Movements of the earth's crust causing progressive changes in the levels of large bodies of water relative to their shorelines may influence the formulation of water resource projects and/or their continuing effectiveness with time. In the Great Lakes basin there is evidence of an uplift of the earth's crust, of about 1 ft per 100 y, in the northeasterly part of the basin relative to that in the southwest. This results in a corresponding lowering of water levels along the northeasterly shorelines and a rise in water levels along the southwest shores. In at least two of the lakes, Lake Huron and Lake Ontario, the average depth of water will change with time. In Lake Huron, it will gradually decrease because the bed underlying the lake is rising with respect to the lake outlet. In Lake Ontario, the depth of water will increase since the lake outlet is rising with respect to the remainder of the lake. This paper reviews some of the engineering implications of the relative rates of crustal movement in the Gre...


The 46,XX male is rare, with an incidence of 1 in over 9,000 newborn males. The diagnosis is most often made in the postpubertal period. A case of a 46,XX male was diagnosed in the neonatal period and further confirmed by the results obtained from amniocentesis performed earlier, in the second trimester.


Pulmonary surfactant is inactivated in meconium aspiration syndrome and neonatal pneumonia. Development of an exogenous surfactant less sensitive to inactivation might be useful for treating these diseases. We investigated in vitro whether addition of the cationic cyclic membrane cross-linking peptide polymyxin B (PxB) and/or calcium chloride (CaCl2) to modified porcine surfactant Curosurf increases resistance to meconium-induced inactivation of surface activity while antimicrobial activity of PxB is maintained. To study bacterial proliferation, Escherichia coli, group B streptococci (GBS), or Staphylococcus aureus were incubated 0–5 h in saline or in meconium in the presence or absence of Curosurf with or without PxB. PxB and CaCl2 improved spreading and adsorption of Curosurf. Curosurf plus CaCl2/PxB needed a 4-fold increase of meconium concentration to increase dynamic surface tension significantly compared with Curosurf plus CaCl2 alone, indicating that PxB further increases the resistance of Curosurf to meconium-induced inactivation. Meconium alone like meconium/Curosurf promoted growth of E. coli and GBS, but addition of Curosurf/PxB or PxB alone significantly reduced the growth of E. coli. Biophysical and antibacterial properties of Curosurf and PxB may be combined into a useful adjunct in the treatment of neonatal Gram-negative pneumonia and/or meconium aspiration syndrome.


In previous research, scientists were able to use transient facial thermal features extracted from
Thermal Infra-Red Images (TIRIs) for making binary distinction between the affective states.
For example, thermal asymmetries localised in facial TIRIs have been used to distinguish
anxiety and deceit. Since affective human-computer interaction would require machines to
distinguish between the subtle facial expressions of affective states, computers' able to make
such binary distinctions would not suffice a robust human-computer interaction. This work, for
the first time, uses affective-state-specific transient facial thermal features extracted from TIRIs
to recognise a much wider range of facial expressions under a much wider range of conditions.
Using infrared thermal imaging within the 8-14 μm, a database of 324 discrete, time-sequential,
visible-spectrum and thermal facial images was acquired, representing different facial
expressions from 23 participants in different situations. A facial thermal feature extraction and
pattern classification approach was developed, refined and tested on various Gaussian mixture
models constructed using the image database. Attempts were made to classify: neutral and
pretended happy and sad faces; multiple positive and negative facial expressions; six
(pretended) basic facial expressions; partially covered or occluded faces; and faces with evoked
happiness, sadness, disgust and anger.
The cluster-analytic classification in this work began by segmentation and detection of
thermal faces in the acquired TIRIs. The affective-state-specific temperature distributions on the
facial skin surface were realised through the pixel grey-level analysis. Examining the affectivestate-
specific temperature variations within the selected regions of interest in the TIRIs led to
the discovery of some significant Facial Thermal Feature Points (FTFPs) along the major facial
muscles. Following a multivariate analysis of the Thermal Intensity values (TIVs) measured at
the FTFPs, the TIRIs were represented along the Principal Components (PCs) of a covariance
matrix. The resulting PCs were ranked in the order of their effectiveness in the between-cluster
separation. Only the most effective PCs were retained to construct an optimised eigenspace. A
supervised learning algorithm was invoked for linear subdivision of the optimised eigenspace.
The statistical significance levels of the classification results were estimated for validating the
discriminant functions.
The main contribution of this research has been to show that: the infrared imaging of facial
thermal features within the 8-14 μm bandwidth may be used to observe affective-state-specific
thermal variations on the face; the pixel-grey level analysis of TIRIs can help localise FTFPs
along the major facial muscles of the face; cluster-analytic classification of transient thermal
features may help distinguish between the facial expressions of affective states in an optimized
eigenspace of input thermal feature vectors. The Gaussian mixture model with one cluster per
affect worked better for some facial expressions than others. This made the influence of the
Gaussian mixture model structure on the accuracy of the classification results obvious.
However, the linear discrimination and confusion patterns observed in this work were consistent
with the ones reported in several earlier studies.
This investigation also unveiled some important dimensions of the future research on use of
facial thermal features in affective human-computer interaction.


The German Bundeskartellamt rendered a significant decision on the obligation of franchisors to share purchasing advantages with franchisees the 8th May 2006. Praktiker is a leading German…


ABSTRACT Introduction : Vaccine preventable diseases are occuring despite high immunization coverage. Hence, the predictors of adherence toward childhood immunization are important to be identified. A cross-sectional study conducted to determine the predictors of adherence toward different vaccines of childhood immunization among mothers of under five children. Materials and Methods : Recruitment of 320 respondents into the study was via systematic random sampling technique. Validated self administered questionnaires and proforma were used as the study instruments. Descriptive and inferential statistics were analyzed using SPSS version 22. Multiple logistic regression conducted for the analysis of predictors. Result: Response rate of 98.1% was obtained from 314 respondents. Adherence (completeness) towards childhood immunization and adherence (timeliness) towards different vaccines were 98.09% and 56.5% - 97.1% respectively. The predictor of adherence (completeness) was household income category of RM2000 to RM2999 ( p =0.047). The predictors of adherence towards vaccine timeliness were; employed mothers towards BCG vaccine ( p =0.011), third and onwards born children towards Hepatitis B dose one vaccine, ( p =0.049), 25 year old and above mothers towards Hepatitis B dose two vaccine ( p =0.038) and household income of RM5000 and more towards MMR dose one vaccine, ( p =0.044). Conclusion: High adherence (completeness) towards childhood immunization relatively differs with the lower adherence (timeliness) towards different vaccines and its doses. Household income was the predictor for adherence (completeness). Predictors of vaccine timeliness included; mother's employment status for BCG vaccine, birth order for Hepatitis B dose one vaccine, maternal age for Hepatitis B dose two vaccine, and household income for MMR dose one vaccine. Keywords: Predictor, adherence, childhood immunization, under five children


Amphiphilic block copolymers poly(LysAA-b-DMS) consisting of a hydrophilic poly(N-α-acrylamide-L-lysine) [poly(LysAA)] segment with different molecular weights and a hydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) segment were prepared as follows. The precursor copolymer poly(Boc-LysAA-OtBu-b-PDMS) was obtained from radical polymerization of N-α-acrylamide-N-e-tert-butoxycarbonyl-L-lysine-tert-butylester (Boc-LysAA-OtBu) initiated with 4,4'-azobis(polydimethylsiloxane 4-cyanopentanoate) (azo-PDMS) with the molecular weight of PDMS Mw = 4.3 × 103 in the presence of 2-mercaptoethanol (2-ME) as a chain-transfer agent. Removal of the protecting groups of the precursor copolymer was carried out in 80% trifluoroacetic acid aqueous solution to give poly(LysAA-b-DMS)-1-3. The weight average molecular weight of poly(LysAA-b-DMS)-1-3 was Mw = 1.02 × 104 – 2.52 × 104. From the 1H-NMR and fluorescence spectra measurements, poly(LysAA-b-DMS)-1-3 was determined to self-organize and form core-shell micelles in water. The critical micelle concentration (CMC) increased to 1000 - 4000 mg·L–1 with increasing molar ratio of the poly(LysAA) segment from 0.42 to 0.65. From morphological analysis with a scanning probe microscope (SPM), poly(LysAA-b-DMS) has microphase-separated structures made up of hydrophilic and hydrophobic regions with the domain size ranging from several tens to several hundreds of nanometers. Inhibition of thrombin activity of poly(LysAA-b-DMS) was evaluated from the Michaelis constant (KM) and catalytic activity (kcat) for the enzymatic reaction of thrombin and synthetic substrate S-2238 in the presence of poly(LysAA-b-DMS). The KM and kcat were 0.10 - 0.11 mM and 4.04 × 105 – 4.26 × 105 min–1, respectively. Fibrinolytic activity was also verified from the transformation of plasminogen to plasmin by tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) using synthetic substrate S-2251 in the presence of poly(LysAA-b-DMS). The KM and kcat were 0.07 mM and 5.73 × 106 –5.95 × 106 min–1, respectively.


We study structural restrictions on biautomata such as, e.g., acyclicity, permutation-freeness, strongly permutation-freeness, and orderability, to mention a few. We compare the obtained language families with those induced by deterministic finite automata with the same property. In some cases, it is shown that there is no difference in characterization between deterministic finite automata and biautomata as for the permutation-freeness, but there are also other cases, where it makes a big difference whether one considers deterministic finite automata or biautomata. This is, for instance, the case when comparing strongly permutation-freeness, which results in the family of definite language for deterministic finite automata, while biautomata induce the family of finite and co-finite languages. The obtained results nicely fall into the known landscape on classical language families.


Abstract In Singapore, wearing the tudung (Muslim headscarf) to public schools is not allowed because, the Singaporean government argues, this will jeopardize Singapore's racial balance. Wearing the hijab to state schools is also prohibited in France, given secularism as state policy. The Hong Kong government, in contrast, does not ban wearing ethnic/religious clothing to public sector schools, and claims that accommodating diversity is a manifestation of ethnic harmony. Why such difference? This paper examines Hong Kong's embracing multicultural education as an institutional response, under the threat of student shortage, to the new challenge of neoliberal marketization of education, and argues that this has resulted in empowering ethnic minority students to enjoy a niche of freedom in religious and cultural expressions.


Taking as a reference the existing literature, through this article intends to make a brief presentation of curriculum standardization and its implementation in the field of education. Standards, taken from the business field, are considered to be a necessary instrument for assurance of educational quality. However, empirical research, as well as critical voices in relation to their applicability, in all educational contexts, emphasize that these cultural homogenized and unify teaching, which does not guarantee an improvement in learning, since it tends to ignore cultural diversity in schools. Standards, taken from the business field, are considered to be a necessary instrument for assurance of educational quality. However, empirical research, as well as critical voices in relation to their applicability, in all educational contexts, emphasize that these cultural homogenized and unify teaching, which does not guarantee an improvement in learning, since it tends to ignore cultural diversity in schools.


Introduction:
 Recent studies have suggested that female physicians are more likely to adhere to clinical practice guidelines in medical care. When clinical guidelines for post-cardiac arrest care are adhered to patients have better outcomes.

 Hypothesis:
 We hypothesize that gender of the attending provider may affect guideline concordance in post-cardiac arrest care.

 Methods:
 We identified 139 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients treated at an academic tertiary care facility between 12/2013 and12/2016. Patients were over 18 years of age, suffered a medical cardiac arrest and were comatose at hospital admission. Demographic data and arrest characteristics were collected. The gender of the admitting provider and the provider who lead the first documented family meeting were abstracted. To assess for evidence based practice, we utilized 4 previously cited guidelines that are associated with improved survival; a.) was coronary angiography completed within 24 hours of admission, b.) was targeted temperature management initiated, c.) was target temperature achieved, and d.) did withdrawal of life sustaining therapy occur before 72 hours from return of spontaneous circulation?

 Results:
 Of the total cohort, 61.9% were male, mean age was 57.5 ±16.2 years, 36.6% had an initial shockable rhythm and 41.7% received bystander CPR. Fifty-six (40.3%) individuals survived to hospital discharge. Approximately 28.8% of the cohort was admitted to the hospital by a female attending physician. Guideline adherence by provider gender is described in the Table. No statistically significant differences were appreciated when examining the frequency of guideline concordant care and attending physician gender.

 Conclusions:
 In this small cohort of post-cardiac arrest patients, provider gender does not appear to affect post-arrest care guideline adherence. Further study in a large, multi-center cohort may yield different findings.


Decentralization of BANK services would allow its users, first, to primarily earn money, second, to extremely reduce document routines, third, to make their activity more transparent and secure.We propose a new concept of BANK, a digital BANK that never can be a bankrupt and has professional skills and degree of activity of its customers as a main capital.


The paper presents the experience formation of image of the future teacher through the use of modern technology through interaction with university students on specialties "Pre-school education and training" and "Defectology".


Minocycline is a tetracycline derivative antibiotic commonly prescribed for acne, rosacea, and other inflammatory skin disorders. Minocycline turns black when oxidized, leading to discoloration of the skin, nails, bulbar conjunctiva, oral mucosa, teeth, bones, and thyroid gland. Hyperpigmentation has been reported after long-term minocycline therapy with at least 100 mg/day. Three types of minocycline-induced cutaneous hyperpigmentation can result. Type I is the most common, and is associated with blue-black discoloration in areas of previous inflammation and scarring. Type II most commonly affects the legs and is characterized by blue-gray pigmentation of previously normal skin. Type III is the least common and is characterized by diffuse muddy-brown discoloration predominantly on sun exposed skin. Minocycline-induced hyperpigmentation may be cosmetically disfiguring and prompt identification is essential. Without treatment, symptoms may take several months, to years to resolve, after discontinuation of the drug. However, the pigmentation may never completely disappear. In fact, there have been few reports of complete resolution associated with any therapeutic intervention. We report a case of a patient on long-term minocycline therapy utilized as an anti-inflammatory agent to control symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, which led to minocycline-induced hyperpigmentation of the face. To remove the blue-gray cutaneous deposits, 3 Q-switched lasers (Neodymium: yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) 1064 nm, Alexandrite 755 nm, and Ruby 694 nm) were used in test areas. The Alexandrite 755 nm laser proved to provide effective clearing of the minocycline hyperpigmentation requiring just 2 treatments, with minimal treatment discomfort and down time.


The interest of tobramycin, studied here in 63 cases of severe infection, is due to several factors: --its ease of use including in cases of renal insufficiency; --the efficiency of subcutaneous administration, of particular interest to patients on anticoagulants; --its action on multi-resistant Enterobacteria and those not responding to gentamicin. Antibiotherapy is however only one of the elements of success in the treatment of severe infections, beside two factors which are often linked and determining: early treatment and the development of foci resistant to antibiotics.


High blood pressure (HBP) is a health problem world—wide. In Togo, that affection constitutes a more and more pre-occupying cause of morbidity and mortality. This study is a prospective one which intended to identify the antihypertensive regimens prescribed and evaluate their effect on patients' blood pressure (BP) control. Out of the 204 patients enrolled (mean: 55.01 ± 12.55 years; sex ratio: 1.3), 112/176 placed on antihypertensive therapy have controlled their BP (38.39% outpatients vs 61.61% inpatients). Related to the sex factor, we didn't observe any significant difference in the BP control. Whereas, the mean median value of BP reduction of outpatients (30.00/15.00 mmHg) (p = 0.001) was half lower than that of inpatients (60.00/30.00 mmHg (p = 0.004)). Thirty five outpatients (81.40%) vs 64 inpatients (92.75%) were placed on combination therapy. The bitherapy was prescribed to 23 outpatients (53.49%) against 27 inpatients (39.13%) while the quadritherapy and more than 4 drugs combination were prescribed exclusively to inpatients (20.29%, n = 14). That quadritherapy induced a significant mean reduction of inpatients' SBP compared to monotherapy (p = 0.043) and to bitherapy (p = 0.004). The favorite combinations were D + CCA, D + ACEI, D + CCA + ACEI and D + CCA + ACEI + CAAD of which the quadruple therapy showed a significant inpatients' DBP control (p = 0.015) compared to D + CCA combination. The combinations including at least one diuretic induced a significant difference between outpatients (median value: 30.000/10.000 mmHg) (p < 0.001) and inpatients (median value: 60.000 mmHg/30 mmHg) (p < 0.001). The first-line molecules and fixe combinations prescribed in decreasing frequency were among others: hydrochlorothiazide + captopril, nicardipine, α methyldopa for outpatients; furosemide, nicardipine, captopril, α methyldopa, hydrochlorothiazide + captopril for inpatients. Diuretics, CCAs and ACEIs were the 3 favorite pharmacological groups for essential hypertension management in our African resource limited context. Combined to CAAD, they represented the best quadruple combination among inpatients having showed a significant difference in DBP control compared to D + CCA combination.


ZnO is a wide bandgap semiconductor with a direct bandgap of 3.32eV at room temperature. It is a candidate material for ultraviolet LED and laser. ZnO has an exciton binding energy of 60 meV, much higher than that of GaN. It is found to be significantly more radiation hard than Si, GaAs, and GaN, which is critical against wearing out during field emission. Furthermore, ZnO can also be made as transparent and highly conductive, or piezoelectric. ZnO nanotips can be grown at relatively low temperatures, giving ZnO a unique advantage over the other nanostructures of wide bandgap semiconductors, such as GaN and SiC. In the present work, we report the selective growth of ZnO nanotips on various substrates using metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. ZnO nanotips grown on various substrates are single crystalline, n-type conductive and show good optical properties. The average size of the base of the nanotips is 40 nm. The room temperature photoluminescence peak is very intense and sharp with a full-width-half-maximum of 120 meV. These nanotips have potential applications in field emission devices, near-field microscopy, and UV photonics.


The authors use data from the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey to examine the association between incarceration and living arrangements, net of a range of sociodemographic and early life characteristics. Relative to living with a spouse and child(ren), there is evidence that a history of incarceration is strongly associated with several nonnuclear living arrangements, including living alone, as a sole adult with child(ren), with a partner and child(ren), with a partner but no child, and with other family but no spouse, partner, or child. These living arrangements may be indicative of lower levels of social integration, which have potentially serious consequences for these individuals as well as their families and communities. The authors discuss these results with reference to the decades-long, unprecedented mass incarceration that is ongoing in the United States today.


This paper examines a particular episode in the history of British imperialism in India: the appointment of the Indian Hemp Drug Commission in 1893. We analyze the way a quasi-judicial investigation into the consumption of drugs was differently conceived and executed as a civilizing mission by, on the one hand, British colonizers, and, on the other hand, an aspiring colonized elite. By bringing together the ideological dimensions of a civilizing mission (e.g., the reliance on scientific knowledge, groper procedures, legal techniques) with its social ones (e.g., collaboration between colonizers and a local elite), we show how the very notion of a civilizing mission became a site of struggle over meaning, identity, and desirable forms of governance. The analysis reveals a local elite struggling to position itself at once on a par with British criteria of scientific competence and yet not as a mere proxy for British interests; at once able to articulate itself in terms of enlightenment concepts such as reason and modernity and yet celebrating its own distinct cultural authenticity.


Recently, browser-based crypto mining (or browser mining) received attention in academic literature, mainly from work in the field of computer science. Browser-based crypto mining describes the act of websites or other actors mining cryptocurrencies for their own gain on client-side user hardware, which mainly takes place by mining Monero through Coinhive or similar codebases. Although the practice gained infamy through the various ways in which it was illicitly deployed, browser mining has the potential to act as an alternative means for the monetisation of web services and digital content. A number of studies explored browser mining for monetisation purposes and highlighted its short-comings compared to traditional advertisement-based monetisation strategies. This paper discusses the practice in light of EU data protection and privacy law, notably the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive (ePD), which is currently being overhauled and aligned with the GDPR. It adds to the discussion surrounding the feasibility of browser mining as a potential alternative for monetisation by (i) exploring the legality of browser mining in relation to EU data protection and privacy law (ii) and by identifying possible benefits regarding the protection of individuals' personal data and privacy by deploying browser mining. It is argued that employing browser mining in a transparent and legitimate manner may be an additional option to financing websites and online services due to the growing legal pressure on advertisement models such as programmatic advertisement that rely on the exploitation of large amounts of personal data and ad networks.


Textile manufacturing releases large amount of wastewater with significant load of organic pollution mainly in form of desizing agent and dyes. The textile effluent is amenable to biological treatment and can negatively impact receiving water bodies if proper treatment is not performed before discharging the same in natural water bodies. The untreated wastewater takes its toll on dissolved oxygen and the ecosystem is put to stress. This can have serious and permanent adverse effects on flora and fauna of the ecosystem. Additionally impairment of water quality will render it harmful to other water users. Hence treatment of waste water is of paramount importance to save the nature and the right of other users. Of late anaerobic treatment has become a competitive method to traditional aerobic process as it is less energy intensive, produces smaller amount sludge and terminal product of anaerobic treatment is rich in methane which has potential fuel value. This study focused on examination of biodegradability of textile effluent in an anaerobic biofilm reactor. The reactor was operated in batch mode with complete recycling. The kinetics of waste degradation was described by implementing Anaerobic Digestion model No. 1 (ADM1) through mole based stoichiometric equations to safeguard against mass leakages reported elsewhere about the model. The pH of the solution was computed through an algebraic charge balance equation. The reactor hydraulics was modeled as a completely mixed reactor. The resulting set of ordinary differential equations was solved using implicit Euler method including a positivity preserving step. The model predictions were compared against the experimental results collected.


Herein, we have developed molecular markers for nuclear genes to use in multiplex-PCR and PCRRFLP, with the goal of characterising hybrid lines derived from crosses between pintado Pseudoplatystoma corruscans and cachara P. reticulatum. These markers, together with others described previously, were used to perform molecular identification analyses as genetic subsidies for Brazilian aquaculture. These analyses were performed due to the problems of high mortality in the offspring reported by the aquaculturist. From a total of 16 broodstock samples, 13 were genetically identified as hybrids; surprisingly, nine of these hybrids were found to be post-F1 lineages. These data show that the fertility of these animals can seriously affect the cultivated stocks, thus causing financial damage in this aquaculture system. The establishment of PCR-RFLP and multiplex-PCR as molecular techniques allows for both the correct management of these animals and the routine monitoring of production and trade of fish hybrids in aquaculture. Consequently, such tools will enable a sustainable development in the aquaculture industry.


Resampling methods including randomization test, cross‐validation, the jackknife and the bootstrap are widely employed in the research areas of natural science, engineering and medicine, but they lack appreciation in educational research. The purpose of the present review is to revisit and highlight the key principles and developments of resampling methods to advance the understanding and applications of resampling methods in educational research. The present review also intends to provide resources for educational researchers to identify specific resampling methods that may be unitized to solve research problems in education. The procedures of each resampling technique are illustrated by empirical examples. The recent developments and further directions of resampling methods are also discussed.


Background Physical activity and a healthy body composition are said to reduce the risk of major depressive disorder. Nonetheless, deeper insight is needed into which specific forms of physical activity (and their relation to body composition) are effective in improving and preventing depressive symptoms. Methods We compared different self-reported physical activities of the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire and body composition measures between patients with a current major depressive episode (MDE; N = 130) and healthy control subjects (N = 61). These parameters were also tested for correlations with depression severity and serum lipid levels in patients and controls. Results Patients with a current MDE reported significantly fewer hours spent on total physical activity, walking or bicycling for travel, and vigorous-intensity activities at leisure than healthy control subjects. More time spent on vigorous-intensity activities at work, less time spent on walking or bicycling for travel, higher body fat mass, and lower body muscle mass correlated significantly with stronger depression severity. Physical activity and body measures correlated significantly with serum lipid levels. Limitations Self-reports of physical activity, only short-term follow-up of 20 days, cross-sectional study design without examination of causal role of exercise. Conclusions More time spent on traveling by foot or by bike is especially associated with a lower risk of and milder depression. These results highlight the differential role of physical activity in depression.


RFID represents a significant improvement over other automated identification technologies (such as bar coding) in that RFID readers do not require line of sight to tags nor do RFID systems require human assistance when functioning properly. These and other attributes make RFID an excellent candidate for convergence with a variety of networking technologies, and recent research has paired RFID in a broad range of mashup-like partnerships with IP networks, sensor networks, the Internet, mobile phones, wireless networking, Bluetooth, social networks, peer-to-peer, SMS and others. While other studies have provided overviews of RFID security and privacy [1], relevant protocols [2] and overall technical introductions [3], this appears to be the first work to survey the landscape of RFID's increasing convergence with other networking technologies.


From 1995 to 1997 11 racehorses, one Hanoverian and one Pony were presented to the clinic with a sudden appearing, very loudly gurgling expiratory respiratory noise. Considering the preliminary report and the clinical and endoscopical findings, as exercise induced dorsal displacement of the soft palate (DDSP) was found to be the cause of the respiratory noise. The 13 horses were treated in general anaesthesia by transendoscopic coagulation of the caudal margin of the soft palate with a Neodym-YAG-Laser. This surgical intervention had to be repeated on four horses with unchanged signs. Eight of 13 horses (62%) did not show any respiratory noises after the operation. These horses were again successfully raced and ridden. Only an improvement was observed in two horses (15%), while in three patients (23%) the respiratory noise was unchanged after surgery. The laser chirurgic approach to the exercise induced DDSP offers, compared to previous therapies important advantages, like shorter recoveries, combined with similar success rates.


Increasing size, severity, and human proximity to fires in the western US are driving a need for more effective ecosystem restoration in the immediate post-fire period. Surface treatments, such as mastication of logging slash, reduce erosion and improve soil nutrient and water retention on steep slopes. However, few studies have investigated the impact of these treatments on arthropod communities over time. Our objective was to determine which insect communities return to these treated areas and if the mulch changes the community structure over time. We surveyed arthropod abundance using pitfall traps in mulch treatments in a landscape-scale fire near Flagstaff, Arizona, and a controlled split-plot experiment outside of the larger fire footprint. Predatory beetles were more abundant in mulch in the large landscape treatment, with no differences in abundance in the split plots. Fungivores had no significant mulch preference, and several native bark beetles were more abundant in the untreated sites. We found that the size of the fire footprint and distance to the intact forest matrix likely impact arthropod community composition over time. We were unable to fully evaluate vegetation recovery, but further work will allow us to understand how surface treatments impact the interaction of arthropods and vegetation.


The paper presents a detailed study of building energy audit through a case study about a commercial building in Shanghai. Recorder data of energy consumption of each building service system are used to diagnose the weak points of the building energy-usage system, tap latent power and then a detailed energy audit study are presented. By conducting an investigation of the energy consumption, the energy audit focuses mainly on the equipment consumption, especial on air-conditioning system, electronically equipments, lighting system, and elevators, etc. During the energy audit investigation, field-measurement of the indoor environment has been carried out in winter. Indoor temperature, relative humidity and CO 2 concentration have been measured during the field-measurement. Based on the energy audit results on the total energy consumption of the building from 2005 to 2008, outer climate and office occupancy rate are two leading factors for the change of the total energy consumption. The energy consumption of the air-conditioning system is at the first place, which accounts for about 45%. The energy consumption of the lighting system is just less than 10%. Some measures are put forward to increase energy efficiency.


Generally, approaches of coastal issues are sectoral basis and solutions have been formed in adhoc fashions which are not long lasting. Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) is conceived as a holistic management tool working across sectoral, disciplinary, and institutional boundaries. ICZM planning is a continuous process to achieve the goals and objectives by using alternative decisions. ICZM plan is providing boundary conditions for limitation, negotiation and implementation. Planning for coastal management is essentially requires integration of resources, uses, issues, and tools for achieving the management objectives. The ultimate goal of ICZM is to improve the quality of life of human communities. Coastal area management needs integrated, interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral approaches for sustainable utilization of resources, which is the fundamental objective of the resource planners and managers. Methodology for ICZM planning is differing in relation to the regional culture, society, economics, politics, nature, technology, scientific, human behavior, etc. Planning for coastal management is very easy by following the methodology or framework developed for the planning process. A case study of ICZM Plan for Andaman has been prepared by using the participatory methodology, which is the source of consensus for all stakeholders of the Andaman Islands. The tasks of ICZM Plan preparation for Andaman Islands includes, knowledgebase development, selection of ICZM plan preparation methodologies, conflict identification, risk analysis, cost benefit analysis, strategic and action plans, recommendations and institutional changes. This ICZM methodology could be used for comparing and understanding the boundary conditions of union or federal developing nations towards comparative planning.


A new sexual diploid of D. erythrosora complex was discovered from the Oki Islands in Japan. Spores of this plant were observed and the meiotic chromosome number was confirmed to be n=41II (2x). This diploid plant differs from the two other endemic sexual diploid species in the D. erythrosora complex, D. caudipinna and D. koizumiana, in having pale-green indusia. This newly reported diploid plant will help inform the origin and diversity of agamosporous species within the D. erythrosora complex in Japan.


Exceptionally leaky transistors are increasingly more frequent in nano-scale technologies due to lower threshold voltage and its increased variation. Such leaky transistors may even change position with changes in the operating voltage and temperature, and hence, redundancy at circuit-level is not sufficient to tolerate such threats to yield. We show that in SRAM cells this leakage depends on the cell value and propose a first software-based runtime technique that suppresses such abnormal leakages by storing safe values in the corresponding cache lines before going to standby mode. Analysis shows the performance penalty is, in the worst case, linearly dependent to the number of so-cured cache lines while the energy saving linearly increases by the time spent in standby mode. Analysis and experimental results on commercial processors confirm that the technique is viable if the standby duration is more than a small fraction of a second.


Tumour-associated cell cycle defects are often mediated by alterations of incyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) activity. Misregulated CDKs induce unscheduled proliferation as well as genomic and chromosomal instability. According to current models,mammalian CDKs are essential for driving each cell cycle phase, so therapeutic strate- gies that block CDK activity are unlikely to selectively target tumour cells. However, recent genetic evidence has revealed that, whereas CDK1 is required for the cell cycle, interphase CDKs are only essential for proliferation of spe- cialized cells. Emerging evidence suggests that tumour cells may also require specific interphase CDKs for proliferation. Thus, selective CDK inhibition may provide therapeutic benefit against certain human neoplasias.


By law, US food aid relies on commodity procurement in the US. A powerful political coalition of US farm groups, shippers and relief agencies vigorously supports these in-kind food aid donation. As an alternative, local procurement of food aid, in Africa, has attracted growing interest because of its potential to reduce landed costs and speed delivery times. For this reason, many food aid donors, other than the US, have switched to local and regional procurement of food aid commodities. This paper reviews experience with local and regional food aid procurement in Zambia. The study focuses primarily on experience of the World Food Programme (WFP), the agency with the most extensive experience conducting local and regional procurement in Africa. WFP's experience suggests that local or regional procurement of food aid offers significant savings, in both commodity costs and delivery times. On average, maize procured in Africa costs 30% to 50% less than white maize imported from the US and arrives 1 to 2 months faster than commodity imports from the US.


This paper describes the development of a decision support tool, an adoption assessment matrix based on critical adoption factors, that addresses a need in industry; namely, to improve the overall understanding of the constituent parts of agile systems development methodologies. It highlights the importance of critical adoption factors to the adoption of an agile method and illustrates the usefulness of a decision support process to determine the viability of an agile method for a specific software project. The paper describes the results of a series of workshops (two carried out in commercial software developement companies, and one with personnel from the British Minsitry of Defence) where the adoption assessment matrix was used to assess the suitability of agile methods in software development projects. A major benefit of the tool is that it guides discussion, concentrating the debate on the critical factors, applied to the individual project. These discussions proved to be as valuable as the output of the tool itself. The results of these workshops show that an argument can be made for the use of and benefit of such a decision support process in industry, in supporting the decision to adopt an agile methodology.


Fermented culture of Streptomyces fulvissimus was found to secrete an antibacterial protein inhibitory to Micrococcus luteus, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus and methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains. The extracellular protein from the fermented culture on concentration revealed a high molecular weight peptide of 63kDa on SDS-PAGE gel and the region on gel displayed inhibitory activity against methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Bioactivity of the extra cellular protein was non-sensitive to proteinase K, alpha chymotrypsin, protease, EDTA (ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid), PMSF (phenyl methyl sulfonyl fluoride) and DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) but partially susceptible to amylase and heat. Glycoprotein nature of the proteinaceous compound was confirmed by periodic acid schiffs (PAS) staining. The secretary protein of S. fulvissimus demonstrated a significant activity against MRSA strain. It could be an important source for developing new drugs to control multidrug resistant gram positive bacteria.


The in vitro biotransformation of 7-alkoxycoumarin by rat liver microsomes was studied to develop a simple and accurate assay procedure for 7-alkoxycoumarin O-dealkylase. 7-Alkoxycoumarin was converted to the O-dealkylated metabolite, 7-hydroxycoumarin, by aerobic incubation of the parent compound with microsomes and NADPH, but the decreased amount of 7-alkoxycoumarin in the reaction mixture was several times higher than that of the 7-hydroxycoumarin produced during the incubation. The thin-layer chromatogram of the ether extractable metabolites in the reaction mixture showed the existence of several fluorescent metabolites including 7-hydroxycoumarin. Fluorescent properties of the parent compound, 7-alkoxycoumarin, and most of the metabolites differed from that of 7-hydroxycoumarin, but the reaction cofactor, NADPH, showed similar properties. Treatment of the reaction mixture with perchloric acid resulted in conversion of NADPH to the non-fluorescent form without any effect upon the fluorescent properties of 7-hydroxycoumarin and its related compounds. Based on these properties, an improved and simple in vitro fluorometric assay of the O-dealkylation of 7-alkoxycoumarin was developed. The method is applicable to routine determination of O-dealkylase activity in both isolated microsomes and whole homogenate. Species differences in the substrate specificity of the O-dealkylation reaction and in the responsiveness of animals to the inducer were observed even with use of the liver homogenate obtained from untreated and phenobarbital- or beta-naphthoflavone-pretreated animals, similar to what was observed with the microsomal system.


Today, companies need more information and communications to reduce achieving costs to resources and time diversity and also the quality of resources. In other words, Organizations are required to develop an integrated information system. Enterprise resource planning systems are considered a help to flourish the companies' capabilities through the integration and management of business processes. This research examines the information management and decision-making process with the help of enterprise resource planning systems.


In this paper we introduce a new parallel algorithm MLFPT (multiple local frequent pattern tree) for parallel mining of frequent patterns, based on FP-growth mining, that uses only two full I/O scans of the database, eliminating the need for generating candidate items, and distributing the work fairly among processors. We have devised partitioning strategies at different stages of the mining process to achieve near optimal balancing between processors. We have successfully tested our algorithm on datasets larger than 50 million transactions.


In this work we make use of the concept of policy networks to introduce the main consequences underlying the building and establishing of a transport infrastructure for enhancing mobility. Our interest is connected with the vast domain of inter-organizational relations for transport systems: settings in which many key players, both public and private, cooperate to implement socially relevant public policy. Under this respect, policy networks may be interpreted as an analytical tool for examining, in transport settings, the relations between organizations, by taking into account the role played by private and public actors and the formal as well as informal relationships between them. This paper unfolds as follows. In par. 2 we depart by pointing out the relevance of the policy networks concept to study transportation infrastructures. Interpreting transport infrastructures as policy networks subsequently recalls a few issues that are covered in the following paragraphs. In particular, transportation infrastructures bring about both economic impacts (par. 3) and logistic advantages in terms of peripheralness/accessibility of a given area (par. 4). Finally, we look at the wider context of transportation infrastructure to derive a notion of organizing mobility as a more inclusive concept of policy network exploring how organizing mobility can represent an infrastructure for development.


Reactions of AgX with 2,4,6-tri(2-pyridyl)-1,3,5-trazine (tpt) yielded three 3D highly symmetric isostructural coordination polymers (X = ClO4-, BF4-, and PF6-) and a dimer (X = CF3COO-), respectively. In the coordination polymers, anion−π interactions are found between the multiatomic anions and tpt ligands. Systematic variation including synthetic methods, ratios of reactants, and solvents provides synthetic evidence proving that anion−π interactions play a decisive role in assembly of the coordination polymers.


Our previous studies have found that (±)-(E)-12-hydroxyoctadec-10-enoic acid (HOEA) isolated from the red alga Tricleocarpa jejuensis showed cytotoxic effects on various living organisms including harmful microalgae, Gram-positive bacteria, and mammalian tumor cells. Since natural products with apoptosis-inducing ability can be promising anti-cancer agents, in this study, we investigated the cytotoxic mechanism of HOEA on U937 cells focusing on apoptosis induction. HOEA showed much stronger cytotoxic and cytolytic effects on U937 cells than elaidic acid, which has similar structure but no 12-hydroxy group, suggesting that hydroxy group is important for the cytotoxicity of HOEA. HOEA induced apoptotic nuclear morphological changes, DNA fragmentation, and decrease in mitochondrial membrane potential. Furthermore, time-dependent increase in annexin V+/PI+ cell population in HOEA-treated U937 cells was detected. Among the apoptosis-related reagents, caspase-family inhibitor almost completely inhibited HOEA-induced DNA fragmentation. In the analyses using specific caspase-substrates, extremely high cleavage activity toward caspase-3/7/8 substrate was observed in HOEA-treated U937 cells, and weak activities of caspase-1 and -3 were detected. Analyses using specific caspase inhibitors suggested that caspase-3 and caspase-8 might be predominantly responsible for the cleavage activity. Activation of these caspases were also confirmed by western blotting in which significant levels of cleaved forms of caspase 3, caspase 8, and PARP were detected in HOEA-treated U937 cells. Our results suggest that HOEA is capable of inducing apoptosis in U937 cells in which caspase-3 and caspase-8 might play important roles. Since the cytotoxic effect of HOEA is not strictly specific to tumor cells, development of appropriate drug delivery system for selective tumor targeting is necessary for the clinical applications to reduce the possible side effects.


Bamboo is used for many things, such as for building material, furniture and interior products. There are many ways to process bamboo using taraditional methods and conventional manufacturing methods using machines. The structure of bamboo has the same tensile strength as wood and can be used as an alternative to using wood. Bamboo also has better bending properties than wood and using composite and or laminating process bamboo can be processed into laminates or blocks like wood. Because the manufacturing is similar to the process used by wood the materials produced from bamboo can also be variative. Bamboo composite that are shaped into blocks or laminates must be able to be processed using wood techniques such as being milled, sanded down, joined with certain profiles and bended with varying degrees of roundness. The methods used are actually wood process which is steam bending in a steam box. The process of using the steam box to process bamboo uses bamboo shaped as planks. The process still needs to be further examined because the properties of bamboo compared to wood that uses the steam box method is different. Also there needs to be a redesign of the steam box method because of the different property of bamboo compared to wood. The refinement of the steam box design and prototype is hoped to be able to be used by small home industries to innovate their products in the bamboo industry.


It has been shown that cells from neonatal rabbits are capable of producing considerable amounts of antibody after exposure to antigen in vitro and transfer to x-radiated adult recipients. This suggests that the immunological inadequacy of these neonates is not dependent primarily upon the lack of cells capable of antibody formation. Both in vitro sensitized neonatal lymphoid cells and in vivo sensitized adult lymphoid cells made much more antibody after transfer to x-rayed adult recipients than to neonatal recipients. Possible reasons for and significance of these observations are pointed out in the discussion.


Stigma (prejudice or negative stereotypes associated with personal attributes such the presence of ill health or disease) is an important concept as it has the potential to adversely impact on social exclusion, help seeking behaviours and the utilisation of health and social services. Whilst limited international research suggests that there may be stigma associated with dementia, this paper presents results from the first comprehensive study to explore stigma towards dementia in Australia. Results from an online survey of Australian adults (45-60 years) outline the nature and presence of negative attitudes or stereotypes towards dementia and people living with dementia, and examine which information sources may have informed these perceptions. Implications are discussed in relation to the need for action or interventions that may be necessary to shift changes in public perceptions and attitudes in relation to dementia.


The development of devices that combine hardware and software has created new challenges. The new built devices have a short life cycle and frequently require upgrading. The software industry attends to these requests with agile methods, such as Scrum. Agile methods apply quick iterations and continuous preplanning based on feedback and past iterations, enabling a quick and continuous delivery for those requests. Linking hardware and software development in an agile and co-desing environment makes the hardware development to be divided in more phases than in the traditional methods. This enables the whole development team to apply agile principles such as constantly working deliverables, testability applied to partial deliberables, simplicity, self-organizing teams, daily cooperation between business people and developers, among other principles. This scenario is being analyzed when applied to hardware or software development and used along with agile methodologies.


This Article presents a new paradigm for thinking about intangible property rights in response to recent criticism that information products such as databases should not be over-propertized. Analyzing the inherent problems with existing approaches, the Article concludes that creating private property rights in these intangible assets will not inevitably lead to commercial and social problems. On the contrary, legislatures can create private property rights that when accompanied by appropriate oversight and monitoring will preserve commercial markets and the public domain of information. Indeed, a new database law can use the concept of property as an organizing tool to properly balance private rights and public policies. In developing this new approach to database protection, this Article examines the international debate on the creation of private property rights in databases. Furthermore, unlike previous models for sui generis database protection law based on copyright or trade secret law, the model in this Article draws on the principles underlying trademark and patent law in reaching a new solution.


Fast electron beams (FEBs) are one of the main products of various active events and are ubiquitous in solar, space and cosmic plasmas. They reveal themselves in hard X-ray and radio emissions. The observed characteristics of X-ray and radio emissions sensitively depend on the energy distribution of FEBs, which usually have a power-law energy spectrum. As FEBs travel in the solar atmosphere, their energy distribution can considerably vary due to the interaction with ambient plasmas. Tang et al. investigated the evolution of the energy spectrum of the FEBs traveling along a flare loop and discussed the possible effects on associated hard X-ray (HXR) and radio emissions. Considering the ubiquitous coronal loops in active regions, in the present paper, we investigate the parametric evolution of the energy spectra of FEBs when propagating along coronal loops. Here, we take the sunpot atmospheric model as an approximate coronal loop atmosphere model. The results show that the energy loss has an important impact on the cutoff behavior and energy spectra of FEBs when precipitating in a coronal loop with density ratio n b /n e = 0.01. The initially single power-law spectrum with a steepness cutoff can evolve into a more complex double power-law spectrum or two "knees" power-law spectrum with a flattened steepness cutoff behavior or saturation cutoff behavior. Our calculations also demonstrate that the energy spectrum evolution is not obvious if n b /n 0 = 0.001 as Tang et al. asserted. The present results are helpful for a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamic spectra of HXR and radio emissions from FEBs.


This study addresses an adaptive backstepping fuzzy control approach for automatic steering vehicles. The vehicle lateral dynamics is presented by an eight degree-of-freedom model, which considers the nonlinear behaviors such as tire force, wheel rotations, forward velocity, and roll motion. According to the existing result, the analysis and design on this model is difficult to perform because of its model complexity. To facilitate the designing work, a robust control scheme which is based on T-S fuzzy control strategy is investigated. The stability condition for ensuring that the control system is uniformly ultimately bounded is derived based on Lyapunov's method. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified via numeric examples.


New Internet of Things (IoT) technologies such as Long Range (LoRa) are emerging which enable power efficient wireless communication over very long distances. Devices typically communicate directly to a sink node which removes the need of constructing and maintaining a complex multi-hop network. Given the fact that a wide area is covered and that all devices communicate directly to a few sink nodes a large number of nodes have to share the communication medium. LoRa provides for this reason a range of communication options (centre frequency, spreading factor, bandwidth, coding rates) from which a transmitter can choose. Many combination settings are orthogonal and provide simultaneous collision free communications. Nevertheless, there is a limit regarding the number of transmitters a LoRa system can support. In this paper we investigate the capacity limits of LoRa networks. Using experiments we develop models describing LoRa communication behaviour. We use these models to parameterise a LoRa simulation to study scalability. Our experiments show that a typical smart city deployment can support 120 nodes per 3.8 ha, which is not sufficient for future IoT deployments. LoRa networks can scale quite well, however, if they use dynamic communication parameter selection and/or multiple sinks.


Access control is a key mechanism to secure outsourced data in mobile clouds. Some existing solutions are proposed to enforce flexible access control on outsourced data or reduce the computations performed by mobile devices. However, less attention has been paid to the efficiency of revocation when there are mobile devices needed to be revoked. In this paper, we put forward a new solution, referred to as flexible access control with outsourceable revocation (FACOR) for mobile clouds. The FACOR applies the attribute- based encryption to enable flexible access control on outsourced data, and allows mobile users to outsource the time-consuming encryption and decryption computations to proxies, with only requiring attributes authorization to be fully trusted. As an advantageous feature, FACOR provides an outsourceable revocation for mobile users to reduce the complicated attribute-based revocation operations. The security analysis shows that our FACOR scheme achieves data security against collusion attacks and unauthorized accesses from revoked users. Both theoretical and experimental results confirm that our proposed scheme greatly reliefs the mobile devices from heavy encryption and decryption computations, as well as the complicated revocation of access rights in mobile clouds.


1) Objectives: To analyze the characteristics of occupational diseases among agricultural, forestry and fishery workers compensated under the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance that is operated by the Korea Labor Welfare Corporation (KLWC). Methods: Using the KLWC database, we collected 667 cases of occupational disease compensated during the 8 years between 1 January 1998 and 31 December 2005. We analyzed the characteristics of occupational diseases using the KLWC electronic data and the data investigated by the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency. Results: KLWC approved 667 cases, including 69 deaths (10.3%). Men accounted for 76.0%of the approved cases. The most common age group was 50~59 years of age (37.3%). The most common size of enterprise was 5 to 49 workers (47.5%). The proportion of occupational diseases was 54.1%, of which 45.9% was work-related. Among occu- pational diseases, the most common was skin diseases (147 cases, 40.7%), followed by infectious dis- eases (131 cases, 36.3%), including scrub typhus (123 cases) and intoxication (40 cases, 11.1%). The causal hazardous agents were biological (320 cases, 88.6%), chemical (29 cases, 8.0%), and physical (11 cases, 3.0%). The major type of industry and occupation were forestry (445 cases, 66.7%) and elemen- tary (151 among 235 cases, 89.3%), respectively. Conclusions: Major compensated occupational diseases were infectious diseases, including scrub- typhus, skin diseases and toxic disease, which occurred among workers who were older, and had short tenure and elementary occupation, and these workers were out of the occupational health policy. A man- agement policy must be established to prevent occupational diseases occurring in such vulnerable work- ers.


Material removal in the cutting process is regarded as a friction system with multiple input and output variables. The complexity of the cutting friction system is caused by the extreme conditions existing on the tool–chip and tool–workpiece interfaces. The critical issue is significant to use knowledge of cutting friction behaviors to guide researchers and industrial manufacturing engineers in designing rational cutting processes to reduce tool wear and improve surface quality. This review focuses on the state of the art of research on friction behaviors in cutting procedures as well as future perspectives. First, the cutting friction phenomena under extreme conditions, such as high temperature, large strain/strain rates, sticking–sliding contact states, and diverse cutting conditions are analyzed. Second, the theoretical models of cutting friction behaviors and the application of simulation technology are discussed. Third, the factors that affect friction behaviors are analyzed, including material matching, cutting parameters, lubrication/cooling conditions, micro/nano surface textures, and tool coatings. Then, the consequences of the cutting friction phenomena, including tool wear patterns, tool life, chip formation, and the machined surface are analyzed. Finally, the research limitations and future work for cutting friction behaviors are discussed. This review contributes to the understanding of cutting friction behaviors and the development of high-quality cutting technology.


Defamation basically means, passing statements regarding someone, intentionally in order to depreciate that human's reputation, which can either be Slander (Temporary) or libel (Permanent). Defamation in E-commerce or say, "Cyber Defamation", which means passing insulting / harsh statements regarding someone or for his conduct, knowing that such statements are false, in order to harm his repo in cyberspace. Also, the required provisions and statutes are there to act as a guard of the innocent prudent man, but sometimes there is a misuse of these laws and statutory provisions.

The present trend of legislation and also the judicial approach to such offenses appears to be such that these offenses are treated lightly and the punishments are not adequate having regard to the gravity of such offenses. Defamation laws should be sufficiently flexible to apply to all media. It is not practical to apply the principles derived in 18th or 19th-century cases to the issues that arise on the internet in the 21st century.


It will be shown that Nelson's constructive logic with strong negation N3 can be faithfully embedded into its paraconsistent analog N4.


Solar Developers' Losses due to Sunshine Duration Shortfall and Marketability of Sunshine Insurance: A Loss Distribution Approach Elena Shuppe Department of Environmental Planning Environmental Management Major The Graduate School Seoul National University Photovoiltaic energy is a rapidly increasing renewable energy source in Korea. As of 2014, it constituted 4.7% of the renewable energy mix, an increase of 58.9% from the previous year (KEA, 2014). To maintain this trend, it is essential to minimize solar generation volatility and other risks related to solar energy development. Solar developers face market risks (SMP and REC price, FIT and PPA availability, etc.), technical risk (system performance, tests reliability, infrastructure level, etc.), weather/climate risk (extreme weather events, natural disasters, solar radiation/sunshine shortfall, etc.). Among those, this paper will focus on sunshine duration shortfall, since it is one of the factors that systematically affects solar energy developers and has high correlation with the amount of solar energy produced (as much as 0.8 according to some empirical studies in South Korea). This paper will analyze the typical risk mitigation tool, insurance against potential losses, which can be categorized as business interruption insurance. Despite of the high correlation between generated energy output and sunshine duration hours, only a few Korean insurance companies offer solar insurance, and with little success so far. To examine the potential demand, this paper will first compute the number of cities that have faced sunshine shortfall on yearly basis from 1990 to 2015. This paper created two plausible criteria defining sunshine shortfall: 1) when an average annual sunshine duration hour in a particular city and year falls more than 10% of the historical average (scenario 1) or when the same variable drops over 20% of the historical average (scenario 2). The former scenario will be discussed in detail, whereas the latter scenario will be used for suggestion part of this paper. Based on the frequency of sunshine shortfall events and solar developers' revenue estimation, this paper will calculate the severity of the losses due to sunshine shortfall. Based on this information, the paper will derive the most suitable probability distribution describing the frequency and severity of the events, respectively. Then, it will check for their statistical significance by using Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Anderson-Darling tests. After selecting the distributions that match the data, this paper will estimate the parameters for each case using Maximum Likelihood Estimation and Bayesian Estimation methods. The two methods will be applied separately on the same data set in order to improve the credibility of the results and provide richer information on the topic. Then, for each combination set of the estimated parameters, this paper will apply Loss Distribution Approach (LDA), the method often used in the evaluation of operational risk, by summing yearly risk and conjugating the frequency and severity distributions to obtain 50th, 75th, 90th, 99th and 99.9th percentile of the aggregate loss distribution. Finally, this paper will perform a simulation on the LDA results 30 times for each paired outcome of frequency and severity to use the average value of each set for risk interpretation. This paper intends to assess the attractiveness of sunshine shortfall insurance both from the perspective of solar developers and insurance companies. By calculating different percentiles of Value at Risk with the use of Loss Distribution approach, this paper will try to answer why sunshine (or solar radiation) shortfall insurance is still an infantile industry and why the current providers have to offer it at high premiums. This paper is the first academic research in Korea that answers 1) how much volatility sunshine duration has; 2) based on the synthesis of current sunshine shortfall contracts, what the following revenue loss due to sunshine shortfall is; 3) how the result change if we considered more realistic (by incorporating Renewable Energy Certificates sales revenues inside) calculations of sunshine shortfall; 4) whether climate change affects average yearly sunshine duration hours and how it can be translated into a higher risk for insurance companies; 5) whether it is possible to make sunshine duration insurance affordable to more solar developers. There are four important findings in this paper. First, risk value exceeds insured value at high percentiles. Consequently, it is reasonable to assess the realizable risk at 50th and 75th percentiles of the aggregate probability distribution. Second, when rescaled at per KW level, fixing the base year at 1990 th level creates risk value 2.2 to 2.6 times higher than with moving base year (based on the sunshine duration average of directly preceding 10 years). Third, by incorporating RECs in solar developers' risk valuation, this paper concludes that the risk will soar by 1.9 to 2.3 times. Finally, although this paper focused on scenario 1, which defined sunshine duration shortfall as any shortfall below 10% of the historic average, it also suggested an alternative, where sunshine shortfall is defined as any shortfall below 20% of historic average. The results showed that an insurance product following the latter insurance structure could reduce the premium much more than in the former insurance structure. In the less riskier insurance structure case, the ratio of fixed costs to insurance premiums and the share of insurance premiums in energy sales revenue were close to the NREL(2010) indicators, making it more realizable. 


A 3D model of the Middle Jurassic ammonoid Normannites with an apertural modification from Thürnen, Switzerland, was constructed using physical–optical tomography. It was tested to determine whether the formation of the apertural modification affected shell orientation, to estimate buoyancy regulation and to reconstruct the mode of life of this ammonoid. No drastic postural changes occurred between the 3D models that excluded and included lappets, suggesting that the lappets were not formed to change the syn vivo shell orientation and, in turn, locomotion. We speculate that these adult shell modifications served to protect the soft parts during the reproduction period. Buoyancy calculations based on the model assume that ammonoids were positively buoyant when the phragmocone was devoid of liquid. When 31% of the entire phragmocone was filled with liquid, the living animal would have reached neutral buoyancy in contrast to 27% of cameral liquid filling when the weight of the aptychi is included. Provided that smaller ammonoids had more cameral liquid than bigger ammonoids, such as the modern Nautilus, Normannites examined in this study would have been able to maintain neutral buoyancy and might have had a demersal, nektobenthic or nektonic habitat somewhere in the water column.


With the continued scaling of NAND flash and multi-level cell technology, flash-based storage has gained widespread use in systems ranging from mobile platforms to enterprise servers. However, the robustness of NAND flash cells is an increasing concern, especially at nanometer-regime process geometries. NAND flash memory bit error rate increases exponentially with the number of program/erase cycles. Stronger error correcting codes (ECC) can be used to tolerate higher error rates, but these have diminishing returns with increasing P/E cycles and can have prohibitively high power, area, and latency overheads. The goal of this paper is to develop new techniques that can tolerate high bit error rates without requiring prohibitively strong ECC. Our techniques, called Flash Correct-and-Refresh (FCR) exploit the observation that the dominant error source in NAND flash memory is retention errors, caused by flash cells losing charge over time. The key idea is to periodically read, correct, and reprogram (in-place) or remap the stored data before it accumulates more retention errors than can be corrected by simple ECC. Detailed simulations of a solid-state drive (SSD) storage system driven by measured experimental data from error characterization on real flash memory chips show that our techniques provide 46× average lifetime improvement on a variety of workloads at no additional hardware cost. We also find that our techniques achieve lifetime improvements that cannot feasibly be achieved with stronger ECC.


Purpose
An innovative training approach was developed to enable staff working with complex cases, including personality disorder, to reflect on and work with the interpersonal dynamics of their interactions with service users. The aim of this approach is to support effective, compassionate and boundaried care. An overview of the model and development of the training is provided along with presentation and discussion of outcome data. Implications for future practice are also considered.

Design/methodology/approach
One-day workshops were provided within inpatient forensic women's services. Nine workshops were delivered with 96 multidisciplinary staff having attended in total. Evaluation tools were developed to ascertain participants' feedback regarding the training including its relevance and potential for impact on practice. Feedback was analysed using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Findings
The evaluation demonstrated that the training was well received by a motivated group of participants and was felt to be relevant to their clinical practice.

Research limitations/implications
The evaluation is limited by the lack of a follow-up to assess the longer-term impacts of the training and whether the positive effects of the training were maintained.

Practical implications
The findings demonstrate that the training can be delivered within a short time frame, which makes the training efficient and cost effective.

Social implications
The training can develop practitioners' skills in delivering compassionate and boundaried care in line with key NHS drivers for staff working with complex service users.

Originality/value
The 4Ps model enables staff with little or no psychotherapy training to deliver psychologically informed care which takes account of interpersonal dynamics and positively contributes to relational security, with an emphasis on reflecting on self and others.


Optical stimulation of genetically-targeted cells has evolved as an effective tool for the study of cellular systems, both in-vitro and in-vivo. Unlike the conventional single-photon Optogenetic methods, Two-Photon Optogentic Stimulation (TPOS) uses near-infrared (NIR) laser beam and hence enables higher spatial precision and temporal precision. In addition, the TPOS technique developed by Dhakal et al. also allows deeper penetration due to low scattering and absorption coefficients of tissue in the NIR spectral region. It may be noted that until now the two-photon cross section of ChR2 has been estimated based on a two-state model. However, our experimental data somewhat contradict the theory presented by Tank et al. and we have a feeling that a reversible four-state model for 2-photon excitation will fit the results better. Hence, here, we report the development of a four-state model for TPOS of ChR2 and present detailed study of the photocurrent arising from the FO-TPOS of HEK cells. Moreover, it has been observed that the power dependence of the current was highly non-linear. We, therefore, hypothesise contribution of single-photon stimulation by second harmonic generation of ultrafast NIR laser in ATR in addition to the current induced by two-photon stimulation. We, thus, have outlined the contributions to the net photocurrent by several potential phenomena, like the Second HArmonic Generation (SHG) in all-trans retinal (ATR), capacitive charging of cell membrane by NIR laser, etc., that take place simultaneously during NIR stimulation.


Functional food that contains biologically-active compounds is an important source for prevention, management and treatment of chronic diseases in the modern age. The present work showed the quality of some Egyptian sea cucumbers to encourage Egyptian natives using them as an alternative food. The present work investigated the morphometric parameters, the proximate chemical composition, the amino acids and fatty acid profiles of Actinopyga mauritiana, Holothuria scarba, Bohadschia marmorata and Holothuria leucospilota. The results showed that Actinopyga mauritiana had the highest length, width, weight, and body wall thickness. All the investigated sea cucumbers had high content of protein (43.23 to 48.27%), carbohydrates (44.62 to 48.56%) and very low content of fats (4.6 to 5.66%). Among the investigated specimens A. mauritiana showed the highest percentage of total protein (48.27%), Holothuria leucospilota showed the lowest level of total lipids (4.6%), while Holothuria scarba showed the highest percentage of carbohydrates (48.65%). Glycine was the most abundant amino acids in all studied sea cucumbers (18.38 to 19.172 g/100 g) and constituted 37 to 39% of the total amino acids. Lycine: argignin ratio was low in H. scarba, H. leucospilota and B. marmorata (0.410, 0.428 and 0.9, respectively) while was higher in A. mauritiana (3.56). Myristic acid was the most abundant saturated fatty acid (SFA) in all studied sea cucumbers (19.789 to 37.036 %) followed by palmitic acid (16.93 to 16.926%). Among the unsaturated fatty acid (UFA) oleic and linoelaidic acids were the most abundant acids in all investigated cucumbers. On the other side linoleic acid (omega 6) was abundant in H. scarba and constituted 26% of the UFA. In conclusion, all investigated sea cucumbers had high protein and low fat contents and the bioactive compounds in the sea cucumbers describe its efficacy in tissue regeneration and inflammatory diseases.


The emergence of pyrethroid-resistant mosquitoes is a worldwide problem that necessitates further research into the development of new repellents and insecticides. This study explored the modification of existing pyrethroid acids to identify structural motifs that might not be affected by kdr active site mutations that elicit pyrethroid resistance. Because synthetic pyrethroids almost always contain activity-dependent chiral centers, we chose to focus our efforts on exploring alkoxy moieties of esters obtained with 1R-trans-permethrinic and related acids, which we showed in previous studies to have repellent and/or repellent synergistic properties. To this end, compounds were synthesized and screened for spatially acting repellency and insecticidal activity against the susceptible, Orlando, and pyrethroid-resistant, Puerto Rico, strains of Aedes aegypti mosquito. Screening utilized a high-throughput benchtop glass tube assay, and the compounds screened included a mixture of branched, unbranched, aliphatic, halogenated, cyclic, non-cyclic, and heteroatom-containing esters. Structure-activity relationships indicate that n-propyl, n-butyl, n-pentyl, cyclobutyl, and cyclopentyl substituents exhibited the most promising repellent activity with minimal kdr cross resistance. Preliminary testing showed that these small alcohol esters can be synergistic with phenyl amides and pyrethroid acids. Further derivatization of pyrethroid acids offer an interesting route to future active compounds, and while mosquitoes were the focus of this work, pyrethroid acids and esters have potential for use in reducing pest populations and damage in cropping systems as well.


Purpose: An objective of this study was to investigate nurses` perceptions toward patient safety culture and to examine the factors affecting safety care activities. Methods: The participants were 429 nurses, at 6 hospitals located in regions, which have 150 to 300 beds, and HSOPSC (AHRQ, 2009) and questionnaire on safety care activities were used as measurement tools. Descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one way ANOVA, and stepwise multiple regression with SPSS/WIN version12.0 were used to analyze the data. Results: Supervisor manager expectations and actions promoting patients safety and frequency of events reported were the highest as positive responses, whereas staffing and nonpunitive response to errors showed the lowest scores as positive responses. Scores of medication surveillance is the highest while firefighting surveillance is the lowest in terms of safety care activities. Significant predictors influencing safety care activities were frequency of events report, handoffs and transitions, work unit a patient safety grade, organizational learning-continuous improvement, and teamwork across units. These predictors account for 23% of the variance. Conclusion: These results suggest that hospital policies and systems should be built to settle patient safety culture effectively. Development of standard manuals for safety care activities is another critical element for promoting patient safety.


Coping with climatic variability for livelihood security is part of everyday life for rural communities in semi-arid and dry sub-humid savannas. Water scarcity caused by rainfall fluctuations is common, causing meteorological droughts and dry spells. However, this paper indicates, based on experiences in sub-Saharan Africa and India, that the social impact on rural societies of climatically induced droughts is exaggerated. Instead, water scarcity causing food deficits is more often caused by management induced droughts and dry spells. A conceptual framework to distinguish between manageable and unmanageable droughts is presented. It is suggested that climatic droughts require focus on social resilience building instead of land and water resource management. Focus is then set on the manageable part of climatic variability, namely the almost annual occurrence of dry spells, short 2-4 week periods of no rainfall, affecting farmer yields. On-farm experiences in savannas of sub-Saharan Africa of water harvesting systems for dry spell mitigation are presented. It is shown that bridging dry spells combined with soil fertility management can double and even triple on-farm yield levels. Combined with innovative systems to ensure maximum plant water availability and water uptake capacity, through adoption of soil fertility improvement and conservation tillage systems, there is a clear opportunity to upgrade rainfed farming systems in vulnerable savanna environments, through appropriate local management of climatic variability.


Pycnolejeunea glauca, originally described by Stephani based on a collection in New Zealand by William Colenso, was placed by Grolle into the synonymy of the paleotropical species Cheilolejeunea intertexta with a type from Micronesia. In this study, we generated DNA sequences from a recently-collected sample of P. glauca and compared them with published sequences of C. intertexta from China. Pycnolejeunea glauca was recovered in the phylogenetic analyses as sister to C. nipponica, whereas C. intertexta grouped in another clade with C. vittata and C. streimannii. The analysis justifies the reinstatement of P. glauca as the new combination Cheilolejeunea glauca, a New Zealand endemic. Descriptions and illustrations are provided of key features of this species together with data on its position in the phylogeny of the genus.


Recently, long-term time-series of ground-based UV-visible observations of stratospheric bromine monoxide (BrO) have revealed a decline in the stratospheric bromine loading. Given the mean age of air in the stratosphere, this trend follows the reported decline of long-lived bromine source gases observed since 1998, as a result of the Montreal Protocol restrictions limiting the production of brominated and chlorinated substances. In the present study, a trend analysis is performed of stratospheric BrO vertical profiles measured by the SCIAMACHY limb instrument aboard the ENVISAT satellite. A statistical model including a linear trend and seasonal components represented by polyharmonic functions is used. The inclusion of such functions in the model enables to fit the strong seasonality of BrO in the stratosphere. We focus on SCIAMACHY observations collocated with four NDACC (Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change) stations where long-term times-series of ground-based UV-visible measurements of stratospheric BrO are available: Harestua (60°N, 11°E), Observatoire de Haute Provence (44°N, 6°E), Izaňa (28°N, 16°W), and Lauder (45°S, 170°E). Preliminary comparison results at Harestua show good consistency between the trend values obtained from SCIAMACHY limb and ground-based UV-visible observations.


Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) during pregnancy as well as during postnatal period has been shown to be potentially responsible for variety of diseases, including premature delivery, upper and lower respiratory illnesses, asthma or behavioral disturbances (colic, attention deficient disorders). It is estimated that up to 70 to 80% of children are exposed to ETS, and most often they are forced to inhale air contaminated by tobacco smoke in public places such as kindergartens, schools, play grounds, but also cars and in other forms of transportation. Nevertheless one of the most significant sources of nicotine and other toxicants of tobacco smoke is breast milk from the smoking mother, or even among mothers exposed to ETS. Lack of individual educational approach focused on prevention of ETS exposure by infants lead our academic collaboration and establishment of "The QUIT for kids" program.


In ultrashort pulse laser applications, optical dispersion seriously affects the energy concentration in the laser pulse duration and lowers the peak power. Accordingly, this study proposes a rapid dispersion estimation mechanism to facilitate the compensation of optical dispersion using a closed-loop control system. In the proposed approach, the optical dispersion information of the laser pulse is estimated directly from a frequency-resolved optical gating trace without the need for an iterative pulse-retrieval algorithm. In particular, the group delay dispersion (GDD) is determined from frequency and delay marginals, which are related to the laser spectrum and intensity autocorrelation, respectively, using a simple lookup table approach. The accuracy of the estimated GDD results is confirmed via a comparison with the spectral phase distribution of the electric field reconstructed using the principal component generalized projections algorithm. It is shown that the computation time of the proposed direct estimation method is around 13 times faster than that of the traditional iterative algorithm. It thus provides a feasible approach for enabling the real-time compensation of ultrafast laser pulse compression. Moreover, in a multiphoton-excited fluorescence imaging application, the proposed pulse compression mechanism yields an effective improvement in the intensity and contrast of the reconstructed image due to the increased nonlinear optical excitation efficiency of the optimized laser pulses.


ABSTRACT In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to situational factors associated with childhood sexual abuse (CSA) to explain incidence of CSA, as well as to provide potential targets for prevention efforts. However, very few studies have examined situational factors associated with juvenile perpetration, despite juveniles composing a substantial proportion of offenders. In addition, no studies to our knowledge have applied a situational framework to CSA research in the Orthodox Jewish community (OJC). In the present study, we obtained data from therapists regarding 80 victims of CSA in the OJC from both the United States and Israel. We hypothesized that (a) more abusers' first perpetration would be between ages 12 and 17 than between any other age range, which corresponds to increased sexual urges, as well as increased unsupervised access to minors; (b) among juvenile offenders, the time of day of the abuse would depend on the relationship of the offender to the victim; and (c) age of the victim and grooming strategies would be associated with the frequency of abuse. Our first two hypotheses were confirmed, and our third hypothesis was partially confirmed, as younger victims tended to have higher frequency of abuse. Additionally, we discuss possible implications of significant correlations found during exploratory analyses. Our results generally support the importance of considering culturally specific situational factors when studying or developing prevention efforts for CSA.


Common engineering approaches and modeling approaches from software engineering are brought together. For the domain of process automation an implementation oriented approach for an object oriented software development for heterogeneous distributed systems is introduced. Model elements for control are added to UML as well as small-scale patterns for plant automation. Besides large-scale patterns are introduced as well as implementational models. The adoption of UML regarding applied diagrams and stereotypes for process automation will be introduced and evaluated.


Headache etiology research has not supported the traditional headache classification system. This paper provides evidence that classic migraine headache and muscle contraction headaches that appear in the morning (depression headaches) may share a common etiology and respond to the same treatment - reducing sleep duration. Three clinical cases with long-standing headaches are presented, one a depression headache patient and two classic migraineurs. All case histories showed a strong relationship between extended sleep duration and headaches, and headaches completely remitted after patients consistently awakened one-half to one hour earlier than their normal rising time. Eight common migraineurs showed no such relationship and failed to respond to sleep manipulations. We conclude that classic migraine and morning onset "muscle contraction" (or depression) headaches may result from serotonergic mechanisms which are triggered by excessive sleep. Common migraines, in contrast, may be related to oral habits and temporomandibular joint derangement.


This paper investigates how taxes influence portfolio choices by exploring the response to the distinctive treatment of foreign dividends in the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA). JGTRRA lowered the dividend tax rate to 15% for American equities and extended this tax relief only to foreign corporations from a subset of countries. This paper uses a difference-in-difference analysis that compares US equity holdings in affected and unaffected countries. The international investment responses to JGTRRA were substantial and imply an elasticity of asset holdings with respect to taxes of -1.6. This effect cannot be explained by several potential alternative hypotheses, including differential changes to the preferences of American investors, differential changes in investment opportunities, differential time trends in investment or changed tax evasion behavior.


The use of Dynamic Cone Penetrometer resulted in an estimated ratio of
soil strength. Dynamic cone penetrometer can also be used as an indicator of
changes in soil moisture in situ testing in accordance through the soil profile.
Research in this study is laboratory test at the Department of Civil Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering, University of Atma Jaya Yogyakarta and DCP test field
(along the Selokan Mataram Road Maguwo - Babarsari to obtain a minimum of
15 samples). The purpose of this research is to find the correlation value of CBR
(California Bearing Ratio) and DCP (Dynamic Cone Penetrometer). The research
divided into two tests, first for the DCP test in order to find the DCP value (mm /
blow). The second test is CBR laboratory test to find the CBR value. CBR and
DCP values are plotted on a graph and then look for the value of its correlation
with a linear regression methods. After correlation CBR - DCP resulting equation
Log CBR = 1.175494 - 0.011362 Log (DCP), the CBR value (%) of each DCP
test locations can be searched by this equation. CBR and DCP correlation values
in this study at location 1 close to the correlation of previous studies by NCDOT
(1998) with the equation log (CBR) = 2.60 – 1.07 log (DCP), and at location 2 to
10 close to the correlation of previous studies by Livneh et . al. (1992) with the
equation log (CBR) = 2.45 – 1.12 log (DCP). From the correlation obtained,
laboratory CBR value can be correlated with value of DCP in the field. From this
correlation obtained the DCP test value every location at the field closed to the
CBR laboratory value with the real condition.


The production of materials that contain more than one functional constituent, the so-called multifunctional materials, is quite relevant in advanced technology. By acting as building blocks, nanoparticles can be suitably explored for generating higher-order multifunctional structures. In this regard, herein, a special clustered magneto-fluorescent superstructure has been developed for non-destructive detection of flaws and shallow subsurface discontinuities in industrial ferromagnetic materials. The strategy consists of the solvophobic-controlled assembly of organic-based maghemite cores and water-based II–VI quantum dots, in the presence of hexadecyltrimethyl-ammonium bromide, CTAB, as a compatibilizer agent. This composite exhibited a high magnetic response (σmax = 66 emu g−1) and uniform size, in addition to tunable optical properties (QY = 78%). The strategy of utilizing nanoparticles as magneto-fluorescent nanoprobes to identify tiny slits represents a great advance, for improving the capability of precisely revealing the fracture boundary locations by visual real-time inspection. The nanoscale probes exhibit a low signal-to-noise ratio and a higher competitive performance in relation to the existing micrometric detection systems.


Research has suggested that people are motivated to achieve their hopes for the future (hoped-for self) while trying to move away from that which they fear becoming (feared-for self). In chronic pain populations, however, these hopes and fears become heavily dependent on the presence of pain. Research has suggested that there is a relationship between psychological distress and persistent attempts to remove pain in order to move away from one's feared self (Wells, 2010). However, little is known about the relationship between the hoped-for self and persistent attempts at pain removal. The purpose of this research is to replicate the research of Wells (2010), adding to this work by exploring the relationship between persistent problem solving and the hoped-for self. An additional aim of the research was to further explore the use of a relatively new measure of scenario-based problem solving, the MEPS for Pain.

Sixty chronic pain patients were recruited from one pain clinic in Leeds. Participants completed measures of pain disability (PDI), pain acceptance (CPAQ), pain intensity (VAS), feared self interview, hoped self interview and previously used measures of problem solving attitudes (PaSol) and scenario-based problem solving (MEPS for Pain). Participants also completed the MEPS for Pain-PPS a new measure of personal problem solving.

Assimilative problem solving attitudes were significantly negatively correlated with feared-for self proximity but not enmeshment when using the PaSol, and did not correlate with any of the MEPS for Pain problem solving scales. Assimilative problem attitudes were significantly correlated with hoped-for self proximity and enmeshment when using the PaSol, but did not correlate with any of the MEPS for Pain problem solving scales. Assimilative problem solving as measured by the MEPS for Pain-PPS was correlated with hoped-for self enmeshment, but not with hoped-for self proximity or feared-for self proximity or enmeshment.

The results suggest a relationship between feared-for and hoped-for self variables and problem solving attitudes as measure by the PaSol, however show no relationship with chronic pain patients scenario-based problem solving attempts. The implications of these findings are explored, limitations highlighted and areas of future research suggested.


The proposed involvement of free intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca]i) in neuronal plasticity is examined. While it is generally believed that a rise of [Ca]i is necessary for the triggering of long-term modification of synaptic connections, there are many unresolved issues related to this dogma; it is not entirely clear what is the source of the elevated calcium, how much of a calcium rise is sufficient to produce the synaptic potentiation, where and for how long, and what are the relevant chemical consequences of the transient rise of [Ca]i. It is generally believed that the dendritic spine is the locus of synaptic modification, yet little evidence exists to support this view. High resolution calcium imaging studies may contribute to the clarification of some key issues in the field of neuronal plasticity.


In practice, most of the engineering materials manufactured using sheet metal forming
processes, are orthotropic. The technological demands on such materials are coming
from various manufacturing processes, aerospace structures, car crashworthiness and
defence. Much research has been performed involving analytical, experimental and
computational methods, it is generally accepted that there is still a need for improved
constitutive models. Moreover, there are numerous mechanics of materials issues that
have yet to be solved, related to finite strain deformation and failure of elastic and
plastic of material orthotropic. Based on this motivation, a constitutive model is
developed to predict a complex elastoplastic deformation behaviour involving
shockwaves and spall failure in orthotropic materials at high pressure. The important
feature of the proposed hyperelastic-plastic constitutive model formulated in this
research project is a Mandel stress tensor combined with the new generalised
orthotropic pressure. The formulation is developed in the isoclinic configuration and
allows for a unique treatment for elastic and plastic part. The stress tensor
decomposition of the new generalised pressure and Hill's yield criterion aligned
uniquely within the principal stress space is adopted to characterize elastic and plastic
orthotropy. An isotropic hardening is adopted to define the evolution of plastic
orthotropy. The formulation is further combined with a shock equation of state (EOS)
and Grady spall failure model to predict shockwave propagation and spall failure in
the materials, respectively. The algorithm of the proposed constitutive model is
implemented as a new material model in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
(LLNL)-DYNA3D code of UTHM's version, named Material Type 92 (Mat92). The


Amorphous carbon (a-C) and carbon nitride (a-CNx) thin films prepared by sputter deposition on thin Corning glass substrates were studied using isothermal thermogravimetry and the differential method. Two typical reaction kinetics, the sigmoid and deceleratory reactions, were observed, which correspond to the films sputtered at higher (0.9–3 mTorr) and lower vacuums (7–16 mTorr), respectively. The structure bonding ratios and activation energies for thermal decompositions, which increased with the kinetic energy of the carbon species during deposition, were used to interpret the observations of reactions. The free bonded and weakly bonded compositions, the amounts of which increased with sputtering pressure, could be active nucleus sites in early reactions determining the reaction kinetics. The films with higher structure bonding ratios showed an induction period for generation of infrequently formed nuclei and had typically sigmoid-type reaction kinetics, while those with large amounts of free and weakly bonded compositions produced large amounts of quickly formed nuclei in early reactions and showed deceleratory reaction kinetics.