoms maintain extensive cycling of Photosystem II proteins even in the dark. Photosystem II protein cycling saturates at low light, and continued cycling in dark periods, using energy from respiration, allows the diatoms to catch up to excess photoinactivation accumulated over the preceding illuminated period. The large diatom suffers only limited photoinactivation of Photosystem II, but cycling of Photosystem II protein exceeds Photosystem II inactivation, so the large diatom recycles functional Photosystem II units before they are inactivated. Through the diel cycle the contents of active Photosystem II centers and Photosystem II proteins change predictably, but are not correlated, generating large changes in the fraction of total PSII that is active at a given time or growth condition. We propose that dark and steady cycling of Photosystem II proteins is driven by the tight integration of chloroplastic and mitochondrial metabolism in diatoms. This ability for baseline, continuous Photosystem II repair could contribute to the success of diatoms in mixed water environments that carry them from illumination to darkness and back.


The design of safety critical systems calls for advanced software engineering models, methods and tools in order to meet the safety requirements that will avoid putting human life at stake. When the safety critical system encompasses a substantial interactive component, the same level of confidence is required towards the human-computer interface. Conventional empirical or semi-formal techniques, although very fruitful, do not provide sufficient insight on the reliability of the human-system cooperation, and offer no easy way to, for example, quantitatively compare two design options. The aim of this paper is to present a method with supporting tools and techniques for engineering the design and development of usable user interfaces for safety-critical applications. The specific application area that we consider is air traffic management but most of the results will be valid for any application areas with similar requirements.


The discourse on kitsch has changed tone. The concept, which in the early 20th century referred more to pretentious pseudo-art than to cute everyday objects, was attacked between the World Wars by theorists of modernity (e.g. Greenberg on Repin). The late 20th century scholars gazed at it with critical curiosity (Eco, Kulka, Calinescu). What we now have is a profound interest in and acceptance of cute mass-produced objects. It has become marginal to use the concept to criticize pseudo-art. Scholars who write about kitsch are no longer against it (Anderson, Olalquiaga). And since the 2000s, art students have been telling us that they "love kitsch". The contemporary concept is strongly attached to certain colors (pink) and materials (porcelain). In this article I aspire to find some keys on how to view the history and contemporary state of the concept. My hypothesis is that the change in the use of the concept has at least partly to do with changes in the concept of art, which has lately, this is my hypothesis, become sufficiently decentralized from its original roots and boundaries (upper class, male, ethnically Central European).


A series of donor-π-acceptor (D-π-A) conjugated copolymers (PBDT-AT, PDTS-AT, PBDT-TT, and PDTS-TT), based on benzo[1,2-b:4,5-c']dithiophene-4,8-dione (BDD) acceptor unit with benzodithiophene (BDT) or dithienosilole (DTS) as donor unit, alkylthiophene (AT) or thieno[3,2-b]thiophene (TT) as conjugated π-bridge, were designed and synthesized for application as donor materials in polymer solar cells (PSCs). Effects of the donor unit and π-bridge on the optical and electrochemical properties, hole mobilities, and photovoltaic performance of the D-π-A copolymers were investigated. PSCs with the polymers as donor and PC70BM as acceptor exhibit an initial power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5.46% for PBDT-AT, 2.62% for PDTS-AT, 0.82% for PBDT-TT, and 2.38% for PDTS-TT. After methanol treatment, the PCE was increased up to 5.91%, 3.06%, 1.45%, and 2.45% for PBDT-AT, PDTS-AT, PBDT-TT, and PDTS-TT, respectively, with significantly increased FF. The effects of methanol treatment on the photovoltaic performance of the PSCs can be ascribed to the increased and balanced carrier transport and the formation of better nanoscaled interpenetrating network in the active layer. The results indicate that both donor unit and π-bridge are crucial in designing a D-π-A copolymer for high-performance photovoltaic materials. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2014, 52, 1929–1940


Mosquito A Natural History of Man's Most Persistent and Deadly Foe. Andrew Spielman and Michael D'Antonio. Hyperion, New York, 2001. 267 pp. $22.95, C$32.95. ISBN 0-7868-6781-7. Faber and Faber, London. £10.99. ISBN 0-571-20980-7. Spielman, an authority on mosquito-borne diseases, and D'Antonio, a science journalist, have collaborated to provide a popular account of mosquitoes, their roles as disease vectors, and the efforts of humans to combat them. The book includes numerous stories and anecdotes that Spielman has gathered over the course of his career.


In the Internet, securing email has always been an important issue. Various standards and products have been created. One of the most successful standards is OpenPGP by J. Callas et al. (1998), which uses public key cryptography (R. L. Rivest et al. (1977) and others) and is implemented in systems like Pretty Good Privacy according to P. Zimmerman (1995), Gnu Privacy Guard by W. Koch, Hushmail, and others. A well-known difficulty with the use of public key cryptographic systems is the verification and distribution of the public keys. OpenPGP solves the problem of verifying the authenticity of a public key by having users certify each others keys, building a "Web of Trust" described by P. Feisthammel (1997) by bundling these key certificates with each users public key. Therefore, adding a new public key and updating an existing public key (or replacing it by a new version) are the two most important operations of any PGP public key repository. To allow easy distribution of PGP public keys, the OpenPGP community established a network of open access public keyservers, allowing users of OpenPGP software to freely exchange public keys. The nodes of this keyserver network synchronise their database by exchanging new public keys and key updates amongst each other, virtually building one global key database. At the moment, this synchronisation is done with an inefficient and ineffective email based protocol. This paper describes the implementation of an alternative protocol - KX - on the popular pksd keyserver according to M. Horowitz (1997), based on direct TCP connections between the keyservers and unambiguous identifiers for every key update or new key. With the dropping of the dependency on a working mail system and the improved fault mechanisms, KX is a lightweight alternative in terms of used network, disk and CPU resources.


ABSTRACT Testing 1,666 fecal or intestinal samples from healthy and diarrheic pigs, we obtained hemolytic Escherichia coli isolates from 593 samples. Focusing on hemolytic E. coli isolates without virulence-associated genes (VAGs) typical for enteropathogens, we found that such isolates carried a broad variety of VAGs typical for extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Vitamin D deficiency has been reported in patients with ulcerative colitis, and polymorphism in the gene encoding the vitamin D binding protein can affect the characteristics of vitamin D binding protein, thus affecting the level and function of vitamin D in vivo. Previous studies have rarely reported on the potential relationship between vitamin D binding protein polymorphisms and ulcerative colitis. The objective of this study is to investigate the associations between genetic variants in vitamin D binding protein genes and ulcerative colitis susceptibility in the Han Chinese population.

METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN
In this casecontrol study, the genotyping of vitamin D binding protein rs4588 and rs7041 polymorphisms was conducted using polymerase chain reaction-ligase detection reactions, genotypes were detected by polymerase chain reactionligase fragment length polymorphism. We also measured inflammatory factors, oxidation and antioxidant indicators.

RESULTS
There was no significant difference in the distribution of two loci genotypes, alleles and haplotypes between the two groups (p>0.05). However, the differences in the distribution of serum MDA in different haplotypes in the case group were statistically significant (p=0.014): CG>, CT>AT.

CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest that polymorphism of these two sites (rs4588 and rs7401) in the vitamin D binding protein gene may have no correlation with susceptibility to ulcerative colitis in the Han Chinese population. But, interestingly, haplotype GC may affect the level of oxidative stress in ulcerative colitis patients, especially the level of malondialdehyde.


Indirect evidence suggests that the genetic defect in hereditary spherocytosis lies in the erythrocyte membrane skeleton, a submembranous meshwork of proteins (principally spectrin, actin, and protein 4.1) responsible for membrane shape and structural stability. To test this premise we systematically assayed the interactions of spectrin, the major skeletal protein, in six kindreds with autosomal dominant hereditary spherocytosis. In one these kindreds, enhancement of spectrin-actin binding by protein 4.1 was reduced, owing to a 39 +/- 4 per cent decrease (mean +/- S.D) in the binding of normal protein 4.1 by spectrin, in all of four members with the disorder. The defective spectrin was separated into two populations by affinity chromatography on immobilized normal protein 4.1. One population (41 +/- 2 per cent) lacked the ability to bind 4.1, but the other functioned normally. Presumable, the nonfunctional spectrin was the product of the autosomal dominant gene responsible for the hereditary spherocytosis in this kindred.


Forecasting the number of fire department deployments for different types of operations is important to size the need to the demand and hence, improve emergency response efficiency and reduce financial and material resources. Fire department operations are not considered hazardous because they are somewhat related to time and date. Fires are more likely to occur in the fall than in the winter, and floods are more risky in the winter than in the spring. Car accidents are also logically more likely to occur during the day than at night, when most people are resting at home. This work focuses on predicting the target value of fire calls by creating 14 different subsets of data for each type of possible category (childbirth, fire, suicide, traffic accident, drown, fire on public road, water-flood, heating, emergency aid to people, help for people, public road accident, brawl, witness, and wasp). The methodology was based on the Departmental Fire and Rescue Doubs (SDIS 25) in France, where two machine learning techniques were then implemented to verify the feasibility of the experiments. Although the results can be improved by adding additional explanatory variables, the results were promising.


A new chemometric approach is put forward, dealing with the non-linear behaviour observed in the multivariate curve resolution (MCR) analysis of certain overlapping voltammetric signals obtained in titrations of metal complexes where pH is progressively changed. In such cases, non-reversible reduction signals move along the potential axis as a consequence of the involvement of H(+)-ions in the electrochemical process and cause a dramatic loss of linearity, which hinders accurate MCR analysis. The method proposed is based on the least-squares fitting of peak potential vs. pH datasets to parametric linear and sigmoid functions through the decomposition of the data matrix into both a concentration profile matrix and a unit signal matrix, in a similar way as in the alternating least-squares algorithm of MCR (ALS). Such calculations are carried out through several home-made Matlab programs which are freely available as Supplementary Material of the present work. The fitted parameters, along with the evolution of resolved concentrations and potential shifts with pH, provide valuable information on the complexation/reduction processes. The method is tested first on the relatively simple Cd(II)-NTA system and then applied to the study of the binding of Cd(II)-ions by glutathione (gamma-Glu-Cys-Gly, GSH) and the phytochelatin PC(2) ((gamma-Glu-Cys)(2)-Gly).


Despite the widely hailed importance of gay bars, what we know of them comes largely from the gayborhoods of four "great cities." This paper explores the similarities of 55 lone small–city gay bars to each other and the challenges they pose to the sexualities and urban literatures. Small–city gay bars have long been integrated with straight people in their often red–state communities; they are undifferentiated and unspecialized subcultural amenities not just for LGBT people, but for straights as well, fostering cosmopolitan lifestyles for large geographical regions whose residents nevertheless prefer small–city living for reasons, including proximity to kin or nature, and the fact that many big–city pleasures can be found everywhere. Contrasts between these findings and previous scholarship reveal the ways in which the latter has often implicitly defined urbanism and cosmopolitanism in terms of commercial diversity, as do studies of gentrification or gayborhoods. Small cities provide a way to integrate studies along the urban–rural interface, including places left to rural studies by both sexualities and urban scholarship. As an analytic object of comparison, small cities can help to disentangle urban effects from the cosmopolitanism of modern life generally.


A lady, a mare, a lire and a vase are the examples chosen by Hippias Major to reply Socrates'questions on beauty. Aesthetics' debate began from concrete things, beings and events we encounter in everyday life. In this paper I will consider two rudimentary events lacking any of the qualities traditionally considered aesthetic; items that have no elegance, grace or style and are not original, creative or expressive. These plain, simple objects and situations do not intend to incite contemplation because they do not conform to any model of art or beauty nor manifest syntactic or semantic complexity. I am referring to the most prosaic and yet capable of inducing a deep aesthetic response akin to that conveyed by traditional aesthetic objects. A difficult case to argue but for a quality which, despite being entirely ignored by western aesthetic theory, is still worth of regard. This quality may be defined as earthiness or the tellurian, a sensuous and symbolic celebration of sheer materiality in everyday life.


STUDY OBJECTIVES
To examine caffeine consumption from various dietary sources in a cohort of Australian children and the relationship between caffeine consumption, sleep, and daytime behavior.

METHODS
Children aged 8 to 12 years and their parents/guardians completed a battery of questionnaires. Children completed a caffeine questionnaire while parents completed questionnaires regarding demographics, sleep, and behavior.

RESULTS
The final sample consisted of 309 children (mean ± standard deviation [SD] age 10.6 ± 1.3 years, male = 48%) and corresponding parent reports. On average a mean ± SD 10.2 ± 17.4 mg/day of caffeine was consumed with a range of zero to 151 mg/day. Of the children who consumed caffeine (87% of the sample), the largest contributor was coffee and tea; making up 41% of total caffeine intake, and sodas (soft drinks) contributed to 40% of caffeine intake. Total caffeine consumption was significantly associated with sleep routine (r = 0.152); morning tiredness (r = 0.129); restless sleep (r = 0.113); and internalizing behavioral problems (r = 0.128). Using path analysis, caffeine consumption was positively associated with morning tiredness (β = 0.111, P = .050) which was positively associated with internalizing behaviors (β = 0.432, P < .001). The addition of sleep routine and restless sleep to the model led to a complete mediation of caffeine consumption on morning tiredness, as well as a partial mediation of the association between morning tiredness and internal behaviors.

CONCLUSIONS
In 8- to 12-year-olds the primary sources of caffeine are coffee/tea and sodas. Overall mean caffeine consumption is small by adult standards but has an effect on behavior and sleep in children. The effect on behavior is mediated by disrupted sleep, indicating that caffeine is a contributor to sleep problems and related behavior in children.


B019 GETTING RID OF STRATIGRAPHIC GRIDS Abstract 1 The implementation of any geostatistical method requires the use of a parametric coordinate system (u v t) such that (u v) corresponds to "horizontal" curvilinear coordinates tangent to the horizons while (t) corresponds to the "vertical" curvilinear axis approximately orthogonal to the horizons. So far common practice consists in covering the geological domain with a "structured stratigraphic grid" and then to use the (i j k) indexes as a sampling of the (u v t) coordinates. In this article we propose a completely different approach based on the recently introduced "GeoChron" model


In this report, experiences with on-line PD measurements on turbogenerator stator insulation using the VHF PD detection technique are discussed. The discussion is focussed on the care that should be taken with on-line PD detection, regarding the following topics: localization of PD sources, comparison of PD results, and selecting measurement frequencies.


Introduction Metastatic involvement of the gallbladder is extremely uncommon. We present a first-in-literature report on a 79-year-old male who presented with acute cholecystitis secondary to metastatic transitional cell carcinoma from the urinary bladder to the gall bladder. Case Report A 79-year-old male with a history of bladder cancer, presented with right upper quadrant pain and a positive Murphy's sign on physical examination. He was diagnosed with acute cholecystitis and underwent a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Pathologic examination revealed a poorly differentiated, infiltrative tumour, most consistent with metastatic bladder carcinoma. Conclusion This case report serves to remind internists and surgeons to consider metastatic disease as the aetiology of acute cholecystitis in patients with a history of cancer. Also, oncologists, radiologists and urologists need to be aware of this rare presentation of bladder cancer metastasis in order to focus some attention on the biliary tree in follow-up scans of these patients.


A procedure for separation and pre-concentration of trace amounts of cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, and zinc in brine samples has been proposed. It is based on the adsorption of metal ions onto dithizone co-crystallized with microcrystalline naphthalene, in the pH range 8.5-9.1. Nitric acid is used to back-extract the cations from the solid phase, which are measured by ICP-OES. Various parameters, such as the effect of pH, stirring time, and amounts of solid phase, have been studied in detail, to optimize the conditions for the determination of trace amounts of Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni and Zn in synthetic brine samples. The limits of detection values expressed in μg L-1 are 44 (Zn), 11 (Ni), 30 (Cd), 47 (Pb) and 11 (Cu). The precision of the procedure was determined by running 10 replicate samples, each one containing 250 μg L-1 of each element and the relative standard deviations were 2.71 % (Cd), 2.15 % (Cu), 1.53 % (Pb), 2.47 % (Ni), and 2.78 % (Zn). The accuracy of the procedure was confirmed by applying the analyte additions method and the results indicated that quantitative recoveries (≥ 95 %) were obtained.


India, being a developing nation, basically relies on farming. For farming water is essential factor. In other countries also the major profession of human Being is agriculture, out of available land 64% is engaged by the farming, and it needs nearly 85 % of clean water. This paper represents the irrigation system using the Linux board and wireless sensor network. Fundamentally, it includes two nodes which are named as Coordinator node which will be at receiver side and Sensor node which will be at transmitter side. Two parameters of the soil that is temperature of soil and moisture of soil are used for the decision to make either Irrigation turned on or off. In this proposed system, Raspberry Pi 3 is used as a coordinator node which collects the data collected by the sensors. RPi communicates with the sensor node uses ZigBee wireless protocol for communication. Web server will be designed at the Raspberry Pi through which user can control the level of water depending on the values of temperature and moisture remotely.


There has been enormous growth in world population over the last several decades. 90 million people are currently added to the world's population every year. That amounts to 250,000 people per day, or 10,000 per hour. However, the Earth is a finite body with finite resources. For the first time, the human population is beginning to push against some of the Earth's limits at the global level. The author cites the example of the stagnation in growth of the world fish catch. The world fish catch grew from 22 million tons in 1950 to 100,000 million tons by 1990. In 1950, the average person consumed 9 kg of seafood; by 1990, average per capita consumption had increased to 19 kg. Japan alone in 1994 consumed almost 10 million tons of seafood. Most marine biologists believe that oceanic fisheries cannot sustain a catch of more than 100 million tons of seafood per year. Indeed, 6 years have passed since we hit that limit and the catch has not increased. The per capita seafood catch has therefore declined by 7% and will continue to decline until world population size is stabilized. Already expensive, seafood will grow increasingly more costly as demand rises. Available water supplies and cropland are also declining. It has even been determined that there are limits to the amount of fertilizer crops can use. The author considers the rising consumerism in China as it becomes increasingly industrialized and urges Japan to continue to expand its financial support of international family planning programs, especially in the context of US budget cuts to family planning expenditures. For most countries in the world, the main threat to security will not be military aggression, but food scarcity.


The effect of Amazonian dark earth fertility on the nutritional status and fruit production of a Carica papaya plantation was evaluated in Açutuba Coast, Iranduba Municipality, Amazonas, Brazil, between August and Octuber 2003, when the plantation was eight months old and just starting production. A completely randomized experimental design, with four treatments and nine replications, was used; each replication contained three plants. The treatment were: Tpn Amazonian Dark Earth with no supplemental fertilizer; Tpa Amazonian Dark Earth with supplemental fertilizer (3 kg aged chicken manure and 300 g dolomite per plant); Tm1 Mulata Earth with no supplemental fertilizer after cropping with squash; Tm2 Mulata Earth with no supplemental fertilizer after slashing and burning fallow. The fruit production on Tpn (18.2 fruits/plant) was approximately 30% of the maximum production obtained on Tpa (61.1 fruits/plant); this effect was attributed to K which is low in Tpn and higher in Tpa because of the chicken manure. The potential acidity in all treatments was as expected in TP or TM, without apparent effect of previous soil management. There appeared to be a very large nutritional disequilibrium, caused by the high levels of P, Ca, Mg and low level of K. All treatments had levels Zn and Mn that are considered toxic, whereas Fe was suitable.


In this paper the author studies systems of first-order partial differential equations on superspace; by means of a Cauchy-Kowalewsky-like expansion he is able to solve a large class of differential systems.