ABSTRACT Purpose Many rugby league clubs rely on developing youth athletes into experts in adulthood. One factor that contributes to the attainment of expertise is the activities that athletes engage in across their development. Therefore, the developmental activities of professional male British rugby league players were compared to lesser-skilled players. Methods Players who had progressed from youth academies to professional status, those who were released from youth academies, and those who had only played recreationally completed the Participation History Questionnaire. Results During childhood, professional players accumulated significantly greater amounts of play compared to ex-academy and recreational players, as well as greater coach-led practice compared to ex-academy . During early adolescence, this pattern continued, whereas in late adolescence the professional and ex-academy players accumulated significantly greater amounts of coach-led practice compared to their recreational counterparts. Professional players accumulated more hours in rugby league up to 18 years of age compared to ex-academy players, with both groups accumulating more hours than recreational . The number of other sports engaged in was relatively low across development and did not discriminate between performance levels. Conclusion Findings from this study may inform future practice of talent development systems within rugby league in Britain.


Abstract The most important theme of critical pedagogy (hereafter CP) is the belief that educations systems are political (Freir, 1970). In effect, the centrality of politics and power in our understanding of how school work is an inevitability. Good education should aim at political transformation for the purpose of justice and human being liberation. This will be available if there is a congruity between what a teacher thinks (theory) and what he/she does (practice) in the class. In fact, CP asserts that the relationship between pedagogy and politics is two way; not only is pedagogy political, but pedagogy provides the knowledge and abilities through which individuals can see themselves as political agents and act accordingly. The present study was an attempt to investigate the educational-political implications of CP in Iran educational system, with the emphasis on the fact that the failures and successes of an educational system is ascribed to people's linguistic and socio-cultural interaction, which are under the influence of dominant ideology, institutional practice and social relations.   Apart from its valuable ideality, CP seems to become an ignis fatuus. The role of teachers is not more than a museum curator whose duty is restricted to placing knowledge in the mind of students. In fact the lack of political perspective on the part of teachers and learners reduces teachers to a technician. Nevertheless, English language teaching is not a technical business devoid of any ideology. Key words: Critical Pedagogy; Marginalization; Praxis;


Plant growth is influenced by nutrient availability. The objective of this research was to study, under greenhouse conditions, eggplant growth as affected by rates of bovine manure and magnesium thermophosphate (g kg-1 and mg kg-1, respectively), according to a "Box central composite" matrix: 4.15-259; 4.15-1509; 24.15-259; 24.15-1509; 0.0-884; 28.3-884; 14.15-0,0; 14.15-1768; 14.15-884. Potassium sulfate (170 mg kg-1) and 200 mL per pot of cow urine solution were applied four times, but the concentration of the last two applications (200 mL/H2O L) was twice of that of the first two. Additional treatments: magnesium thermophosphate without cow urine and triple superphosphate with urea, both with nutrient levels equivalent to the bovine manure, P2O5 and potassium sulfate to the combination 14.15-884. The experimental design consisted of randomized blocks with four replicates. Leaf area (LA) and LA ratio increased as quadratic functions with manure rates, with negative interaction for thermophosphate. Leaf dry matter mass (DMM) had an increasing quadratic function with rates for both fertilizers. The higher combined rates of both fertilizers resulted in the smallest specific leaf area, but also the highest values of shoot and root DMM, total DMM and, with positive interaction in relation to root shoot dry matter ratio. The relative growth rate in stem height, and also in diameter, increased with manure, according to quadratic and linear functions, respectively. The cow urine effect was, in general, lower than that of urea. The plant's overall growth was more influenced by manure. Root DMM and shoot DMM were greater with high K and P.


MINI: Most published enhanced recovery pathways exclude patients undergoing urgent or emergent surgeries. This study found that nonelective colorectal surgery patients benefit significantly from the implementation of an enhanced recovery pathway, suggesting opportunities for improved outcomes in this high-risk population.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of our study was to determine if an enhanced recovery pathway (ERP) can successfully be applied in nonelective colorectal surgery.

BACKGROUND
ERPs have been shown to reduce hospital length of stay (LOS), complications, and costs after elective colorectal surgery. Yet, little data exist regarding the benefits of ERPs in patients undergoing nonelective colorectal surgery. We hypothesized that ERP implementation in a nonelective colorectal surgery population is associated with decreased postoperative LOS.

METHODS
A prospectively-maintained database was used to identify consecutive patients undergoing colorectal surgery after emergency room (ER) or hospital transfer admissions over a period from 2 years before until 1 year after implementation of a comprehensive ERP. The primary endpoint was LOS. Secondary endpoints included total LOS [TLOS = postoperative LOS + LOS of readmission(s)], readmission rates, complication rates, 30-day mortality, and hospital costs. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to assess the relationship between ERP implementation and LOS.

RESULTS
We identified 269 pre-ERP and 135 ERP patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria. Admit source (ER 43.4% vs transfers 56.7%), Charlson comorbidity index, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) status, diagnosis (inflammatory bowel disease 45.8%, malignancy 19.6%, benign intestinal obstructions 10.4%, diverticulitis 9.4%, others 10.4%), and blood loss were comparable (P > 0.05) between the cohorts. Pre-ERP patients had a higher number of previous abdominal surgeries, whereas post-ERP patients had more laparoscopy and more compliance with ERP elements. ERP patients had a shorter postoperative LOS [6 (4, 10) vs 7 (5, 12) days; P = 0.0007]. Hospital costs were 13.4% lower (P = 0.004). Postoperative 30-day morbidity, mortality, and readmissions were comparable, although reoperation rate was higher in the ERP group. On multivariate analysis, ERP implementation and laparoscopy were the only modifiable variables independently associated with shorter LOS, whereas longer operative times and higher ASA classification were associated with longer LOS.

CONCLUSIONS
Patients undergoing nonelective colorectal surgery after ER or hospital transfer admission benefit from the use of an ERP, demonstrating decreased LOS and costs without an increase in complications.


After the development of a hand-held intraoperative device for 3D real-time imaging of radioactively labeled sentinel lymph nodes in the human body, we present our first experience with the newest version of the free- hand single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) technology in the operating room. The freehand SPECT system combines a gamma probe and an optical infrared positioning system, and provides surgeons with 3D imaging including exact depth information of the radioactive target. This technology was used intraoperatively in a female breast cancer patient to localize the axillary sentinel lymph nodes. The data obtained with freehand SPECT correlate well with conventional lymphoscintigraphy and with data collected using a conventional hand-held probe. By offering fast real-time intraoperative imaging, the new freehand SPECT system might facilitate the detection and removal of the sentinel lymph node(s) in certain situations and can be used for documentation and quality assurance purposes.


This study discusses the production cost variance. The purpose of this study was to calculate the total difference in the budgeted costs and the actual cost to complete the project job number PTC-0213-2212. This research was conducted by comparing the cost of the budget (budget) as determined by actual production costs are real. The object of this research project is job number PTC-0213-2212 which manufactures wellhead control panel with client Thai Nippon Steel & Sumkin Engineering & Construction Corp., Ltd. This research was conducted at PT Proserv Batam which is a manufacturing company engaged in oil and gas. Cost of production is an important element for companies, especially companies engaged in manufacturing. For manufacturing companies, the cost of production is the main focus of management in particular for the production can be controlled. One analytical tool that can control the production cost variance analysis. The total variance of the results of this study is $ 27,241.21 (favorable). The variance in total variance obtained from raw material costs of $ 7,164.19, variance direct labor costs of $ 13,105.54, variance variable overhead costs amounted to $ 2,335.00, and the variance fixed overhead costs amounted to $ 4,186.48.


To investigate bicyclists' behavior at unsignalized intersections with mixed traffic flow,a bicycle capacity model of borrowed-priority merge was developed by the addition-conflict-flow procedure.Based on the actual traffic situation,the concept of borrowed priority,in which the major-road bicycles borrow the priority of major-road cars to enter the intersections when consecutive headway for major-steam cars is lower than the critical gap for minor-road cars,was addressed.Bicycle capacity at a typical unsignalized intersection is derived by the addition-conflict-flow procedure.The proposes model was validated by the empirical investigation.Numerical results show that bicycle capacity at an intersection is the function of major-road and minor-road car streams.Bicycle capacity increases with increasing major-road cars but decreases with increasing minor-road cars.


Abstract The fetal oxygen saturation is an important parameter to determine the health status of a fetus, which is until now mostly acquired invasively. The transabdominal, fetal pulse oximetry is a promising approach to measure this non-invasively and continuously. The fetal pulse curve has to be extracted from the mixed signal of mother and fetus to determine its oxygen saturation. For this purpose efficient algorithms are necessary, which have to be evaluated under constant and reproducable test conditions. This paper presents the improved version of a phantom which can generate artificial pulse waves in a synthetic tissue phantom. The tissue phantom consists of several layers that mimic the different optical properties of the fetal and maternal tissue layers. Additionally an artificial vascular system and a dome, which mimics the bending of the belly of a pregnant woman, are incorporated. To obtain data on the pulse waves, several measurement methods are included, to help understand the behavior of the signals gained from the pulse waves. Besides pressure sensors and a transmissive method we integrated a capacitive approach, that makes use of the so called "Pin Oscillator" method. Apart from the enhancements in the tissue phantom and the measurements, we also improved the used blood substitute, which reproduces the different absorption characteristics of fetal and maternal blood. The results show that the phantom can generate pulse waves similar to the natural ones. Furthermore, the phantom represents a reference that can be used to evaluate the algorithms for transabdominal, fetal pulse oximetry.


The agricultural work demands prediction of loss of the mound stability. The mound under certain conditions may lose its stability, and transfer from the static equilibrium state to the state of motion. The article is devoted to prediction of loss of the mound stability in respect to the stability coefficient, by using an artificial intelligence system. This problem can be solved by introduction of the computer monitoring systems that can be quickly adapted in the course of work. The analysis of the literature showed that nowadays there is no computer system for monitoring the mound stability which would allow the units to react quickly to extreme conditions and adapt to them. The authors suggest a concept of the computer system, mainly creating an automatic fuzzy system. This approach is implemented with the help of a software package, the observation data are applied to the system input, which makes a decision about a danger of instability occurrence. The fuzzy logic methods are proposed to predict the coefficient that affects stability. A linguistic variable being constructed takes some values, the membership function is built for the terms, the knowledge base is created, fuzzification and defuzzification is carried out, some prognostic values are obtained. The algorithm of appearance of instability is calculated, and rapid reaction of the operator to this phenomenon is predicted, that is, the sequence of actions necessary to avoid danger is indicated.


In this article, we propose a hybrid semi-supervised boosting algorithm to sentiment analysis. Semi-supervised learning is a learning task from a limited amount of labeled data and plenty of unlabeled data which is the case in our used dataset. The proposed approach employs the classifier predictions along with the similarity information to assign label to unlabeled examples. We propose a hybrid model based on the agreement among different constructed classification model based on the boosting framework to assign a final label to unlabeled data. The proposed approach employs several different similarity measurements in its loss function to show the role of the similarity function. We further address the main preprocessing steps in the used dataset. Our experimental results on real-world microblog data from a commercial website show that the proposed approach can effectively exploit information from the unlabeled data and significantly improves the classification performance.


Television (TV) viewing is a risk factor for obesity in children. This is partly due to its promotion of energy intake by distracting from normal satiety signals. Children are exposed to a variety of TV programs which differ in features such as pacing. This is reason to believe that different children's TV shows distract to varying degrees, and can therefore influence energy intake to different extents. We suggest that future research should examine how different TV shows influence energy intake in children. Such research could help identify new ways to protect children from the negative effects of TV viewing on caloric intake and ultimately body weight.


We investigated the effect of the presence of an oviposition substrate on female remating behavior in three strains of the adzuki bean beetle, Callosobruchus chinensis. In the two strains with low levels of female remating, females maintained with an oviposition substrate, and thus allowed to lay eggs, had a greater tendency to remate than females maintained without an oviposition substrate to prevent them from laying eggs. The oviposition substrate had no significant effect on female remating in the strain with a high level of female remating. The results indicate that female remating is influenced by the presence of an oviposition substrate, an environmental factor, in C. chinensis. This suggests that females adaptively change their receptivity to remate in response to environmental factors affecting the costs and benefits of remating in C. chinensis.


Continuous intake of green tea catechins (GTC) increases fatty acid utilization as an energy source and improves endurance capacity. Conversely, the single pre-exercise intake of maltodextrin (MD) as a carbohydrate source and the gluconeogenic amino acids alanine (Ala) and proline (Pro) effectively maintain blood glucose levels and increase endurance performance. In this study, we investigated the synergistic combinational effect of these interventions on endurance performance in mice. Male BALB/c mice were fed a 0.5% GTC diet or Control diet for 8 weeks. Maximum running time was measured every 2 weeks. MD (2 g/kg body weight (B.W.)), MD (1 g/kg B.W.) + AlaPro (9:1, 1 g/kg B.W.), and vehicle were orally administrated 60 mins before measurements in each diet group. The GTC + MD + AlaPro group showed significantly higher endurance performance than the Control-Vehicle group at all measurements. Indirect calorimetry analysis during running exercise at 4 weeks in the Control and GTC groups supplemented with pre-exercise MD + AlaPro administration revealed significantly higher fat oxidation in the GTC groups compared to the Control group. The combined increase in fatty acid utilization through continuous GTC intake and pre-exercise MD + AlaPro carbohydrate energy supplementation synergistically improves endurance capacity.


Bemisia tabaci is a complex of cryptic whitefly species, which includes some of the world's most damaging agricultural pests. The Mediterranean (MED) putative species is globally invasive and its populations are often resistant to insecticides. The intra-species genetic variability identified in partial sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase 1 (mtCOI) gene has led to the recognition of four MED groups: Q1, Q2, Q3 and African silver-leafing (ASL). A lack of hybridisation between Q1 and ASL populations has been reported, but the taxonomic and biological significance of these groups remained unclear.

The aim of this study, therefore, was to evaluate the species status of MED groups using an integrative approach, combining (i) molecular analyses of high-throughput sequencing-derived mitogenomes, (ii) reciprocal crossing experiments to investigate reproductive compatibility among Q1, Q2 and ASL populations and developing a molecular marker for hybrid verification, (iii) detection of bacterial endosymbionts and (iv) bioassays to compare their host-plant ranges and performances on 13 plants. Our mitogenome phylogeny showed close relationships among Q1 and Q2 populations, while ASL was placed outside the Q1/Q2 cluster with 100% bootstrap support. Using the mitogenomes as a reference enabled the identification of sequence errors in 155 of 289 published MED mtCOI haplotypes. Crossing experiments revealed that only Q1 from Spain and Q2 from Israel were compatible, confirming that they belong to the same species. In contrast, ASL from Uganda and Q1 from Sudan both failed to interbreed with any other population. Parental origin of the Q1xQ2 hybrids was verified by the novel nuclear marker GC1 and their fertility by backcrossing. The F2 offspring showed asymmetry in numbers and sex ratio. Hypotheses were formulated about the involvement of endosymbionts Rickettsia and/or Hamiltonella in the F2 asymmetry, and Wolbachia and/or Cardinium in the incompatibility between Spain Q1 and Sudan Q1 populations. Lastly, significant differences (P<0.05) in host use occurred amongst all four populations. Spain Q1 had the widest host range and Israel Q2 the narrowest, but the most distinct pattern of host use was observed for Uganda ASL. In addition, despite its name, we found no evidence of the capacity of ASL to induce silver-leafing symptoms in squash.

From this combined evidence, we conclude that the ASL group belongs to a distinct biological species and we highlight the inconsistency between the biological species concept and the currently used species delimitation based on the partial mtCOI sequence and 3.5% nucleotide distance threshold. Accurate knowledge of the number and biology of cryptic species will allow more targeted and efficient design of pest control strategies.


The paper is presenting the examination of the cyberwarfare phenomenon in its legal context. The cyberattacks are increasingly effective measures of modern combat and would probably become the most crucial dimension of forthcoming armed conflict. The role of the international humanitarian law is to determine whenever the cyberattack is reaching the threshold of an armed conflict. The aim of the article is to present the existing framework of ius in bello in terms of its temporal scope of applicability, especially in the light of the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare. It supported conclusion that the international law requires an revision of the armed conflict definition to sufficiently addressed the challenges arising from growing cyber activity.


Abstract New discoveries of kuksite, Pb3Zn3Te6+P2O14, from the Black Pine mine, Montana, and Blue Bell claims, California, have enabled a detailed crystal-chemical study of the mineral to be undertaken. Single-crystal X-ray structure refinements of the structure indicate that it is isostructural with dugganite, Pb3Zn3Te6+As2O14, and joëlbruggerite, Pb3Zn3(Sb5+,Te6+)As2O13(OH,O). Kuksite from the Black Pine mine crystallizes in space group P321, with unit-cell dimensions a = 8.392(1), c = 5.204(1) Å, V = 317.39(8) Å3, and Z = 1 (R1 = 2.91% for 588 reflections [Fo > 4σF] and 3.27% for all 624 reflections), while Blue Bell kuksite has the unit cell a = 8.3942(5), c = 5.1847(4) Å, and V = 316.38(4) Å3 (R1 = 3.33% for 443 reflections [Fo > 4σF] and 3.73% for all 483 reflections). Chemical analyses indicate that solid-solution series exist between kuksite, dugganite, and joëlbruggerite. Raman spectroscopic and powder X-ray diffraction data are also presented for samples from both occurrences. The crystal structure of the chemically related species yafsoanite, (Ca,Pb)3Te26+Zn3O12, from the type locality (Delbe orebody, Kuranakh Au Deposit, Aldan Shield, Saha Republic, Russia), has been refined to R1 = 2.41% for 135 reflections [Fo > 4σF] and 3.68% for all 193 reflections. A garnet-type structure has been confirmed and significantly improves upon the results of an earlier structure determination


We studied the result of immunostaining for muscle specific actin in 15 chondroblastomas and observed distinct muscle actin positive chondroblasts and chondrocytes in five cases. In their cytoplasm actin positive cells contained bundles of microfilaments with focal densities on the ultrastructural level, but they differed from myofibroblasts in many aspects. Analogously to the terminology of myofibroblasts such cells can be probably designated as myochondroblasts having characteristic immunophenotype (vimentin, S-100 protein, NSE and muscle actin positivity).


With the availability of very high resolution commercial satellite data, there has been much interest to extract man-made objects from such imagery. In this paper, we propose a PC-based incremental system, which includes both road and building extraction tasks in a same package, and makes use of IKONOS's stereo pair to generate 3-D city-model. For each image set, we first use the traditional Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to locate the vegetated areas to be used for masking, and apply the Canny operator to the panchromatic images for edge detection. Subsequently, we use the edge thinning and division algorithm to enhance the detected edges. The roads in satellite imagery are extracted in a semiautomatic way. After the major road areas have been extracted, we focus the search for buildings in areas that are neither road nor vegetation instead of searching the whole image. The package also provides user interactions, which make use of some existing techniques for rooftop hypotheses generation. To handle buildings of different sizes in an image, we use a multi-level approach to make 3D building model generation more efficient


Azide polymers samples were analyzed by FT-MIR in order to develop a quantitative methodology to determine the C, H and N content in energetic polymers used in propellants. The elemental analysis data were used as reference. The FT-MIR results show a good agreement with CHN analysis. A good linear relationship was obtained suggesting that the methodology developed in the CTA laboratory can be used for quality control of these energetic polymers.


Primary activities of daily living (ADL) were monitored weekly in 102 patients admitted to a rehabilitation ward for elderly people using the Barthel index. The three commonest diagnoses were 'stroke', 'fractured neck of femur' and 'dementia recovering from acute illness'. Multiple disabling diagnoses were common: 60% of patients had dementia and 23% had a live-in carer; mean (median) length of stay in the rehabilitation ward was 98 (62 days). Over 18 months, the weekly assessment of patients in the ward was omitted once. No extra resources were needed. There was a significant rise in Barthel scores between admission to the rehabilitation ward (median Barthel 6) and discharge (median 13) for the group as a whole (median change 6, 95% CI 5–7; p < 0.001) and for each of the three main diagnostic groups. Barthel scores on discharge were significantly lower than in patients discharged from an acute ward for elderly people. Barthel scores and mental test scores (MTS) at discharge were significantly related to destination on discharge, with a characteristic pattern for patients unable to return home and having to be placed in nursing homes (Barthel < 10, MTS < 7). Our experience confirms that routine clinical use of the Barthel in this setting is feasible and responds to clinically important change, at least in group evaluation. It suggests that the Barthel may be useful in outcome measurement, case-mix adjustment and audit of discharge practices.


Smart campus refers to campus facilities which are supporting all activities of the academics in carrying out the obligations of the Tridarma Perguruan Tinggi using information technology as the backbone. STKIP Muhammadiyah Bone was chosen as a partner in the community service program. In order to welcome a transformation, the campus will direct its services with technology. Currently services such as student registration, attendance input is still done mannually, in the future it will be converted into an electronic system. However, in STKIP Muhammadiyah Bone, it has not applied smart campus system. The proposed solution is to make Smart cards socialization and training and database implementation. After thorough socialization and training which includes hardware, software, procedures and work procedures, furthermore, independent development is carried out by the campus itself. This activity was held for one day and went smoothly judging from the enthusiasm of the staff and students who participated in this activity and the installation of two smartcard systems in the rector and vice rector rooms.


Development of RADAR absorbing materials (RAMs) is the most important research area in camouflage application mainly in Defence. Aniline was polymerized in presence of dodecylbenzene sulphonic acid (DBSA) as a functionalized protonic acid in water medium to form DBSA-doped polyaniline (PANI). Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 (NZF) nanoparticles were synthesized by co-precipitation method along with Bariun Titanate (BaTiO3) particles to form BaTiO3-Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 nanoparticles. Both DBSA-doped PANI and BaTiO3-Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 nanoparticles were thoroughly mixed in different ratios and the mixtures were dispersed in Epoxy Resin (LY556) matrices to produce RAMs. The spectroscopic characterization of the composite materials were examined by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), High resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM). The microwave absorbing properties return loss (dB) and important parameters such as complex relative permittivity (εr ́ jεr ́ ́), complex relative permeability (μr ́ jμr ́ ́) were measured in different microwave frequencies in X-band (8.2-12.4 GHz) region. The composite materials showed that a wider absorption frequency range and showed maximum return loss of -15.78 dB (>97% power absorption) at 10.8 GHz. The mechanism of microwave absorption occurs mainly due to the dielectric loss rather than magnetic loss.


Composers do not usually collaborate with other composers but, for the last half century, open works were created that invite performers to implement details left undetermined or even decide the order in which various sections of the composition are to be played. Chance operations were also used in the writing of musical pieces and, in music generated with the assistance of computers, controlled randomness found its place. This article proposes a platform designed to encourage collaborative and interactive composition on high-performance computers with DISSCO (Digital Instrument for Sound Synthesis and Composition). DISSCO incorporates random procedures as well as deterministic means of defining the components of a piece. It runs efficiently on the Comet supercomputer of the San Diego Supercomputing Center and uses the Jupyter notebook environment to integrate the end-to-end processes with a user. These tools, the implementation platform, and the collaboration management are discussed in detail. Comments regarding aesthetic implications of the partnership between one or more humans and computer—considered a bona fide collaborator—are also provided. Possible future developments are supplied at the end.


Abstract

 Exotic animals, including small herbivores, are increasing in popularity as companion animals. Commonly owned exotic herbivores include guinea pigs, chinchillas, and rabbits. These animals fall into the category of prey species with an inherent instinct to hide their illness until severely affected by the disease process. Therefore, any of these animals presented as an emergency case must be carefully evaluated for chronic underlying illness. Cardiovascular emergency and critical care principles are similar across all mammalian species. However, specialized techniques and adaptations are occasionally required because of the unique physiology and natural behaviors of these animals. It is essential to evaluate and stabilize these patients before attempting definitive diagnostic plans. Emergency cardiovascular presentations, as in other mammals, consist of congestive heart failure, arrhythmias, pericardial effusion, and toxicities that can result in cardiac and pulmonary arrest. Cardiac disease is a relatively common finding in small exotic mammals, but there are few peer-reviewed reports regarding diagnosis and treatment of heart disease in these species. Diagnostic testing and treatment options are generally based on knowledge of small animal medicine.


With the tremendous growth of wind power worldwide in the past decade, there has been an equally great demand for simplified, standard and publicly available models for simulating wind power generators in commercially available power system simulation tools for stability analysis. Several efforts have been on the way to meet this need. The Western Electricity Coordinating Council's Renewable Energy Modeling Task Force has successfully achieved this goal and more recently has been working on expanding these models to include the ability to model complex plants, energy storage and frequency response capabilities. This paper presents an account of these latest developments.


Falls are the second leading cause of injury deaths worldwide, inducing over 0.6 million accidental deaths per year. Among various prevention strategies, fall-related research has been prioritized. However, conventional fall detection solutions rely on computer vision or wearable sensors embody several inherent limitations such as scalability, coverage, and privacy issues. To this end, we present FallSense, a transparent and real-time fall sensing system driven by wireless channel data. FallSense is built on a Dynamic Template Matching (DTM) algorithm, which can start with a light training set and keep updating on usage. FallSense has been realized on commodity WiFi devices and evaluated in real environments. Experimental results show that FallSense outperforms another state-of-the-art approach WiFall in terms of detection precision, false alarm rate and complexity.


Tomato is a model plant for studying the mechanisms of plant salt tolerance. Responses of Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) to various concentrations of salt and changes in some protein expression levels were investigated. Seeds of three (3) varieties of tomato namely, Roma vf, Rio Grande and UC 82 B were germinated on a nursery bed and seedlings were transferred to polythene bags supplemented with 0, 20, 40 and 60 mM NaCl. After 24 days, growth parameters, floral number, free Proline content, Glycine betaine content, shoot dry weight were measured using standard methods and procedures. Leaf samples were collected for protein extraction and the alterations in expression levels induced in leaf proteins under salt stress treatments were studied by one-dimensional SDS-PAGE. Increasing concentration of NaCl decreased in all growth parameters (floral number, number of leaves, plant height and dry weight) evaluated. Free Proline and Glycine betaine content increased significantly (P < 0.05) in salt-treated plants compared with the control. The content ranges from 1.56-1.99 mM in Roma vf, 1.32-1.99 mM in UC 82 B, and 1.77-1.99 mM, 1.95-1.99mM in Rio Grande. SDS-PAGE showed up-regulation of at least nine proteins with a molecular weight of 46, 35, 25 and 12 kD in leaves of UC 82 B, 45, 25, 19 and 17 kD in leaves of Roma vf and 38 kD in leaves of Rio Grande. At least three proteins with a molecular weight of 29 kD in leaves of Roma vf and 45 and 53 kD in leaves of Rio Grande were down-regulated. From the results of this study, it was observed that Tomato Roma vf is more tolerant to salt stress followed by UC 82 B and the Rio Grande, and therefore could be selected as the salt-tolerant variety to ameliorate production loss.


The effects of smoke and smoke fractions from tobacco and a substitute smoking material (NSM) on the DNA content of mammaliam cells in culture were measured. Tobacco smoke caused significant (P less than 0.001) changes in the DNA content of all the mammalian cells exposed compared with controls. NSM smoke did not have a significant effect on the DNA content of the exposed cells (P less than 0.95). Smoke from blends of NSM and tobacco caused changes in DNA content in proportion to the amount of tobacco in the mixtures. Condensate from cigarettes containing tobacco or blends of tobacco and NSM caused significant (P less than 0.001) changes in DNA content of mammalian cell populations in culture, whereas equal weights of condensate from NSM alone or NSM containing nicotine did not cause significant changes (P less than 0.05). NSM produces 28% of the weight of condensate per cigarette in comparison with tabacco and would, therefore, be expected to be far less biologically active than tobacco. Filtered smoke from cigarettes containing tobacco caused significant (P less than 0.001) changes in the DNA content of mammalian cells in culture. These changes were quantitatively similar to those caused by whole smoke suggesting that the gas phase of cigarette smoke is biologically more reactive than the particulate phase. The filtered smoke from the substitute smoking material NSM did not cause significant (P less than 0.95) changes in DNA content of cultured mammalian cells. Filtered smoke from blends of NSM and tobacco caused changes in DNA content in proportion to the amount of tobacco in the mixture.


This work was designed for low-temperature mechanical properties of the solder joints, the temperature is 293K, 223K, 173K, and 123K, in order to get the mechanical strength and mechanism of fracture at low temperature; Cryogenic temperature (77K) storage experiment is applied to get microstructure of internal solder joint, and the evolution of IMC and other microstructures, as well as solder joints' mechanical properties, failure modes and failure mechanisms The results show that tensile strength of the solder joints increases first and then decreases along with the decreasing temperature, 63Sn37Pb/Cu and 62Sn36Pb2Ag/Ag joints reach their maximum strength at 173K and 223K respectively. Cryogenic temperature storage has no effect on IMC growing, but tin whisker is found in some parts of 63Sn37Pb/Cu and 62Sn36Pb2Ag/Cu solder joints stored for 10 days, without appearance in solder joints that stored for 20 days and those lead-free solder jonits. Sn whisker is random and unpredictable.


In recent years, industries have increasingly demanded novel materials of low density (and, therefore, weight) and high strength. Such materials are required for all kinds of transport, especially for automobile and aviation industries. Lower weight vehicles would allow for reduced fuel consumption, which increases the transportation efficiency (the economical point of view) and a corresponding decrease of emission of pollutants to the atmosphere (the ecological point of view). This is why the development of materials with decreased densities is of great importance. The aim of this study was to develop novel materials as reinforcing elements for metal matrix composites. Boron crystalline compounds are proposed to be used, including the derivatives of higher boron– hydrogen anions BnXn 2- n = 10,12, X = H (in some cases – halogen, for example, Cl) as their respective densities meet the criteria. The study pursued two goals: (i) to develop a method for producing these boron hydrides and (ii) to investigate the structure and properties of these boron hydrides.


We demonstrate that the near-horizon physics, the Hawking radiation, and the reflection off the radial potential barrier can be understood entirely within a conformal field theory picture in terms of one- and two-point functions in the boundary Liouville theory. An important element in this demonstration is the notion of horizon state, the Hawking radiation being interpreted as a result of the transition of horizon state to the ordinary states propagating outside the black hole horizon.


The virtualization of compute and network resources enables an unseen flexibility for deploying network services. A wide spectrum of emerging technologies allows an ever-growing range of orchestration possibilities in cloud-based environments. But in this context it remains challenging to rhyme dynamic cloud configurations with deterministic performance. The service operator must somehow map the performance specification in the Service Level Agreement (SLA) to an adequate resource allocation in the virtualized infrastructure. We propose the use of a VNF profile to alleviate this process. This is illustrated by profiling the performance of four example network functions (a virtual router, switch, firewall and cache server) under varying workloads and resource configurations. We then compare several methods to derive a model from the profiled datasets. We select the most accurate method to further train a model which predicts the services' performance, in function of incoming workload and allocated resources. Our presented method can offer the service operator a recommended resource allocation for the targeted service, in function of the targeted performance and maximum workload specified in the SLA. This helps to deploy the softwarized service with an optimal amount of resources to meet the SLA requirements, thereby avoiding unnecessary scaling steps.


Throughout, Lovell provides just enough background and context to make challenging topics accessible to the non-specialist while simultaneously enlivening the narrative with events and people drawn from the documents. The result is a historical geography that is both engaging to read and brimming with scholarly insight. For years, I have successfully used earlier editions in place of a textbook in my undergraduate courses on colonial Latin America. Given the improvements, I am certain this edition will be even more effective.


Acute inflammatory diseases, such as sepsis, are life-threatening illnesses. Regulating the α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7 nAchR)-mediated signaling may be a promising strategy to treat sepsis. Diarylheptanoids have long been found to exhibit anti-inflammatory properties. However, the possible mechanism of diarylheptanoids has rarely been investigated. In this study, we isolated and synthesized 49 diarylheptanoids and analogues and evaluated their anti-inflammatory activities. Among them, compounds 28 and 40 markedly blocked lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced production of nitric oxide (NO), interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and interleukin-6 in murine RAW264.7 cells. Furthermore, compounds 28 and 40 also effectively attenuated LPS-induced sepsis, acute lung injury, and cytokines release in vivo. Mechanistically, compounds 28 and 40 significantly induced phosphorylation of janus kinase 2/signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (JAK2/STAT3) signaling and suppression of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathway. Furthermore, blocking α7 nAchR could effectively abolish compounds 28 and 40-mediated activation of JAK2-STAT3 signaling as well as inhibition of NF-κB activation and NO production in LPS-exposed RAW264.7 cells. Collectively, our findings have identified a new diarylheptanoid, compound 28, as an agonist of α7 nAchR-JAK2-STAT3 signaling, which can be potentially developed as a valuable candidate for the treatment of sepsis, and provide a new lead structure for the development of anti-inflammatory agents targeting α7 nAchR-JAK2-STAT3 signaling.


Taken into account the development features of physical scientific innovative base and the training objectives of the innovative ability of outstanding innovative talents,this paper proposed several reform methods for managing the physical scientific innovative base in the information age.It is believed that these experiences are helpful for construction and management of other scientific innovative bases and will promote innovative talent training for physical protection industry.


Abstract The compatible interaction between virulent Hessian fly, Mayetiola destructor (Say), larvae and susceptible wheat, Triticum aestivum L., plants was investigated at the light microscope and ultrastructural levels. During the first day of larval attack at the base of the sheath of the third leaf of a wheat seedling, small punctures of the appropriate size (0.1 μm in diameter) and spacing of the paired larval mandibles were found in the outer wall of epidermal cells. Inside epidermal cells, nuclei and cytoplasmic organelles seemed to be breaking down, and the number and size of cytoplasmic vacuoles had increased. Two to 3 d later, epidermal and mesophyll cells at the base of the third leaf showed signs of becoming nutritive. Nutritive cells were identified by an increase in cytoplasmic staining, increased numbers of cellular organelles (mitochondria, proplastids, Golgi, and rough endoplasmic reticulum), numerous small vacuoles, and an irregularly shaped nucleus. The Hessian fly nutritive tissue probably acts as a sink tissue within the wheat seedling, benefiting the growth of larvae by importing photoassimilates. Breakdown of nutritive cells began soon after they were first observed, indicated by a change in the shape and density of the cell nucleus. Contents of nutritive cells moved through compromised cell walls into adjacent cells that had a more complete breakdown and loss of cytoplasm. Structural changes were not restricted to the third leaf. The sixth leaf, a leaf more recently initiated by the shoot apical meristem that was not directly fed upon by larvae, was found to consist primarily of well-developed epidermal layers, with poorly developed mesophyll cells. The implications of these findings for understanding incompatible interactions between avirulent Hessian fly larvae and R gene-defended plants are briefly discussed.


This study was designed to determine the distribution patterns of nidogen-1 (N-1) and -2 (N-2) in the rat uterus, oviduct and ovary. For this purpose, 6 female Wistar-albino rats found in proestrous period were used. The tissue samples fixed in 10% neutral formalin were examined immunohistochemically. Sections were incubated with primary goat-polyclonal N-1 and -2 antibody. Both the N-1 and -2 immunoreacted strongly with the uterine luminal and gland epithelium, many cells in the uterine stroma, the oviduct epithelium, the follicular cells of the unilaminar primary follicles, interstitial cells, and atretic follicles. They were moderately expressed in the follicular epithelium of primary and secondary follicles. The immunostaining intensity of N-1 was higher than that of N-2 in theca interna cells of graafian follicles. N-1 and -2 immunostaining were weakly detected in some of the primordial follicles, and in the granulosa lutein cells of corpus luteum. Neither theca externa nor zona pellucida immunoreacted with N-1 and -2. In conclusion, the present study showed that the nidogen are synthesized by the uterine luminal and the endometrial gland epithelium, the oviduct epithelium and ovarian follicles in the rats.


In this paper, a multi-input multi-output(MIMO) integral variable structure system with an integral-augmented sliding surface is designed for the improved robust control of uncertain multivariable system under the matched persistent disturbance. To effectively remove the reaching phase problems, the integral augmented sliding surface is proposed. Then for its design, the eigenstructure assignment technique is introduced to. To guarantee the designed performance against the persistent disturbance, the stabilizing control for multi-input system is also designed to generate the sliding mode on the integral sliding surface. The stability of the global system together with the existence condition of the sliding mode are investigated and proved for the case of multi input system in the presence of uncertainty and disturbance. The reaching phase is completely removed in proposed MIMO VSS by satisfying the two requirements. An example and computer simulations will be present for showing the usefulness of algorithm.


AIM To discusses pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapeutic alternatives for managing knee osteoarthritis in primary care by primary health care nurse practitioners. METHODS A case example is presented, the evidence-based guideline recommendations of the Osteoarthritis Research Society International and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons are reviewed, and a plan of care is developed. RESULTS Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis seen in primary care, and it is a major public health issue because the aging population and widespread obesity have drastically increased incidence. Osteoarthritis is clinically associated with escalating chronic pain, physical disability, and decreased quality of life. Early diagnosis of mild osteoarthritis in relatively young patients presents an opportunity for primary health care providers to manage pain, increase quality of life, and decrease risk of disability. CONCLUSION Primary health care providers can implement these recommendations in their own practices to provide care to patients with knee osteoarthritis based on current best evidence.


The cultivation of tropical Asian rice, which may have originated 9000 yr ago, represents an agricultural ecosystem of unrivaled ecological complexity. We undertook a study of the community ecology of irrigated tropical rice fields on Java, Indonesia, as a supporting study for the Indonesian National Integrated Pest Management Programme, whose purpose is to train farmers to be better agronomists and to employ the principles of integrated pest management (IPM). Two of our study objectives, reported on here, were (1) to explore whether there exist general and consistent patterns of arthropod community dynamics related to natural or intrinsic levels of biological control, and (2) to understand how the existing levels of biological control are affected by insecticide use, as well as by large-scale habitat factors relating to differing patterns for vegetational landscapes, planting times, and the length of dry fallow periods. We performed a series of observational studies and two experimental studies. Abundant and well-distributed populations of generalist predators can be found in most early-season tropical rice fields. We took samples from plants and water surface using a vacuum-suction device, and from the subsurface using a dip net. Our results show that high populations of generalist predators are likely to be supported, in the early season, by feeding on abundant populations of detritus- feeding and plankton-feeding insects, whose populations consistently peak and decline in the first third of the season. We hypothesize that since this abundance of alternative prey gives the predator populations a "head start" on later-developing pest populations, this process should strongly suppress pest populations and generally lend stability to rice ecosystems by decoupling predator populations from a strict dependence on herbivore populations. We experimentally tested our hypothesis of trophic linkages among organic matter, detritivores and plankton feeders, and generalist predators and showed that by increasing organic matter in test plots we could boost populations of detritivores and plankton-feeders, and in turn significantly boost the abundance of generalist predators. These results hold for populations found on the plant, on the water surface, and below the water surface. We also demonstrated the link between early- season natural enemy populations and later-season pest populations by experimentally reducing early-season predator populations with insecticide applications, causing pest populations to resurge later in the season. Overall, these results demonstrate the existence of a mechanism in tropical irrigated rice systems that supports high levels of natural biological control. This mechanism depends on season- long successional processes and interactions among a wide array of species, many of which have hitherto been ignored as important elements in a rice ecosystem. Our results support a management strategy that promotes the conservation of existing natural biological control through a major reduction in insecticide use, and the corresponding increase in habitat heterogeneity.


This paper aims at providing a solution for augmenting the runoff water from major lakes of Chennai and Thiruvallur district of Tamilnadu. Hence an attempt was made to save surplus water from Puzhal, Ayanambakkam, Koratur, Ambattur, and Retteri lakes have been proposed. To interlink Puzhal lake with Koratur lake alignment is considered as it passes through the road network, excluding built-up areas. Water quality analysis was also done with a minimum of three samples that were collected from each lake. Samples were tested for pH, Total dissolved solids, Total suspended Solids, and Chemical oxygen demand. The linking of the lakes is proposed based on the water quality assessment of each lake. This study suggests an efficient/optimal route or canal for interlinking lakes in a GIS environment. The elevation differences, slope and dimensions of the canal, and the possible best location to link the lakes/tanks were obtained through the spatial data in the GIS. This helps in an effective and optimized management of the water supply for Chennai city.


This paper describes a Bayesian procedure for unsupervised learning of phonological rules from an unlabeled corpus of training data. Like Goldsmith's Linguistica program (Goldsmith, 2004b), whose output is taken as the starting point of this procedure, our learner returns a grammar that consists of a set of signatures , each of which consists of a set of stems and a set of suffixes . Our grammars dif-fer from Linguistica's in that they also contain a set of phonological rules , specifically insertion, deletion and substitution rules, which permit our grammars to collapse far more words into a signature than Linguistica can. Interestingly, the choice of Bayesian prior turns out to be crucial for obtaining a learner that makes linguistically appropriate generalizations through a range of different sized training corpora.


Air showers with primary energies between 3 and 100 PeV which are pointed toward TALE give rise to an optical signal dominated by Cherenkov radiation rather than fluorescence light. The reconstruction of these showers can be greatly improved for a sample of these showers by placing a small (400 m square) array of non-imaging Cherenkov counters (25 counters) below the field of view of TALE. Estimates of the hybrid reconstruction resolutions for shower geometry, energy and Xmax are presented along with estimates of the hybrid aperture. NICHE counter designs and construction plans will be presented.


Background: Laparoscopy is perceived as a minimally invasive surgical technique that both provides a panoramic & magnified view of the pelvic organs and allows surgery at the time of diagnosis. Laparoscopy has became an integral part of gynaecologic surgery for the diagnosis and treatment of abdominal and pelvic disorders of the Female reproductive organs. Endoscopic reproductive surgery intended to improve fertility many includes surgery of the uterus, ovaries, pelvic peritoneum and the fallopian tubes. Aim: To determine the best treatment for infertility. Method: The prospective study was carried out among the infertile women during the period of July 2014 to December 2014, in Shaheed Suhrawardi Medical College Hospital. Fifty women identified with Infertility both primary and secondary with the criteria of menstrual cycles with duration of 25-45 days were selected. Semen analysis was considered to be normal. Result: Fifty women underwent diagnostic & therapeutic laparoscopy between the period of July 2014 to December 2014. Among them 20 suffered from primary subfertility & 30 from secondary subfertility. In primary subfertility 12 patients were diagnosed as poiycystic ovarian disease & 7 patients diagnosed as minimal to moderate endometriosis 1 patient diagnosed as pelvic inflammatory disease. In secondary subfertility 15 patients diagnosed as pelvic inflammatory disease, 12 patients with endometriosis & 03 patients as poiycystic ovarian disease. Therapeutic intervention were done in almost all cases of subfertility. Conclusion: The routine use of diagnostic laparoscopy for the evaluation of all case of female infertility is currently under debate. Current evidence indicates that the surgical treatment of minimal or mild endometriosis increase the spontaneous pregnancy rate in Infertility women J Shaheed Suhrawardy Med Coll, December 2015, Vol.7(2); 73-75


Protein-protein interactions are crucial to many biological processes, and predicting the effect of amino acid mutations on binding is important for protein engineering. While data-driven approaches using deep learning have shown promise, the scarcity of annotated experimental data remains a major challenge. In this work, we propose a new approach that predicts mutational effects on binding using the change in conformational flexibility of the protein-protein interface. Our approach, named Rotamer Density Estimator (RDE), employs a flow-based generative model to estimate the probability distribution of protein side-chain conformations and uses entropy to measure flexibility. RDE is trained solely on protein structures and does not require the supervision of experimental values of changes in binding affinities. Furthermore, the unsupervised representations extracted by RDE can be used for downstream neural network predictions with even greater accuracy. Our method outperforms empirical energy functions and other machine learning-based approaches.


【Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the association between job stress and metabolic syndrome among male workers. Methods: A total of 396 male workers employed in an electronic company, located in 'P' city, Gyeonggi Province, who had taken medical examination at the 'D' hospital, volunteered in this study. All the data used in this study were obtained from 'D' hospital after getting consent and permission from the workers. General and occupational characteristics, medical history, and health-related behaviors of the subjects were obtained by self-administered questionnaire. Results: The highest occupational stress by sub-sector was reported in the order of insufficient job control, organizational system, lack of reward, job demand, job insecurity, physical environment, job culture, and relationship conflict. The prevalence rate of metabolic syndrome of the participants was 19.9%. The results of the multiple logistic regression analysis on metabolic syndrome of the subjects indicated that the syndrome was significantly higher among those with family history, smoking habit and ex-smoking, working duration of 3 years and over, and with higher total score of occupational stress. It was significantly more prevalent, when the degree of stress was high in the sub-sectors of occupational stress; job autonomy, job insecurity, lack of reward, and job culture. Conclusion: In conclusion, it is necessary to implement a plan to efficiently manage the job stress of these male workers, as the probability of metabolic syndrome increased with the increase of occupational stress. Furthermore, considering the highest occupational stress was found to be job autonomy among its sub-sectors, it is necessary to prepare various measures to enhance the autonomy of such employees.】


Contributions of quasiparticle states, bound to the boundary of anisotropically paired superconductors, to the density of states and to the conductance of normal-metal{endash}insulator{endash}superconduction (NIS) junctions are studied both analytically and numerically. For smooth surfaces and real order parameters, we find some general results for the bound-state energies. In particular, we show that under fairly general conditions quasiparticle states with nonzero energies exist for momentum directions within a narrow region around the surface normal. The energy dispersion of the bound states always has an extremum for the direction along the normal. Along with the zero-bias anomaly due to midgap states, we find, for quasi-two-dimensional materials, additional low-temperature peaks in the conductance of NIS junctions for voltages determined by the extrema of the bound-state energies. The influence of interface roughness on the conductance is investigated within the framework of Ovchinnikov{close_quote}s model. We show that nonzero-bias peaks at low temperatures may give information on the order parameter in the bulk, even though it is suppressed at the surface. {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}


In magnetorheological finishing (MRF) the mechanical energy for material removal is generated by the hydrodynamic flow of a magnetorheological (MR) polishing suspension through a converging gap that is formed by a workpiece surface and a moving rigid wall. In addition to causing material removal, MRF also reduces the surface micro roughness of optical materials to ≤ 10 Å rms. Shape errors are corrected to a fraction of a wavelength of light and subsurface damage is removed. A theoretical analysis of MRF, based on Bingham lubrication theory, illustrates that the formation of a core attached to the moving wall results in dramatically high stress on the workpiece surface. A correlation between the shear stress on the workpiece surface and materials removal is obtained.


This research identifies the underlying drivers impacting on healthcare professionals' social media usage behaviours using the technology acceptance model (TAM) as the theoretical lens. A self-administered survey questionnaire was developed and administered to 219 healthcare professionals. Data are analysed applying the structural equation modelling (SEM) technique. The SEM model demonstrated an acceptable model fit (χ2 = 534.241; df, 239, χ2/df = 2.235, RMSEA = 0.06, IFI = 0.92, TLI = 0.93, and CFI = 0.92) and indicates content quality, perceived risk, perceived credibility, peer influence, confirmation of expectations, supporting conditions, and perceived cost significantly influence the notion of perceived social media usefulness. Furthermore, perceived social media usefulness positively affects social media usage behaviour of healthcare professionals. This research generates important insights into what drives the adoption of social media by healthcare professionals. These insights could help develop social media guidelines and strategies to improve the state of professional interactions between health professionals and their clients.


The complete mitochondrial genome of Nanorana pleskei from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was sequenced. It includes 17,660 base pairs, containing 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNAs and 23 tRNAs. A tandem duplication of tRNA(Met) gene was found in this mitochondrial genome, and the similarity between the two tRNA(Met) genes is 85.8%, being the highest in amphibian mitochondrial genomes sequenced thus far. Based on gene organization, 24 types were found from 145 amphibian mitochondrial genomes. Type 1 was present in 108 species, type 11 in 11 species, types 5, 16, 17, and 20 each in two species, and the others each present in one species. Fifteen types were found in Anura, being the most diversity in three orders of the Lissamphibia. Our phylogenetic results using 11 protein-coding gene sequences of 145 amphibian mitochondrial genomes strongly support the monophyly of the Lissamphibia, as well as its three orders, the Gymnophiona, Caudata, and Anura, among which the relationships were ((Gymnophiona (Caudata, Anura)). Based on the phylogenetic trees, type 1 was recognized as the ancestral type for amphibians, and type 11 was the synapomorphic type for the Neobatrachia. Gene rearrangements among lineages provide meaningful phylogenetic information. The rearrangement of the LTPF tRNA gene cluster and the translocation of the ND5 gene only found in the Neobatrachia support the monophyly of this group; similarly, the tandem duplication of the tRNA(Met) genes only found in the Dicroglossidae support the monophyly of this family [Current Zoology 57 (6): 785-805, 2011].


To assess the effect of the polyomavirus (Py) early proteins, the large T (LT), middle T (MT), and small T (ST) antigens, on gene expression from the Py late promoter, replication-defective plasmid constructs with the bacterial chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (cat) gene linked to this promoter were cotransfected into mouse or rat cells with plasmids capable of producing either LT, MT, or all three early proteins. When target CAT plasmids contained a truncated early region and thus had the coding potential for MT and ST, base-line CAT activities were low, whereas cotransfection with an LT plasmid resulted in up to 70-fold stimulation of CAT activity that was also reflected in similar increases in the level of steady-state mRNA. Studies with target plasmids with deletions within the Py regulatory region indicated that at least the major LT-binding site C and a functional enhancer region were both required for maximal stimulation of CAT activity. However, although enhancer deletions totally suppressed the ability of target plasmids to be trans activated, a consistent two- to fourfold stimulation of CAT activity by LT was still observed with a plasmid in which all three major LT-binding sites were deleted. Of four mutant LTs incapable of binding Py DNA but retaining immortalization potential, only one showed a low but significant trans-activating ability. When the early coding region was completely eliminated from the target plasmid, base-line CAT activity was increased 10-fold. LT failed to stimulate CAT activity to the same levels observed with target plasmid containing the truncated early region, but this limited response could be enhanced by supplying, in addition, MT and ST. Our results suggest that LT trans activation may involve the formation of a complex of transcriptional factors which interacts with the enhancer, an interaction that is facilitated both by the binding of LT to the Py regulatory region and by the presence of MT or ST or both, and that a significant portion of LT stimulation of late gene expression is a result of the removal of the competing early transcriptional unit via autoregulation. In addition, our results suggest that LT trans activation involves a second indirect component acting independently of LT binding and that the immortalization and trans activation functions of LT can be dissociated.


The dynamic nature of topology makes it challengeable to estimate link loss rates in mobile ad hoc network (MANET). Firstly, simulation results based on existing mobility models have the unrealistic movement scenarios which may not correctly reflect true MANET performance. Secondly, it is difficult to identify MANET topology under these models due to phantasmagoric movements. This paper presents the circle movement mobility model (CMMM), which is superior to previous models, and its topology identification algorithm to characterize the dynamic MANET topology. Moreover, we present a loss inferring algorithmic based on modeling and computational methodology of factor graphs, which iteratively updates the estimates of link losses. The inference is a process based on unicast back-to-back packets probes sent from a sender to pairs of receivers. Without internal nodes' cooperations, the inference can be calculated using only information recorded at the end hosts. NS2 simulations show that the proposed algorithms exhibit good performance.


Identification of when and where moving areas intersect is an important problem in maritime operations and air traffic control. This problem can become particularly complicated when considering large numbers of objects, and when taking into account the curvature of the earth. In this paper, we present an approach to conflict identification as a series of stages where the earlier stages are fast, but may result in a false detection of a conflict. These early stages are used to reduce the number of potential conflict pairs for the later stages, which are slower, but more precise. Our approach is generally applicable to objects moving in piece-wise straight lines on a 2D plane, and we present a specific case where the Mercator Projection is used to transform objects moving along rhumb lines on the earth into straight lines to fit in our approach. We present several examples to demonstrate our methods, as well as to quantify the empirical time complexity by using randomly generated areas.


On-chip spiral micromachined inductors fabricated in a 0.18-/spl mu/m digital CMOS process with 6-level copper interconnect and low-K dielectric are described. A post-CMOS maskless micromachining process compatible with the CMOS materials and design rules has been developed to create inductors suspended above the substrate with the inter-turn dielectric removed. Such inductors have higher quality factors as substrate losses are eliminated by silicon removal and increased self-resonant frequency due to reduction of inter-turn and substrate parasitic capacitances. Quality factors up to 12 were obtained for a 3.2-nH micromachined inductor at 7.5 GHz. Improvements of up to 180% in maximum quality factor, along with 40%-70% increase in self-resonant frequency were seen over conventional inductors. The effects of micromachining on inductor performance was modeled using a physics-based model with predictive capability. The model was verified by measurements at various stages of the post-CMOS processing. Micromachined inductor quality factor is limited by series resistance up to a predicted metal thickness of between 6-10 /spl mu/m.


Studies to date on continental slope deposits of Peru and Oregon indicate that coastal upwelling indirectly contributes to the alteration of sediment mass physical properties and stability characteristics by concentrating organic matter in the underlying and nearby sediments. Those sediments in close proximity to areas of intense upwelling display distinctly different geotechnical properties than do those of comparable sediment type some distance away. The ability of organic matter to adsorb water and to aggregate clay-size particles to form an open fabric appears to result in exceptionally high water End_Page 944------------------------------ content (853% by dry weight), porosity (89%), and plasticity as well as very low bulk density (1.09 Mg/m3). The undrained shear strength (cohesion) of these sediments is also unexpectedly high, resulting apparently from some form of bonding of the sediment particles by organic matter. Sensitivity (ratio of natural to remolded or disturbed shear strength) is also unusually high (21), indicating a high susceptibility to failure if the sediments should become severely disturbed. All sediments along the margins behave as if they are overconsolidated. The greater the organic content the greater the degree of overconsolidation. In some areas this degree is on the order of six to seven times that of similar slope deposits but with relatively low organic contents. This degree of ov rconsolidation suggests that organic-matter related, interparticle bonding may be responsible for the apparent overconsolidation. End_of_Article - Last_Page 945------------


Let $(Z_t)_{t\geq 0}$ denote the derivative martingale of branching Brownian motion, i.e.\@ the derivative with respect to the inverse temperature of the normalized partition function at critical temperature. A well-known result by Lalley and Sellke [\textit{Ann. Probab.}, 15(3):1052--1061, 1987] says that this martingale converges almost surely to a limit $Z_\infty$, positive on the event of survival. In this paper, our concern is the fluctuations of the derivative martingale around its limit. A corollary of our results is the following convergence, confirming and strengthening a conjecture by Mueller and Munier [\textit{Phys. Rev. E}, 90:042143, 2014]: \[ \sqrt{t} \left( Z_\infty - Z_t + \frac{\log t}{\sqrt{2\pi t}} Z_\infty \right) \xrightarrow[t\to\infty]{} S_{Z_\infty}, \quad \text{in law}, \] where $S$ is a spectrally positive 1-stable Levy process independent of $Z_\infty$.
In a first part of the paper, a relatively short proof of (a slightly stronger form of) this convergence is given based on the functional equation satisfied by the characteristic function of $Z_\infty$ together with tail asymptotics of this random variable. We then set up more elaborate arguments which yield a more thorough understanding of the trajectories of the particles contributing to the fluctuations. In this way, we can upgrade our convergence result to functional convergence. This approach also sets the ground for a follow-up paper, where we study the fluctuations of more general functionals including the renormalized critical additive martingale.
All proofs in this paper are given under the hypothesis $E[L(\log L)^3] < \infty$, where the random variable $L$ follows the offspring distribution of the branching Brownian motion. We believe this hypothesis to be optimal.


We present exact bright multi-soliton solutions of a generalized nonautonomous nonlinear Schrödinger equation with time- and space-dependent distributed coefficients and an external potential which describes a pulse propagating in nonlinear media when its transverse and longitudinal directions are nonuniformly distributed. Such solutions exist in certain constraint conditions on the coefficients depicting dispersion, nonlinearity, and gain (loss). Various shapes of bright solitons and interesting interactions between two solitons are observed. Physical applications of interest to the field and stability of the solitons are discussed.


Magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) is one of the most highly utilised tools in the assessment of patients with small bowel Crohn's disease (CD). As a non-invasive modality, it has both patient and procedure-related advantages over ileocolonoscopy which is the current gold standard for Crohn's disease activity assessment. MRE relies upon high-quality images to ensure accurate disease activity assessment; however, few studies have explored the impact of image quality on the accuracy of small bowel CD activity assessment. Bowel distension and motion artifacts are two key imaging parameters that impact the quality of images obtained through MRE. Multiple strategies have been employed to both minimise the effects of motion artifacts and improve bowel distension. This review discusses the definitions of bowel distension and motion artifacts within the literature with a particular focus on current strategies to improve bowel distension and limit motion artifacts in MRE.


Abstract It is often assumed that fluid inclusions in quartz do not maintain their density if they experience internal pressures 2 kbar in excess of confining pressure. However, results of a long-term (180 d) laboratory experiment simulating a nearly isothermal decompression PT path showed that two of 160 inclusions recorded the original density. These two inclusions thus maintained about 2 kbar internal overpressure for the duration of the experiment without modification. Comparison with results reported in the literature reveals that a small percentage of fluid inclusions in quartz from high-grade metamorphic rocks maintain peak densities during retrograde uplift. These inclusions represent outliers in homogenization temperature histograms and are often ignored during data interpretation.


Since 1999 the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has undertaken a joint project, called Hurricane Watch (HW), with the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (NOAA/AOML), and more recently the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). This project has evolved from archival data searches to storm monitoring and dedicated planning. Program focus in recent years has been an effort to plan RADARSAT-1 coverage with coincident NOAA aircraft penetration flights. In this paper, we will describe the CSA Mission Planning Center, the RADARSAT-1 planning timeline and guidelines, which form the basis for all planning, and activities related to storm tracking and request submission to support the HW program. The CSA maintains responsibilities for the overall management of issues related to data acquisition for the program, which involve: (1) monitoring active and potential hurricanes and tropical storms; (2) determining possible RADARSAT-1 coverage and generating requests; (3) submission of requests; (4) planning requests through routine operations and standard procedures; (5) monitoring status of submissions; (6) communication with project partners, and (7) acting as a liaison for project partners. We will discuss the challenges of hurricane imaging due to sometimes unpredictable storm trajectories coupled with imaging geometry, coverage and planning constraints. Finally, 2003 post-season results will be presented to demonstrate the contribution of RADARSAT-1 data in the study of hurricanes.


This paper presents a new approach to control of stable motion of single wheel driving robot system of a pitch that is controlled by an in-wheel motor and a roll that is controlled by a reaction wheel. This robot doesn"t have any actuator for a yaw axis control, which makes the derivation of the dynamics relatively simple. The Lagrange equations was applied to derive the dynamic equations of the one wheel driving robot to implement the dynamic speed control of the mobile robot. To achieve the real time speed control of the unicycle robot, the sliding mode control and optical regulator are utilized to prove the reliability while maintaining the desired speed tracking performance. In the roll controller, the sigmoid-function based robust controller has been adopted to reduce the vibration by the situation function. The optimal controller has been implemented for the pitch control to drive the unicycle robot to follow the desired velocity trajectory in real time using the state variables of pitch angle, angular velocity, angle and angular velocity of the driving wheel. The control performance of the control systems from a single dynamic model has been illustrated by the real experiments.


In patients undergoing hemodialysis, catheter-related bacteremia results in expensive hospitalizations. In our study, the mean cost was $23,451 per hospitalization. When itemized, housing ("bed-related") costs accounted for 66% of the total; laboratory costs accounted for 4%, radiologic costs accounted for 9%, and procedure-related costs accounted for 21%. Hypoalbuminemia and bacteremia due to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are associated with higher healthcare costs; bacteremia due to MRSA is also associated with poor survival rates.


During the past decade newborn screening for congenital hypothyroidism has become an important health activity in most developed countries. These screening programs have not only benefited patients and their families but also have produced new information about the epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of thyroid disease in infancy and childhood. During this period of implementation and growth of the screening programs, a variety of issues and questions arose. Some of these have been resolved, and some have not. The point has now been reached where collation of the combined experiences of the North American programs can address these issues. The reader should understand that what follows reflects current opinion and may require changes when the results of the next decade of screening are reviewed.
 SCREENING METHOD
 Thyroxine (T4) and Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone (TSH)
 Most North American programs use a two-tiered laboratory approach. An initial T4 measurement is followed by measurement of TSH in specimens with low T4 values. In addition to detecting infants with primary hypothyroidism (low or low normal T4 level with elevated TSH value; prevalence 1:3,500 to 4,500 newborns), this approach can also identify infants with thyroxine-binding globulin deficiency and some with hypothalamic-pituitary hypothyroidism (low or low normal T4 level with normal TSH value; prevalence 1:5,000 to 10,000 and 1:50,000 to 150,000 newborns, respectively). Programs that quantify T4 values also have the option of identifying newborns with hyperthyroxinemia (1:20,000 to 40,000 newborns).
 On the other hand, this approach will miss infants who have normal T4 values but elevated TSH values. Such infants are relatively commonplace in European programs where initial screening is done by measurement of TSH.


The DNA glycosylase NEIL3 has been implicated in DNA repair pathways including the base excision repair and the interstrand cross-link repair pathways via its DNA glycosylase and/or AP lyase activity, which are considered canonical roles of NEIL3 in genome integrity. Compared with the other DNA glycosylases NEIL1 and NEIL2, Xenopus laevis NEIL3 C terminus has two highly conserved zinc finger motifs containing GRXF residues (designated as Zf-GRF). It has been demonstrated that the minor AP endonuclease APE2 contains only one Zf-GRF motif mediating interaction with single-strand DNA (ssDNA), whereas the major AP endonuclease APE1 does not. It appears that the two NEIL3 Zf-GRF motifs (designated as Zf-GRF repeat) are dispensable for its DNA glycosylase and AP lyase activity; however, the potential function of the NEIL3 Zf-GRF repeat in genome integrity remains unknown. Here, we demonstrate evidence that the NEIL3 Zf-GRF repeat was associated with a higher affinity for shorter ssDNA than one single Zf-GRF motif. Notably, our protein–protein interaction assays show that the NEIL3 Zf-GRF repeat but not one Zf-GRF motif interacted with APE1 but not APE2. We further reveal that APE1 endonuclease activity on ssDNA but not on dsDNA is compromised by a NEIL3 Zf-GRF repeat, whereas one Zf-GRF motif within NEIL3 is not sufficient to prevent such activity of APE1. In addition, COMET assays show that excess NEIL3 Zf-GRF repeat reduces DNA damage in oxidative stress in Xenopus egg extracts. Together, our results suggest a noncanonical role of NEIL3 in genome integrity via its distinct Zf-GRF repeat in suppressing APE1 endonuclease-mediated ssDNA breakage.


The recent outbreak of COVID-19 poses a serious threat to people's lives. Epidemic control strategies have also caused damage to the economy by cutting off humans' daily commute. In this article, we develop an Individual-based Reinforcement Learning Epidemic Control Agent (IDRLECA) to search for smart epidemic control strategies that can simultaneously minimize infections and the cost of mobility intervention. IDRLECA first hires an infection probability model to calculate the current infection probability of each individual. Then, the infection probabilities together with individuals' health status and movement information are fed to a novel GNN to estimate the spread of the virus through human contacts. The estimated risks are used to further support an RL agent to select individual-level epidemic-control actions. The training of IDRLECA is guided by a specially designed reward function considering both the cost of mobility intervention and the effectiveness of epidemic control. Moreover, we design a constraint for control-action selection that eases its difficulty and further improve exploring efficiency. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that IDRLECA can suppress infections at a very low level and retain more than 95% of human mobility.


Heritability estimates of metabolic syndrome traits vary widely across studies. Some studies have suggested that the contribution of genes may vary with age or sex. We estimated the heritability of 11 metabolic syndrome-related traits and height as a function of age and sex in a large population-based sample of twin families (N = 2,792–27,021, for different traits). A moderate-to-high heritability was found for all traits [from H2 = 0.47 (insulin) to H2 = 0.78 (BMI)]. The broad-sense heritability (H2) showed little variation between age groups in women; it differed somewhat more in men (e.g., for glucose, H2 = 0.61 in young females, H2 = 0.56 in older females, H2 = 0.64 in young males, and H2= 0.27 in older males). While nonadditive genetic effects explained little variation in the younger subjects, nonadditive genetic effects became more important at a greater age. Our findings show that in an unselected sample (age range, ∼18–98 years), the genetic contribution to individual differences in metabolic syndrome traits is moderate to large in both sexes and across age. Although the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome has greatly increased in the past decades due to lifestyle changes, our study indicates that most of the variation in metabolic syndrome traits between individuals is due to genetic differences.


The intent of this study was to examine the effects of stress-like plasma corticosterone (CS) elevation on the generation of alloantigen-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) activity in mice. Elevation of plasma CS was achieved by infusion of exogenous CS via osmotic pumps. CS infusion at 16 mg/kg/day on days -4 through 10 relative to alloantigen challenge led to slight, but significant, suppression of CTL activity on day 10 but no elevation of plasma CS levels. Infusion of lower CS doses (1, 2, 4 or 8 mg/kg/day) had no effect on CTL activity. Serial sampling of mice infused with CS at 0.09, 0.9 or 9 mg/kg/day over a 14-day period indicated that only the 9 mg/kg/day infusion rate caused significant plasma CS elevation. Peak CS levels (approximately 500 ng/ml) were observed 1 day after the start of CS infusion, but CS levels fell to below 200 ng/ml by day 7 and were approximately 50 ng/ml on day 12 indicating that elevated plasma CS levels could not be maintained for extended periods by CS infusion. An attempt to define the windows of CS sensitivity during CTL development was made by infusing mice with CS at doses of 10-16 mg/kg/day on days 0-3, 3-6, 4-7, 5-8 and 6-9, relative to alloantigen challenge; however, CS infusion had no effect on CTL activity. In contrast, dexamethasone infusion (9.4 mg/kg/day) on days 0 to 3 suppressed CTL activity by approximately 90% indicating that the generation of CTL activity is sensitive to high dose GC treatment, but is refractory to stress-like CS elevation. In mixed lymphocyte-tumor cell cultures, CTL activity was suppressed by CS (2.5 x 10(-8) M) if added on the first day of culture but not if added on subsequent days. These results suggest that CTL are most sensitive to CS-induced suppression if exposed near to the time of alloantigen challenge.


Abstract: Religious education at all levels of institutions are generally still dwelled on the perspective of the internal circle,  intended for the internal, and less responsive to social changes. In other words, religious education is still monoreligious, so that institutions and religious communities are often stuttered toward the diversity and changes. In fact, the monoreligious model does not accept other people who are different. It does not foster a sensitivity on how to think, how to live and the needs of others who are a different religion. Such a model of religious education raises a wide impact on the mindset and attitude of religious students, one of which could potentially give rise to attitudes of intolerance. Therefore, it is necessary the presence of a renewal model of religious education that allows students to more insightful open to differences and diversity of religions. This research aims to know the implementation of the interreligious model in religious education at Senior High School (Sekolah Menengah Atas-SMA) BOPKRI 1 Yogyakarta. Data are collected by using interview, observation, and documentation, and verified by triangulation. The findings are that interreligious model at SMA BOPKRI 1 Yogyakarta has been implemented only on grade XII, whereas at the grades X and XI, the Christian religious education is applied. According to Michael Grimmit, the implementation of religious education at grades X and XI can be categorized as "learning religion", whereas in grade XII It can be categorized as "learning from religion". On the other hand, by using the theory of Jack Seymour and Tabita Kartika, the model religious education in grades X and XI can be included as "in the wall", whereas, in grade XII, it can be categorized as "beyond the wall". Tolerance and multiculturalism insight of students of SMA BOPKRI 1 Yogyakarta by applying the interreligious model is already up on the fifth level of the multicultural barometer popularized by Karuna Center for Peacebuilding i.e. on the level of respect, recognizes, and contributes to other groups, or can be categorized at the highest level, namely the award on the similarities and differences, as well as celebrate plurality.


This paper is devoted to proposing numerical algorithms based on the use of the tau and collocation procedures, two widely used spectral approaches for the numerical treatment of the initial high-order linear and non-linear equations of the singular type, especially those of the high-order Emden–Fowler type. The class of modified Chebyshev polynomials of the third-kind is constructed. This class of polynomials generalizes the class of the third-kind Chebyshev polynomials. A new formula that expresses the first-order derivative of the modified Chebyshev polynomials in terms of their original modified polynomials is established. The establishment of this essential formula is based on reducing a certain terminating hypergeometric function of the type 5F4(1). The development of our suggested numerical algorithms begins with the extraction of a new operational derivative matrix from this derivative formula. Expansion's convergence study is performed in detail. Some illustrative examples of linear and non-linear Emden–Flower-type equations of different orders are displayed. Our proposed algorithms are compared with some other methods in the literature. This confirms the accuracy and high efficiency of our presented algorithms.


Objective sleep measures derived from a computerized movement detector attached to the child's leg, were obtained for a group of 31 toddlers (mean age: 18.5 months). The monitored sleep parameters were compared with maternal assessment of the child's sleep and her perception of his temperament. The validity of maternal diaries as a measure of the child's sleep was not supported. Nevertheless, a link between both subjective and objective sleep measures with temperament dimensions was indicated. The modest association between sleep and temperament may suggest either a continuity between some aspects of day- and night-time functioning or, alternatively, the influence of the child's sleep behavior in shaping the mother's perceptions of her toddler's temperament.


The faunistic compositions of recent planktonic foraminiferal assemblages from the Atlantic Ocean between 0-46°N lat. correlate with average ocean temperatures at 50-m depth. The correlation between temperature and faunistic assemblages provides the basis for an independent method of reconstructing paleotemperatures during the Pleistocene. In this model, Parks' distance coefficient is used to construct a similarity matrix comparing every recent sample station with every other station based on the abundance of species and phenotypes. Relative to the station(s) of highest diversity there is a linear relation between the similarity of all stations and average ocean temperatures at 50-m depth. Pleistocene assemblages contain the same species and phenotypes as found in recent sediments. Comparison of the similarity of Pleistocene assemblages with recent assemblages in the manner suggested allows an estimate of the ocean temperatures at 50-m depth during deposition of the assemblages. The model, tested in an equatorial core suggests faunistic paleotemperatures which are ± 1° from isotopic paleotemperatures of G. sacculifer from the same core. The temperature range between glacial and interglacial periods in the equatorial Atlantic is 5-6°C. In the Caribbean, during the last 100,000 years, the faunistic paleotemperature ranged between 20 and 27.5°C, a somewhat larger variation than that found in the equatorial Atlantic. The results of this study provide an independent estimate of paleotemperatures during the Pleistocene Epoch. Comparison of faunistic and isotopic paleotemperatures for the cores examined are consistent with Emiliani's estimate of paleotemperature variations, whereby 70% of the isotopic variation is directly related to changes in ocean temperature. End_of_Article - Last_Page 625------------


Small-scale gold mining activities are still mostly carried out in various regions in Indonesia. The use of mercury (Hg) in the process of extracting gold from sediments can be a source of pollution for aquatic ecosystems and organisms. The aim of this study was to analyze the macrozoobenthos community structure in the Cikondang River which was affected by Hg pollution due to small-scale gold mining. Sampling was carried out by survey method at 5 sampling points along the Cikondang River from upstream to downstream. Water quality parameters measured include temperature, transparency, current velocity, pH, Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD). Hg concentrations in sediments and macrozoobenthos were measured using automatic mercury analyzer. The results showed that the concentration of Hg in sediments in the Cikondang River ranged from 0.63–52.48 mg/kg and the accumulation of Hg in macrozoobenthos ranged from 0.97 to 0.98. The macrozoobenthos diversity index was 1.50-2.17 and the dominance index was 0.16-0.30. The most group of macrozoobenthos found was from the Gastropod class, followed by the Insecta and Malacostraca classes. Macrozoobenthos in the Cikondang River were only found in the downstream of the river, at Sampling Points 4 and 5 only. This showed that Hg pollution in the Cikondang river is highly toxic, caused macrozoobenthos was not found at Sampling Point 1, 2 and 3.


AIM
The aim of this study was to investigate multiple regression models with prediction equations that would enable a valid estimate of running repeated-sprint ability (RSA) in soccer players from the variables measured in field and laboratory physiological tests.

METHODS
Adolescent soccer players (N=33) performed five field performance tests and two laboratory tests for assessment of muscle strength of legs, sprint ability, anaerobic power and capacity, aerobic power and capacity, and running economy. These tests served as potential predictors of RSA. RSA was assessed by a intermittent anaerobic running test (IAnRT) consisted of ten 20 m sprints.

RESULTS
Multiple regression analysis revealed that the mean speed in the 20 m sprint test and the 2 km endurance running test accounted for 89% of total variation in the mean running speed in the IAnRT (VIAnRT) as the indicator of capacity for multiple sprint work (R2=0.89, SEM=0.09 m.s-1). Using the variables from the laboratory tests, the best prediction of the VIAnRT was obtained from the running speed at the ventilatory threshold level (VVT) and anaerobic power (Pmax.kg-1) (R2=0.49, SEM=0.21 m.s-1).

CONCLUSION
Performance in the multiple-sprint exercise as an indicator of RSA can be estimated by the regression equation with two predictors - mean speed in the 20 m sprint and 2 km running test with an error of 4%.


Modern control systems, like controllers for swarms of quadrotors, must satisfy complex control objectives while withstanding a wide range of disturbances, from bugs in their software to attacks on their sensors and changes in their environments. These requirements go beyond stability and tracking, and involve temporal and sequencing constraints on system response to various events. This work formalizes the requirements as formulas in Metric Temporal Logic (MTL), and designs a controller that maximizes the robustness of the MTL formula. Formally, if the system satisfies the formula with robustness r, then any disturbance of size less than r cannot cause it to violate the formula. Because robustness is not differentiable, this work provides arbitrarily precise, infinitely differentiable, approximations of it, thus enabling the use of powerful gradient descent optimizers. Experiments on a temperature control example and a two-quadrotor system demonstrate that this approach to controller design outperforms existing approaches to robustness maximization based on Mixed Integer Linear Programming and stochastic heuristics. Moreover, it is not constrained to linear systems.


Patients with advanced achalasia, accompanied by severe complications can be seen only rarely today. In these patients, resection of the esophagus has to be considered. The modern technique of extirpation of the whole thoracic esophagus without thoracotomy is a sparing intervention capable to solve the problem of dysphagia as well as the complications of advanced achalasia. The authors describe their favourable experience with this technique in three patients. The evidence for such radical treatment appears from the clinical picture and the microscopical findings in the resected specimens.


It would be easily possible to draw quite different conclusions from the three cases they report. In case 1 the error was not relying on endoscopy rather than radiology, but relying on endoscopy without histology and cytology. These are far more likely to assist in differentiating benign from malignant strictures than is radiology. In case 2 the correct diagnosis was made; it was the management that was at fault. In case 3 it is a matter of opinion whether radiology would have given a more accurate anatomical diagnosis, and for the patient the outcome would clearly have been the same. There is already much duplication of investigation in modem clinical management. It is better not to encourage this, but rather to insist that those carrying out particular diagnostic procedures do so skilfully and with a clear insight into their limitations and hazards. I shall certainly continue to rely entirely on endoscopic findings in some of my patients with oesophageal disease, to the advantage of their comfort, speed of diagnosis, and reduction of National Health Service costs. If Mr Little and Mr Matthews were to direct their attention to the problem of doctors who are satisfied with an apparently normal barium swallow in patients with dysphagia and who neglect to carry out endoscopy, they might be on sure critical ground. J R BENNETT Gastrointestinal Unit, Hull Royal Infirmary, Hull HU3 2JZ


The purpose of this study was to establish the optimal operation condition of the natural evaporation system(NES) which was used for reducing swine slurry. Especially the main point of this study is to estimate the effect of climate condition(clear & rainy) and spray type(batch & flow) for the evaporation rate of swine slurry applying the NES in summer. Experiment was performed from June to August, which was generally regarded as summer in Korea, with the spray type of batch in 2000 and that of flow in 2001. As a result of experiment for batch and flow type, the averaged evaporation rate was measured int 2.71 and 3.59 l/ton·㎡·day on clear days and 0.62 and 0.66 l/ton·㎡·day on rainy days, respectively. Based on the calculated evaporation rate by the climate condition and the spray type, it was proved that the averaged reduction rate for total input(1t/day) were 15.99% and 3.19% on clear and rainy days and the evaporation rate of the flow type was superior to that of the batch type by 5%, approximately. Therefore, it was concluded that the supplementary equipment, such as fan, should be operated in rainy days and the spray type of flow rather than that of batch should be recommended to increase the evaporation rate in the natural evaporation system(NES).