Recent studies have shown that the current situation of foreign language learning in England seems to be discouraging in comparison with the European average (British Council, 2013; European Commission, 2013). The fact that numerous cities are becoming multilingual nowadays emphasises the usefulness of opening up to other communities. Bearing this in mind, communicating verbally with others in another language can be seen as a convenient skill to develop in the foreign language classroom. In an attempt to satisfy the need to practise oral conversations and offer innovative options in the context of England, new didactic approaches are being considered. Amongst these, the active use of techniques traditionally employed in audiovisual translation has proved to have a positive impact on foreign language learning (Talavan, 2013; Incalcaterra and Lertola, 2014; Banos and Sokoli, 2015).
This thesis examines the effect of the technique of intralingual dubbing (where students replace the original voices of actors in video clips) on Spanish oral production. There are two main aims. The first is to provide objective evidence to support the hypothesis that the use of intralingual dubbing can enhance students' speed, intonation and pronunciation when speaking spontaneously in Spanish as a foreign language. The second is to create a teaching and learning toolkit on the subject for teachers. To this end, a total of 94 students aged 16–19 with a B1–B2 level of Spanish dubbed videos in several stages. In addition, 28 teachers received training on dubbing activities and five of them implemented the activities in their classes with a total of 26 students. The data is triangulated qualitatively and quantitatively. Results confirm that the main hypothesis serve as evidence to support the theoretical justification for the inclusion of active AVT techniques in FL speaking classes.


Following Eggers and Dupont (1994), we will derive approximate equations of motion valid in the limit of slender jets i.e. jets for which the radial dimensions are much smaller than the longitudinal dimensions. We start by writing the full equations of motion for an incompressible viscous fluid in cylindrical (axisymmetric) coordinates. The equations for the two components of momentum can be written ∂tur+ ur∂rur+ uz ∂zur=− 1 ρ ∂rp+ ν (


Ganoderma lucidum is a basidiomycete white rot fungus that has been used for medicinal purposes worldwide. Although information concerning its genome and transcriptome has recently been reported, relatively little information is available for G. lucidum at the proteomic level. In this study, protein fractions from G. lucidum at three developmental stages (16-day mycelia, and fruiting bodies at 60 and 90 days) were prepared and subjected to LC-MS/MS analysis. A search against the G. lucidum genome database identified 803 proteins. Among these proteins, 61 lignocellulose degrading proteins were detected, most of which (49 proteins) were found in the 90-day fruiting bodies. Fourteen TCA-cycle related proteins, 17 peptidases, two argonaute-like proteins, and two immunomodulatory proteins were also detected. A majority (470) of the 803 proteins had GO annotations and were classified into 36 GO terms, with "binding", "catalytic activity", and "hydrolase activity" having high percentages. Additionally, 357 out of the 803 proteins were assigned to at least one COG functional category and grouped into 22 COG classifications. Based on the results from the proteomic and sequence alignment analyses, a potentially new immunomodulatory protein (GL18769) was expressed and shown to have high immunomodulatory activity. In this study, proteomic and biochemical analyses of G. lucidum were performed for the first time, revealing that proteins from this fungus can play significant bioactive roles and providing a new foundation for the further functional investigations that this fungus merits.


Background and Purpose: According to the increasing prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and further tendency of public and medical doctors to the traditional and complementary medicine, review and reassessing of cardiac drugs specially cardiotonics will take more importance and indication. In this article we try to complain the overall meaning of cardiotonic and its mechanisms of action from the viewpoint of Iranian traditional medicine. Material and Methods: This is a library review article which has been carried out using modern medical references, the main texts of Iranian traditional medicine such as "AlQanoon fi al-Tibb" (The Canon of Medicine), "Al-Resaleh fi Al-Adviyah Al-ghalbyah", "Makhzan-al-Adviyah", "Gharabadin-e-kabir", "As-Shamel fi as-SINA'A at-Tibbiyya", Daruha-yi Qalbi (Cardiac drugs) and databases including Google scholar and PubMed. Results: According to the definition of tonic drug (modulator of an organ consistency and temperament for prevention of flowing pathogenic fluids to the organ) and the effect of cardiotonic drugs, it was shown that constancy of an organ texture is achieved by astringency ("ghabz"), strengthening the mass of heart, desiccation, dryness and stiffness; while moderation of spirit consistency is obtained through being aromatic, astringency, attenuation, "tanshif" (sponge like action), increase of generation of spirit, and cleansing of spirit. Moderation of the heart temperament is obtained through warming the cold and cooling the hot heart and desiccating the moist of the heart with moist temperament. Besides, two other features were mentioned ("Belkhasyah" (by character) and "theriaqiyat") that were not related to the temperament of drug and could be considered intrinsic properties. Conclusion: According to the causative agent of disease and through finding specific features of each drug, traditional medicine practitioners can highlight the place of simple cardiotonics in the treatment of heart diseases. Also, due to the abundance and diversity of cardiotonics in traditional medical books, new cardiotonic medications can be proposed and be tested.


A 20-year-old female with hypospadias was admitted to our clinic with the complaint of incontinence since her birth. The urethral orifice opened widely at the proximal roof of the vagina and the vesical mucosa was visible through the orifice by colposcopy. Although no anomaly was noticed in the upper urinary tract, there were complications of other congenital anomalies such as vaginal septum, bicolibicornus and ventricular septal defect. Urethroplasty according to Teller 's method gave improvement of the symptoms.


The aging and degradation of light-water-reactor (LWR) pressure vessels is of particular concern because of their relevance to plant integrity and the magnitude of the expected irradiation embrittlement. The radiation embrittlement of reactor pressure vessel (RPV) materials depends on many different factors such as flux, fluence, fluence spectrum, irradiation temperature, and preirradiation material history and chemical compositions. These factors must be considered to reliably predict pressure vessel embrittlement and to ensure the safe operation of the reactor. Based on embrittlement predictions, decisions must be made concerning operating parameters and issues such as low-leakage-fuel management, possible life extension, and the need for annealing the pressure vessel. Large amounts of data from surveillance capsules and test reactor experiments, comprising many different materials and different irradiation conditions, are needed to develop generally applicable damage prediction models that can be used for industry standards and regulatory guides. Version 1 of the Embrittlement Data Base (EDB) is such a comprehensive collection of data resulting from merging version 2 of the Power Reactor Embrittlement Data Base (PR-EDB). Fracture toughness data were also integrated into Version 1 of the EDB. For power reactor data, the current EDB lists the 1,029 Charpy transition-temperature shift data points, which include 321 from plates, 125 from forgoings, 115 from correlation monitor materials, 246 from welds, and 222 from heat-affected-zone (HAZ) materials that were irradiated in 271 capsules from 101 commercial power reactors. For test reactor data, information is available for 1,308 different irradiated sets (352 from plates, 186 from forgoings, 303 from correlation monitor materials, 396 from welds and 71 from HAZs) and 268 different irradiated plus annealed data sets.


Shortly after the BCCI case (In Re BCCI Case No. 61/2010), the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has taken another decision against a national sports federation. In Sh. Dhanraj Pillay and…


This study examines how interactions between policy, institutions and individuals that reinforce inclusive music education can be framed from an activist standpoint. Resonaari, one among many music schools in Finland, provides an illustrative case of rather uncommonly inclusive practices among students with special educational needs. By exploring this case, contextualised within the Finnish music school system, we identify the challenges and opportunities for activism on micro, meso and macro levels. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that Resonaari's teachers are proactive because, within an inclusive teaching and learning structure, they act in anticipation of future needs and policy changes, engaging in what we call teacher activism. We claim that this type of activism is key for inclusive practices and policy disposition in music education.


Control of Cu extrusion and delamination due to CTE mismatch between Si and Cu is a big issue for high reliable TSV formation. In this paper we tried to find some methods to reduce Cu extrusion and to prevent TSV sidewall delamination. It is demonstrated that residual Cu extrusion height can be reduced by additional high temperature heat treatment before TSV CMP. And also Cu extrusion and delamination strongly depends on TSV dimension, which leads to the conclusion that smaller vias are preferred for better reliability.


culture in the spiritual void. This symptoms has grow corruption, collusion, and nepotism, and criminality that occur frequently and decorate the society attitude, no exception of governmental management where development budget inefficiency become something usual and become
tradition. From many investigation, and views, then the negative causes tracking come from the spiritual void. The spiritual void occurs according to some category, that is, no spiritual supply, dried spiritual awareness, or disagreement with spiritual values with the today development.
Above discourse is phenomenon that often occurred in Indonesia today, especially in Kabupaten Tanah Bumbu of South Kalimantan Province. Area with abundant natural resources but ever get title of underdeveloped area, try to formulate management concept by adding religious element
in it. The management concept is called by Illahiah Management. The Illahiah management is formulated to manage government through apparatus mental development or is employee of various aspect. And it become important problems to discussed.
While this research indicators aimed at describing about the how Illahiah management implementation in the governmental management in Tanah Bumbu Regency. This research using descriptive qualitative research. The used data technique is interview, observation, and documentation.
Based on the conducted research, Illahiah management implementation in managing government at Tanah Bumbu regency that is conducted through: (a) religious activities that aimed at improving spirituality mental and growing religiosity in the government of Tanah Bumbu. So, it
is expected that thing able to change attitude and apparatus service pattern or governmental employee toward society. Recall government as public service, (b) illahiah management strengthening program, and the personal integrity development and the illahiah leadership also
able to grow high working ethos and able to produce better performance in servicing society and in the governmental administration process.
The thing above can be said as effort to reach governmental wishes in general. That is able to embody good government and good governance. It can be seen from the paradigm change of apparatus or governmental employee to better direction so able to produce better performance.
From the results, the obtained results is, illahiah management at Tanah Bumbu regency government as one of efforts for government to embody good government and governance through spirituality, religiosity, integrity, and leadership development in the Tanah Bumbu Regency itself. It is embodied by implementing religious activities and human resources development. Improving faith and belief to the God and grow the leadership soul that produce good human resources is not easy thing. It should get support fully from various aspect, either from society or government itself. Because of that, it need cooperation, coordination, spirit, and want to change from each apparatus or governmental employee to reach the desired goals.


The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of an immunosuppressant on the immunological status of New Zealand white rabbits after skin grafting, and to evaluate a method for monitoring the immunological status of subjects with skin transplants. The rabbits were randomly divided into allograft rejection, autograft tolerance, nontransplant, allograft low-dose immunosuppressant and allograft high-dose immunosuppressant groups. The rabbits in the low- and high-dose immunosuppressant groups were treated with cyclosporine A intravenously 8 h prior to skin transplantation and once daily following transplantation at doses of 2 and 25 mg/kg, respectively. At 12 days after skin transplantation, the spleens of donor (female) rabbits and recipient (male) rabbits were harvested for the preparation of single-cell suspensions. The splenocytes from recipient and donor rabbits were labeled with 0.3 or 6 µM carboxy fluorescein diacetate succinimidyl ester, respectively, and a mixed cell suspension was prepared. The final preparation was intravenously injected into recipient New Zealand white rabbits. The ratio of the two fluorescently labeled cell populations in the peripheral blood was measured using flow cytometry at 1, 2, 4 and 8 h after the injection, and the cell death rate was calculated. Histological analysis was also performed on samples collected at the time of splenectomy. The cell death rates of the allograft rejection and low-dose immunosuppressant groups reached their highest levels 8 h after the injection of spleen cell suspension. Allogeneic spleen cells from donor male rabbits were almost completely removed within 8 h of injection. The cell death rate increased slowly in the nontransplant, autograft and high-dose immunosuppressant groups without specificity. This study provides a specific method for the in vivo monitoring of the immunological status of patients after skin grafting. This method can quickly and accurately detect the immunological status of recipients following the injection of a mixed splenocyte suspension, thereby indicating the strength of immune rejection by the immune systems of the recipients.


The paper presents application of OpenCLLink in Wolfram Mathematica to accelerate fully recurrent neural networks using GPU. We also show the idea of automatically generated parts of source code using SymbolicC. Introduction The general purpose graphics processing units (GPU) represent a modern, powerful and cheap parallel platform. Since the neural networks consist of many relatively simple neurons computation units, it seems natural to use the GPU multicore architecture to accelerate the evaluation and learning of neural networks. There are many approaches to the acceleration the core question is, how the network or group of networks will be mapped to the GPU structure. We have chosen the very intuitive version where single thread (kernel) represents one neuron in the network. We have used the fully recurrent neural network (FRNN) with the realtime recurrent learning algorithm (RTRL). There are two main platforms for GPU programming CUDA which can be used with nvidia GPUs and OpenCL which represent the multi platform technology. Both of these platforms are available in Wolfram Mathematica through OpenCLLink or CUDALink. To easier porting the code between this two platforms we will show the usage of SymbolicC package in Wolfram Mathematica. Neural Networks Neural networks consist of many interconnected neurons. It can be differentiate them by information representation and processing as spiking networks or so-called traditional neural networks. It can be differentiated also by topology as feed-forward or recurrent networks. The following figure shows a typical neuron with multiple inputs and single output. Each neuron has an activation function which transforms the neuron's potential to the output value. Model of single neuron with multiple inputs and single output value. y = f  i=1 n wi xi + Θ = f  i=0 n wi xi , where x0 = 1 and w0 = Θ (1) The well known feed-forward topology is shown in the following image. The network is divided into particular layers. There is a complete connection between the layers. Example of feed-forward neural network with three external inputs two hidden layers and one output layer with single neuron. The feed-forward kind of neural network is not able to handle time context of processed data, the output depends only on current combination of input values. The extension of such network with the backward connections leads to recurrent neural networks. The figure below shows an example of so-called Jordan-Elman neural network with explicit recurrent layer representing the state of the system. Output of this network depends not only on the current configuration of input values but also on the previous states of the network (previous input values transformed by hidden layers). 12th International Mathematica Symposium, 2015, Prague, Czech Republic The feed-forward kind of neural network is not able to handle time context of processed data, the output depends only on current combination of input values. The extension of such network with the backward connections leads to recurrent neural networks. The figure below shows an example of so-called Jordan-Elman neural network with explicit recurrent layer representing the state of the system. Output of this network depends not only on the current configuration of input values but also on the previous states of the network (previous input values transformed by hidden layers). Example of recurrent neural network Jordan-Elman network, there are two "state" neurons which handle the previous outputs from the hidden layer. GPU Accelerated Computing GPUs are primarily oriented to parallel data manipulation this is mainly derived from the graphics rendering based on operations applied to huge amount of graphics data elements (pixels, vertices, etc.). Serial processing became inefficient with increasing number of these elements. The standard CPUs handle many different tasks at the "same" time, so it's optimized for this purpose (caching, context switching, etc.). Even on many-core CPUs all tasks are not executed simultaneously, but each task has its amount of processor time and when this time is spent the operating system switches the context to another task. In contrast, GPU handles just one task at the time, but executed many times in parallel. It is not possible to execute more different programs (tasks) on the same GPU at the same time. The data-parallel processing model maps data elements to threads (working items/units). Thread is running binary code (the functionality is described by Kernel) executed many times in parallel. To map threads on the data we need to organize the threads somehow. The GPU memory is exposed to programmer as a linear array of elements. Each thread has an automatically generated identification used for memory object identification. For easier mapping the threads are organized into multidimensional virtual grid of threads. OpenCL Execution Model (Image source: The OpenCL Specification v1.2, Khronos OpenCL Working Group, 2012) NVidia CUDA technology uses five-dimensional structure for better orientation it is divided into three-dimensional blocks of threads and two-dimensional grid of blocks. The OpenCL organization is similar but uses different terminology, see the following table. CUDA Terminology OpenCL Terminology Grid Index space Block Work-−group Thread Work-−item The unique thread identification is evaluated from coordinates in the block and coordinates within the grid. The block and grid dimensions have to be set up before executing the code. In OpenCL the id of current kernel can be calculated as: get_global_id(0)


A new decoder for the Leech lattice is presented. This quasioptimal decoder utilizes a re-encoding paradigm, where candidates are obtained via a shallow neural network. This implies easy parallelization and low latency. The decoder exploits the fact that the Leech lattice is obtained from the direct sum of three polarized Gosset 8-dimensional lattices. This Turyn's construction was used in 2010 by G. Nebe to build the extremal even unimodular lattice in dimension 72 from three copies of the Leech lattice. Thus, we view this work as a first step towards the implementation of an efficient decoder for the Nebe 72-dimensional lattice.


The correlation dimension can provide some intrinsic Information of an underlying dynamic system by reconstructing measured nonlinear time series. The vibration signals measured from a rotor with different clearance sizes between shaft and bushing were analyzed using the correlation dimension. The results showed that the correlation dimension can identify the size of the clearance of a rotor and the lubricating condition, which can not be analyzed by frequency spectrum or wavelet. The magnitude of the correlation dimension became smaller as the clearance larger and as the lubrication condition better.


Experiments were carried out during the 1967–1972 period in an attempt to measure cryostatic (frost-induced) pressures by means of soil pressure cells installed in nonsorted circles (mud hummocks) at Inuvik, N.W.T. Although slight soil pressure increases were measured in the hummocks during the freeze-back period, the field evidence shows that the hummock centers became desiccated, overconsolidated, and immobile rather than saturated, underconsolidated, and mobile, because of water loss to growing ice lenses at the top and bottom of the active layer. Cryostatic pressures during the freeze-back period are considered to be no more important than thaw displacement in the summer. The Inuvik mud hummocks appear to maintain considerable stability and individual identity over a time span of hundreds of years.


Computer-assisted cognitive training is an effective intervention for patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which can avoid the disadvantages of traditional cognitive training that consumes a lot of medical resources and is difficult to be standardized. However, many computer-assisted cognitive training systems have unfriendly human-computer interaction, for not considering that most MCI patients have certain difficulties in using computers. In this paper, we design a cognitive training system which allows patients to implement human-computer interaction through gestures. First, a gesture recognition algorithm is proposed, in which we implement gesture segmentation based on YCbCr color space and Otsu algorithm, extract Fourier Descriptors of gesture contour as feature vectors and use SVM algorithm to train a classifier to recognize gestures. Then, the graphical user interface (GUI) of the system is designed to realize the task requirement of cognitive training for the MCI patients. Finally, the results of tests show the accuracy of the algorithm and the feasibility of the GUI. With the above computer-assisted cognitive training system, patients can achieve human-computer interaction only through gestures without the need to use keyboard, mouse, etc., greatly reducing the burden of patients during training.


We determine the influence of the localized surface plasmon induced by Ag nanoparticles on the divalent europium complex. A poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)/toluene solution including europium dichloride was spin-coated onto an Ag-deposited glass substrate. Localized surface plasmon resonance was strongly induced at the emission wavelength of divalent europium complex according to the thickness of the Ag deposition. As a result of the photoluminescence measurement, the emission intensity from the divalent europium complex was enhanced in proportion to extinction of Ag nanoparticles. The enhancement of emission intensity was visualized through the confocal microscope images. The modified photoluminescence originated from the resonant coupling between the localized surface plasmon of the Ag nanoparticles and the electric dipole transition of divalent europium ions.


The energy spectra of electrons induced by xenon ion bombardment of the Fe-Ni alloy target covered by frozen xenon were measured. Three broad maxima superimposed on the background which ranges from zero to a few hundred electron volts were observed. Excluding the first maximum which is a typical maximum of bulk electrons from the metal the yield of electrons shows some angular anisotropy in the region of large detection angles. It is assumed that the emission of these electrons is connected with the creation of the symmetric quasi-molecules Xe++Xe0. The background is associated with direct ionisation of the quasi-molecules during the approach of the collision particles, and the structure of the energy spectrum with outer-shell and inner-shell molecular auto-ionisation processes. The presence of the xenon condensed layer on the metal target was tested by energy analysis of the back-scattered neon ions. The xenon peak and the so-called double-scattering maximum which is attributed to the solid state were found on the energy distribution curve.


Abstract Scientists know that human activities, primarily fossil fuel combustion, are causing Earth's temperature to increase. Yet in 2021, only 60% of the US population understood that human activities are the primary cause of global warming. We experimentally test whether information about the human causes of global warming influences Americans' beliefs and concerns about global warming and support for climate policies. We find that communicating information about the human-causes of global warming increases public understanding that global warming is human-caused. This information, both alone and with additional information about climate impacts and policy solutions, also increases public concern about global warming and support for climate policies, although the effects on climate concern and policy support are smaller. Importantly, the treatment effects are consistent across political party, with no backlash effects among Republicans. This suggests that when informed about climate change causes, impacts and solutions, most Americans can update their own climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support.


A 300-year (1700-2007) chronological record of environmental perchlorate, reconstructed from high-resolution analysis of a central Greenland ice core, shows that perchlorate levels in the post-1980 atm were two-to-three times those of the pre-1980 environment. While this confirms recent reports of increased perchlorate in Arctic snow since 1980 compared with the levels for the prior decades (1930-1980), the longer Greenland record demonstrates that the Industrial Revolution and other human activities, which emitted large quantities of pollutants and contaminants, did not significantly impact environmental perchlorate, as perchlorate levels remained stable throughout the 18th, 19th, and much of the 20th centuries. The increased levels since 1980 likely result from enhanced atmospheric perchlorate production, rather than from direct release from perchlorate manufacturing and applications. The enhancement is probably influenced by the emission of organic chlorine compounds in the last several decades. Prior to 1980, no significant long-term temporal trends in perchlorate concentration are observed. Brief (a few years) high-concentration episodes appear frequently over an apparently stable and low background (∼1 ng kg-1). Several such episodes coincide in time with large explosive volcanic eruptions including the 1912 Novarupta/Katmai eruption in Alaska. It appears that atmospheric perchlorate production is impacted by large eruptions in both high- and low-latitudes, but not by small eruptions and nonexplosive degassing.


In the pigeon, 70-80% of the activities of maltase (alpha-D-glucoside glucohydrolase EC 188.8.131.52), sucrase (alpha-glucohydrolase, EC 126.96.36.199), isomaltase (dextran 6-alpha-D-glucan hydrolase, EC 22.214.171.124) and glucoamylase (1,4-alpha-D-glucan glucohydrolase, EC 220.127.116.11) were found to be localized in the brush-border membrane of intestinal epithelial cells. Of the total glycosidase activities in the mucosal homogenate, nearly 60 to 70% were recovered in the microsomal (105 000 X g) fraction, about 30% in the mitochondrial (22 000 X g) fraction and less than 5% from the cytosol (105 000 X g supernatant) fraction. The hydrolases were solubilized by digestion with papain but not with trypsin, and the phosphate ion had a protective effect in the solubilization. Amongst detergents, Triton X-100 but not sodium deoxycholate, was found to truly solubilize these enzymes.


The abundance distribution in the ejecta of the peculiar slowly declining Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) SN 1999aa is obtained by modelling a time series of optical spectra. Similar to SN 1991T, SN 1999aa was characterised by early-time spectra dominated by Fe iii features and a weak Si ii 6355 Å line, but it exhibited a high-velocity Ca ii H&K line and morphed into a spectroscopically normal SN Ia earlier. Three explosion models are investigated, yielding comparable fits. The innermost layers are dominated by ∼0.3 M⊙ of neutron-rich stable Fe-group elements, mostly stable iron. Above that central region lies a 56Ni-dominated shell, extending to v ≈ 11, 000 – 12,000 km s−1, with mass ∼0.65 M⊙. These inner layers are therefore similar to those of normal SNe Ia. However, the outer layers exhibit composition peculiarities similar to those of SN 1991T: the intermediate-mass elements shell is very thin, containing only ∼0.2 M⊙, and is sharply separated from an outer oxygen-dominated shell, which includes ∼0.22 M⊙. These results imply that burning suddenly stopped in SN 1999aa. This is a feature SN 1999aa shares with SN 1991T, and explain the peculiarities of both SNe, which are quite similar in nature apart from the different luminosities. The spectroscopic path from normal to SN 1991T-like SNe Ia cannot be explained solely by a temperature sequence. It also involves composition layering differences, suggesting variations in the progenitor density structure or in the explosion parameters.


High temperature in terminal growth stages is a major stress of wheat productivity in South-west Iran, as well as in other Mediterranean environments and the long-term spring temperatures trend to increase. Determination of affecting factors or traits helps to improve the yield potential of wheat. The effects of heat stress during and post anthesis for physiologic, phenologic and agronomic traits was evaluated in ten bread wheat genotypes. The research was conducted under field condition in two different dates under less and more heated environments (two different sowing times). Also, source levels were manipulated through 50% spikelet removal at anthesis to evaluate cultivar source/sink limitations to kernel growth. The results depicted that grain yield, kernel number per spike and 1000 kernel weight were reduced by 24.1%, 9.2% and 23.7% in warmer environment, respectively. Hence, kernel weight was more suited for heat stress screening than other traits evaluated in this study. Thus, wheat genotypes that are able to maintain high individual kernel weight despite heat stress may possess a high level of heat tolerance. Furthermore, results indicated that the poor grain filling could mainly be attributed not to sink-limited conditions, but to source-limited conditions. Key words : Heat, stress intensity, tolerance, sink-source limitation.


A method of vegetation analysis is described in which interspecific associations are observed from a sampling block in each of its overlapping sequential positions as it moves across landscape. Its advantages are, firstly, that a graph of block associations (ordinate) against sequential block positions (abscissa) reveals intersected homogeneous communities as horizontal low sections separated by sharp peaks. Secondly, change in the value and sign of any pairwise interspecific association can be followed by similar plotting. Both of these features are illustrated.


PURPOSE: To evaluate the effect of flexion and linear measures of the cranial base on the anteroposterior position of the jaws in skeletal Class III malocclusion compared with skeletal Class I. METHODS: One hundred-twenty lateral radiographs were divided in two groups: Group 1 - 60 radiographs of individuals with a Class I skeletal pattern; and Group 2 - 60 radiographs of individuals with a skeletal Class III pattern. The radiographs were of adult Caucasian individuals with no previous orthodontic treatment. Data were analyzed by using ANOVA. RESULTS: There were significant differences in the cranial base angle (NSBa) and anterior cranial base length (S-N) between the two groups. Group 2 had the lowest values for NSBa and S-N. The analysis of cranial base complementary angles (NSGn and BaSGn) revealed a significant statistical difference in NSGn: Group 2 had lower NSGn values, which indicates a more anterior position of the gnathion. Variations of the cranial base angle and the Y axis were inversely correlated with variations of SNA and SNB angles, and the differences were statistically significant for the two groups. CONCLUSION: This study supports previous findings that the cranial base flexion contributes to skeletal configuration in Class III skeletal patterns. Therefore, the cranial base should be evaluated for growth predictions and Class III diagnosis. The effect of the cranial base on the positioning of the jaws should be further assessed.


AIM. To define the mineral content in foods supplied for preschool facilities in Irkutsk by laboratory methods. METHODS. Food samples (whole cow milk, white bread, potato, apple, beef, «Gerkules» oat) were analyzed. The results were compared with data of food chemical contents used as reference values by «Center for Biotic Medicine» for evaluating food mineral contents. Analytic tests were performed using atomic emission spectroscopy with inductively coupled argon plasma and mass spectroscopy with inductively coupled argon plasma. RESULTS. Food samples analysis in preschool facilities of Irkutsk revealed that these samples have significant differences in mineral contents compared with foods used in the European part of Russia. In common, examined foods contains less macroand microelements, especially Ca, Fe, P, Si. In animal products (milk, meat) the differences were more significant both in number of elements and in absolute differences, compared to plant food (bread, potato, apple, cereal). Animal products contains less zinc. CONCLUSION. The gained data highlight the need for improving children's catering, as well as for development and use of preventive measures aimed to reduce risks for diseases associated with macroand microelements deficiencies.


The rising cost of R&D activities and the increasing complexity of technologies and markets have led to the widespread diffusion of collaborative and open innovation processes. As a consequence, different open innovation paradigms have become the protagonists of many innovation strategies. Although this type of approach is an optimal strategy to identify solutions to specific problems and introduce functional innovations (Verganti, 2017), it is less useful when a company wants to develop new visions. This study shows that radical circles, i.e., small groups of radical individuals, can support the development of new visions. This work is based on the examination of two radical circles that created two significant cultural movements: Memphis and Slow Food. Radical circles have particular characteristics, such as a yearning for rebellion, voluntary and closed participation, and peer criticism. We discuss the implications for companies seeking to introduce new visions.


Gibb, D. J., Van Herk, F. H., Mir, P. S., Loerch, S. and McAllister, T. A. 2011. Removal of supplemental vitamin A from barley-based diets improves marbling in feedlot heifers. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 91: 669-674. The objective of this research was to determine if removing supplemental vitamin A from barley-based feedlot diets affects animal performance, health, or carcass quality. Six pens per treatment (10 heifers per pen) were randomly assigned to receive zero (-VA) or 3640 (+VA) IU kg-1 dry matter of supplemental vitamin A in barley-based feedlot diets. Initial serum retinol was similar between treatments (28 µg dL-1; P=0.34), but -VA reduced levels by 40% (30 vs. 50 µg dL-1; P<0.001) by day 217. Removal of supplemental vitamin A reduced dry matter intake during the 58 d backgrounding period (6.93 vs. 7.07 kg d-1; P=0.007) and over the 218-d trial (9.18 vs. 9.35 kg d-1; P<0.001), but had no effect on average daily gain during backgrounding (1.22 kg d-1; P=0.46) or over all (1.46 kg d-1; P=0.15). Based on camera grading, -VA increased degree of marbling (480.6 vs. 439.3; P=0.02) without affecting backfat thickness (0.74 cm; P=0.62). Ultrasound measurements were highly correlated with camera grading, but did not detect treatment difference in marbling score (P=0.99). Results from this study show that the removal of supplemental vitamin A increased marbling without affecting backfat, gains, or animal health.


Environmental site investigations often involve the collection and analysis of hundreds of samples producing data sets that contain thousands of data points, which are difficult and time consuming to analyze. Consequently, investigators often focus on key surrogate parameters for site characterization and remedial action planning and assessment, which results in a large portion of the data collected remaining unused. This study presents the application of principal component analysis (PCA) as an efficient statistical technique to examine large environmental data sets through highlighting patterns in a reduced-variable space. In this work, PCA was applied to ground water and soil data collected from a National Priorities List Superfund site. Analysis of the soil sample data identified several samples with contaminant parameters that were more closely related to those of the waste material than the background samples, and provided both a measure and delineation of the overall soil contamination. Analysis of the ground water data identified elevated metal concentrations due to the corrosion of a carbon steel well screen, a potential hydraulic connection between upper and lower water bearing zones at one well location, and two potentially impacted well locations. These results demonstrate that PCA facilitates the efficient analysis of large environmental data sets, providing a measure of contamination based on multiple sample parameters and aiding in the definition of a remediation boundary. These advantages can expedite data interpretation, guide additional sampling efforts, and define more accurate remediation boundaries, ultimately reducing the total cost of site investigation.


Power distribution systems reliability is significantly affected by many outage causing events; good outage cause identification can help expedite the restoration procedure. However, the data imbalance issue encountered in many real-world data affects the performance of fault cause identification. The elegant fuzzy classification algorithm, I-algorithm, proposed by Ishibuchi et al. achieves satisfactory performance on many carefully preprocessed data sets but not on the imbalanced data, I-algorithm, an extension of the I-algorithm, is developed in this paper to alleviate the effect of imbalanced data constitution. Both the I- and E-algorithms are applied to Duke Energy outage data for power distribution systems fault cause identification. Their performance on this real-world imbalanced data set is presented, compared, and analyzed to demonstrate the improvement achieved by the extended algorithm


We review the calculations of the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD corrections to vector-boson pair production processes in proton–proton collisions and their implementation in the computational framework MATRIX, which has been publicly released recently. Our calculations include the leptonic decays of W and Z bosons, consistently taking into account spin correlations, off-shell effects and non-resonant contributions. We present inclusive cross section for the production of massive vector-boson pairs, applying the respective mass windows chosen by ATLAS and CMS to define Z bosons from their leptonic decay products, as well as total cross sections for stable bosons. Moreover, we show some examples of differential distributions in fiducial phase-space regions inspired by typical selection cuts used by the LHC experiments. For the vast majority of measurements, the inclusion of NNLO corrections significantly improves the agreement of the Standard Model predictions with data


Inclusion of a polymer cushion between a lipid bilayer membrane and a solid surface has been suggested as a means to provide a soft, deformable layer that will allow for transmembrane protein insertion and mobility. In this study, the properties of a heterofunctional, telechelic PEG lipopolymer (1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine-N-poly(ethylene glycol)-2000-N- [3-(2-(pyridyldithio)propionate]) (DSPE-PEG-PDP) adsorbed from ethanol and water solutions onto gold surfaces were studied using a variety of surface-sensitive techniques. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed that the PEG molecules are tethered to the gold surface via thiolate bonds. When adsorbed from water, ethanol, or their mixtures, reflection-absorption infrared spectroscopy showed that amorphous PEG layers with disordered DSPE alkyl chains were formed, independent of adsorption time or solution concentration. On the basis of advancing and receding water and hexadecane contact angles on the lipopolymer films, the DSPE lipid groups appear to segregate from the PEG layer and become exposed at the surface of the polymer films. Swelling observed in surface plasmon resonance experiments and the large contact angle hysteresis observed indicate that highly swellable, mobile films capable of molecular rearrangements are formed. The self-assembling and amorphous properties of these PEG layers make them ideal candidates as polymer cushions for polymer-supported lipid bilayers. The DSPE surface concentration can be controlled, to a limited degree, by varying the adsorption time of DSPE-PEG-PDP from ethanol. A more effective strategy is to coadsorb DSPE-PEG-PDP with a non-lipid-functionalized PEG-PDP from an ethanol/water mixture, which allows the PEG thickness and density to remain constant while decreasing the density of DSPE groups.


The sudden arrival of the epidemic has brought a heavy blow to every one of us. All walks of life in China have been greatly affected. In order to help the country tide over the difficulties, all the Chinese are united in the fight against the epidemic. The results of the anti-epidemic are very effective. During the anti-epidemic period, many industries in China have changed their traditional business mode to adapt to the development under the epidemic environment. This shows strong development force and strong innovation ability of China. Under the epidemic situation, the design and research on the teaching reform of logistics management specialty in colleges and universities in China is an urgent problem for colleges and universities to think about. Therefore, in order to better help colleges and universities to carry out the teaching reform of logistics management specialty during the epidemic period, this article puts forward the teaching reform direction of logistics management specialty in colleges and universities as the practice teaching method. Through the accurate analysis of the current practice and characteristics of logistics management major in colleges and universities, a set of suitable teaching methods for logistics management major in colleges and universities during the epidemic period is formulated the new plan of learning reform. Through the analysis, it is found that the method proposed in this paper has important practical significance for the design and research of the teaching reform of logistics management specialty in colleges and universities under the epidemic situation.


The Qur'an as kalamullah descended to the Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel as a miracle. The Qur'an is used as a guide for life for humans. To find the guidelines contained in it, the Qur'an is not only used as a readable scripture, but we must also understand the content of its meaning. The understanding of the content of Al-Qur'an content has been done by some great scholars. This understanding is done through several approaches, among others, with a hermeneutic approach. The presence of hermeneutics can't be separated from the growth and advancement of thinking about language in the discourse of philosophy and other scholarship. Hermeneutics as a method of reading the text has been widely recognized in various fields of traditional Islamic scholarship, especially in the tradition of Fiqh and Tafsir al-Qur'an. Meanwhile, modern hermeneutics Islamic of ideology can basically be called a big leap in the formulating the methodology of Islamic ideoogy in general and the method of interpretation of the Qur'an in particular.


We report a patient with multiple myeloma and chronic kidney disease who presented with severe hyperphosphatemia in the outpatient clinic without any related symptoms. Initial differential diagnosis: Tumor lysis syndrome or chronic kidney disease. Further work‐up revealed pseudohyperphosphatemia. In general, treatment is not necessary if the true phosphate level is within the reference range and the patient is asymptomatic.


Public environmental organisations face a Herculean task: to be responsive to public and executive expectations for decentralisation, integration, increasing accountabilities and efficiency savings plus, contemporaneously, managing increasingly complex nature–society systems as exemplified by the water–energy–food nexus. The public-agency innovation literatures and contingency theory offer partial explanations for this challenge. However, this article, which sits at the intersection of public administration and organisational theory, proposes a new analytical framework for framing public-agency responses to nexus complexity. It first outlines the framework and then tests it on the case of Natural Resources Wales, the Welsh national natural environment agency. This case identifies six distinct innovations that have adopted to meet complex nexus pressures. This leads us to characterise the case as an example of a multi-scalar, hybrid, adhocratic organisation designed to meet nexus challenges. These findings have wider impact for the international community of public agencies with socio-environmental remits facing similar nexus pressures and challenges in the 21st century.


This essay argues that classical Greek rhetoric was informed by the ethic of competition and the aesthetic of exhibition and performance. It proposes that this rhetoric can be profitably studied in the terms of the Sophistical, Platonic, Isocratean, and Aristotelian perspectives. The essay recalls the author's early experiences with rhetoric and articulates the logic of his Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece. At the same time, it promises a theatrical play (in the spirit of Plato's Symposium) that illustrates the four perspectives.


Seasonal climate is the main driver of crop growth and yield in broadacre grain cropping systems. With a 40-year record of 30 m resolution images and 16-day revisits, the Landsat satellite series is ideal for producing long-term records of remotely sensed phenology to build understanding of how climate affects crop growth. However, the time-series of Landsat images exhibits gaps caused by cloud cover, which is common in wet periods when crops reach maximum growth. We propose a novel spatial–temporal approach to gap-filling that avoids data fusion. Crop growth curve estimation is used to perform temporal smoothing and incorporation of spatial weights allows spatial smoothing. We tested our approach using Landsat NDVI data acquired for an 8000 ha study area in Western Australia using a train/test approach where 157 available Landsat-7 images between 2013 and 2019 were used to train the model, and 95 at least 80% cloud-free Landsat-8 images from the same period were used to test its performance. We found that compared to nonspatial estimation, use of spatial weights in growth curve estimation improved correlation between observed and predicted NDVI by 75%, MAE by 31% and RMSE by 75%. For cropland, the correlation is improved by 58%, the MAE by 36% and the RMSE by 76%. We conclude that spatially weighted estimation of crop growth curves can be used to fill spatial and temporal gaps in Landsat NDVI for the purpose of within-field monitoring. Our approach is also applicable to other data sources and vegetation indices.


Density functional theory (DFT) calculations on pyrrole oligomers were carried out at the B3LYP/6-311+G(d,p) level to search the relationship between the molecular structure and corrosion inhibition. The electronic properties such as the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels, energy gap (LUMO-HOMO) and dipole moment were computed. It was found that these electronic values can explain some features of the inhibition phenomena.


This paper presents a new Android malware de-tection method based on Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) with Jumping-Knowledge (JK). Android function call graphs (FCGs) consist of a set of program functions and their inter-procedural calls. Thus, this paper proposes a GNN-based method for Android malware detection by capturing meaningful intra-procedural call path patterns. In addition, a Jumping-Knowledge technique is applied to minimize the effect of the over-smoothing problem, which is common in GNNs. The proposed method has been extensively evaluated using two benchmark datasets. The results demonstrate the superiority of our approach compared to state-of-the-art approaches in terms of key classification metrics, which demonstrates the potential of GNNs in Android malware detection and classification.


Across the lifespan, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with increased health risk behaviors including substance abuse, binge eating and obesity, and unsafe sexual behavior. These risks are directly linked to the neurocognitive deficits associated with ADHD, and are also mediated by the cascade of psychosocial impairments and stressors caused by ADHD across development. However, little is known about optimal approaches to improve health outcomes in this high-risk population. This topical review provides an overview of health risks associated with ADHD and the limited existing research relevant to health promotion for children and adolescents with ADHD. Future research questions and implications for clinicians are also addressed-especially how psychologists and medical practitioners may improve child health through early screenings, increasing medication adherence, and treating psychosocial impairments.


We report what we believe to be the first accuracy evaluation of an optical lattice clock based on the S01-->P03 transition of an alkaline earth boson, namely, Sr88 atoms. This transition has been enabled by using a static coupling magnetic field. The clock frequency is determined to be 429228066418009(32)Hz. The isotopic shift between Sr87 and Sr88 is 62188135Hz with fractional uncertainty 5x10(-7). We discuss the necessary conditions to reach a clock accuracy of 10(-17) or less by using this scheme.


Ever so rarely does one find a book so unique that it should appeal to all disciplines of our Academy. It should also grip the attention of the general public, ranging from the adolescent to the sociologically minded adult, with satisfaction. This is a dynamically personal book on many levels—psychological, medical, political, and social. The author, Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, J.D., M.D. (a Fellow and proposed Dame of our Academy), projects her sociological philosophy into a workable program. We Mainline Dreams: The Odyssey House Story relates the story of Odyssey House, a drug rehabilitation program which began in 1967 with 17 addicts and $3.82 and has progressed to its present growth of 33 facilities in six states.


The main objective of this paper is to contribute into the process of the standardization of a demographic service in a federated healthcare environment. Our approach is based on semantic web techniques and aimed at the reconciliation of several previous standardization works.


Over the past 25 years, technology has immensely impacted the field of therapeutic recreation; however, our current methodological approach needs to adapt to the changing nature of therapeutic recreation. The ecological momentary assessment (EMA) approach is one such method that will benefit the field immensely. EMA has been widely used in disciplines such as nursing, kinesiology, and tourism but has only been used sparingly in therapeutic recreation. In this paper, we illustrate some of its uses and advocate for the continued use of EMA as a data collection technique that has multiple applications in the field of therapeutic recreation. Subscribe to TRJ


Agricultural practices affect the status of legacy phosphorus (P) in soils and consequently the P bioavailability and susceptibility of losses to water resources. Previous studies have primarily assessed P status within agroecosystems, and rarely have these results been compared to native conditions. We evaluated the effects of long-term (45 years) consistent cropping [continuous corn (CC), corn-oats-alfalfa-alfalfa rotation (CR), and continuous bluegrass sod (CB)] with and without P fertilization on changes in P fractions of different bioavailability in a Brookston clay loam, as compared to an adjacent forest native soil. Soil P was separated into various inorganic P (Pi) and organic P (Po) fractions using a modified sequential fractionation method. Phosphorus in native soil was predominated by moderately labile Po (NaOH-Po), 44%, followed by moderately stable Pi (HCl-P), 26%. Compared to the native soil, consistent cropping without P fertilization significantly decreased all P fractions except for water-extractable Po, with the largest decrease in labile Pi (water-Pi + NaHCO3-Pi) and moderately labile Po of 65 and 73 mg kg–1, respectively, over 45 years. Consistent cropping with fertilization retained comparable amount of total P in CC and RC, but increased total P in CB, relative to the native soil. Averaged over cropping systems, labile Pi, NaOH-Pi, and HCl-P increased by 129, 74, and 20 mg kg–1, respectively, whereas labile Po and moderately labile Po decreased by 8 and 60 mg kg–1, respectively, compared to the native soil. This study indicates that long-term cropping significantly enhanced the rate of moderately labile Po mineralization, irrespective of fertilization. The increases of total P and Po in the fertilized CB plots suggest that P accumulation in long-term grass fields is a concern as far as potential P contamination in surface waters.


1.1 Aim: The effective in vitro antibacterial activity on Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P.aeruginosa), Klebsiella pneumoniae (K.pneumoniae), Escherichia coli (E.Coli) and the combination of S.aureus and K. pneumoniae of a topical cream based on 0.1% polyhexanide was compared to a topical cream based on 1% silver sulfadiazine. A topical cream containing 0,1% gentamicin was used as a positive control and a white blank topical cream was used as negative control.1.2 Materials and Methods: The in vitro antibacterial activities were determined by agar well-diffusion assay. Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test, by calculation of P-values, for significant antiseptic activity in bacteria treated with 0,1% polyhexanide topical cream compared to 1% silver sulfadiazine and to the negative and positive controls. 1.3 Results: Among the derivatives tested, all the active topical creams analyzed were able to reduce microbial strains. The topical cream based on 0.1% polyhexanide showed a significantly higher antibacterial efficacy in comparison to the topical cream based on 1% silver sulfadiazine on S. aureus and K. pneumoniae and on the combination of S. aureus and K. pneumoniae, while no significant difference was detected between the antibacterial activity of the two topical creams against P. aeruginosa and E. coli. 1.4 Conclusion: These results provide a further insight into the antibacterial activity of polyhexanide and its non-inferiority compared to silver sulfadiazine towards certain bacterial strains (P. aeruginosa and E. coli) and superiority towards other (S. aureus and K. pneumoniae) and support the use of 0.1% Polyhexanide topical preparation for the treatment of wounds that are infected or at risk of infection.


The formation of bromate (BrO3−)in groundwater treatment is still a severe environmental problem. Catalytic hydrogenation by nanoscale heterogeneous catalysts with gaseous H2 or solid-state H2 has emerged as a promising approach, which relies on reducing BrO3− to innocuous Br− via the process of direct electron transfer or reduction with atomic hydrogen. Several nanocatalysts have demonstrated high efficiency with a 100% effective BrO3− reduction with greater than 95% of Br− generation in the batch and continuous reactors. However, this technology has not been widely adopted in water treatment systems. Indeed, this research article summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of these technologies by highlighting the factors of nanomaterials reduction efficiency, long-term durability, and stability, as well as addressing the essential challenges limiting the implementation of the use of H2 for BrO3− reduction. In this work, we provide an economic evaluation of catalytic BrO3− removal, safe hydrogen supply, storage, and transportation.


Objective: The aim of present study was to evaluate effect of using two different biomaterials, Bio-oss graft and PRF membrane for ridge preservation after tooth extraction, clinically and radiographically. Subjects & Methods: This study was conducted on 20 patients indicated for extraction, from those attending the outpatient clinics of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Faculty of Dental Medicine, Al-Azhar University Hospitals. Patients were divided into two groups: Group I: Extraction socket preservation with bio-oss graft and PRF membrane (10 patients). Group II: Extraction socket without grafting (10 patients). . All patients were evaluated clinically after 24-hour, one week and two weeks for pain and edema. They were also evaluated immediately and after six months for bone gain in height and width using cone beam computed tomography. Results: The bone width between the two groups was found to be statistically significant where the bone height was not statistically significant between the study and control groups. Conclusion: Post extraction alveolar ridge resorption is an inevitable process. Bio-oss placed in extraction socket give better bone quality and quantity than empty socket. The PRF membrane is used effectively as a membrane to cover the bone graft.


We present a patient with acute pancreatitis that was specially persistent from a biochemical viewpoint, derived from a duodenal sarcomatous tumor of immunoblastic type that narrowed the second duodenal segment for a length of about 8 centimeters. We discuss the possible role of tumoral neoformations in the production of pancreatitis due to increased intraluminal pressure distal to the Vater ampulla, or to occlusion of the Oddi sphincter or the Wirsung duct. We review the existent literature.


Heterosexual behaviour is a complex subject and one which is aggravated by confounding variables. Few studies have investigated the way in which one variable, namely coitus, is initiated and negotiated in stable marital relationships. As the HIV/AIDS pandemic spreads in sub-Saharan Africa, the subject of marital coitus becomes of increasing concern. This study tests a methodology of semi-structured interviews and diary-keeping techniques to investigate how the activity is initiated and negotiated. A research team monitored the study and evaluated the research techniques. The study concluded that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is affecting the initiation and negotiation of coitus between marital partners and that the partners wish to renegotiate the relationship, but the mechanisms for renegotiation are not at present available.


Through the recursive preference, which includes the parameters of risk aversion and intertemporal substitutability, and assuming that the process of per capita consume is generated by AR(1), this paper is on measuring the costs of consumption volatility and the welfare gain of extra consumption growth after the Reform using the real national consumption data. We show that the welfare cost and gain before economic reform is greater than after economic reform, the welfare gain of economic growth is near to the welfare gain from eliminating business cycle, while the parameters of the relative risk aversion and intertemporal substitutability are under a reasonable range of parameterization.


An optimal smoothing problem for noncausal two-dimensional systems is formulated and solved based on the descriptor model with coefficient functions. Using this model, a forward and backward recursion procedure is obtained. It is shown that for the existence of solutions, pointwise reachability and observability of the descriptor model at infinite poles are important. >


High-quality single crystals of Lu2Fe3Si5 and Sc2Fe3Si5 are grown by the floating-zone method, and their temperature dependences of specific heat are measured down to 0.35 K. Both compounds show anomalously small jump in specific heat at the superconducting transition temperature, Tc, and large residual specific heat coefficient even at 0.2 Tc, where BCS superconductor shows negligible electronic contribution. We also find drop in the specific heat coefficient below 0.2 Tc. These characteristics are very similar to MgB2, and temperature dependences of specific heat in both compounds are well reproduced by assuming two superconducting gaps. Upper critical field measurements confirm that both Lu2Fe3Si5 and Sc2Fe3Si5 are weakly one-dimensional superconductors.


There is growing concern about "algorithmic bias" - that predictive algorithms used in decision-making might bake in or exacerbate discrimination in society. When will these "biases" arise? What should be done about them? We argue that such questions are naturally answered using the tools of welfare economics: a social welfare function for the policymaker, a private objective function for the algorithm designer and a model of their information sets and interaction. We build such a model that allows the training data to exhibit a wide range of "biases." Prevailing wisdom is that biased data change how the algorithm is trained and whether an algorithm should be used at all. In contrast, we find two striking irrelevance results. First, when the social planner builds the algorithm, her equity preference has no effect on the training procedure. So long as the data, however biased, contain signal, they will be used and the algorithm built on top will be the same. Any characteristic that is predictive of the outcome of interest, including group membership, will be used. Second, we study how the social planner regulates private (possibly discriminatory) actors building algorithms. Optimal regulation depends crucially on the disclosure regime. Absent disclosure, algorithms are regulated much like human decision-makers: disparate impact and disparate treatment rules dictate what is allowed. In contrast, under stringent disclosure of all underlying algorithmic inputs (data, training procedure and decision rule), once again we find an irrelevance result: private actors can use any predictive characteristic. Additionally, now algorithms strictly reduce the extent of discrimination against protected groups relative to a world in which humans make all the decisions. As these results run counter to prevailing wisdom on algorithmic bias, at a minimum, they provide a baseline set of assumptions that must be altered to generate different conclusions.


The modern hydraulic fracturing technique was implemented in the oil and gas industry in the 1940s. Since then, it has been used extensively as a method of stimulation in unconventional reservoirs in order to enhance hydrocarbon recovery. Advances in directional drilling technology in shale reservoirs allowed hydraulic fracturing to become an extensively common practice worldwide. Fracturing technology can be classified according to the type of the fracturing fluid with respect to the well orientation into vertical, inclined, or horizontal well fracturing. Depth, natural fractures, well completion technology, capacity, and formation sensitivity of a shale reservoir all play a role in the selection of fracturing fluid and fracturing orientation. At present, the most commonly used technologies are multi-section fracturing, hydra-jet fracturing, fracture network fracturing, re-fracturing, simultaneous fracturing, and CO 2 and N 2 fracturing. This chapter briefly reviews the technologies used in shale reservoir fracturing.


Aortoiliac occlusive disease (AOD) is a rare presentation of thrombosis of the abdominal aorta. Also known as Leriche syndrome, its classic description entails claudication of the buttocks, thighs, and calves, absent femoral pulses, and impotence. AOD risk factors include smoking, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, chronic renal insufficiency, and hypercoagulopathy. Ischemic complications of gastrointestinal malperfusion, renal infarction, and paralysis secondary to spinal cord ischemia are also noted. This case describes AOD complicated by a Stanford Type B aortic dissection leading to multi-system organ failure. A brief review of the literature further elucidates the key risk factors in identifying and treating Leriche syndrome.


Foreword by Robert Scoble. Welcome to the Second Edition of the New Rules. Second Edition. Introduction. The New Rules. Trying to Write Like a Blog, But in a Book. Showcasing Innovative Marketers. I How the Web Has Changed the Rules of Marketing and PR. 1 The Old Rules of Marketing and PR Are Ineffective in an Online World. Advertising: A Money Pit of Wasted Resources. One-Way Interruption Marketing Is Yesterday's Message. The Old Rules of Marketing. Public Relations Used to Be Exclusively about the Media. Public Relations and Third-Party Ink. Yes, the Media Are Still Important. Press Releases and the Journalistic Black Hole. The Old Rules of PR. Learn to Ignore the Old Rules. 2 The New Rules of Marketing and PR. The Long Tail of Marketing. Tell Me Something I Don't Know, Please. Bricks-and-Mortar News. Advice from the Company President. The Long Tail of PR. The New Rules of Marketing and PR. The Convergence of Marketing and PR on the Web. 3 Reaching Your Buyers Directly. The Right Marketing in a Wired World. Let the World Know about Your Expertise. Develop Information Your Buyers Want to Consume. Buyer Personas: The Basics. Think Like a Publisher. Tell Your Organization's Story Directly. Know the Goals and Let Content Drive Action. Content and Thought Leadership. II Web-Based Communications to Reach Buyers Directly. 4 Social Media and Your Targeted Audience. What Is Social Media, Anyway? Social Media Is a Cocktail Party. Facebook Group Drives 15,000 People to Singapore Tattoo Show. The New Rules of Job Search. How David Murray Found a New Job via Twitter. Insignificant Backwaters or Valuable Places to Connect? Your Best Customers Participate in Online Forums-So Should You. Your Space in the Forums. Wikis, Listservs, and Your Audience. Creating Your Own Wiki. 5 Blogs: Tapping Millions of Evangelists to Tell Your Story. Blogs, Blogging, and Bloggers. Understanding Blogs in the World of the Web. The Four Uses of Blogs for Marketing and PR. Monitor Blogs-Your Organization's Reputation Depends on It. Comment on Blogs to Get Your Viewpoint Out There. Work with the Bloggers Who Talk about You. How to Reach Bloggers Around the World. Do You Allow Employees to Send E-Mail? How about Letting Them Blog? Breaking Boundaries: Blogging at McDonald's. The Power of Blogs. Get Started Today. 6 Audio and Video Drive Action. Digging Digg Video. What University Should I Attend. The Best Job in the World. Audio Content Delivery Through Podcasting. Putting Marketing Back in Musicians' Control. Podcasting: More Than Just Music. Grammar Girl Podcast. 7 The New Rules of News Releases. News Releases in a Web World. The New Rules of News Releases. If They Find You, They Will Come. Driving Buyers into the Sales Process. Reach Your Buyers Directly. 8 Going Viral: The Web Helps Audiences Catch the Fever. Minty-Fresh Explosive Marketing. Monitoring the Blogosphere for Viral Eruptions. Creating a World Wide Rave. Rules of the Rave. Film Producer Creates a World Wide Rave by Making Soundtrack Free for Download. Viral Buzz for Fun and Profit. The Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich and Jerry Garcia's Toilet. Clip This Coupon for $1 Million Off Ft. Myers, FL Home. When You Have Explosive News, Make It Go Viral. 9 The Content-Rich Web Site. Political Advocacy on the Web. Content: The Focus of Successful Web Sites. Reaching a Global Marketplace. Putting It All Together with Content. Great Web Sites: More Art Than Science. III Action Plan for Harnessing the Power of the New Rules. 10 You Are What You Publish: Building Your Marketing and PR Plan. What Are Your Organization's Goals? Buyer Personas and Your Organization. The Buyer Persona Profile. Reaching Senior Executives. The Importance of Buyer Personas in Web Marketing. In Your Buyers' Own Words. What Do You Want Your Buyers to Believe? Developing Content to Reach Buyers. Obama for America. Stick to Your Plan. 11 Online Thought Leadership to Brand Your Organization as a Trusted Resource. Developing Thought Leadership Content. Forms of Thought Leadership Content. How to Create Thoughtful Content. Write What You Know. Leveraging Thought Leaders Outside of Your Organization. How Much Money Does Your Buyer Make? 12 How to Write for Your Buyers. An Analysis of Gobbledygook. Poor Writing: How Did We Get Here? Effective Writing for Marketing and PR. The Power of Writing Feedback (from Your Blog). 13 How Web Content Influences the Buying Process. Segmenting Your Buyers. Elements of a Buyer-Centric Web Site. Using RSS to Deliver Your Web Content to Targeted Niches. Link Content Directly into the Sales Cycle. A Friendly Nudge. Close the Sale and Continue the Conversation. An Open-Source Marketing Model. 14 Social Networking Sites and Marketing. Television's Eugene Mirman is Very Nice and Likes Seafood. Facebook: Not Just for Students. Check Me Out on MySpace. Tweet Your Thoughts to the World. Social Networking and Personal Branding. Connecting with Fans. How Amanda Palmer Made $11,000 on Twitter in Two Hours. Which Social Networking Site is Right for You? You Can't Go to Every Party, So Why Even Try? Optimizing Social Networking Pages. Start a Movement. 15 Blogging to Reach Your Buyers. What Should You Blog About? Blogging Ethics and Employee Blogging Guidelines. Blogging Basics: What You Need to Know to Get Started. Pimp Out Your Blog. Building an Audience for Your New Blog. Tag, and Your Buyer Is It. Fun with Sharpies (and Sharpie Fans). Blogging Outside of North America. What Are You Waiting For? 16 Video and Podcasting Made, Well, as Easy as Possible. Video and Your Buyers. A Flip Video Camera in Every Pocket. Getting Started with Video. Knifing the Competition ... and It's All Caught on Video. Podcasting 101. My Audio Is Your Podcast. 17 How to Use News Releases to Reach Buyers Directly. Developing Your News Release Strategy. Publishing News Releases through a Distribution Service. Reaching Even More Interested Buyers with RSS Feeds. Simultaneously Publishing Your News Releases to Your Web Site. The Importance of Links in Your News Releases. Focus on the Keywords and Phrases Your Buyers Use. Include Appropriate Social Media Tags. If It's Important Enough to Tell the Media, Tell Your Clients and Prospects, Too! 18 The Online Media Room: Your Front Door for Much More Than the Media. Your Online Media Room as (Free) Search Engine Optimization. Best Practices for Online Media Rooms. An Online Media Room to Reach Journalists, Customers, Bloggers, and Employees. Really Simple Marketing: The Importance of RSS Feeds in Your Online Media Room. 19 The New Rules for Reaching the Media. Nontargeted, Broadcast Pitches Are Spam. The New Rules of Media Relations. Blogs and Media Relations. Launching Ideas with the U.S. Air Force. How to Pitch the Media. 20 Search Engine Marketing. Making the First Page on Google. Search Engine Optimization. The Long Tail of Search. Carve Out Your Own Search Engine Real Estate. Web Landing Pages to Drive Action. Search Engine Marketing in a Fragmented Business. 21 Make It Happen. Getting the Help you Need (and Rejecting What You Don't). Great for Any Organization. Now It's Your Turn. Acknowledgments for the Second Edition. Index. About the Author. Preview: World Wide Rave. Preview: The New Rules of Social Media book series.


This document is the outcome of the work done during the 2nd year of the project in task "T2.2 -
Organizing Online Labs for the Go-Lab Federation: from Small to Big Ideas of Science", in task
"T2.3 – The Go-lab Inventory of Online Labs" and Task "T2.4 – Populating the Go-Lab
inventory". The document describes (a) the process of populating the Go-Lab Inventory for year
2, (b) the main characteristics of the new online labs (including quality, diversity, multilingualism)
and (c) explains in detail the steps towards the development of a federated ecosystem of online
labs and educational resources (inquiry learning activities that are making use of a lab – or a
series of labs) that could be available to the users (namely science teachers) through an
effective search mechanism. Overall the Go-Lab inventory includes currently 48 online labs
(the initial indicator was to have 45 online labs at the end of the project) out of which 13 were
integrated during the 1st year of the project and 35 during the 2nd year. The consortium has
already set in place a mechanism to populate the Go-Lab Repository with more online labs from
the initial planned sample to support the large scale validation work. The consortium has
already established cooperation with similar efforts across the globe. Following the remarks of
the reviewers the main concepts of the proposed approach (Big Ideas of Science, online lab
metadata model1) were validated with real users (namely, science teachers and teachers'
trainers) in the framework of specific workshops and activities. The data were analysed and the
results are presented. About 341 potential users were involved in the validation exercises. In
particular, 108 users participated in the validation of the metadata elements set for online labs
and 233 users were involved in the validation of the Go-Lab set on the "Big Ideas of Science".


Corn borers are an important maize (Zea mays L.) pest in northwestern Spain. In order to use methods of control or to breed plant material against corn borers it is necessary to know the life cycle and behavior of this pest. The objectives of this work were to complete the study of the incidence of corn borers in northwestern Spain, to study the behavior of the two species of corn borers inside the plant, and to relate the abundance of borers with climatic factors. To monitor the incidence of the corn borers, data were taken in four localities of the northwest of Spain, during seven years (1997-2003). Sesamia nonagrioides is the most important pest in the coast. Ostrinia nubilalis is as important as S. nonagrioides in the inlands. There were two generations of both borers but a third generation can occur. Damage could hardly be predicted from studying the abundance of adults. S. nonagrioides and O. nubilalis had the same distribution inside the plant and it seems that both species can coexist.


We have studied the structural, electronic, elastic, magnetic and Thermodynamic properties of Co-based full-Heusler alloys Co 2 TiSi and Co 2 TiGe. have been studied by first-principles full-potential linearized augmented plane wave (FPLAPW) method with the Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA) based on density functional theory (DFT). This shows that the magnetic properties of the compound are dependent on electron concentration of main group element and all compunds are magnetic in their equilibrium L2 1 structure. The electronic structure report that, our compounds have half-metallic (HM) nature. The mechanical results show that these compounds are mechanically stable. and exhibit 100% spin polarization at the Fermi level where it can be shifted within the energy-gap. In addition, the quasi-harmonic Debye model is applied to determine the thermal properties of the alloy.


The study aimed to assess whether the infusion of microdoses of morphine in the cisterna magna, close to the sensitive nuclei of the cranial nerves (V-VII-IX-X) involved in painful syndromes of the head and neck, is able to control severe oncological pain in this region which does not respond to traditional pain killing treatment or neurolesive practices. Cisternal catheters were inserted in eight patients with cancer of the head and neck. The intensity of pain was assessed using VAS and the quality of analgesia obtained using cisternal morphine was judged to be: excellent, good, inadequate or null. Treatment lasted a mean of 121 days. Good or excellent analgesia was achieved in 7 patients using a mean daily dose of 1.5 mg morphine during the initial stage and 4.8 mg during the final stage; in one patient with a large component of "deafferent pain", good pain relief was obtained by associating cisternal morphine with chlorimipramin per os. The side-effects observed were almost always short-term and easily resolved. Morphine treatment was begun in the hospital and in all cases continued at home. This efficacious pain killing method should be given adequate attention in the global strategies used to treat oncological pain in the head and neck region.


The commercial real estate sector is one of the fastest developing sectors in Rwanda, evidenced by an explosion in the development of high-rise properties especially within the CBD of Kigali city. A peculiar feature of commercial real estate investment is the requirement for huge initial capital outlay with a maturity commensurate through the economic life of the investment holding period. Thus, it is often impractical or finically imprudent for investors to finance such acquisitions or developments solely from their personal savings. This necessitates the use of external funding to finance the cost of developing or purchasing commercial properties. This paper provides an empirical examination of the factors which underpin commercial real estate investors' decisions to combine debt, equity and other financing options the way they do. It focuses on Rwanda, where 10 commercial properties in the city of Kigali were examined. The analysis revealed that the majority of investors prefer combining debt and equity in their capital structure, with the types of equity capital mainly used being partnerships and personal savings, whereas the debt financing option mainly used is bank loans secured by the subject property. The main difference in the capital structure lies in the proportionate fractions of debt and equity that makes up the capital stack. This difference appears in two ways, where an investor might choose a high debt-to-equity ratio or a low debt-to-equity ratio, high debt to equity ratio being the most commonly chosen. The differences were then analyzed to understand the reasons for the observed capital structures. From this understanding we were able to determine empirically the factors that influence investors' capital structure decisions of commercial properties in Rwanda. The key determinants were interest rates, risk diversification, portfolio considerations and the tax deductibility. The implications of the adopted capital structure on investment performance and risk were also examined.


In responding the rapid changes of global environment every organization transforms managerial process. Interaction between organization and new environment is in an action-reaction pattern. The transformation is inspired by the debate of two approaches on organizational structure Bureaucratic Organizational Structure (Weber) and Modern Organizational Structure (Likert). This paper describes the pictures of organizational environment and the changes that follow; the strategic responds of organization, the structure of organization and the impacts of transformation on the process of organizational activities. It concludes that organizational management should transform its own structure in responding the volatile environment.


Study revealed that increase in milk production has lead to decline in fertility performances of Murrah buffaloes. Data pertaining to 1224 lactation records of Murrah buffaloes spread over a period 19 years were analyzed in the study. It was observed that pregnancy rate (fertility) depicted negative phenotypic association with 305 days or less milk yield (-0.08±0.04), wet average (-0.12±0.02) and test day five milk yield (-0.09±0.03). It was observed that to achieve around 2000 kg MY, 7.5 kg WA and 7.7 kg in TD 5 MY, the level of pregnancy rate varied between 30-50%. Under the present study an attempt was made to quantify the decline of fertility with the increase of milk production in Murrah buffaloes. The per unit change in fertility with respect to milk yield in Murrah buffaloes, were studied using multiple regression analysis. Increasing one kilogram milk yield in test day five (125th day) pregnancy rate reduced by about 1.3%, and increase in one kilogram milk yield per day in 305 days or hundred kilogram in 305 days of Murrah buffaloes pregnancy rate reduced by 0.9%.


Market risk is the potential loss on investment due to fluctuations in the market value of traded position that cannot be hedged or diversified away. Value at Risk (VAR) is a standard measure of market risk, adopted by all financial market participants. Its use in risk management is a legal and regulatory requirement. VAR is a single number that defines risk as mark-to-market loss on a fixed portfolio over a fixed time horizon, assuming normal markets. This paper presents and compares several VAR methodologies: parametric, historical, historical simulation and stochastic (Monte Carlo) simulation. It can be shown that, despite excessive computational requirements and reliance on sophisticated mathematical models; Monte Carlo simulation is a superior to alternative VAR measurement methods, due to its flexibility and adaptability.


Einstein's editorial on radiation risk from coronary artery imaging rightly emphasises that the effective radiation dose from a radiographic examination is intended to be applied to a population rather than to an individual. This is not an easy concept, and makes it difficult to relate the dose to the risk/benefit decision that it required of the IRMER (Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations) practitioner. It is easy enough to avoid radiation if a nonradiographic test is available, but is anyone truly capable of comparing the risks of the invasive nature of catheter coronary angiography with the extra radiation risk of a CT study? The companion editorial by Hamon and Nolan on radial artery access for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) provides another example to debate. They make a sound argument that the risk of bleeding complications is less from the radial route than from the femoral route, despite greater skill and experience being required. They do not mention radiation, but Einstein points out that the radial route entails a higher dose. What then of a planned PCI in a man of 45 (who may well survive the latent period of cancer induction), who is lean and therefore very unlikely to have a bleed from the femoral approach? Is the reduction in radiation dose sufficiently important to mandate that this patient should have his PCI from the femoral route? If not, why not? I suspect that very few cardiac radiographic investigations are refused on the basis of radiation dose alone. We seek to mitigate the problem by using as little radiation as is reasonably achievable, a laudable stance, even though the resultant images should hover just above the nondiagnostic level. Some comfort can be had from those who doubt the official line that stochastic effects have no threshold.


A DNA sensor has been proposed on the platform of glassy carbon electrode modified with native DNA implemented between two electropolymerized layers of polyaniline. The surface layer was assembled by consecutive stages of potentiodynamic electrolysis, DNA drop casting, and second electrolysis, which was required for capsulation of the DNA molecules and prevented their leaching into the solution. Surface layer assembling was controlled by cyclic voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, atomic force, and scanning electron microscopy. For doxorubicin measurement, the DNA sensor was first incubated in the Methylene blue solution that amplified signal due to DNA intercalation and competition with the doxorubicin molecules for the DNA binding sites. The charge transfer resistance of the inner layer interface decreased with the doxorubicin concentration in the range from 1.0 pM to 0.1 μM (LOD 0.6 pM). The DNA sensor was tested for the analysis of spiked artificial urine samples and showed satisfactory recovery in concentration range of 0.05–10 μM. The DNA sensor developed can find application in testing of antitumor drugs and some other DNA damaging factors.


The effect of thiamine and its various derivatives on the respiratory control of rat liver mitochondria was examined. Except TDP all other thiamine derivatives tested were shown to damage mitochondrial respiration. In these experiments DCET and T A TD are shown to be strong inhibitors. It was noted that thiamine and its derivatives except TDP have aldehyde group in their chemical structure. Because formaldehyde and acetalhyde are inhibitors to the respiration of the isolated rat liver mitochondria, the aldehyde group in chemical structure is speculated to have some relation to their action on liver mitochondria. Further studies are necessary concerning the mechanism of the inhibitory actions of thi!lmine derivatives. INTRODUCTION Many thiamine derivatives are at present widely used in Japan by clinicians in place of thiamine. Except thiamine diphosphate, thiamine derivatives used in Japan have an aldehyde group in their chemical structure. It is well known that formaldehyde and acetaldehyde are inhibitors to the respiration by isolated rat liver mitochondria1>. The effect of thiamine derivatives on the mitochondrial functions must be an interesting problem to be studied. Muraoka has reported that TPD and TTFD decreased respiratory control of the isolated rat liver mitochondria. He suspected that Pi in the reaction medium and SH group in their chemical structure have some relation to this effect 2>. In the present report we examined the effect of thiamine and its seven derivates including TPD and TTFD on the respiration of isolated rat liver mitochondria and we recognized that all derivatives except TDP impaired Jl9f 3Z ~ Received for publication September 8, 1972. Thiamine: Bt TDP : Thiamine diphosphate TPD : Thiamine propyldisulfide TTFD BUTDS BTMP DCET TATD Thiamine tetrahydrofurfuryl disulfide o-butyroyl thiamine disulfide s-benzoyl thiamine monophosphate o, s-diethoxycarbonyl thiamine Thiamine methyl-6-acetyl-dihydrothioacetate disulfide


Introduction Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is gaining more attention by society in recent years. The authors chose Arla Foods in the dairy industry, which is one of the leading dairy companies in the world and headquarter in Viby, Denmark, as a case study. Problem discussion Many researchers have been engaged in researching CSR activities; a modern corporation can gain numerous benefits. To investigate motivations behind CSR is to know why a company chooses to commit to CSR while there is the growing attention among stakeholder groups towards a company's behaviors. In this study, the authors chose Arla Foods as a case company for their high interest in CSR activities and accessibility. Purpose To investigate motivations behind a company's practiced CSR activities. Methodology In this study, the authors took interpretivism and practiced in a deductive way. By examining existing theories and collecting data, qualitative research has been chosen in order to investigate motivations behind Arla Foods's CSR. Primary and secondary data are collected to ensure the quality of the study. Empirical The empirical materials collected from the code of conduct and annual report of Arla as well as information from interviewee are reliable, exact, and consistent with theory. Analysis Exploring the connection between theories and empirical which have been divided into definition of CSR, stakeholder and three motivations of Arla. Conclusion What CSR Arla is doing is consistent with definition which examined the categories of Arla's CSR activities, however those activities are tools or implements to help reach the company's financial goals.


Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) has been widely used in graph learning tasks. However, GCN-based models (GCNs) is an inherently coupled training framework repetitively conducting the complex neighboring aggregation, which leads to the limitation of flexibility in processing large-scale graph. With the depth of layers increases, the computational and memory cost of GCNs grow explosively due to the recursive neighborhood expansion. To tackle these issues, we present Node2Grids, a flexible uncoupled training framework that leverages the independent mapped data for obtaining the embedding. Instead of directly processing the coupled nodes as GCNs, Node2Grids supports a more efficacious method in practice, mapping the coupled graph data into the independent grid-like data which can be fed into the efficient Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). This simple but valid strategy significantly saves memory and computational resource while achieving comparable results with the leading GCN-based models. Specifically, by ranking each node's influence through degree, Node2Grids selects the most influential first-order as well as second-order neighbors with central node fusion information to construct the grid-like data. For further improving the efficiency of downstream tasks, a simple CNN-based neural network is employed to capture the significant information from the mapped grid-like data. Moreover, the grid-level attention mechanism is implemented, which enables implicitly specifying the different weights for neighboring nodes with different influences. In addition to the typical transductive and inductive learning tasks, we also verify our framework on million-scale graphs to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed Node2Grids model against the state-of-the-art GCN-based approaches.


The study aims to construct and pilot test a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guided PLE platform to enhance learners' engagement and achievements in the International English Language Test (IELTS) course. Altogether, 178 sophomores from a comprehensive university in the coastal area of China joined a 16-week IELTS project. Mixed methods were used. To assess the learners' learning engagement, data involving the weekly discussion forum, weekly participation on the platform, vocabulary exercises, and open questions about the benefits and gains from the forum were collected and analyzed. The result indicated an improved learning engagement in the PLE-IELTS platform. To evaluate learners' cognitive achievement, the pre-and post-test of IELTS listening and reading were carried out. The result of the pre-and post-test indicated a significant difference, indicating the improved cognitive performance of the participants. This paper offers insights into the construction of a highly engaged and cognitively effective PLE platform that is universally accessible and inclusive for all.


Watching President Vladimir Putin field the questions of high school students in Texas, that early assessments of Putin's chances for a long political life and autonomous political action were extremely negative seems almost implausible. In two years, Putin moved from being a puppet of President Boris Yeltsin's family to being the dominant fixture on the Russian political scene. This profound change in the universal assessment of the Russian president raises the need to reflect on the roots of his improbable success, the durability of his governing coalition in the face of new challenges, and the capacity of the United States to achieve its foreign policy goals in relation to Russia.


Modern wireless communication systems use spectrally efficient modulation schemes to reach high data rate transmission. These schemes are generally involved with signals with high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Moreover, the development of next generation wireless communication systems requires the power amplifiers to operate over a wide frequency band or multiple frequency bands to support different applications. These wide-band and multi-band solutions will lead to reductions in both the size and cost of the whole system. This dissertation presents several advanced power amplifier solutions to provide wide-band and multi-band operations with efficiency improvement at power back-offs.


SUMMARY The period 1875–1925 was remarkable in the history of parasitology mainly for the elucidation of the life cycles of parasites causing important parasitic diseases and the incrimination of vectors in their transmission. These discoveries were made by a small number of scientists working in the tropics a number of whom were Scots. Sir Patrick Manson, the discoverer of the mosquito transmission of filarial worms, was instrumental in directly or indirectly encouraging other Scots including Douglas Argyll-Robertson, David Blacklock, David Bruce, David Cunningham, Robert Leiper, William Leishman, George Low, Muriel Robertson and Ronald Ross, who all made significant discoveries across a wide spectrum of tropical diseases. Among these, William Leishman, Robert Leiper and Muriel Robertson were all graduates of the University of Glasgow and their achievements in the fields of leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, dracunculiasis and African sleeping sickness, together with subsequent developments in these fields, are the subjects of the ten papers in this Special Issue of Parasitology.


Abstract In this study, the complete mitogenome sequence of nereid worm, Neanthes glandicincta (Annelida: Nereididae), has been decoded for the first time by PCR amplification and Sanger sequencing methods. The overall base composition of N. glandicincta mitogenome is 31.5% for A, 22.2% for C, 14.5% for G and 31.7% for T, and has GC content of 36.7%. The assembled mitogenome, consisting of 16,126 bp, has unique 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNAs and 2 ribosomal RNAs genes. The complete mitogenome of N. glandicincta shows 65% identities to Namalycastis abiuma. All PCGs, tRNA and rRNA genes were encoded on H-strand. The potential D-loop is 1625 bp in length and located between tRNA-Gly and tRNA-Met. The complete mitogenome provides essential and important DNA molecular data for further phylogenetic and evolutionary analysis for Annelida.


In the current WTO negotiations, the developing and the developed countries take an opposite view regarding the criteria for green box subsidies supposed to be decoupled from current production levels and prices. This study investigates whether U.S. PFC and direct payment subsidies are truly decoupled from production or not by modeling the farmers' risk attitudes in a non-structural approach and estimating the effect of decoupled payments on production by the change in risk attitudes. The results show that farmers' risk attitudes are mostly risk loving and change over time, which is different from other studies. The results also show that only the amount of money matters in determining risk attitude. The effect of decoupled payments is not only statistically insignificant on corn and soybean acreage but also very small in magnitude.


: The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on the labor market, leading to a breakdown in the historical relationship between business openings (births) and closings (deaths), thus breaking the assumptions underlying the BLS birth/death model, which is an important element of the normal BLS methodology. BLS subsequently modified the CES methodology to better reflect the effect of the contribution of business births and deaths to monthly payroll employment estimates. This paper examines the impacts of modifications to the birth/death methodologies on statewide industry-level employment estimates, as well as the correlation between employment estimates and the number of coronavirus cases in states with high infection rates. Results show that the modified procedure modestly improved the overall accuracy of monthly estimates, in turn reducing total benchmark revision.