High-mast light poles are frequently used in areas where widespread illumination is required, such as along interstates and at major highway interchanges. The structures' heights are large relative to their cross-sectional dimensions, and, consequently, they are flexible and sensitive to wind loading. A number of failures of high-mast structures have occurred due to fatigue cracking. These failures have been linked to buffeting and vortex shedding loads. The primary study objective is to characterize the dynamic effects of wind-induced vibrations on high-mast structures in Laramie, Wyoming, and to propose several retrofits that increase the aerodynamic damping, thereby reducing vibrations. A 120-ft tall high-mast pole was monitored to determine its dynamic characteristics. The pole was then retrofitted with helical strakes, ribbon dampers, a perforated shroud, and surface roughness, and the difference in the dynamic response of the retrofitted and unretrofitted pole under similar wind conditions was examined. The perforated shroud covering approximately 13% of the pole prevented lock-in under the wind conditions tested. A second pole was monitored and exhibited a drastically different response. It was observed that traffic vibrations exciting the pole at higher frequencies prevented lock-in from occurring. This phenomenon has not previously been observed as reported in the literature.


Students' actions while working with a tuoring system were used to generate estimates of learning goals, specifically, the goal of learning by using multimedia help resources, and the goal of learning through independent problem solving. A Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) model was trained with interface action and inter-action interval latency data from 115 high school students, and then tested with action data from an independent sample of 135 students. Estimates of learning goals generated by the model predicted student performance on a post-test of math achievement, whereas pre-test performance did not.


We have developed MOSFETs noise models for the 1/f, thermal and induced-gate noise based on self-consistent surface-potential description. Consideration of non-uniform mobility and carrier distributions arising from the surface potential distribution along the channel is indispensable for accurate noise modeling for RF applications. The developed noise models are implemented in the complete surface-potential based MOSFET model HiSIM (Hiroshima-university STARC IGFET Model) for circuit simulations


Postsynaptic density 95 (PSD-95), the major scaffold protein at excitatory synapses, plays a major role in mediating intracellular signaling by synaptic N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) type glutamate receptors. Despite the fact that much is known about the role of PSD-95 in NMDA-mediated toxicity, less is known about its role in mechanical injury, and more specifically, in traumatic brain injury (TBI). Given that neural circuitry is disrupted after TBI and that PSD-95 and its interactors end-binding protein 3 (EB3) and adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) shape dendrites, we examined whether changes to these proteins and their interactions occur after brain trauma. Here, we report that total levels of PSD-95 and the interaction of PSD-95 with EB3 increase at 1 and 7 days after moderate controlled cortical impact (CCI), but these changes do not occur after mild injury. Because changes occur to PSD-95 following brain trauma in vivo, we next considered the functional consequences of PSD-95 alterations in vitro. Rapid deformation of cortical neurons leads to neuronal death 72 h after injury, but this outcome is not dependent on PSD-95 expression. However, disruptions in dendritic arborization following stretch injury in vitro require PSD-95 expression, and these changes in arborization can be mimicked with expression of PSD-95 mutants lacking the second PDZ domain. Thus, PSD-95 and its interactors may serve as therapeutic targets for repairing dendrites after TBI.


In a survey of sarcocysts in muscle tissues obtained from 142 water buffaloes, 65% of the carcasses had sarcocysts. Macroscopic and two forms of microscopic sarcocysts, the spindle-shaped or fusiform sarcocysts commonly occurring in the muscles of the esophagus, throat and limbs, and the globular to oval-shaped sarcocysts which were the dominant form in the diaphragm and cervical muscle tissues were noted. Ultrastructural analysis of macroscopic and microscopic sarcocysts and their cyst wall revealed two distinct species of Sarcocystis: the macroscopic species, Sarcocystis fusiformis which has been previously reported in Philippine carabaos possessing highly dendritic cauliflower-like projections emanating from the primary cyst wall, with annulated microfilaments and numerous electron dense granules: and the Sarcocystis levinei (Dissanaike and Kan, 1978) Huong, Dubey and Uggla. 1997 exhibiting a cyst wall with undulating and hair-like villar protrusions with expanded or dome-shaped base, intermediate finger-like, and distal tapering segments which at some points join to form conical tufts. Our findings represent the first report of S. levinei in the country supported with ultrastructural analysis of the sarcocysts and cyst wall, and likewise refute earlier published reports that all microscopic sarcocysts in Philippine carabaos are developing forms of the macroscopic species, S. fusiformis. Histopathological changes such as displacement and necrosis of the surrounding host muscle tissue were observed with macroscopic sarcocysts and histologically processed tissue samples containing microscopic fusiform sarcocysts. Necrotic myofibrils and mitochondria were evident in ultrathin sections.


The entomopathogenic nematodes, Steinernema carpocapsae (All strain), Heterorhabditis bacteriophora (HP-88 strain), H. bacteriophora (Florida strain), applied to the soil of a citrus grove near Lake Jem, Florida in March 1989, significantly reduced adult emergence of the root weevil, Diaprepes abbreviatus (L.). The total number of weevils captured in 160 traps from April 1989 through May 1990 was 833. Weevil emergence was reduced 70% compared with the check in May, June, and September (1989) and March and April 1990. There was no difference between nematode treatments. Efficacy trials conducted in a grove in Fort Pierce, Florida, for control of the citrus root weevil, Pachnaeus opalus and P. litus, gave similar results. A study to determine seasonal variation of a native heterorhabditid population in a grove adjacent to the Lake Jem grove was inconclusive.


To retain nurses and prevent worsening the nursing shortage, a key opportunity is to better understand the drivers of complete and partial retirement of older nurses. This study investigates the characteristics that distinguish older nurses' partial and complete actual retirement behavior, from those continuing to work, over a three-year period. A quantitative longitudinal design comprising 217 female Australian nurses aged 50 years or over, from two samples working at Time 1 (2012 and 2016), responding three years later (Time 2). Multinomial regression found two different patterns of drivers for each of completely retiring and partly retiring respectively. Age was the only variable distinguishing both partly and completely retired nurses from nurses who were not retired. The further variables distinguishing completely retired nurses were not being prosperous, having impaired work ability, being partnered, not stressed at work and working part-time. The only variable beyond age distinguishing partly retired nurses was having a casual contract. Offering flexible work options in terms of working hours and contracts that suit the nurse's lifestyle and supporting nurses with health impairments to continue working are options that may lessen the number of nurses completely retiring and instead either remaining at work or partly retiring.


Guided by Basic Psychological Need Theory, we investigated the combined associations between need satisfaction and need frustration (i.e., need profiles) and their relations with theoretically relevant correlates including mindfulness, physical literacy, physical activity enjoyment, and physical activity. The participants were Singapore-based school students (N = 844, Mage = 12.45, SDage = 1.99, boys = 53.1%) who completed a cross-sectional survey. The results of the latent profile analysis identified four distinct need profiles: profile 1–average satisfaction and frustration (n = 364, 44.1%); profile 2–low satisfaction (n = 251, 29.7%), above average frustration; profile 3–very high satisfaction, very low frustration (n = 144, 17.1%); and profile 4–high satisfaction, very high frustration (n = 85, 10.1%). Among these, profile 3 was the most adaptive one; it had the highest levels of mindfulness, physical literacy, physical activity enjoyment, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Experiences of need satisfaction countered the negative effects of need frustration on these correlates. These findings enhance our understanding of students' psychological need experiences and highlight the need for investigating the combined associations between need satisfaction and need frustration.


This study explores metadata practices in the relation to data reuse in biology. Metadata has long been viewed as a major constituent in research data management and reuse. However, the topic of whether metadata is used in a way that encourages data reuse has been understudied. The current study examined metadata elements used to describe datasets and the predictive probability of those metadata elements for data reuse under the assumption that citation frequency reflects the frequency of research data reuse. A total of 34,491 cited records from the biology category of the Clarivate Analytics Data Citation Index were analyzed using descriptive comparison and multiple regression analysis to compare usage patterns of metadata elements between data records cited more than twice and those cited only once. Of the five types of metadata elements identified and examined, metadata elements that provided descriptions about datasets and author-related information dominantly appeared across datasets, whereas DOI and ORCID identifier were scarce. Metadata related to author and funding resources were found to be positive influential factors in predicting data reuse, whereas data descriptions and identifiers appeared to have negative influences. This study contributed to a better understanding of metadata needs for data reuse.


We report in this paper, an optimized design and characterization of SOI based single mode, four channels wavelength demultiplexer using microrings. The usage of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) allows a wide free spectral range (FSR) for the device that is crucial in developing ultra-compact integrations of planar lightwave circuits (PLCs). The characterizations are done using Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) mode simulations from RSOFT. Serially cascaded microring arrays up to the third order are presented to study the design trade-off among the FSR, Q-factor and optical losses of the laterally coupled wavelength demultiplexer. The demultiplexer is expected to be working at C-band region of Wavelength Division Multilplexing (WDM) for a wavelength around 1550 nm. Our proposed demultiplexer has low insertion loss (< 0.5 dB) and a crosstalk around 12 ~ 19 dB.


Background Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and disability. The role of red cell distribution width (RDW) as a prognostic biomarker for outcome in TBI patients is unknown. Based on the corticosteroid randomization after significant head injury (CRASH) trial database, a prognosis calculator (CRASH) has been developed for outcome prediction in TBI. The objectives of this study are to investigate the association between RDW on day 1 of TBI and outcome, and to compare outcome prediction from RDW to that from CRASH. Methods We performed a retrospective review of patients with TBI and a Glasgow coma scale (GCS) score of 14 or less. Day 1 RDW and CRASH data were extracted. CRASH was calculated for each patient. Outcome was defined as mortality at 14 days and GOS at 6 months, with poor outcome defined as GOS of 1 - 3. Patients were stratified according to RDW values into six groups, and according to CRASH values into six groups. Results A total of 416 patients with TBI were included, with 339 survivors (S) and 77 non-survivors (NS). Compared to survivors, non-survivors were of similar age in years (58 ± 23 vs. 58 ± 23, P = 1.0), had lower GCS scores (5 ± 3 vs. 12 ± 3, P = 0.0001), similar RDW (14.0 ± 1.2 vs. 13.9 ± 1.5, P = 0.6), and higher CRASH values (68 ± 26 vs. 24 ± 22, P = 0.0001). Estimating the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) area under the curve (AUC) showed that CRASH was a significantly better predictor of mortality compared to RDW (AUC = 0.91 ± 0.01 for CRASH compared to 0.66 ± 0.03 for RDW; P < 0.0001). In addition, CRASH was a better predictor of neurologic outcome compared to RDW (AUC = 0.85 ± 0.02 for CRASH compared to 0.76 ± 0.03 for RDW; P = 0.005). Conclusions CRASH calculator was a strong predictor of mortality in patients with TBI. RDW on day 1 did not differ between survivors and non-survivors, and was a poor predictor of mortality. Both RDW on day 1 and CRASH calculator are good predictors of 6-month outcome in TBI patients, although CRASH calculator remains a better predictor.


ABSTRACT About one-third of breast cancers express a functional estrogen (β-estradiol [E2]) receptor (ER) and are initially dependent on E2 for growth and survival but eventually progress to hormone independence. We show here that ER+, E2-independent MCF-7/LCC1 cells derived from E2-dependent MCF-7 cells contain elevated basal NF-κB activity and elevated expression of the transcriptional coactivator Bcl-3 compared with the parental MCF-7 line. LCC1 NF-κB activity consists primarily of p50 dimers, although low levels of a p65/p50 complex are also present. The ER− breast cancer cell lines harbor abundant levels of both NF-κB complexes. In contrast, nuclear extracts from MCF-7 cells contain a significantly lower level of p50 and p65 than do LCC1 cells. Estrogen withdrawal increases both NF-κB DNA binding activity and expression of Bcl-3 in MCF-7 and LCC1 cells in vitro and in vivo. Tumors derived from MCF-7 cells ectopically expressing Bcl-3 remain E2 dependent but display a markedly higher tumor establishment and growth rate compared to controls. Expression of a stable form of IκBα in LCC1 cells severely reduced nuclear expression of p65 and the p65/p50 DNA binding heterodimer. Whereas LCC1 tumors in nude mice were stable or grew, LCC1(IκBα) tumors regressed after E2 withdrawal. Thus, both p50/Bcl-3- and p65/p50-associated NF-κB activities are activated early in progression and serve differential roles in growth and hormone independence, respectively. We propose that E2 withdrawal may initiate selection for hormone independence in breast cancer cells by activation of NF-κB and Bcl-3, which could then supplant E2 by providing both survival and growth signals.


The process e + e ! + with a distinctive \photon-plus-missing-energy" signal can serve as an important tool to search for new physics at LEP2. It can be exploited to measure the WW coupling, or to search for weakly interacting and invisible (s)particles. For meaningful comparisons of experimental data with theoretical predictions, higher-order QED corrections due to multiphoton emission must be taken into account. In the present paper we explain how the WW coupling has been incorporated into the KORALZ Monte Carlo program, which can now be used for simulations of e + e ! + events with higher-order QED corrections. The strategy of how to perform an experimental analysis in the presence of experimental cuts is proposed. The question of systematic uncertainties is addressed and some numerical results for the phenomenologically interesting case of anomalous WW couplings are also given.


Effects of a juvenile hormone analog, pyriproxyfen, on various developmental stadia of the onion thrips, Thrips tabaci Lindeman, were determined on cabbage leaves in the laboratory. Pyriproxyfen was applied at 0.064 or 0.128 g AI liter(-1) on leaves (residual contact-ingestion), thrips (direct contact) and leaf-thrips (residue contact-ingestion-direct contact). Pyriproxyfen did not have any significant lethal effects on thrips pupae in any treatment. Lethal effects on thrips larvae varied depending on application method and dosage. In the leaf and the leaf-thrips treatments, few larvae and pre-pupae molted to the next stage, and none developed to adults. In contrast, in the thrips-only treatment, pyriproxyfen did not show any significant lethal effects. The developmental times of larvae and pre-pupae were prolonged when larvae were treated with pyriproxyfen, and those of pre-pupae and pupae were shortened when pre-pupae and pupae were treated. The longevity and survival rates of thrips adults were generally shorter when they contacted and ingested pyriproxyfen-treated leaves than those in water control. Significantly fewer progeny (0.22-1.15 larvae per female) were produced by females that had fed on and been in contact with the pyriproxyfen-treated leaves than by those in the water control (11.94 larvae per female). However, the number of progeny produced by the thrips females increased significantly (3.32-7.28 larvae per female) when the females were transferred to untreated leaves after feeding on treated leaves for 5 days; the daily larval hatching pattern was similar to those in water control, indicating that female adults were able to produce viable eggs when untreated food was offered.


Abstract UNESCO's MacBride report attributes to communication a substantial role in matters of democratisation and peace and, thus, provides a firm foundation on which to build toward a better understanding of media as a resource for enriching democratic culture to resist war. Accordingly, this paper works at the intersection of media and messages to advance the argument that democratic peace-building communication is usefully thought of as a tactic, or set of re-humanizing tactics, of dissent exercised by citizens operating in media saturated settings to resist the dehumanizing caricatures propagated by war propaganda. The notion of web-watching as a creative use of alternative media to locate incipient peace-building metaphors is examined and briefly illustrated with reference to an emergent image of secular bomber as homeland defender.


The usefulness of fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) in various civil engineering applications is indisputable. Fiber reinforced concrete has so far been successfully used in slabs on grade, shotcrete, architectural panels, precast products, offshore structures, structures in seismic regions, thin and thick repairs, crash barriers, footings, hydraulic structures and many other applications. This paper presents a brief state-of-the-art report on mechanical properties and durability of fiber reinforced concrete. Civil infrastructure around the world the problem is at the apparent lack of durability in our construction materials, inability on part of the owners to provide timely maintenance, absence of advanced condition assessment tools and lack of long-lasting, cost effective repair materials and technologies. This paper will present data to support the argument that fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) is an ideal material for achieving these goals. The paper also discusses fiber reinforced concrete materials carrying Polypropylene Triangular Fibers. This material can help us to develop intelligent infrastructure with elegantly integrated sensing.


Although they can make a significant contribution to crisis response and management, citizens tend to be underestimated and under-integrated by official crisis responders. There is a necessity to take citizen contribution into crisis management tools, both for the information they can provide (information-focused volunteers) and the actions they can carry out (action-focused volunteers). Therefore, professionals need to be aware of the diverse ways citizens can help them to manage a critical situation: obviously by improving the situational awareness, but also by spontaneously performing tasks to meet specific needs on the ground. After presenting the RIO-Suite software, a crisis management tool based on collaboration of stakeholders, this paper suggests ideas about how to make the most of action-focused volunteers to improve the orchestration of the crisis response. Given a volunteer action, four possible decision types are identified: Ignore, Stop, Consider and Support, and their consequences on 1) the crisis response and 2) the collaboration process are presented.


Regulations and practices associated with the prevention of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) are explored with regard to the public school setting. Requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act provide the only federal education regulations that mandate hearing-loss prevention activities in schools. School hearing screening regulations, other federal legislation, classroom acoustics standards, Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health guidelines are all discussed as they relate to this topic. Current school practices suggest that school personnel have limited awareness of hearing-loss prevention activities and the implications of NIHL. Recommendations for actions needed by schools, the government, university teacher preparation programs, and the community are suggested.


Results of particle transport analysis are presented for both low and high charge impurity species in JET optimized shear plasmas. The impurity content in the plasma centre is sensitive to the strength of the internal transport barrier. In a strong transport barrier plasma, the diffusion coefficient in the centre is about an order of magnitude lower than that in plasmas with weak transport barriers. Impurity transport is close to the neoclassical transport prediction in the centre of the plasma, whereas it is much higher than the neoclassical theoretical value in the plasma edge. A convection term in the vicinity of the transport barrier was required in order to account for the measurements. These data support theories of turbulence suppression by the E × B shearing rate.


INTRODUCTION
Tracheostomy (TCT) is the most frequently performed surgical procedure among COVID-19 patients. In Argentina, survival and decannulation rates are unknown. The main objectives of this study were to evaluate mortality and decannulation rates after 90 days of the percutaneous TCT performance. Secondarily, airway injury rate, days on invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) and days of hospitalization in the intensive care unit (ICU) were also evaluated.

METHODS
This observational analytic prospective cohort study included patients over 18 years old with SARS-CoV-2 who were admitted into the ICU requiring IMV and percutaneous TCT in the period covering from 1 February 2021 to 31 July 2021.

RESULTS
the mortality rate in 95 patients was 66.3%. Among the survivors, 67% were decannulated. The youngest patients were the ones who survived [mean 50.6 (SD 10.2) years versus mean 58.9 (SD 13.4) years; p = 0.001] and presented lower Charlson index scores [median 1 (IQR 0-2) versus 2 (1-3) points; p = 0.007]. Patients who were tracheostomized ten days before the start of IMV were fewer days on IMV and had a shorter stay in the ICU, p < 0.01 and p = 0.01, respectively. Charlson Index was identified as an independent factor of mortality for both decannulation mortality at 90 days.

DISCUSSION
In our cohort of patients, those who were younger and presented less c omorbidities benefited from TCT. Charlson Index could be used as a prognostic marker among this patient population.


PURPOSE
To describe the nature and the frequency of systemic diseases responsible for the pruritus sine materia. Value of this sign as a marker of malignancy.

METHODS
Prospective study undertaken over five years (1996-2001).

INCLUSION CRITERIA
generalized aspect of the pruritus and absence of specific primitive cutaneous lesions of an itching dermatosis. Parameters taken from the data of the anamnesis and the physical examination. Standard biologic and morphologic investigations were done.

RESULTS
Ninety-five patients included (54 men, 41 women) of 55.5 years average age +/-18.1. In 24 patients, traditional hospitalisation with one average duration of eight days stay +/-3.15 was necessary. In 38 cases (40%), a systemic cause was found. The main conditions were: toxocariasis (8 cases), hematologic diseases (7 cases), chronic renal failure (6 cases), hypothyroidism (5 cases) and iron deficiency (5 cases). A neoplasm was found in eight cases (8,42%): seven hematologic malignancy (3 myeloma, 2 Hodgkin's diseases, 2 myeloproliferative syndromes) and one solid cancer (pulmonary adenocarcinoma).

CONCLUSION
A systemic aetiology was observed in 38 cases (40%). The toxocariasis an underestimated disease comes at the first place. The pruritus sine materia can hide an hematologic malignancy.


Summary: We performed a new procedure for reconstruction of donor site of a deltopectoral (DP) flap. A 58-year-old man presented with a wide subcutaneous abscess, which was caused by acute mandibular osteomyelitis due to dental caries. On admission, the patient received a neck incision for drainage. However, necrosis of the neck skin was observed after drainage. The patient had an 8 × 10 cm skin and soft-tissue defect, which we covered with a DP flap (15 × 7 cm). The DP flap donor site was reconstructed using a 16 × 8 cm pedicled thoracodorsal artery perforator (TDAP) flap. There was no flap necrosis, abscess formation, or scar contracture of the DP region. Debulking of the TDAP flap was not required. The pedicled TDAP flap is useful for the reconstruction of the donor site of DP flap. In this report, we describe our operative procedure.


Non-point source (NPS) pollution is an important source of lake eutrophication, the phosphorus (P) is one of the main elements of NPS pollution, and land use change has an important influence on NPS pollution load. Most previous studies focused on a single phase and did not analyze the internal structure of land use. In this study, six natural river basins such as the Hangbu River Basin were selected as the study area in Chaohu Basin, China. Based on the Sediment Delivery Distributed (SEDD) model, the NPS P load was simulated from 2000 to 2015, and the characteristics of land use change were depth analyzed at the same time to discuss the mechanism of land use pattern on NPS P load under longterm sequence. The main result are as follow: the NPS P load intensity was positively correlated with FL (forest land) area, in the whole study area, the correlation coefficient between NPS load intensity and FL area was 0.67, and the NPS P load intensity was negatively correlated with arable land (AL), construction land (CL) and wetland (WL) area, and the correlation coefficients were 0.56, 0.26 and 0.14 respectively. On the other hand, the internal structure of land use is also affecting NPS P load, the Fractal Dimension Index Mean (FRAC) was positively correlated with NPS P loss intensity, and the correlation coefficient is 0.56. Compared to the AL, FL and CL are more easily affected by FRAC. The optimization of land use spatial layout plays an important role in alleviating NPS pollution particle state.


We developed a lumped parameter, computer-based model of an equivalent electronic circuit for a one-atrium one-ventricle (frog) heart attached to a vascular circuit, to simulate a basic concept of cardiovascular physiology, the Frank-Starling Law of the Heart. A series of simulations was performed, to observe changes in cardiovascular variables (e.g., arterial pressure, ventricular volume, and valve flows) if either preload or afterload was increased. The simulated data agreed qualitatively, and quantitatively when experimental data are available, with data obtained on amphibian or on mammalian myocardium. In addition, the data obtained in these simulations improve our understanding of the mechanism(s) whereby the heart muscle adapts itself to increased distension (increased preload) or to impeded systolic contraction (increased afterload). The analysis of the measured valve flows suggests that the ventricle is a highly input sensitive pump because the input pressure determines the diastolic distension and, consequently, the force of ventricular systolic contraction. On the other hand, the ventricle is a relatively output insensitive pump. Therefore, not only atrium contraction, but also predominantly the preceding ventricular systolic contraction is the main mechanism of the subsequent diastolic ventricular filling. We conclude that the presented model enables the study of basic concepts of cardiovascular physiology.


This research presents an approach based upon ant-colony optimization to address the system reliability problem. For each component of a system, the number of units in parallel needs to be chosen to maximize the reliability for the entire system. As more parallel units are selected, costs increase in a proportional fashion. For this effort, quantity discounts for additional parallel units are considered, and the budget for purchase of parallel units is limited. Ant colony optimization methodology is employed to find an optimal system reliability that satisfies the budget constraint. The methodology is employed for several test problems, and near-optimal solutions are found.


Thus far, ecophysiology research has predominantly been conducted within controlled laboratory-based environments, owing to a mismatch between the recording technologies available for physiological monitoring in wild animals and the suite of behaviours and environments they need to withstand, without unduly affecting subjects. While it is possible to record some physiological variables for free-living animals using animal-attached logging devices, including inertial-measurement, heart-rate and temperature loggers, the field is still in its infancy. In this opinion piece, we review the most important future research directions for advancing the field of 'physiologging' in wild animals, including the technological development that we anticipate will be required, and the fiscal and ethical challenges that must be overcome. Non-invasive, multi-sensor miniature devices are ubiquitous in the world of human health and fitness monitoring, creating invaluable opportunities for animal and human physiologging to drive synergistic advances. We argue that by capitalizing on the research efforts and advancements made in the development of human wearables, it will be possible to design the non-invasive loggers needed by ecophysiologists to collect accurate physiological data from free-ranging animals ethically and with an absolute minimum of impact. In turn, findings have the capacity to foster transformative advances in human health monitoring. Thus, we invite biomedical engineers and researchers to collaborate with the animal-tagging community to drive forward the advancements necessary to realize the full potential of both fields. This article is part of the theme issue 'Measuring physiology in free-living animals (Part II)'.


This paper, after recalling the importance of a good University system also for a potential development of the territory, analyses the delays that characterise the Universities of Southern Italy on average in terms of resources, students' academic careers and research results. It stresses that part of the delay in student achievement and funding capacity depends on context factors, such as the quality of the entire educational path of Southern students and the lower level of local development. At the same time, it highlights how the results of Southern Universities, especially in the field of research, and the lower quality of recruitment also depend on a more marked self-reference in the management of individual Universities and a lower sensitivity to the quality of results. Lastly, it underlines that such problems, including the resource gap, are not recent and therefore cannot be attributed to the important changes introduced in recent years in the allocation of public funds, aimed at linking the distribution of resources to the results achieved. Then, it outlines proposals for intervention which are based on the need to expand the overall funding of the Italian university system. In this context, it is considered appropriate to define a reserve of additional resources to be allocated to Southern Italy according to explicit policy objectives, which take into account the factors disadvantaging the territory. The allocation of these funds should however be based on efficiency and reward criteria, so as not to alter the system of incentives that has been built with effort in recent years. Finally, it suggests that some measures are more explicitly aimed at encouraging the quality of recruitment and the mobility of the teaching staff, in order to break that localism and self-referential mechanisms that seem to have mostly diverted the attention to quality results in the South of Italy.


Content filtering is gaining popularity due to easy exposure of explicit visual contents to the public. Excessive exposure of inappropriate visual contents can cause devastating effects such as the growth of improper mindset and rise of societal issues such as free sex, child abandonment and rape cases. At present, most of the broadcasting media sites are hiring censorship editors to label graphic contents manually. Nevertheless, the efficiency is limited by factors such as the attention span of humans and the training required for the editors. This paper proposes to study the effect of usage of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) as feature extractor coupled with Support Vector Machine (SVM) as classifier in an automated pornographic detection system. Three CNN architectures: Mobile Net, Visual Geometry Group-19 (VGG-19) and Residual Network-50 Version 2 (ResNet50_V2), and two classifiers: CNN and SVM were utilized to explore the combination that produce the best result. Frames of films fed as input into the CNN were classified into two groups: porn or non-porn. The best accuracy was 92.80% obtained using fine-tuned ResNet50_V2 as feature extractor and SVM as classifier. Transfer learning and SVM have improved the CNN model by approximately 10%.


RESTful APIs (or REST APIs for short) represent a mainstream approach to design and develop Web APIs using the REpresentational State Transfer architectural style. When their source code is not (or just partially) available or the analysis across many dynamically allocated distributed components (typical of a micro-services architecture) poses obstacles to white-box testing, black-box testing becomes a viable option. Black-box testing, in fact, only assumes access to the system under test with a specific interface. This paper presents RESTTESTGEN, a novel approach to automatically generate test cases for REST APIs, based on their interface definition (in Swagger). Input values and requests are generated for each operation of the API under test, with the twofold objective of testing nominal execution scenarios and of testing error scenarios. Two distinct oracles are deployed to detect when test cases reveal implementation defects. Our empirical investigation shows that this approach is effective in revealing actual faults on 87 real-world REST APIs.


Humans are unable to generate and remember strong secrets, and thus have difficulty managing cryptographic keys. To address this problem, numerous proposals have been suggested to enable people to reliably generate high-entropy cryptographic keys from measurements of their physiology or behavior. Typically, evaluators argue that these Biometric Cryptographic Key Generators (BKGs) achieve some notion of security, for example, that the biometric input resists forgery, or that the keys have high entropy. Unfortunately, despite these arguments, many BKGs succumb to attacks in practice.
The goal of this work is to understand why typical security arguments fail to identify practical attacks. We revisit the security requirements of BKGs and show that common arguments overlook practical subtleties. We provide examples of such oversights by examining three general classes of adversaries. First, we study the impact of humans who can replicate other users' biometrics with high accuracy, and demonstrate why typical evaluation techniques fail to identify these forgers. Second, we explore Generative techniques that combine information about a target user with population statistics to create forgeries. We show that these forgeries can subvert BKGs with high likelihood. Third, we propose an algorithm that probabilistically enumerates the key space of a BKG to find a target user's key. We analyze two BKGs, and show that for each, our algorithm has at least a 15% chance of predicting ostensibly 40-bit keys on its first guess. Our exposition brings to the forefront practical ways of thinking about BKG security, and provides a framework for evaluators to study BKGs with adversarial techniques.
Finally, we present Randomized Biometric Templates (RBTs), a BKG that outputs keys with at least as much entropy as keys derived from passwords. RBTs extract entropy not only from biometric inputs, but also from a novel source: how these inputs are measured. Analysis with our strengthened evaluation techniques show that for some users, RBTs result in dramatically stronger keys. In our experiments, 40% of the users were able to generate keys that were at least 230 times stronger than keys derived from passwords alone.


We take the idea of anachronism—the awareness of the difference between past and present—for granted as a commonsense principle, yet this idea has a history with a point of origin, before which the past did not exist as a conceptual entity. Ancient historians—such as Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, and Tacitus—did not differentiate systematically between past and present. Although a sense of difference began to germinate in the work of Christian writers like Augustine, Gregory of Tours, and Bede, they nonetheless conceived of past, present, and future as coexisting in the omnipresence of God's mind. Following Petrarch's lead, Renaissance humanists began to disentangle these temporal states in their desire to resurrect classical culture, creating a "living past" of vital importance to the present. In the French Enlightenment, this temporal amalgam gave way to a sense of temporal difference, when Montesquieu—under the influence of Descartes and Malebranche—adopted a relational viewpoint that sought to compare historical entities, situating each in its own distinctive context. In the wake of Herder's historicism, this contextualizing impulse subsequently became historicized, yielding our modern conception of the past as a distinctive space lying "back there" in time.


The curvature of spacetime represented by Einstein field equation has many physical implications, including gravity. As light is deflected by the curvature of spacetime, a magnetic field will also be influenced by the curved spacetime. A permanent magnet is generally known to maintain its persistent magnetic field on the ground as long as there is no external magnetic interference. However, a series of experiments find that there are noticeable changes in the magnetic fields distribution while the permanent magnet rotates. The magnetic field lines of the permanent magnet are deflected towards Earth's centre, implying a possibility that we can use magnetic field, a more efficient tool than a satellite, to measure the curvature of spacetime. However, comparing the experimental results of this study with theoretically obtained values of the curvature of spacetime remains a vast area of research for future studies.


Unconventional resource plays, and shale gas plays in particular, are generally characterized by lower geologic risk and higher commercial risk. Large, continuous accumulations of tight, often naturally-fractured shale serve as both a hydrocarbon source and a potentially-productive reservoir. The likelihood of commercial production is a primary uncertainty in these plays, resolved in part by drilling pilot (appraisal) wells. The need to understand the range of potential for commercial realization places a heavy burden on the economic evaluation process. This requires maximum insight into the basis for a decision to pursue or not pursue any particular shale gas resource play. Beyond this, a consistent approach to economic evaluation is of critical importance when comparing the economics of various plays. Without consistency, comparison of multiple shale gas plays becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible. The ability to define and represent key uncertainties and understand their respective impacts on economic feasibility is vital to play entry and subsequent decisions involving continued investment. Issues such as well design (vertical, horizontal, multi-lateral, etc.), well performance (initial production rates, estimated ultimate recovery, etc.), stimulation technologies, commodity price environments, as well as commercial aspects such as acreage availability and cost, project execution timing, and rig count are critical. Furthermore, because there are few well-established commercial plays, analogs are constructed mainly from these data-bearing plays; e.g. Fort Worth Barnett, and applied to emerging or prospective plays. Uncertainty surrounding the technical or commercial fit of a given analog for new basins/plays must be accounted for in the play/project evaluation process. Pioneer focused on a number of domestic shale plays that differ in many ways, most notably in terms of "the stage of commercial maturation." Due to the large number of unknowns, deterministic economic modeling gave the team a low confidence in the results and was viewed as merely a scoping indication of commercial potential. It was recognized by the team and by management that deterministic, singlepoint solutions are unable to provide a reality check for the input assumptions, which typically leads to overly optimistic results. Therefore, it was determined that these models, while good for quick scoping evaluations, would be inappropriate for decision-making in emerging plays. A better solution had to be found. This paper describes a consistent, systematic process employed in the evaluation of a number of shale gas plays, how various software applications were deployed, the vital role of multi-disciplinary participation, iterative modeling efforts and conclusions. In a general sense, we believe the lessons learned here can be applied either to unconventional or conventional upstream oil and gas projects.


At present,the accuracy of image retrieval is a difficult problem to study,the main reason is the method of feature extraction. In order to improve the precision of image retrieval,a new image retrieval method based on multi-feature called CAUC( Comprehensive Analysis based on the Underlying Characteristics) was presented. First,based on YUV color space,the mean value and the standard deviation were used to extract the global feature from an image that depicted the global characteristics of the image,and the image bitmap was introduced to describe the local characteristics of the image. Secondly,the compactness and Krawtchouk moment were extracted to describe the shape features. Then,the texture features were described by the improved four-pixel co-occurrence matrix. Finally,the similarity between images was computed based on multi-feature fusion,and the images with high similarity were returned. On Corel-1000 image set,the comparative experiments with method which only considered four-pixel co-occurrence matrix showed that the retrieval time of CAUC was greatly reduced without significantly reducing the precision and recall. In addition,compared with the other two kinds of retrieval methods based on multi-feature fusion,CAUC improved the precision and recall with high retrieval speed. The experimental results demonstrate that CAUC method is effective to extract the image feature,and improve retrieval efficiency.


This paper reports an alternative method for making glass-ceramic from disposal waste water sludge and soda lime silica (SLS) glass. The glass ceramic samples were prepared from a mixture of wastewater sludge and SLS glasses, melted at 1375°C for 3 hours and quenched by pouring into water to obtain a coarse frit. The frit glass was then crushed and sieved to 106μm before it was pressed to a pellet. The sintering process was performed at various temperatures between 700- 1000°C for 2 hours and morphologically characterized with XRD, SEM, and EDX. Overall results showed the crystalline phase of diopside sodian-critobalite glass-ceramic is depending on thermal treatment process and making them attractive to industrial uses such as in construction, tiling, and glass-ceramic applications.


Scientific Conscience – Notion and Contextualization of Scientific Responsibility in Schleiermacher's Ethics
Recent issues concerning the relation of science and ethics are mainly debated with regard to manipulative misconduct by scientists and risk assessment, such as by innovative technology in biomedical sciences and informatics. Elaborating on Schleiermacher's ethics, Frost approaches a deeper understanding of these issues tracing them back to the relation of freedom and responsibility. From this perspective Schleiermacher's ethics seem to show the fragility of science as well as the risk of its instrumentalization. Nor the securing of productivity neither the evidence of its efficiency won't proof the social justification of science sufficient; its political and ethical responsibility has always to be taken into consideration.


This paper is part of the MUVA Paper Series on female entrepreneurship. It focuses on how soft skills in female entrepreneurship programmes strengthen agency and impact economic empowerment of women entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). It draws on both the literature and lessons learned from Mozambique-based social incubator MUVA. By exploring MUVA's entrepreneurship experience, this paper contributes to debates in the literature about the importance of soft skills in female entrepreneurship programmes for enhanced self-esteem, self-confidence and self-efficacy to strengthen agency.


Abstract Practical realizations of 3D forward/inverse separable discrete transforms, such as Fourier transform, cosine/sine transform, etc. are frequently the principal limiters that prevent many practical applications from scaling to a large number of processors. Existing approaches, which are based primarily on 1D or 2D data decompositions, prevent the 3D transforms from effectively scaling to the maximum (possible/available) number of computer nodes. A highly scalable approach to realize forward/inverse 3D transforms has been proposed. It is based on a 3D decomposition of data and geared towards a torus network of computer nodes. The proposed algorithms requires compute-and-roll time-steps, where each step consists of an execution of multiple GEMM operations and concurrent movement of cubical data blocks between nearest neighbors. The aim of this paper is to present an experimental performance study of an implementation on high performance computer architecture.


One aimed to identify the nutritional profile of children in a public daycare center in the city of Cuité-Paraíba, from the perspective of health surveillance. This is a cross-sectional, exploratory-descriptive, field study with a quantitative approach, performed in 2011, with 55 children from 6 to 60 months of life, assisted full time in a public daycare center, who met the selection criteria: be attending the daycare center; and not present any disability. One used for evaluation the anthropometric measurements of weight, height and Body Mass Index, according to the growth curve suggested by the Ministry of Health. One identified that 96.4% had adequate nutritional status, however, 7.3% had overweight risk and 3.6% underweight risk, especially girls. It is important to raise managers', professionals' and parents' awareness about the health surveillance of children in daycare centers for identification and intervention against nutritional changes, encouraging an adequate child growth.


Ephedra juice is used as the drink of longevity given even to the new born. This is an Aryan custom mentioned in Rigveda and followed even by the Romans. To trace the history of this custom would lead to identifying Soma = Ephedra. The original species of Ephedra or Soma proper would be Ephedra sinica, the Chinese plant. It is the one species with yellow stalks. This has been illustrated so that it confirms Rigveda speaking of Soma as "golden yellow." The name Soma is also a loan word from Chinese meaning "fire-yellow fibers of hemp." The plant Soma is described as "thousand boughs" and photographic evidence has been offered in support. Each stalk is rod-like resembling an arrow as Rigveda speaks of it. An illustration has been offered to show the plant with stalks which are straight and rod-like, comparable with an arrow.


The harmonic oscillator with a time-dependent frequency has a family of linear quantum invariants for the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, which are determined by any two independent solutions to the classical equation of motion. Ermakov and Pinney have shown that a general solution to the time-dependent oscillator with an inverse cubic term can be expressed in terms of two independent solutions to the time-dependent oscillator. We explore the connection between linear quantum invariants and the Ermakov-Pinney solution for the time-dependent harmonic oscillator. We advance a novel method to construct Ermakov-Pinney solutions to a class of time-dependent oscillators and the wave functions for the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. We further show that the first and the second Pöschl-Teller potentials belong to a special class of exact time-dependent oscillators. A perturbation method is proposed for any slowly-varying time-dependent frequency.


The enhancement of TEFLON, a physics-based large-signal GaAs MESFET model and circuit simulator that predicts and optimizes the yield of GaAs MESFET designs before fabrication, is discussed. Device acceptance criteria include both small- and large-signal RF operating characteristics such as small-signal gain, maximum power added efficiency, and output power at 1 dB gain compression. SUPREM 3.5, a process simulator, has been incorporated into TEFLON so that the MESFET channel donor distribution can be described directly from processing specifications for material deposition, ion implantation, and implant annealing. Monte Carlo techniques are used to estimate yield when disturbances in the MESFET parameters are modeled as multivariate Gaussian distributions. Finally, the yield estimator has been integrated with an optimizer so that a design can be centered for maximum yield in the presence of process disturbances.<<ETX>>


Despite continued progress obtained recently in treating the massively burned, mortality and morbidity rates remain quite high. Implementation of preventive strategies has still not managed to significantly alter the dramatic epidemiological picture of burns patients. Survivors of severe burns still carry a heavy load of physical and psychosocial sequelae, which engenders a considerable share of suffering to overcome. There is little doubt that the final prognosis of a burn essentially depends on prompt and adequate inicial management. This is why it is important for all physicians, including dermatologists, to be able to guide first aid for and manage initially a burns victim. The aim of this article is to review the pathophysiology of burns and the principles according to which a burns victim is assessed. In addition, it is discussed a single and objective way of carrying out the emergency medical care until the victim be moved to a burns unit, if needed.


Mutual clock synchronization over a wireless channel has been recently studied in the framework of pulse-coupled oscillators using either models borrowed from mathematical biology or the model of coupled discrete-time Phase Locked Loops (PLLs). In this paper, we focus on the latter case and extend previous analyses by considering frequency-asynchronous clocks, second-order PLLs and by addressing the issues of propagation delays, finite pulse resolution and half-duplex constraints. Moreover, we provide a steady-state and convergence analysis of the system under the ideal assumption of infinite-resolution time error detectors, exploiting some results from the literature on consensus of multi-agents networks. Finally, numerical examples are discussed that corroborate the analysis and show the impact of system parameters such as transmit/ receive switching time and oversampling factor at the receiver.


A clinical and statistical study has covered 689 patients with alcoholic psychoses developing against the pathologic background. The study of the correlation between the form of attacks and the type of the disease course has demonstrated some highly probable variants of relapse development and transformation of the clinical forms of alcoholic psychoses in subsequent bouts. Two variants of the course of alcoholic psychoses have been identified. In the first variant psychoses show no tendency to recur and transform while the second one is associated with their relapses and transformation. These findings make it possible to infer that the presence of pathologic background is a factor of risk and to outline on this basis the measures to prevent the development and relapse of alcoholic psychoses.


mlogit is a package for R which enables the estimation of the multinomial logit models with individual and/or alternative specific variables. The main extensions of the basic multinomial model (heteroscedastic, nested and random parameter models) are implemented.


Temperature data logger is a portable measurement instrument used for reading the temperature of an object and storing the results of temperature in the form of data. Temperature data logger consists of NTC 7.5 K probe thermocouple with serial number SSR038 (16 pieces), the arduino mega microcontroller atmega 2560, and the card data logger module  SC-MMC with serial number MOD009. The software used is Arduino 1.5.7 windows based. Testing of 16 thermocouples is done by dipping the thermocouple in water with an initial temperature of about 27oC, then the water is heated slowly for 650 seconds. The results show the same chart pattern, even though there is a slight difference in value.  Maximum deviation is 1.0oC.  The temperature which is displayed on the monitor screen and stored on the SD card is the same.


Abstract: Background: Sleep disturbance is a common self-reported complaint by PTSD patients. However, there are controversies in documenting objective indices of disrupted sleep in these patients. The aim of the present study was to assess sleep disturbances in veterans with chronic PTSD, using both subjective and objective assessments. Methods: Thirty two PTSD patients with complaints of insomnia were evaluated using the Clinician Administrated PTSD Scale version 1 (CAPS) and completed the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) for subjective evaluation of their sleep. For objective evaluation, participants underwent two consecutive overnight actigraphic assessments. Total Sleep Time (TST), Sleep Latency (SL), Sleep Efficiency (SE) and Number of Awakening (NWAK) were measured in all participants. Results: Participants underestimated TST (p less than 0.0001), SE (p less than 0.0001) as well as NASO (0.03) in the questionnaire compared to the actigraphic assessment and overestimated SL (p less than 0.0001). Conclusions: Objective sleep parameters do not adversely affect veterans with chronic PTSD. Self-reported sleep disturbance in these patients is not reliable and objective sleep assessments are necessary.


Elicitation of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) is a goal of vaccine design as a strategy for targeting highly divergent strains of HIV-1. Current HIV-1 vaccine design efforts seek to elicit bnAbs by first eliciting their precursors through prime-boost regimens. This requires an understanding of the co-evolution between viruses and antibodies. Towards this goal, we have analyzed two cooperating antibodies, DH475 and DH272, which exerted pressure on the HIV population in an infected donor, called CH848, to evolve in such a way that it became sensitive to the V3-glycan supersite DH270 bnAb lineage. We obtained a 2.90Å crystal structure of DH475 in complex with the Man9 glycan and a negative stain EM model of DH272 in complex with the HIV-1 spike trimer, Env. Coupled with additional modeling studies and biochemical data, our studies reveal that DH475 contacts a V3- and V4-glycan dependent epitope accessible on an open or shed Env and that DH272 makes critical contacts with the V1V2 and V3 loops on HIV-1 Env. Using these data, we suggest a prime-boost regimen that may facilitate the initiation of DH270-like bnAb precursors.


Many studies have tested perceptual symbols in conceptual processing and found that perceptual symbols contain experiences from multisensory channels. However, whether the disability of one sensory channel affects the processing of the perceptual symbols and then affects conceptual processing is still unknown. This line of research would extend the perceptual symbol theory and have implications for language rehabilitation and mental health for people with disabilities. Therefore, the present study filled in this gap and tested whether Chinese children with congenital and acquired blindness have difficulty in recruiting perceptual symbols in the processing of concrete concepts. Experiment 1 used the word-pair-matching paradigm to test whether blind children used vertical space information in understanding concrete word pairs. Experiment 2 used the word-card-pairing paradigm to test the role of tactile experiences in the processing of concrete concepts for blind children. Results found that blind children automatically activated the spatial information of referents in the processing of concepts through the tactile sensory channel even when the visual sensory channel was disabled. This finding supported the compensatory phenomenon of other sensory channels in conceptual representation. In addition, the difference between elementary school blind children and middle school blind children in judging the spatial position of concrete words also indicated the vital influence of perceptual experiences on perceptual symbols in conceptual representation. Interestingly, there were no significant differences between children with congenital or acquired blindness. This might suggest that the compensatory of other sensory channels did not have a sensitive period. This study not only provided new evidence for the perceptual symbol theory but also found that perceptual symbols could be developed by a compensatory mechanism. This compensatory mechanism can be used to develop a rehabilitation program for improving language learning in blind children. Improved language ability in blind children will also improve their mental health problems caused by difficulties in social interaction (e.g., social anxiety).


Full support of parallelism in object-relational database systems (ORDBMSs) is desired. The parallelization techniques developed for relational database systems are not adequate for ORDBMS because of the introduction of complex abstract data types and operations on ordered domains. In this paper, we consider a data stream paradigm and develop a query parallelization framework that exploits characteristics of user-deened functions in a ORDBMS during query optimization. By introducing the concept of windows and abstract data type orderings, we develop a novel approach for parallelizing user-deened functions in a distributed ORDBMS environment. The implementation issues in providing query services in ordered domains are also discussed.


LTB4 is recognized as an excellent promoter of host defense. Indeed, it stimulates leukocyte functions mainly through the engagement of the BLT1 receptor. Of note, LTB4 induces phagocyte recruitment, the release of antimicrobial peptides, and potentiates the ingestion and the killing of pathogens. In humans, LTB4 has a short half-life and is rapidly metabolized into 12-oxo-LTB4 by monocytes/macrophages, or into 20-OH- and 20-COOH-LTB4 by neutrophils. Although LTB4 metabolites bind to the BLT1 receptor with high affinity, they poorly activate neutrophils.

 We postulated that LTB4 metabolites might act as inhibitors of BLT1-mediated responses, therefore limiting the impact of LTB4 on human neutrophil functions and that inhibiting LTB4 degradation would enhance its effects on neutrophils.

 20-OH-, 20-COOH-, and 12-oxo-LTB4 inhibited all LTB4-mediated responses of neutrophils we tested (migration, degranulation, leukotriene biosynthesis). 20-OH-LTB4 was as efficient as the BLT1 antagonist CP 105,696 and all LTB4 metabolites were more potent than the anti-inflammatory and pro-resolving lipids resolvin E1 and 5(S),6(R)-lipoxin A4. In contrast, the fMLP- and IL-8-mediated responses were not affected by the LTB4 metabolites. Inhibiting LTB4 degradation into 20-OH-LTB4 in neutrophils notably amplified the LTB4-induced kinase phosphorylation and diminished the chemokinetic effect of LTB4.

 Our data indicate that LTB4 metabolites act as natural inhibitors of LTB4-mediated responses and that preventing LTB4 metabolism can modulate some functions of neutrophils. These results support the idea that preventing LTB4 degradation might enhance host defense by boosting innate immunity.


This paper proposes a control method that overcomes the instability arising from both the low update rates of the virtual environment (VE) and the time delay in a communication line. The instability arising from the time delay in a communication line can be overcome using the wave variables since time delay on the wave variables is passive. The so-called multirate control scheme is applied to cope with the problems presented by the low update rates of VE. Since digital sample and hold (rate transitions) can be represented as a series of time delay, the passive nature of time delay on the wave variables is applied. By computing the norm of the scattering matrix, it was verified that rate transitions on the wave variables are passive, thereby deriving a stable haptic interface with the multirate wave transform. Various experiments have shown that a stable force display is achieved with the multirate wave transform.


We investigate the response of magnetic vortex cores in bilayer dots, a vertical stack of disk and square sublayers, to ultrashort in-plane magnetic field pulses by micromagnetic simulations. The bilayer dots adopt the advantage of switching behaviors of constituent dots; the low switching field threshold of the square is still maintained and the operating switching field range is intermediate, compared to the single-layer disk and square. Besides the usual creation and subsequent annihilation of vortex-antivortex pair reported previously, subsequent antivortex or vortex and antivortex pair during the vortex core switching process can be observed in the bilayer dot with a lateral size of about 100 nm.


Delayed maturation and growth to large sizes are only advantageous under stable environmental conditions where food resources are limited. Specialization to algal symbiosis is also highly advantageous under those conditions if sunlight is available. The coevolution of these two characteristics has occurred many times in many foraminiferal lineages. These traits are sometimes associated with increased embryon size and suppression of sexual reproduction, which are also characteristics most advantageous under stable environmental conditions. Specialization for these traits, ensuring success in warm, shallow, stable, oligotrophic environments, often dooms the species or lineage to extinction when conditions change.


Franzoni F, Mataloni E, Femia R, Galetta F. Effect of oral potassium supplementation on QT dispersion in anorexia nervosa. The aim of this study was to evaluate the degree of QT dispersion in a group of young women with anorexia nervosa and its changes after oral potassium supplementation. Twenty-eight patients with self-induced starvation were matched with 20 thin and 20 normal-weight women (body mass index ≥20). All participants underwent a complete clinical examination, including electrocardiogram (ECG) for QT interval measurements. QT dispersion Was defined as the difference between the longest and the shortest QT interval occurring in the 12-lead ECG. QT dispersion was corrected (QTc) with Bazett's formula. Anorexic patients were later allocated two subgroups of 14 to receive or not to receive potassium aspartate (2 vials K-Flebo d 1 = 60 mEq d 1 , per os). ECG was repeated in both the subgroups of anorexic patients after 4 wk. QT dispersion was significantly greater in starving patients than in thin or normal-weight women (QT dispersion = 62.2 ± 12.4 vs 33.4 ± 7.1 or 31.7 ± 6.3 ms; QTc dispersion = 56.5 ± 12 vs 34 ± 9.1 or 33.2 ± 11 ms, p < 0.001). After 4 wk, anorexic women treated with oral potassium aspartate supplementation, compared with untreated patients, showed an increased kalaemia (4.21 ± 0.16 vs 3.91 ± 0.32 mmol I 1 , p < 0.05) and a significant reduction in the QT interval dispersion (QT dispersion = 44.2 ± 8.1 vs 63.2 ± 9.1 ms, QTc dispersion = 41.3 ± 9.7 vs 57.4 ± 9 ms, p < 0.001). Conclusion: Patients with anorexia nervosa have greater QT dispersion than constitutionally thin and normal-weight women, and oral potassium supplementation tends to reduce it. This suggests that the reduction in the pool of potassium may he the critical factor inducing the enhancement of the QT dispersion in anorexia nervosa.


Behcet's disease is known as a vasculitic pathology with a usually systemic course. It is described as intestinal Behcet's disease in the presence of gastrointestinal system involvement, such as intestinal ulcers, hemorrhage or perforation. Prevalence of intestinal Behcet's disease is very rare in Turkish patients and accounts for less than 1% of the patients. It may mimic inflammatory bowel disease or present as massive hemorrhage. Intestinal ulcers are mostly seen in the terminal ileum and cecum and may be complicated with perforation. Herein, we report two cases with intestinal Behcet's disease, one of which was diagnosed as Behcet's disease while under investigation for the etiology of intestinal disease.


Single crystals of fully hydrated copper sulphate have been studied by neutron diffraction and the measurements have been used to construct projections of the neutron-scattering density, due to the atomic nuclei, on the three crystallographic axial planes. These provide full details of the shape and environment of the water molecules and of the hydrogen bonds which link together the atoms in the structure, which was originally proposed by Beevers & Lipson as a result of X -ray diffraction work. It is found that the H—O—H angles for all the water molecules are within a degree or two of the tetrahedral value and the hydrogen bonds have to be bent by up to 26° in order to accommodate them. Corresponding measurements have been made at a series of five different temperatures between 20 and 90°C in order to test a suggestion that molecular rotations of the water molecules occurred before the onset of dehydration: the neutron data refute this suggestion.


The authors consider the question of what role safety net transfers should play in very low income countries where a large population live in absolute poverty, and the state has limited resources to fund transfers. The number of people living below minimum acceptable consumption levels will remain so high that some form of safety net intervention is justified. For pure transfers, governments should be selective of very specific groups such as orphans, to limit costs and engender political support. To improve the impact per dollar spent on transfers, programs should be selected to have a multiplier effect on incomes such as vouchers for small fertilizers packs for the poor, or to leverage by using small amounts of cash to help households reduce risk or diversify economic activity. Selection of programs that are self-targeting, such as public works at a low wage rate or subsidized food goods. The judicious timing of transfers is important. Programs should also be kept as simple as possible to fit with the limited administrative capacity, avoiding multiple overlapping donor programs in favor of one or two simple nationwide programs that are easily implemented, cost-effective, and fiscally sustainable.


We describe the case of a 23-year-old man whose CT scan revealed a hypodense lesion reshaping the superior and middle third of the clivus and partially invading the sphenoidal sinus. MRI showed an irregular-shaped lesion occupying the body of the sphenoid bone, involving the superior and middle third of the clivus and sprouting into the sphenoid sinus. The lesion was hyperintense on T1- and T2-weighted sequences with a thin peripheral rim of hypointensity, without enhancement after i.v. gadolinium injection. The pathology report confirmed an intraosseus lipoma. Intraosseous lipomas involving the spheno-clival region are extremely rare. CT and MRI scan interpretation can be troublesome but this rare pathology has to be considered in the differential diagnosis.


The paper proved, on theoretical grounds, that direct support scheme induces changes in the volume and structure of goods production in relation to production generated by market operations, thus having a reallocation function. Using the constructed model, the paper graphically presents the impact of applying individual instruments co-creating direct support scheme (area payments, production support and historical payments) on the level of land involvement in agricultural activity and agricultural production volume. This analysis was supplemented with a description of the impact of individual forms of aid on the structure of agricultural production.


This work concerns the development of a methodology specially devoted to lateral parasitic transistors that limit the total dose hardness of CMOS technologies. This methodology is based on i) the irradiation of standard NMOS transistors followed by ii) isochronal annealing measurements to determine energetic spectra of the field oxide trapped charge. Post irradiation effects have been evaluated through additional isothermal annealing experiments at 75/spl deg/C which are consistent with isochronal results. We propose a test procedure which allows to determine physical parameters helpful to improve comparison and qualification of CMOS commercial technologies.


The guinea pigs were dermally exposed to nickel (Ni), sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS) and in their combination for 7 and 14 days. The exposure to Ni and SLS produced changes in enzymes and lipid peroxidation in kidney. The exposure to Ni or SLS depicted slight changes while combined exposure to Ni plus SLS exhibited more degenerative changes in kidney. The result of the study suggests that industrial workers and/or populations exposed simultaneously to Ni and SLS produces more damage to kidney.


Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) is extremely energy-consuming, accounting for 40% of total building energy consumption. Therefore, it is crucial to design some energy-efficient building thermal control policies which can reduce the energy consumption of HVAC while maintaining the comfort of the occupants. However, implementing such a policy is challenging, because it involves various influencing factors in a building environment, which are usually hard to model and may be different from case to case. To address this challenge, we propose a deep reinforcement learning based framework for energy optimization and thermal comfort control in smart buildings. We formulate the building thermal control as a cost-minimization problem which jointly considers the energy consumption of HVAC and the thermal comfort of the occupants. To solve the problem, we first adopt a deep neural network based approach for predicting the occupants' thermal comfort, and then adopt Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients (DDPG) for learning the thermal control policy. To evaluate the performance, we implement a building thermal control simulation system and evaluate the performance under various settings. The experiment results show that our method can improve the thermal comfort prediction accuracy, and reduce the energy consumption of HVAC while improving the occupants' thermal comfort.


The aim of this paper is to analyze the propagation of large-amplitude Alfvén waves in a perfectly conducting plasma in the magnetohydrodynamic approximation, for cylindrical magnetic tubes. In a similar way to that done in Sallago and Platzeck, instead of linearizing the magnetohydrodynamic equations and searching monochromatic waves, we impose the conditions that the perturbations propagate without distortion with a group velocity parallel to the background magnetic induction field, in the reference system in which the plasma is locally at rest, the perturbations are incompressible, there exists a relation between the velocity and induction magnetic field perturbations, and the total pressure remains constant. The solutions are similar to the case in which the background fields vary with a rectilinear variable. When the solution is searched using this methodology there is no singularity problem. If the background total pressure is not uniform and constant, it is not possible to find waves of large amplitude that propagate like Alfvén waves in cylindrical magnetic tubes.


This work reports on the facile synthesis and characterisation of a non-precious-metal bifunctional catalyst for oxygen reduction and evolution reactions (ORR and OER). A few-layer reduced graphene oxide-supported NiCo2 O4 catalyst is prepared using a rapid and easy two-step method of synthesis. It consists of the solvothermal poyl(vinylpyrrolidone)-assisted assembly of metal complexes onto few-layer graphene followed by a calcination step aiming at converting metal complexes into the spinel phase. Using this synthesis approach, the most active material demonstrates an outstanding activity towards the OER and ORR, making it one of the best bifunctional catalysts of these reactions ever reported. This composite catalyst exhibits improved bifunctional behaviour with a low reversibility criterion of 746 mV. The ORR process follows a four-electron pathway and the hydroxyl selectivity is higher than those with pure reduced graphene oxide or NiCo2 O4 materials, showing the synergistic effect between the two phases. Moreover, the high activity of this composite catalyst is confirmed by comparing its performance with those obtained on other cobaltite catalysts prepared using a different synthesis method, or those obtained using a different graphene-based support.


Info 2021 Automation of agricultural and horticultural operations keeps received great attention for over a decade. The control parameters adopted depend on the location and characteristics of likely obstacles and navigation requirements. An automated lawnmower (ALM) with fuzzy logic control is presented in this study. Fuzzy logic was chosen to improve a previous work which was controlled via Bluetooth. Three ultrasonic sensors and two proximity sensors served as the eyes of the ALM for navigation and obstacle avoidance while the cutting blade was made of stainless steel and controlled by a brushless direct current (BLDC) motor. A fuzzy algorithm was implemented on an Arduino controller with the inputs and outputs as directional instructions. Obstacle avoidance was achieved by setting a range of values for the sensors interpreted by the fuzzy logic for the corresponding output in the form of navigations. Three trials tests were conducted on the ALM on a 5 m 2 portion of land with an average grass height of 0.09 m. The average cut area was 4.46 m 2 , therefore achieving an efficiency of 89.2%, which is highly productive. It was observed that the power consumption was minimal compared to the previous design because at the end of the three trials 46% of the battery was left after over 3 hours of


The paper presents the operation of two neuro-fuzzy systems of an adaptive type, intended for solving problems of the approximation of multi-variable functions in the domain of real numbers. Neuro-fuzzy systems being a combination of the methodology of artificial neural networks and fuzzy sets operate on the basis of a set of fuzzy rules "if-then", generated by means of the self-organization of data grouping and the estimation of relations between fuzzy experiment results. The article includes a description of neuro-fuzzy systems by Takaga-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) and Wang-Mendel (WM), and in order to complement the problem in question, a hierarchical structural self-organizing method of teaching a fuzzy network. A multi-layer structure of the systems is a structure analogous to the structure of "classic" neural networks. In its final part the article presents selected areas of application of neuro-fuzzy systems in the field of geodesy and surveying engineering. Numerical examples showing how the systems work concerned: the approximation of functions of several variables to be used as algorithms in the Geographic Information Systems (the approximation of a terrain model), the transformation of coordinates, and the prediction of a time series. The accuracy characteristics of the results obtained have been taken into consideration.


The Japanese electric power companies have long been interested in the optical fiber communication-system features, such as non inductivity, high-insulation property, large transmission capacity etc. Since 1974 they have been conducting field experiments utilizing optical-fiber communications for transmitting power-system protection, supervision, and control data. Based on these works, six Japanese electric companies have installed nine optical fiber communication systems since 1978, and their performance records are fully satisfactory.


By a result of Blokh from 1984, every transitive map of a tree has the relative specification property, and so it has finite decomposition ideal, positive entropy and dense periodic points. In this paper we construct a transitive dendrite map with infinite decomposition ideal and a unique periodic point. Basically, the constructed map is (with respect to any non-atomic invariant measure) a measure-theoretic extension of the dyadic adding machine. Together with an example of Hoehn and Mouron from 2013, this shows that transitivity on dendrites is much more varied than that on trees.


A metal exchange method based upon atomically precise gold nanoclusters (NCs) as templates is devised to obtain alloy NCs including CuxAu25-x(SR)18, AgxAu25-x(SR)18, Cd1Au24(SR)18, and Hg1Au24(SR)18 via reaction of the template with metal thiolate complexes of Cu(II), Ag(I), Cd(II), and Hg(II) (as opposed to common salt precursors such as CuCl2, AgNO3, etc.). Experimental results imply that the exchange between gold atoms in NCs and those of the second metal in the thiolated complex does not necessarily follow the order of metal activity (i.e., galvanic sequence). In addition, the crystal structure of the exchange product (Cd1Au24(SR)18) is successfully determined, indicating that the Cd is in the center of the 13-atom icosahedral core. This metal exchange method is expected to become a versatile new approach for synthesizing alloy NCs that contain both high- and low-activity metal atoms.


In this study, the body force generated by atmospheric positive and negative corona discharges were investigated using a wire-cylinder configuration experimentally and numerically. We provided new insight into the atmospheric electric thruster by introducing a nonlinear term in body force constituent the thrust of the system. It was observed that the direction of both body forces and electric winds is always from the wire to the cylinder irrespective of the applied voltage polarity. It was illustrated that the corresponding thrusts and the electric wind of the positive corona are larger than that of the negative corona discharge. We took into account the nonlinear mechanisms to explain the difference in thrust forces in positive and negative corona discharges. To elucidate the origin of the body force in corona discharges, we performed 2-D simulations via COMSOL Multiphysics and MATLAB software. The results of the numerical simulation showed that in addition to the linear body force (Coulomb force) a strong nonlinear body force is generated around the wire electrode that plays a crucial role in corona thrusters. To verify the direction and magnitude of the thrust, a simple theory was proposed based on variable mass systems and confirmed by published experimental works.


Isolated noncompaction of the left ventricular myocardium (INVM), first described in 1984, is an unclassified cardiomyopathy and is assumed to occur as an arrest of the compaction process during the normal development of the heart. Between weeks 5 to 8 of human fetal development, the ventricular myocardium undergoes gradual compaction with transformation of the relatively large intertrabecular spaces into capillaries while the residual spaces within the trabecular meshwork gradually flatten or disappear. In the case of INVM, the spaces within the intertrabecular meshwork persist while no other cardiac abnormalities exist. Although there is substantial evidence supporting the developmental hypothesis, other pathogenetic processes responsible for INVM have been discussed. It can be assumed that INVM will be better understood in the future as the molecular genetic basis of cardiomyopathies will be further unravelled. Echocardiography has been shown to be the method of choice in diagnosis of INVM. The diagnostic criteria can be summarized as: 1) appearance of at least four prominent trabeculations and deep intertrabecular recesses; 2) appearance of blood flow from the ventricular cavity into the intertrabecular recesses as visualized by color Doppler imaging; 3) the segments of noncompacted myocardium mainly involve the apex and the inferior mid and lateral mid of the left ventricular wall and typically show a two-layered structure with an endsystolic ratio greater than two between the noncompacted subendocardial layer and the compacted subepicardial layer; 4) absence of coexisting cardiac abnormalities. Magnetic resonance imaging using modern gradient echo sequences has also been shown to diagnose INVM accurately. The clinical presentation of INVM is characterized by a high prevalence of heart failure, thromboembolic events and arrhythmias including ventricular tachycardia and atrial fibrillation. The establishment of a registry, which was initiated by the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Leitende Kardiologische Krankenhausärzte (ALKK)" recently, may provide further clues for diagnosis, risk stratification, and management of this disease.


STUDY QUESTION
Is recurrent spontaneous miscarriage (RSM) associated with changes in vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) serum levels, and with polymorphisms in the VEGFA gene?

SUMMARY ANSWER
Reduced serum VEGF levels, and VEGFA -460T/C (rs833061), 398G/A (rs833068), -583T/C (rs3025020) variants, were associated with RSM.

WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY
Reduced expression of VEGF has been linked with spontaneous miscarriage, likely due to defective fetal and placental angiogenesis. Since VEGF production is in part inherited, VEGFA polymorphisms associated with altered VEGF secretion have been investigated for their association with RSM, often with variable conclusions.

STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION
A retrospective case-control study, which was conducted between January 2011 and April 15, 2012.

PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS
Subjects comprised 296 women with RSM (mean age: 31.6 ± 5.4 year), and 305 age-matched (mean age: 31.6 ± 4.9 year) control Arab women, who had attended outpatient obstetrics and gynecology clinics in two teaching hospitals in Bahrain. VEGFA -2578C/A (rs699947), -460T/C (rs833061), -1154G/A (rs15703060), -634G/C (rs2010963), 398G/A (rs833068), 497G/A (rs833070), -583T/C (rs3025020) and 936C/T (rs3025039) genotyping was done by real-time PCR, with defined clusters; VEGF serum levels were measured by ELISA.

MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE
Higher minor allele frequency (MAF) and genotype distribution of -460T/C [corrected P (Pc) = 0.003], 398G/A (Pc = 0.016) and -583T/C (Pc < 0.001) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were seen in RSM cases than control women. Increased RSM risk was seen with homozygous -460T/C and 398G/A SNPs and with heterozygous -583T/C, which had a stronger effect when homozygous. Serum VEGF levels were significantly reduced in RSM cases compared with control women (P = 0.016), and correlated with -460T/C, 398G/A and -583T/C genotypes. Haploview analysis revealed heterogeneity in linkage disequilibrium between VEGFA variants, and two blocks were identified: Block 1 comprising -2578C/A, -460T/C and -1154G/A, while Block 2 contained -634G/C, 398G/A, 497G/A, -583T/C and 936C/T. Both negatively and positively RSM-associated 3-locus (Block 1) and 5-locus (Block 2) VEGFA haplotypes were identified, after controlling for a number of covariates.

LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION
The study was retrospective and can only demonstrate association and not a cause-effect relationship. Furthermore, it was limited to Bahraini Arabs,thereby necessitating parallel studies on other ethnic groups.

WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS
Reduced VEGF secretion, and specific VEGFA variants may contribute to the pathogenesis of RSM. However, the association of VEGFA SNPs with RSM appears to be independent of their association with altered VEGF serum levels. The differential association of VEGFA variants with RSM is in line with previous findings on the contribution of ethnicity/racial background to genetic association studies.


AIM
To assess the level of understanding of pulse oximetry in a hospital setting and identify training needs.

METHODS
Twenty nine nurses and 34 doctors anonymously completed a questionnaire survey previously used by researchers in Exeter, UK. Respondents were required to explain the basic principles of pulse oximetry and demonstrate an understanding of the physiological factors limiting its accuracy. They were asked to apply their knowledge in different clinical scenarios.

RESULTS
A higher proportion of nurses than doctors demonstrated an awareness of the physiological limitations of pulse oximetry. The majority of respondents correctly identified normal ranges for adult patients. Twenty nine per cent of respondents did not know how a pulse oximeter worked. Respondents failed to recognise the clinical implications of low oxygen saturations in many of the hypothetical scenarios. Only 16% of respondents had received any formal training in the use of pulse oximetry, with 65% identifying a need for more training.

CONCLUSIONS
Medical and nursing staff at Christchurch Hospital have a good understanding of pulse oximetry. A higher proportion of participants were aware of checking vital signs when the oximeter reading was unreliable, than in the original UK study cohort. A need was identified for further education in this core technique. Staff training may increase the clinical value of pulse oximetry.


Introduction: Silicosis is an inflammatory restrictive pulmonary disease caused by silica particle inhalation, characterized by intense fibrosis and granuloma formation. Several inflammatory mediators are involved in this disease, including nitric oxide (NO). Aim: To investigate the involvement of NO in silica-induced changes in lung function, hyperreactivity and airway morphology. Methods: Male wild-type C57BL/6 (iNOS+/+) and iNOS ko (iNOS-/-) mice were anesthetized and received a single intranasal instillation of silica (10 mg/50 µL) or saline (control). The analyzes were made 7 and 28 days after silica provocation and included: i) lung function and airways hyperrreactivity to methacholine, ii) quantification of nitric oxide levels in the bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), iii) morphological and morphometric analyses and iv) treatment with NO donor DETANonoate (0.61 µmol/animal). Results: The animals exposed to silica showed higher lung function and airway response than the controls. In 7 days (11.5±2.6) (mean ± SEM) as soon as 28 days (7.8±0.6), the NO in BAL fluid was greater in silicotic mice as compared respectively to those of the controls (5.5±0.7) and (4.7±0.2). Instillation of DETANonoate led to an increase in lung resistance and elastance to methacholine. Yet all silica effects were abolished in iNOS -/- mice. Conclusion: Silica induced lung function compromise and airways hyperreactivity is directly associated with inflammation and granuloma formation. These responses were markedly suppressed in iNOS knockout mice, indicating that NO seems to significantly contribute to several features of the silicosis, including airways hyperreactivity and inflammation. Financial support: FAPERJ, CNPq.


Injection of endoplasm from large Xenopus oocytes which have undergone maturation into small (0.6-0.8 mm diameter) oocytes induces germinal vesicle (GV) breakdown. This process has been cytologically studied. Injection of cytoplasm from such small oocytes into large oocytes (1.0-1.2 mm diameter) is followed by the formation of a large spindle bearing many chromosomes at the site of injection.


Field experiments were conducted in Missouri in 2004 through 2006 to compare the efficacy of fall and spring herbicide treatments for control of winter and summer annual weeds in no-tillage corn. Applications in the fall and 45 d before planting (45 PP) of 2,4-D and simazine; rimsulfuron, thifensulfuron, and 2,4-D; or glyphosate and 2,4-D controlled at least 90% of all winter annual weeds through 1 wk after corn planting (WAP), with a few exceptions. Applications made 30 d before planting (30 PP) of 2,4-D and glyphosate or rimsulfuron, thifensulfuron, and 2,4-D provided greater than 90% control of most winter annual weeds 1 WAP. Winter annual weed control was reduced with herbicide treatments applied 7 d before planting (7 PP), compared with earlier application timings. Summer annual weed control 5 WAP increased as the time between application and planting decreased. Fall applications resulted in greater weed biomass 5 WAP, compared with spring applications. Nomenclature: 2,4-D, glyphosate, rimsulfuron, simazine, thifensulfuron, corn, Zea mays L. 'Pioneer 34B23'


We investigated the time evolution of the cloaking behavior of a small particle placed in front of a meta-material slab with ε=μ=-1+iδ. We found that the dipole excitation would be suppressed in the long time limit. While on the way to being cloaked, the excitation will exhibit oscillatory behavior as the result of the interference between particle-slab resonances and high density-of-states surface modes.


A total of 18 samples made up of six samples from hospital and 12 samples from municipal solid waste dump soil in Benin City were collected for isolation of viable aerobic bacteria. The following aerobic bacteria in decreasing order of prevalence were isolated from municipal solid waste, aerobic spore bearers (83.33%), Escherichia Coli (50.00%), Staphyloccus aureus (14.67%), Klebsiella sp (8.33%). Samples from the hospital waste yielded Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella sp, Bacillus substilis with a prevalence of (60.00%) each, Serratia sp,Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia Coli (20.00%) each. Antibiotic susceptibility tests on isolates were performed using standard disc diffusion method. Overall, Ciprofloxacin was the most effective agent on the isolates followed by Augmentin and Gentamycin in hospital and municipal solid waste respectively.Almost all isolates were resistant to Cloxacillin and Amoxiallin.


This study created a structural model of the influence of paternal and maternal meta-emotion philosophy and children`s emotion regulation in terms of their social competence and confirmed the nature of the relationship among the variables. For the purpose of this study, data was collected, targeting 363 children in the 5 th and 6 th elementary school grades from schools located in Seoul. The main results of this study were as follows: First, both paternal and maternal meta-emotion philosophy had an influence on children`s emotion regulation and emotion dysregulation. Next, paternal and maternal meta-emotion philosophy did not appear to have a significant influence on children`s social competence in a direct manner. The complete mediation effect of emotion regulation in regards to the influence of paternal and maternal meta-emotion philosophy upon children`s social competence was confirmed. It was also found that parental meta-emotion philosophy had an influence upon children`s social competence in an indirect manner through children`s emotion regulation in the period of middle childhood.


The functional properties of electroceramic thin films can be degraded by subtractive patterning techniques used for microelectromechanical (MEMS) applications. This work explores an alternative deposition technique, where lead zirconate titanate (PZT) liquid precursors are printed onto substrates in a desired geometry from stamp wells (rather than stamp protrusions). Printing from wells significantly increased sidewall angles (from ~1 to >35 degrees) relative to printing solutions from stamp protrusions. Arrays of PZT features were printed, characterized, and compared to continuous PZT thin films of similar thickness. Three-hundred-nanometer-thick printed PZT features exhibit a permittivity of 730 and a loss tangent of 0.022. The features showed remanent polarizations of 26 μC/cm2, and coercive fields of 95 kV/cm. The piezoelectric response of the features produced an e31,f of −5.2 C/m2. This technique was also used to print directly atop prepatterned substrates. Optimization of printing parameters yielded patterned films with 90° sidewalls. Lateral feature sizes ranged from hundreds of micrometers down to one micrometer. In addition, several device designs were prepatterned onto silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers (Si/SiO2/Si with thicknesses of 0.35/1/500 μm). The top patterned silicon was released from the underlying material, and PZT was directly printed and crystallized on the free-standing structures.


A Critique of the Competitiveness Imperative and Current Globalisation R. Petrella. Barriers of Human Evolution B. Szanto. Altered States of Society: A Tentative Approach D. Spivak. Social Space: from Freedom to Freedom of Movement D. Aerts. Hunger Strikes: The Dramaturgy of Starvation Politics K.M. Landzelius. Complex Evolution and Fundamental Emergent Transformations. Supra-human Institutions and the Human Condition F.F. Robb. Stability, Turbulence, Chaos? Systems, Analogies and Metaphors, and Change in Contemporary World Politics C. Mesjasz. Confronting Health Transition Complexity M.B. Marques. Non-natural, Cultural Universals Exist P.L. Peterson. Communication: the Key to Understanding the Very Nature of 'Life', 'Death' and the Force Driving Evolution A. De Loof. Ecological Transformation and Responsibility Inquiries. Science and Environmental Law. The Perspectives of Truth Pluralism S. Gutwirth. Strength and Weakness SWOT Analysis of Humankind to Overcome Global Ecological Challenges W. Weyns. And You, My Mountain Will You Never Walk Towards Me? J. Fennema. Humankind and Nature P. Fu-Yang. The Economic-Ecological and Socio-Technical Equilibria. Rural Development Knowledge: Indigenous, Necessary, Appropriate F.D. O'Reilly. The Predicament of Ecological-Economic Valuation and the need for Linkage through an Institutional Framework H. Thomas, R. Mark. The Post-Industrial Society: What Future are we Preparing? R. Petrella. Scarcity versus Fertility Two Ways of Thinking about Economy J. Rosicka.


A growing literature has sought to understand the relationships between religion, politics and views about climate change and climate change policy in the United States. However, little comparative research has been conducted in other countries. This study draws on data from the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey to examine the beliefs of Australian churchgoers from some 20 denominations about climate change—whether or not it is real and whether it is caused by humans—and political factors that explain variation in these beliefs. Pentecostals, Baptist and Churches of Christ churchgoers, and people from the smallest Protestant denominations were less likely than other churchgoers to believe in anthropogenic climate change, and voting and hierarchical and individualistic views about society predicted beliefs. There was some evidence that these views function differently in relation to climate change beliefs depending on churchgoers' degree of opposition to gay rights. These findings are of interest not only for the sake of international comparisons, but also in a context where Australia plays a role in international climate change politics that is disproportionate to its small population.