The neuromuscular and cardiovascular effects of neostigmine, 40 micrograms kg-1, and methyl-atropine, 7 micrograms kg-1, administered at different degrees of rocuronium-induced (600 micrograms kg-1) neuromuscular block were evaluated. In one group of patients spontaneous recovery was awaited (Group A; n = 20). Neostigmine and methyl-atropine were administered 2 minutes after rocuronium (Group B; n = 20) or at 25% twitch recovery (Group C; n = 20). Neuromuscular transmission was monitored mechanomyographically. Data are presented as mean (SD) [95%-CI]. The initial rate of recovery (time until a TOF ratio of 0.2) in group B, i.e. 14.2 (4.5) [12.1-16.3] min, was significantly faster than in group C, i.e. 28.7 (5.3) [26.3-31.1] min. However, the time until clinically sufficient recovery (time until a TOF ratio of 0.7) was similar for groups B, i.e. 29.3 (9.5) [24.9-33.7] min and group C, i.e. 31.8 (5.6) [29.2-34.4] min, both significantly different from that of group A, i.e. 53.2 (14.5) [46.5-59.9] min. The increase in heart rate following neostigmine/methyl-atropine was more pronounced in the group reversed at 2 min after rocuronium (P < 0.01).


The aim of this book is to provide a description of what is currently known about the genetics of deafness for audiologists, otologists and general genetics. It includes a number of background chapters introducing relevant genetics for audiologists and otologists and relevant aspects of auditory intervention for geneticists. These cover the epidemiology of hearing loss and the current situation with regard to gene identification within the field. Chapters on the common syndromes, eg Ushers, Waardenburg, Pendred, Branchio-otorenal and Treacher Collins are followed by coverage of Dominant, Recessive and x-linked non-syndromal deafness, together with mitrochondial deafness. The final section includes chapters on the genetic, rehabilitative and surgical management of genetic disorders.


Two-phase cross flow exists in many shell-and-tube heat exchangers. Flow-induced vibration excitation forces can cause tube motion that will result in long-term fretting-wear or fatigue. Detailed flow and vibration excitation force measurements in tube bundles subjected to two-phase cross flow are required to understand the underlying vibration excitation mechanisms. Some of this work has already been done. The distributions of both void fraction and bubble velocity in rotated-triangular tube bundles were obtained. Somewhat unexpected but significant quasi-periodic forces in both the drag and lift directions were measured. The present work aims at understanding the nature of such unexpected drag and lift quasi-periodic forces. An experimental program was undertaken with a rotated-triangular array of cylinders subjected to air/water flow to simulate two-phase mixtures. Fiber-optic probes were developed to measure local void fraction. Both the dynamic lift and drag forces were measured with a strain gage instrumented cylinder. The investigation showed that the quasi-periodic drag and lift forces are generated by different mechanisms that have not been observed so far. The quasi-periodic drag forces appear related to the momentum flux fluctuations in the main flow path between the cylinders. The quasi-periodic lift forces, on the other hand, are mostly correlated to oscillations in the wake of the cylinders. The relationships between the lift or drag forces and the dynamic characteristics of two-phase flow are established through fluid mechanics momentum equations. The quasi-periodic lift forces are related to local void fraction measurements in the unsteady wake area between upstream and downstream cylinders. The quasi-periodic drag forces correlate well with similar measurements in the main flow stream between cylinders.Copyright © 2006 by ASME


The effectiveness of management for a firm is characterized by the effective use of all the resources in determining the amount of output produced and in-time adjustment of scale economy.By the equal efficiency production function,the economic growth can be expressed as the sum of the increase in output due to the input contribution,the technological progress and the effect of management that explains much of the change in technical efficiency.With this decomposition,we may measure the contribution rate of management to the economic growth based on each possible variation in those component levels in this equation.The methodology developed in this research emphasizes strongly the relationship between the production process and the connotation and extension of effectiveness of management,and the decomposition based on equal efficiency production function exhibits obviously the geometric and economic significance.


Two dimensional lithium beam imaging technique has been applied in the spherical tokamak, CPD (Compact Plasma wall interaction experimental Device), to study the effects of various magnetic field configurations on RF plasma confinement topology. The performance of the lithium sheet beam is absolutely calibrated by a quartz crystal monitor. Experimental results show that plasma initiation takes place at the electron cyclotron resonance layer in a simple torus configuration and then it expands quickly to the low magnetic field side. Different magnetic field configurations critically affect the RF plasma confinement topology. A sharp lower boundary exists for the RF plasma in magnetic null configuration. Magnetic connection length plays the key role in defining plasma boundary and the critical value of connection length for plasma to exist in CPD is found to be ∼ 5-6 meter for a given pressure condition.


Topologically non-trivial phases have recently been reported on self-similar structures. Here, we investigate the effect of local structure, specifically the role of the coordination number, on the topological phases on self-similar structures embedded in two dimensions. We study a geometry dependent model on two self-similar structures having different coordination numbers, constructed from the Sierpinski Gasket. For different non-spatial symmetries present in the system, we numerically study and compare the phases on both the structures. We characterize these phases by the localization properties of the single-particle states, their robustness to disorder, and by using a real-space topological index. We find that both the structures host topologically non-trivial phases and the phase diagrams are different on the two structures. This suggests that, in order to extend the present classification scheme of topological phases to non-periodic structures, one should use a framework which explicitly takes the coordination of sites into account.


It is the method to extract the user sessions from the given log files. Initially, each user is identified according to his/her IP address specified in the log file and corresponding user sessions are extracted. Two types of logs ie., server-side logs and client-side logs are commonly used for web usage and usability analysis. Server-side logs can be automatically generated by web servers, with each entry corresponding to a user request. Client-side logs can capture accurate, comprehensive usage data for usability analysis. Usability is defined as the satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness with which specific users can complete specific tasks in a particular environment. This process includes 3 stages, namely Data cleaning, User identification, Session identification. In this paper, we are implementing these three phases. Depending upon the frequency of users visiting each page mining is performed. By finding the session of the user we can analyze the user behavior by the time spend on a particular page.


This paper is the story of the authors' paths to the shared realization that the strategies and epistemological underpinnings of Aboriginal education need to move out of the margins and into the centre of education in Canada, not only for Aboriginal students, but for all students. Between August, 2010 and April of 2012, the authors were seconded for two years from their Vancouver classrooms to work as Faculty Associates in the teacher preparation program at Simon Fraser University. There we came face to face with the British Columbia Teacher Regulation Branch's mandate that Aboriginal education courses must be taught to pre-service teachers. Part of our job was to cultivate strategies using Aboriginal pedagogy to inform pre-service teachers' developing practice and ways of communicating with their students. Here we describe how, after returning to our school district, we changed our teaching practices through actualizing Aboriginal pedagogy.


Abstract : Data were collected by the U. S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station to characterize sections of gravel roads and courses selected for testing in conjunction with a U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, tire wear-road deterioration study. The primary purpose of the study reported herein was to describe, in quantitative terms, the surface and subgrade of selected sections of unpaved road surfaces in Oregon representative of logging roads in the western United States. Data also were collected on one road and one test course in Nevada. Data summaries are presented in tables. The data include identification of surface type according to the Forest Service scheme; values of gravimetric and nuclear moisture content and density; volume, depth, and moisture content of loose surface materials; soil strength in terms of California Bearing Ratio and cone index; and material classification according to the Unified Soil Classification System. The results indicate that the road sections selected for the tire wear-road deterioration study represent a fairly wide range of surface characteristics for which data were collected. Observations revealed that the maximum safe speed that could be attained on the roads by the test vehicles was controlled primarily by curvature-visibility, grade, and roughness, in that order. It is recommended that road deterioration and performance criteria be established, and that tire wear and/or road deterioration state-of-the-art studies be conducted.


We interpret a new kind of localization in a finite one-dimensional tight-binding model under a weak applied electric field. This phenomenon is quite general and manifests itself in a more than exponential decreasing behaviour of the chain transmittivity. We provide analytic expressions for the transmittivity and confirm the theoretical results by transfer matrix numerical calculations. We show that this phenomenon is present in ordered as well as in aperiodic (incommensurate and pseudorandom systems) irrespective of the number of allowed bands.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE. The aim of this study was to compare the leg extensor muscle strength, the postural stability, and the fear of falling in the women with severe knee joint osteoarthritis (OA) before and after a 2-month home exercise program (HEP). MATERIAL AND METHODS. In total, 17 women aged 46-72 years with late-stage knee joint OA scheduled for total knee arthroplasty participated in this study before and after the 2-month HEP with strengthening, stretching, balance, and step exercises. The isometric peak torque (PT) of the leg extensors and postural stability characteristics when standing on a firm or a foam surface for 30 seconds were recorded. The fear of falling and the pain intensity (VAS) were estimated. RESULTS. A significant increase in the PT and the PT-to-body weight (PT-to-BW) ratio of the involved leg as well as the bilateral PT and the PT-to-BW ratio was found after the 2-month HEP compared with the data before the HEP (P<0.05). The PT and the PT-to-BW ratio of the involved leg were significantly lower compared with the uninvolved leg before the HEP (P<0.05). The center of the pressure sway length (foam surface) decreased significantly after the HEP (P<0.05). Significant correlations were found between the PT of the involved leg and the bilateral PT and the fear of falling and between the PT of the involved leg and the postural sway (foam surface) before the HEP. CONCLUSIONS. After the 2-month HEP, the leg extensor muscle strength increased and the postural sway length on a foam surface decreased. The results indicate that the increased leg extensor muscle strength improves postural stability and diminishes the fear of falling in women with late-stage knee joint OA.


A new mutant strain of inbred Sprague Dawley rats with autosomal recessive hyperbilirubinuria, were studied by biochemical, histologic, and ultrastructural methods. The plasma bilirubin concentration in the homozygote was significantly higher than that of the heterozygote, and about 80% of the bilirubin was conjugated. Plasma BSP and ICG clearance were both severely delayed in the homozygote. Plasma BSP elimination kinetics suggested that the pathophysiologic defect was not hepatic uptake or storage but rather in secretion into bile. Histopathology of the liver demonstrated brown pigment in the hepatocytes that appeared to be lipofuscin. The electron microscopic features of the hepatic pigment resembled those of the Dubin-Johnson syndrome. Homozygote histopathology also revealed glomerular lesions with mesangial expansion and proliferation in the kidneys. Immunohistologic studies disclosed mesangial granular deposition of IgG, IgA, and to a lesser degree, IgM and C3. These renal changes resembled those of IgA nephropathy. The spontaneous hyperbilirubinuric rat (EHBR) may be a useful animal model for studying constitutive conjugated hyperbilirubinemia, bilirubin metabolism, cholestasis, and glomerulonephropathy subsequent to hepatic dysfunction.


N6-Methyladenosine (m6A) is the most prevalent mRNA modification in mammalian cells that is mainly catalyzed by the methyltransferase complex of methyltransferase-like 3 and methyltransferase-like 14 (METTL3-METTL14). Many lines of evidence suggest that METTL3 plays important roles in several diseases such as cancers and viral infection. In the present study, 1,042 natural products from commercially available sources were chosen to establish a screening library, and docking-based high-throughput screening was performed to discover potential METTL3 inhibitors. The selected compounds were then further validated by an in vitro methyltransferase inhibition assay in which m6A content was determined by LC-MS/MS. A cellular assay of the inhibition of m6A methylation was performed to determine the METTL3 inhibitory activity of the selected compound. CCK-8 assay was applied to evaluate the effects of the selected compound on tumor cell viability. Additionally, binding mode analysis, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, and binding free energy analysis were performed to study the process and characteristics of inhibitor binding. Finally, quercetin was identified as a METTL3 inhibitor with an IC50 value of 2.73 μM. The cellular assay of m6A methylation inhibition showed that quercetin decreased m6A level in a dose-dependent manner in MIA PaCa-2 pancreatic cancer cells. CCK-8 assay showed quercetin efficiently inhibited the proliferation of MIA PaCa-2 and Huh7 tumor cells, with IC50 values 73.51 ± 11.22 μM and 99.97 ± 7.03 μM, respectively. Molecular docking studies revealed that quercetin filled the pocket of the adenosine moiety of SAM but not the pocket of the SAM methionine in the METTL3 protein, and hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic interactions, and pi-stacking were formed. The values of the root mean square deviation (RMSD), the root mean square fluctuations (RMSF), and binding free energy suggested that quercetin can efficiently bind to the pocket of the METTL3 protein and form a stable protein-ligand complex. The present study is the first to identify METTL3 inhibitors from natural products, thus providing a basis for subsequent research and facilitating the development of METTL3-targeting drugs for diseases.


Autonomous crack healing using pre-embedded capsules containing healing agent is becoming a promising approach to restore the strength of damaged structures. In addition to the material properties, the size and volume fraction of capsules influence crack healing in the matrix. Understanding the crack and capsule interaction is critical in the development and design of structures made of capsule-based self-healing materials. Continuing our previous study, in this contribution a more practical rupturing mode of capsules characterizing the rupturing manner of capsules fractured by cracks in cementitious materials is presented, i.e., penetrating mode. With the underlying assumption that a crack penetrating capsules undoubtedly leads to crack healing, geometrical probability theory is employed to develop the quantitative relationship between crack size and capsule size, capsule concentration in capsule-based self-healing virtual cementitious material. Moreover, an analytical expression of probability of a crack penetrating with randomly dispersed capsules is developed in two-dimensional material matrix setup. The influences of the induced rupturing modes of capsules embedded on the self-healing efficiency are analyzed. Much attention is paid to compare the penetrating probability and the hitting probability, in order to assist the designer to make a choice of the optimal rupturing modes of capsules embedded. The accuracy of results of the theoretical model is also compared with Monte-Carlo numerical analysis of crack interacting with capsules. It shows that the developed probability characteristics of a crack interaction with capsules for different rupturing modes is helpful to provide guidelines for designer working with capsule-based self-healing cementitious materials. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.23.3.16888


We propose an iterative design algorithm for jointly optimizing source and channel codes. The joint design combines channel-optimized vector quantization (COVQ) for the source code with rate-compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) coding for the channel code. Our objective is to minimize the average end-to-end distortion. For a given channel SNR and transmission rate, our joint source and channel code design achieves an optimal allocation of bits between the source and channel coders. This optimal allocation can reduce distortion by up to 6 dB over suboptimal allocations for the source data set considered. We also compare the distortion of our joint iterative design with that of two suboptimal design techniques: COVQ optimized for a given channel bit-error-probability, and RCPC channel coding optimized for a given vector quantizer. We conclude by relaxing the fixed transmission rate constraint and jointly optimizing the transmission rate, source code, and channel code.


The properties of multihop packet radio networks (PRNs) in the presence of active interference are presented. Both the jammer and the network nodes are subject to an average power constraint. The network uses slotted Aloha multiple access schemes with constant average transmitter power. The situation is treated as a two-person constant-sum game, and network performance is defined as the values of the game in terms of the expected forward progress of a packet. Both the performance and the optimum strategies for access and jamming are investigated. Numerical results for the MFR (maximum forward progress within radius) routing strategy show that the jammer will need a substantial power advantage to decrease the performance of the network significantly even if only moderate link protection schemes are utilized.<<ETX>>


This research aims to follow the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2)
in the atmosphere and the effect of zero-emission on the ecosystem. CO2 is the most important of
the green house gases. Nowadays, the earth is suffering from global warming due to greenhouse
gases. The call all over the world is to reduce the emission of the greenhouse gases, mainly CO2.

The research methodology depends on the data of international research laboratories,
which follow the concentration of CO2, such as National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), the USA, and Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The concern towards
CO2 concentration in the atmosphere started in the last century.

The industrial revolution did not consider the impact of pollution on the environment.
The impact on the environment was noticed only after a clear disturbance in the ecosystem. The
emission of greenhouse gases, especially, CO2 is monitored; daily, monthly and yearly. There are
different sources of CO2 emissions, such as transportation, factories, burning of forests etc. In
fact, CO2 is a harmful as well as a useful gas. It is harmful because of global warming, and useful
because of its important role in the photosynthesis process. This process is very crucial for all
living things. The research to reduce the emission of CO2. has provided some solutions. Layered
materials, MPS3, where M stands for the transition metal, have been used to store hydrogen gas.
The hydrogen molecule size is 2.89 Å, and the molecular size of CO2 is 3.3 Å, this means that the
CO2 can be captured by the layered materials. The capturing of CO2 is achieved by simulation.

We need to reduce the emission of CO2 but not to reach zero emission, because
then, there will be no photosynthesis process, which means there will be no life on the earth.
Carbon capture and storage is a technology that can capture up to 90% of the CO2, but the biggest
obstacle to this approach lies in the inherent thermodynamic stability and kinetic inertness of
CO2.


The first Swedish historical national accounts were compiled in the 1930s, and that pioneering work formed the main basis for later estimates until now. In this paper, an attempt to construct new historical accounts for 1800–1980 is presented. First, the methodology is discussed, particularly concerning series in constant prices adapted for analysis of growth and structural changes. In principle Paasche deflators should be used, but for such a long period they are inadequate due to the huge changes in the goods composition of production as well as of consumption and investment. Instead, a division of the whole period into shorter subperiods is made and within these, Paasche deflators are applied. Then the series for the deflation periods can be linked in order to arrive at longer series. Second, some findings of the work (still in progress) are reported. The new series show a slower growth rate in the second half of the nineteenth century than the earlier ones, and Sweden can internationally no longer be seen as the country where this period's economic miracle took place. Instead, concerning rate of growth of GDP per capita as well as its level, Sweden seems to have been a middle-way country compared to other European countries. In the first half of the 20th century, on the other hand, the growth rate was high in an international comparison. The Swedish sectoral changes followed a general pattern with decreasing agricultural and increasing industrial shares. The service share was not unusually high in the nineteenth century. Within this service production a very distinct pattern of structural change is evident. Finally, a plea is made for a regional breakdown of the national GDP data in order to obtain a better understanding of the economic growth and modernization process.


The excited states of small-diameter diamond nanoparticles in the gas phase are studied using the GW method and Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) within the ab initio many-body perturbation theory. The calculated ionization potentials and optical gaps are in agreement with experimental results, with the average error about 0.2 eV. The electron affinity is negative and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital is rather delocalized. Precise determination of the electron affinity requires one to take the off-diagonal matrix elements of the self-energy operator into account in the GW calculation. BSE calculations predict a large exciton binding energy which is an order of magnitude larger than that in the bulk diamond.


This exploratory and descriptive study aimed to know the reasons that lead men to seek healthy care and understand the reasons that depart them from the Basic Unit of Family Health in the southern tip of Brazil. For the analysis of the records, 175 attendances to men ranging from 25 to 59 years old in 2010 were identified. Acute problems were reported by 93 (52.2%) users, the pain triggered 42 (23.6%) of chronic problems, hypertension, struck 37 (21.4%) clients. Through interviews it was possible to understand what moves them away from the Basic Unit of Family Health. Notably, men felt healthy, so little did they attend the health service, thus, it might take them ten years or more to look for it. In addition to gender issues, alleged scheduling conflict, fear to detect any serious disease, insufficient number of appointments and a lack of specialists. In order to accomplish the peculiarities of the male population it urges qualification on health professionals, so as to problematize the reality of each Basic Unit of Family Health and, along with managers, resolve and enable inclusive service.


Combination chemotherapy has been at the forefront of cancer treatment for over 40 years. However, the rationale for selecting drug combinations and the process used to demonstrate clinical effectiveness has primarily followed trial and error methodology. Typically, the selection and assessment of combined drug therapies has been based on the effectiveness of each agent as monotherapy in treating the neoplasm and avoiding overlapping toxicities, followed by clinical trials to establish dose scheduling, toxicity, and efficacy. Unfortunately, this scheme is inefficient in terms of the time required to complete and revise these clinical trials based on the outcome to optimize the drug combination. A more rational approach for the development of combination oncology products should consider (i) in vitro assays for assessing therapeutic effects of drug combinations (antagonistic, additive or synergistic interactions) when added simultaneously; (ii) methods for measuring these interactions in vivo; (iii) the importance of understanding pharmacokinetic and biodistribution parameters when using drug combinations; (iv) the need to assess pathways known to contribute to cancer cell survival as well as metastasis; and (iv) the need to assess the fate of different cell populations (cancer and stroma) contributing to the development of cancer. Therefore, the goal of this article is to provide a road map for the preclinical development of drug combination products that will have improved therapeutic activity and a high likelihood of providing beneficial therapeutic outcomes in patients with aggressive cancers with a specific focus on patients with breast cancer.


The SIGCSE Technical Symposium is celebrating its 50th year, and a constant theme throughout this history has been to better understand how novices learn to program. In this paper, we present a perspective on the evolution of introductory programming education research at the Symposium over these 50 years. We also situate the Symposium's impact in the context of the wider literature on introductory programming research. Applying a systematic approach to collecting papers presented at the Symposium that focus on novice programming / CS1, we categorized hundreds of papers according to their main focus, revealing important introductory programming topics and their trends from 1970 to 2018. Some of these topics have faded from prominence and are less relevant today while others, including many topics focused on students, such as making learning programming more appropriate from gender, diversity, accessibility and inclusion standpoints, have garnered significant attention more recently. We present discussions on these trends and in doing so, we provide a checkpoint for introductory programming research. This may provide insights for future research on how we teach novices and how they learn to program.


After appendicectomy, cholecystectomy is the most frequently nongynecological operation performed in pregnant women. Pregnancy has been stated to be a contraindication to laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) because of the unknown effects of a prolonged CO2 pneumoperitoneum on the fetus. Between September 1990 and December 1993 451 patients underwent LC at the 2nd Surgical Department of the University of Padova-Italy. Two patients were operated during the second trimester of pregnancy. LC without cholangiograms was successful in both patients and uncomplicated term delivery occurred. The Authors conclude that pregnancy is not a contraindication to LC; it can be performed safely during pregnancy and should be scheduled during the second trimester.


Today user-centered information acquisition over collections of complex XML documents is increasingly in demand. To this end, preferences have become an important paradigm enabling users to express individual interests and delivering personalized information. As the structure of XML documents plays a major part in retrieval, users often have specific preferences about the structure. For evaluation a query has to be unfolded into an entire set of queries filling the structure with more or less preferred values. Since such structure expansions typically contain redundancies, it is important to identify and simplify necessary expansion queries for effective evaluation. To address these issues, we developed a preference query optimizer that not only determines an optimal set of expansion queries, but also preserves the specific ordering induced by the user preferences with respect to Pareto optimality.


Objective. To optimize the conditions for the extraction of alkaloid palmatine from Tinospora cordifolia by using response surface methodology (RSM) and study its anticancerous property against 7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene (DMBA) induced skin carcinogenesis in Swiss albino mice. Methods. The effect of three independent variables, namely, extraction temperature, time, and cycles was investigated by using central composite design. A single topical application of DMBA (100 μg/100 μL of acetone), followed 2 weeks later by repeated application of croton oil (1% in acetone three times a week) for 16 weeks, exhibited 100 percent tumor incidence (Group 2). Results. The highest yield of alkaloid from Tinospora cordifolia could be achieved at 16 hours of extraction time under 40°C with 4 extraction cycles. Alkaloid administration significantly decreases tumor size, number, and the activity of serum enzyme when compared with the control (Group 2). In addition, depleted levels of reduced glutathione (GSH), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and catalase and increased DNA damage were restored in palmatine treated groups. Conclusion. The data of the present study clearly indicate the anticancer potential of palmatine alkaloid in DMBA induced skin cancer model in mice.


In a given environment the physico-chemical parameters of a metabolic system are externally prescribed constant quantities. The living cell, however, is able to regulate the catalytic activities through its programme of gene expression. The paper investigates to what extent this programme is amenable to optimization by evolutionary selection. Abstract, but typical mathematical models of the cellular metabolic system together with the epigenetic metabolism of biomacromolecules (enzyme protein, structural protein) were formulated and evaluated. Selection needs a criterion and the existence of an optimum of parameter values with respect to that criterion. As selection criterion served the growth rate of the cell. Parameters were the rate constants of metabolic reactions whose values may be chosen by regulation of gene expression. Two main types of parameters were distinguished: those which influence the growth rate in a monotonous manner, and those whose positive influence has a maximum. It was found that a maximum is defined if the parameter is part of an autocatalytic cycle limited by competition. The most common such situation is that of a biomacromolecule contributing directly or indirectly, but in an essential manner, to biosynthesis and growth, while competing at the same time for the share in biosynthesis. As the rate of biosynthesis has a natural upper bound, and as most proteins as end products of biosynthesis play an essential role in other parts of metabolism, the conclusion was reached that most of the controllable parameters of gene expression are amenable to evolutionary optimization.


The encoding or representation scheme in evolutionary algorithms is very important because it can greatly affect their performance. Most previous evolutionary algorithms for solving graph problems have traditionally used a vertex-based encoding in which each gene corresponds to a vertex. In this paper, addressing the well-known maximum cut problem, we introduce an edge-set encoding based on the spanning tree - a kind of edge-based encoding. In our encoding scheme, each gene corresponds to an edge subset derived from a spanning tree. In contrast to a traditional edge-based encoding in which each gene corresponds to only one edge, our encoding scheme has the advantage of representing only feasible solutions, so there is no need to apply a repair step. We present a genetic algorithm based on this new encoding. We have conducted various experiments on a large set of test graphs including commonly used benchmark graphs and have obtained performance improvement on sparse graphs, which frequently appear in real-world applications such as social networks and systems biology, in comparison with a scheme using a vertex-based encoding.


In January 2002 the UK Department for Education and Skills (DfES), accepting the recommendations of the School Teachers' Review Body, announced pay increases for all teachers, but higher percentage increases for those eligible for performance related pay. Performance related pay (PRP) was due to be introduced for teachers from September 2000, but was delayed for want of consultation. Slightly modified, its full introduction is now due in September 2002 as part of 'the most radical reform of the teaching profession since the Second World War' (Barber, 2001). It already exists for headteachers and deputies, and indeed has been in the vanguard of public sector pay reform since the Thatcher era. Advocates of the New Economics of Personnel suggest that PRP is superior to the old-fashioned time-based seniority systems, though this is by no means certain in circumstances, such as exist in schools, where employees have so much discretion in the exercise of their duties and where the correlation between output and individual effort is difficult to establish. As a policy, PRP aims to modernise the teaching profession by recruiting, retaining and promoting effective teachers. It seeks to raise the status of teachers in their own eyes and in the eyes of the public (Barber, 2001), and to create a culture in which teachers take prime responsibility for pupil performance. This paper examines the theory that underpins the claim that PRP can fulfil these objectives, from the perspective of research carried out by the author. One hundred teachers of longer than five years standing and forty trainees (PGCE students) were interviewed and surveyed by questionnaire, with a view to gauging the likelihood of whether or not PRP can be introduced to schools with the desired result. A group of four headteachers and one Local Education Authority (LEA) executive triangulated the research findings against their own experience of teacher motivation (in terms of recruitment and retention). No claim for generalisation is made. The paper is offered as an exposition of some important theoretical issues surrounding PRP, which have yet to be considered by the education community, illuminated by research on a sample of teacher participants.


An appropriate microenvironment provided by the mesenchyme is important for establishing tissue recombination models for epithelial cancer. Urogenital sinus mesenchymal (UGSM) cells derived from embryonic rodent show potent inductive effects for prostate regeneration. Genetic manipulation of these mesenchymal cells allows us to define the contribution of the tumor microenvironment to prostate cancer development. This protocol describes preparation and propagation of murine UGSM cells in culture.


Electrical infrastructure must be constantly monitored to guarantee continuity of service, traditional inspection methods can be complemented with unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), and improve the performance and quality of inspections, the inconvenience of using drones in Inspections is the high amount of images collected during inspections. In this project Tecno Drone has integrated several open source technologies for the development of an integral platform for obtaining and processing thermal and RGB images collected during the inspection of electrical infrastructure. This project was developed in two stages: 1. Integration of the unmanned aerial platform. 2. Integration of information management platform.


The Autler–Townes (AT) splitting in femtosecond photoelectron spectrum of three-level Li2 molecules is theoretically investigated using time-dependent quantum wave packet method. With proper femtosecond laser pulses, three peaks of the AT splitting can be observed in the photoelectron spectrum. The AT splitting stems from rapid Rabi oscillation caused by intense ultrashort laser pluses. The effects of laser parameters on the molecular ionization dynamics are also discussed.


In production,the Φ105 mm hole of rear oil seal bearing die castings often appear porosity, shrinkage and other defects , resulting in the parts to scrap. The existing gating system design of rear oil seal bearing die castings was improved , and the flow and temperature field of the two programs that before and after improvement were analyzed by ProCAST software. The simulation results predicted the casting defects, and the conclusion was consistent with the production. By using the improved process optimization, the rejection rate of die castings can be reduced effectively. Die casting is a chipless forming of casting with high casting dimensional accuracy, high surface quality and high production efficiency [1,2]. Therefore, it has developed rapidly in the automotive, communications and other industries. However, due to shrinkage, porosity and other reasons, leading to high rejection rate of castings. With the emergence of commercial casting simulation software, the casting production has been developed from semi empirical and semi theoretical onto theorization, quantification and controllable track[3-5]. In this paper, the casting defects of rear oil seal bearing is analyzed by using numerical simulation technology[6]. By optimizing the casting process, the casting quality is improved, and the rejection rate is reduced effectively.


Established treatments such as surgery, radiation and chemotherapy have not altered the median survival of glioblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumor. Since these failures reflect the highly invasive nature of glioblastoma, as well as the fact that few cells are actively replicating at any given point in time, therapies need to act in areas of the brain distant from the site of tumor origin and for long after their introduction. Over the past decade, laboratory studies and early clinical trials have raised hope that these therapeutic requirements may be fulfilled by gene therapy using non-replicating transgene-bearing viruses, oncolytic viruses or migratory stem cells to deliver tumoricidal transgenes. The principles behind these approaches and their initial results are reviewed.


Around 2.7 billion people globally and 80% of households in Sub-Saharan Africa rely on solid biomass fuels for cooking and heating. This results in high levels of exposure to household air pollution (HAP); the second most common cause of death in eastern, central and western sub-Saharan Africa. Top-down technology-oriented initiatives seeking to promote the uptake of »improved« cookstoves (ICS) have had limited success to date. Drawing on participatory cooking events in the UK, Malawi and Zambia plus in-depth field-based research in Nigeria, we discuss our use of participatory engagement activities that gave voice to (and encourage emic understandings of) end-user priorities regarding fuel and cookstove use. We argue that such approaches can be effective in promoting two-way knowledge sharing between ICS producers, promoters and end-users. We also suggest that community-wide participatory approaches used in sanitation initiatives have potential to be adapted within ICS interventions to help deepen understandings of locally specific cooking preferences and integrate community and scientific knowledges about the causes of health issues linked to solid fuel use.


This paper presents a touch probe system with improved sensitivity and repeatability. In this probe, a tip ball is attached to the probe stylus through elastic bodies that enable the ball to be displaced in three directions. When the tip ball touches the workpiece, three fibre optic lever displacement sensors measure directly the ball's displacement and direction. Because the ball is located in sensitive directions of all of the sensors, this probe complies with Abbe's principle, which is a basis of precision measurement. Various performance tests have been performed using one-dimensional stages. The measurement resolution of the tip ball displacement was less than 12 nm in these experiments. Thus, the probe triggering level was set safely to 50 nm, taking into account the associated noise levels. The variation of the pretravel was less than 25 nm in all directions. The measurement force was approximately 0.6 mN in the horizontal direction and 4.5 mN in the vertical direction.


Consumer panel data are typically available for a fixed duration of time (say, a year) during which buyers invariably make different numbers of purchases in the product class. The author describes a method for obtaining maximum likelihood estimates of zero-order models from panel data containing different numbers of purchase records per household. Empirical data are presented to illustrate the application of the estimation method.


The main objective of this paper was to examine the impact of domestic debt on economic growth in Tanzania for the period 1990 to 2015 using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression method to estimate the effects. The study finds that there is an inverse but insignificant relationship between domestic debt and the economic growth of Tanzania as measured by GDP annual growth. The inverse relationship between domestic debt and GDP may be caused by different factors such as; increased trend in domestic borrowing, government lenders' profile dominated by commercial banks and non-bank financial institutions which promotes the "crowding out" effect; the nature of the instruments used by the government ; the improper use of the domestic borrowed funds which may include funding budgetary deficits, paying up principal and matured obligations on debt, developing financial markets as well as fund other government operations. Other control variables relate with the GDP as predicted. For example, Inflation (INF) has a negative effect on the GDP growth rate, but the relationship is not statistically significant, while gross capital formation (GCF) has a positive statistically significant effect on GDP growth rate. Furthermore, foreign direct investment (FDI) showed a positive effect on the GDP growth rate and export (X) has a positive effect on GDP growth rate, and the relationship is statistically significant explaining that if a country applied an export-led growth economic strategy it enjoys the gains of participating in the world market. This means that an increase in export stimulates demand for goods which leads to increase in output, and as a country's output increases, the economic performance also takes a similar trend. Finally, government expenditure (GE) had a negative effect on the GDP growth rate which may be explained by the increased government expenditures which are funded by either tax or borrowing. Therefore, what is required for countries like Tanzania is to have better debt management strategies as well as prudential financial management while maintaining to remain within the internationally acceptable debt level of 45% of GDP and maintain a GDP growth rate of not less than 5%. It is important for the country to realize from where to borrow from, the tenure, the risks involved and limitations to borrowing and thus set the right balance of combination of both kinds of debt. Another requirement is to properly utilize the borrowed funds. The central government's objective should be to use the funds in more development-oriented projects that bring positive returns to the economic development. The government should not only create a right environment and policies for investment to attract investment from domestic and foreign sources but also be cautious about the kind of investments that the foreign investors make.


PURPOSE
Increased technologic capabilities have allowed for the expanded use of ultrasound beyond simple differentiation of a lesion as solid versus cystic nature, allowing us to classify lesions into various categories based on a number of descriptive features. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether to predict the preoperative prognosis of breast cancer through the correlation between ultrasonographic images and the grade of malignancy.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The patient population for this study consisted of 107 patients with infiltrative ductal carcinoma who were evaluated using ultrasound technology. Ultrasonographic findings were divided as follows: Type I, round or oval shape and regular border; Type II, partially round or oval shape and partially irregular border; and Type III, irregular shape and irregular border.

RESULTS
1. The frequency of grade 1 (G1) was significantly higher in the Type I group than the othergroups. 2. In the 2.0 cm sized mass, the lymph node metastasis rate was significantly lower in the Type I group than the other groups. 3. In all the groups, Estrogen receptor (ER) positivity was insignificant regardless of tumor size and type. 4. In the 2.0 cm sized mass, c-erbB-2 positivity was significantly lower in the Type I than the other groups. There was no clear difference among the three groups in tumors greater than 2.0 cm in size.

CONCLUSION
These results show that our classification of ultrasonographic images reflect the grade of malignancy in terms of clinicopathological features in breast cancers less than 2.0 cm in size. Therefore, ultrasonographic findings may help predict the preoperative prognosis in T1 size breast cancer, although further study is required.


SHEA has a new website address (http://www.shea-online.org/) and has moved to a professional ISP. The Internet Committee will explore ways to enhance ed in the prevention of healthcareacquired infections and antimicrobial resistance. This RNS is not interactive, and participation can be terminated at any time. There is no charge for this service. You may subscribe to the system by accessing http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/hip and clicking on the RNS logo.


In this session, we shall have presentations on capital flows, on credit cycles and on policies in an oil-exporting economy. By way of introduction to how these topics are linked, I would like to underline the key role of the exchange rate and explain what Bruno and Shin (2015) have called the risk-taking channel of currency appreciation. The debate on the policy response to external shocks in emerging market economies (EMEs) is often coloured by the perception that the exchange rate is not a very reliable stabilising mechanism. Events over the 2014–16 period seem to have reinforced this perception. Full publication: Macroprudential Policy


The incidence of thyroid cancer in childhood amounts to approximately 0,5/100.000/year. However, after exposure to ionizing irradiation, the incidence may increase more than 20 fold. In children, lymph node metastases of differentiated thyroid cancer are frequent (more than 50%); distant metastases mainly to the lung are seen in 20-30%. The method of choice for the primary diagnosis of thyroid cancer today is ultrasonography with 7,5 - 10 MHz probes, accompanied by fine-needle aspiration biopsy. Differentiated thyroid cancer has to be treated with a multidisciplinary approach comprising total thyroidectomy and lymph node dissection, post-operative radioiodine treatment and TSH-suppression by levothyroxine. The long-term results of this treatment approach are generally good with 10-year survival rates of 95% and higher. The treatment of children with disseminated pulmonary metastases however, may be complicated due to the increased risk of the induction of pulmonary fibrosis by radioiodine.


The influence of the atmosphere on the remotely sensed angular distribution of canopy reflectance is studied by radiative transfer calculations with both a coupled atmosphere-canopy model and a pure atmosphere model with the canopy replaced by an equivalent bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF). The canopy model, although one-dimensional, is able to reproduce typical canopy features like the "bowl shape" and the canopy "hot spot." In the decoupled mode, it can be used to compute canopy-equivalent BRDF's. The atmospheric perturbation of the angular reflectance pattern of a Lambertian, a mixed Lambertian/specular BRDF, and of the measured BRDF's of savannah and coniferous forest canopies is studied using one aerosol-free and two polluted atmospheres with surface visual ranges of V0 = 23 km and V0 = 5 km. It is shown that for surface albedoes > 10%, local extremes in the angular distribution of the surface reflectance and dependencies on the view azimuth angle are still detectable above the atmosphere and are nearly invariant to atmospheric perturbations. This result leads to the recommendation that off-nadir satellite observations in the near-infrared may contribute additional valuable information to crop identification. However, canopy reflectance variations with varying view zenith angles are dominated by atmospheric perturbations even for relatively clear atmospheres.


A refined method of repeated blood sampling is described: the tongue of the anaesthetized rat is pulled forward with the fingers and the sublingual vein is punctured with a 23 gauge hypodermic needle. Based on the requirement of a pharmacokinetic study, 0.5 or 1 ml of blood was collected 7 times at 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8 and 24 h. The degree of suffering was judged by determining the body weight and food and water consumption. All animals showed an increase in body weight already after 24 h and, therefore, the method of collecting blood from the sublingual vein can be recommended for repeated blood sampling. The haematological evaluation of groups of animals with differing body weight showed that sample volumes of up to 15% of the total blood volume lead to haematocrit values of approximately 40%. A remarkable initial drop in white blood cell counts followed by a marked rise 2 h after first sampling to values partly above the pre-test could not be directly related to the extracted blood volume.


The objective of the present study was to formulate the gastro-retentive floating tablets containing Ibuprofen, which would remain in stomach and/or upper part of GIT for prolonged period of time. Floating systems have low bulk density so that they can float on the gastric juice in the stomach. Ibuprofen is an anti inflammatory drug.  On trial and error basis formulation design was done. Four different batches of floating tablets of Ibuprofen were prepared using HPMC, Xanthan gum, and gas generating agent sodium bicarbonate and citric acid. The tablets were characterized for the pre and post compression parameters such as friability, hardness, thickness, drug content, weight variation, in-vitro buoyancy studies and 13 hrs in-vitro drug release studies and the results were within the limits. From the results obtained, it was concluded that the optimized formulation F4 desired drug release properties and floating behavior.


This paper introduces the Special Interest Group on the Internet and Operation Technology (SIG-IOT) of the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ). IPSJ SIG-IOT is a similar association to ACM SIGUCCS in Japan. It retains about four hundred members who are mainly managers and operators of ICT infrastructures in universities and colleges, and staff members of companies. The activity of IPSJ SIG-IOT focuses on the technologies for the Internet in general and the techniques for the construction, operation, and administration of distributed computer/network systems. IPSJ SIG-IOT regularly organizes four workshops and one annual symposium and also issues a special section in the IPSJ journal every year. All papers submitted for the symposiums and journals are reviewed. IPSJ SIG-IOT participates in the Multimedia, Distributed, Cooperative, and Mobile Symposium (DICOMO) every year, as one of the organizing SIGs. It also hosts the Architecture, Design, Deployment & Management of Networks & Applications (ADMNET) every year. ADMNET is a workshop of COMPSAC which is the signature conference on computers, software, and applications and is sponsored by IEEE Computer Society. The fields of operational technologies may look modest and tend to be shunned, especially by young people. However, it must be an important part of the foundation of the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) infrastructures as it continues to grow. We are encouraging the research activities and preparing academic papers for young people and hope the activities of IPSJ SIG-IOT help to convey the importance of the field.


Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope results are presented for a sample of human and faunal bones and food remains excavated from Pompeii. The well-preserved organic remains provide a valuable resource to examine ancient lifeways associated with a Roman city during a distinct period of time associated with the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Isotopic results indicate human diets that are consistent with the archaeological and documentary evidence for diverse dietary intake for all residents of Pompeii consisting of a range of cereals, fruits, vegetables, seafood, and meat from domestic and wild animals. Males had similar animal protein intakes to those of females, but they ingested significantly greater amounts of seafood than females. The great range of dietary variability among and between males and females indicated by the isotopic data suggests the existence of past dietary distinctions based on social role and/or social class. In comparison to other isotopic studies in the region, human diets at Pompeii are similar to those of Danish farmers and coastal Greek colonies in southern Italy (Metaponto) but included greater amounts of marine protein. Carbon isotope values for domestic animals indicate a C3-based terrestrial diet, while nitrogen isotope values distinguish herbivores from omnivores and carnivores.


A block diagram of the three-port register file is shown. The memory cell for this register file is also shown. A bit line driver, implemented using a differential ECL buffer, sets the differential voltage across WE and WBb according to the value to be written. During a write, current is drawn through WW, while no current is drawn through WWb. This forces the differential voltage between MC and MCb to equal the voltage between WE and WBb. When the current is shifted from WW to WWb after the write is finished, the positive feedback of device QF and QFb maintains the differential voltage across MC and MCb. When the memory cell is selected during a read on read port A, current is drawn through RAW. This forces current to flow through either RAB or RABb, depending on whether MC or MCb has a higher voltage level. The sense amplifier determines through which bit line current is flowing. Read port B operates under the same principle. A diode connected between VCC and TW is used to bias the memory cells in each row compatibly with sense amplifier biasing.


The effective interactions between two hard spheres mediated by a square-well fluid is studied within the framework of classical density functional theory. The main focus of this study is the behavior of the effective interactions in the supercritical regime close to the Fisher-Widom line, where the decay of the bulk correlations of the solvent changes from monotonic to oscillatory, and close to the Widom line, which is the locus of (local) maxima in the bulk correlation length. The effective interactions are calculated by employing the potential distribution theorem.


Labor disputes are an intriguing feature of the landscape of industrialized economies. Economists have had a long-standing interest in formulating a framework for understanding and analyzing labor disputes. The development of noncooperative bargaining theory provided the tools for a theory of collective bargaining and labor disputes. A general aim of this theoretical development is to inform policy makers of the efficiency and equity effects associated with different labor laws and institutions that govern and shape the collective bargaining process. While this new literature is still evolving, it can already offer many insights into the interplay between policy and the bargaining process. In this chapter, we will provide a sketch of this new collective bargaining theory and illustrate its ability to aid in policy analysis. We will also relate the predictions of the model to existing empirical findings in the literature.


Merisik is a traditional ceremony that is in the Malay tribe. This event brought together two families, man and woman side. The purpose of this event is to know each other between the bride and groom. This event led by Bentara Sabda who had been appointed by each family. Thus, there are only two people who will interact in this event to represent each family. In this study,1) turn taking pattern,2) the relationship of utterances of the closest pair,3) the signs of the closest pair of utterances, and 4) how to obtain a turn of speech in Merisik, will be discussed. The method in this study is a descriptive qualitative. The results obtained are 1) having a perfect pattern that is in accordance with the ABAB formula, 2) there are two speech relationships and the closest pair of utterances, namely delivery and questions, 3) this event only obeys the two signs of the closest speech pair, namely utterances from different speakers and consists of two parts of speech, 4) there are two ways to get a turn of speech, namely by obtaining and seizing.


We consider the problem of visual imitation learning without human kinesthetic teaching or teleoperation, nor access to an interactive reinforcement learning training environment. We present a geometric perspective to this problem where geometric feature correspondences are learned from one training video and used to execute tasks via visual servoing. Specifically, we propose VGS-IL (Visual Geometric Skill Imitation Learning), an end-to-end geometry-parameterized task concept inference method, to infer globally consistent geometric feature association rules from human demonstration video frames. We show that, instead of learning actions from image pixels, learning a geometry-parameterized task concept provides an explainable and invariant representation across demonstrator to imitator under various environmental settings. Moreover, such a task concept representation provides a direct link with geometric vision based controllers (e.g. visual servoing), allowing for efficient mapping of high-level task concepts to low-level robot actions.


Abstract We propose a mutual learning method using nonlinear perceptron within the framework of online learning and have analyzed its validity using computer simulations. Mutual learning involving three or more students is fundamentally different from the two-student case with regard to variety when selecting a student to act as the teacher. The proposed method consists of two learning steps: first, multiple students learn independently from a teacher, and second, the students learn from others through mutual learning. Results showed that the mean squared error could be improved even if the teacher had not taken part in the mutual learning.


The landlord and his emaciated labourer are symbolic of Indian agriculture. However, this relationship is less assured as large landowners have fallen from their superior position. This volume explores how this emblematic pair is becoming a thing of the past. Structural Transformation and Agrarian Change in India investigates whether family labour farms are gaining prominence as a consequence of the structural trans formation of the economy. The authors work alongside Weberian method - ology of ideal types and develop different types of family farms; among them family labour farms that rely mainly on family workers, contrasted with capitalist farms that depend on hired labour. Agriculture is shrinking as a part of the total GDP at the same time as agricultural labour is shrinking as part of the total labour force. The changing agrarian structure is explored with the use of unique longterm survey data and statistical models. Results show that India is approaching farm structures that are typical of East and South East Asia, with pluriactive smallholders as the norm. This book successfully criticizes popular narratives about Indian agricultural development as well as simplistic evolutionist, Marxist or neoclassical prognoses. It is of great importance to those who study development economics, development studies and South Asian economics.


We developed a pseudo-three-dimensional (3D) thermal model in conjunction with a thermal micromagnetic model to study the performance of magnetoresistive (MR) readers. With decreasing sensor dimensions, the junction plays an important role in the overall sensor response. With an image method, we converted the 3D thermal problem to a set of coupled nonlinear differential-integral equations in three regions: sensor stack region, junction region, and lead region. Analytic methods for each region allow a speedy solution for rapid development in MR head design and performance analysis, such as numerical design of experiments and regression for design optimization, Monte Carlo analysis, and statistical analysis for product yield.


Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to utilise market-oriented methodologies and simulation analysis to generate information regarding consumers' attitudes, opinions and preferences towards novel β-glucan-enriched breads.

Design/methodology/approach

– Focus Groups and In-depth interviews were used to generate consumer information on potentially suitable attributes that would maximise consumer acceptance. The approach involved the creation of a set of realistic product concepts from a combination of attribute levels and the presentation of these product concepts to consumers. A fractional factorial design generated an orthogonal array of 22 hypothetical products that were presented to consumers for rating while K-means cluster analysis was used to segment consumers into four specific consumer segments. The simulation analysis then identified β-glucan-enriched bread concepts targeted specifically at these four market segments.

Findings

– The simulation analysis identified β-glucan-enriched bread concepts targeted specifically at these four market segments.

Originality/value

– This research can assist manufacturers who wish to optimally design foods with novel ingredients and aid in the development of product concepts which maximise consumer acceptance and increase the likelihood of product success.


Convolution layers are prevalent in many classes of deep neural networks, including Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) which provide state-of-the-art results for tasks like image recognition, neural machine translation and speech recognition. The computationally expensive nature of a convolution operation has led to the proliferation of implementations including matrix-matrix multiplication formulation, and direct convolution primarily targeting GPUs. In this paper, we introduce direct convolution kernels for x86 architectures, in particular for Xeon and Xeon Phi systems, which are implemented via a dynamic compilation approach. Our JIT-based implementation shows close to theoretical peak performance, depending on the setting and the CPU architecture at hand. We additionally demonstrate how these JIT-optimized kernels can be integrated into a light-weight multi-node graph execution model. This illustrates that single- and multi-node runs yield high efficiencies and high image-throughputs when executing state-of-the-art image recognition tasks on CPUs.


The Pentium processor is a new high-performance, i386/i486 compatible microprocessor. The authors describe targets of likely configurations of personal computers and servers based on the Pentium processor and provide simulation data which aid in the analysis of performance and price tradeoffs. Specific performance tradeoff data are provided for the processor-cache-memory interface.<<ETX>>


A 43-year-old man accidentally shot himself with a nail gun. He was seen in the other hospital. Chest computed tomography showed nail penetrating the thorax, and a small amount of pericardial effusion. He was transferred to our hospital and underwent an operation on emergency. After sternotomy and pericardiotomy, the nail was found to reach the right ventricle, and was almost pulled out. The nail was removed and the right ventricle was repaired with felt 4-0 mattress sutures. His postoperative course was uneventful and discharged 7 days after the accident. Because penetrating cardiac injuries often cause cardiac tamponade, prompt diagnosis and emergency surgical repair are required. We report a case of nail penetration injury of the right ventricle with a review of the pertinent literature.


This commentary argues that seeking best practices in literacy instruction is not a good pursuit for the field. Instead, it argues that it would be better for the field to identify good practice, better practice, and malpractice. Further, it discusses the possible meanings of best practice and why each meaning is inadequate, relatively meaningless, or potentially misleading when compared to the concepts of good and better practice. These possible meanings include best practice as relatively good practice, as what most or expert teachers do, as achievement of valued outcomes, and as scientific evidence. Lastly, this commentary discusses why focusing on good and better practice would be better for the field and suggests some implications of that shift in perspective.


Recent developments in economic growth theory have focused on increasing returns as a source of self-accelerating growth in countries or regions. Several empirical contributions have investigated wether increasing returns can imply divergence in growth rates, or per-capita income levels, across regions, against the hypothesis of convergence implied by more orthodox growth models. In this paper we wish to contribute to this debate by analyzing the role for those network externalities associated to the fast-growing share of industries which use the Internet or other information networks as a mean of production. The evidence on the impact of new information technologies on growth is still mixed: several authors point out that investment in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have significant effects on productivity, thus accelerating growth, while others note that faster growth can better be explained by less stringent monetary and fiscal policy, with investment in ICT being a consequence of growth rather than its cause. Some references: Bassanini, A. Scarpetta, S. Visco, I. (2000), "Knowledge, technology and economic growth: recent evidence from OECD countries", Economics Department Working paper n.259, Paris, OECD, October. Brynjolfsson, E. – Yang, S. (1996), "Information Technology and Productivity: A Review of the Literature", Advances in Computers, Academic Press, Vol. 43, P. 179-214 Daveri, F. (2000), "Is growth an information technology story in Europe too?", IGIER Working Paper No. 168, September. Gordon, R.J. (2000), "Does the New Economy Measure Up to the Great Inventions of the Past?", Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 4, n.14, Fall. Jorgenson, D.W. Stiroh, K.J. (2000), "Raising the Speed Limit: U.S. Economic Growth in the Information Age", Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Zezza, G. (2001), "Growth in the Net economy: the role for e-government", presentato al Third Global Forum "Fostering democracy and development through e-government", Napoli, 15-17 march.


In order to take the reduction of pollution emissions as the target, this paper generates the model parameters based on the input-output relationship between material flow and energy flow of regional inter-industry, and builds the model of energy efficiency optimization of industrial park with the distribution of regional industry structure as the control variable. The modeling process is discussed in detail in model structure, elements and optimization objective and control variable etc. and the suggestions on further research are given.


We generalize in several directions our recent analysis of the limitations to the use of the effective field theory approach to study dark matter at the LHC. Firstly, we study the full list of operators connecting fermion DM to quarks and gluons, corresponding to integrating out a heavy mediator in the $s$-channel; secondly, we provide analytical results for the validity of the EFT description for both $\sqrt{s}=8$ {\rm TeV} and $14$ {\rm TeV}; thirdly, we make use of a MonteCarlo event generator approach to assess the validity of our analytical conclusions. We apply our results to revisit the current collider bounds on the ultraviolet cut-off scale of the effective field theory and show that these bounds are weakened once the validity conditions of the effective field theory are imposed.


Introduction The ReLApsE trial compared lenalidomide (LEN)/dexamethasone (DEX; Rd) re-induction, salvage high dose chemotherapy (HDCT), autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) and LEN maintenance with continuous Rd in relapsed multiple myeloma. Landmark (LM) analyses from salvage HDCT were performed due to the fact that ~30% of patients in the HDCT arm did not receive salvage HDCT/ASCT. These analyses showed a survival benefit in patients actually undergoing salvage HDCT/ASCT. Median PFS and OS from LM were 23.3 vs. 20.1 months (HR 0.74; p=0.09) and not reached vs. 57 months (HR 0.56; p=0.046) favoring the salvage HDCT/ASCT arm. Multivariate LM analyses showed significant associations of the salvage HDCT/ASCT arm with superior PFS (HR 0.6; p=0.01) and OS (HR 0.39; p=0.006). The present analysis aims to dissect treatment efficacy in relevant subgroups and provide clues for treatment stratification.
 Methods The ReLApsE trial (ISRCTN16345835) compared 3 Rd (LEN 25 mg, d1-21; DEX 40 mg, d1,8,15,22; 4 week cycles) re-induction cycles, HDCT (melphalan 200 mg/m2), ASCT and LEN maintenance (10 mg/d) until PD (arm B, n=139) with Rd until PD (arm A, n=138). Key inclusion criteria were 1-3 prior therapy lines, age ≤ 75, time to PD in case of front-line HDCT/ASCT (TTP1) ≥ 12 months and WHO PS ≤ 2. Exploratory subgroup analyses were performed in the ITT population for PFS/OS using an LM at HDCT (B; n=103) and the contemporaneous Rd cycle 5 (A; n=114). The median interval from randomization to LM was 117/122 days in arm B/A. Heterogeneity of treatment effect was assessed by cox regression with interaction term between treatment and subgroup factor.
 Results No significant differences in the PFS/OS benefit between arms were observed in subgroups according to baseline ISS (I/II/III; interaction p[i-p]=0.5/0.66), age (1; i-p=0.37/0.22), single vs. tandem front-line HDCT/ASCT (i-p=0.34/0.56), and TTP1 (12-24 vs. 24-48 vs. >48 months; i-p=0.91/0.21).
 The subgroups according to front-line HDCT/ASCT (yes/no) differed significantly with regard to PFS/OS benefit in arm B (i-p=0.006/0.001). A significant benefit was observed in patients with front-line HDCT/ASCT treated in arm B regarding PFS (HR 0.68, p=0.03; n=107[A]/98[B]) and OS (HR 0.43, p=0.009). Patients without front-line HDCT/ASCT constituted a very small subgroup with imbalances in baseline parameters adversely affecting arm B and had expectably inferior survival in arm B (PFS: HR 4.35, p=0.08; OS: HR 19.83, p=0.0078; n=7[A]/5[B]).
 The subgroup with baseline LDH upper limit of normal (ULN) differed significantly in PFS benefit in arm B (i-p=0.03) but not in OS benefit (i-p=0.46). Patients with LDHULN (PFS: HR 1.54, p=0.31; n=16[A]/18[B]).
 The subgroups according to baseline cytogenetic risk and R-ISS showed a trend towards a differential benefit in arm B regarding OS (i-p=0.05 and 0.09) but not PFS (i-p=0.5 and 0.88). Patients with low risk cytogenetics (i.e. absence of t(4;14), del17p, +1q>3 copies and t(14;16)) had significantly superior OS in arm B (HR 0.21; p=0.01; n=57[A]/35[B]), whereas patients with high risk cytogenetics had no significant difference in OS according to trial arm (HR 0.82, p=0.67; n=25[A]/28[B]). Patients with R-ISS I had significantly superior OS in arm B (HR 0.08; p=0.02; n=33[A]/25[B]), whereas no significant difference in OS according to trial arm was seen in patients with R-ISS II (HR 0.72, p=0.42; n=52[A]/43[B]) and R-ISS III (HR 0.65, p=0.6; n=3[A]/5[B]).
 Conclusions The ReLApsE trial is the first RCT of salvage HDCT/ASCT vs. continuous novel agent treatment. In the absence of a significant survival benefit for the primary endpoint, LM analyses indicated a significant PFS/OS benefit in patients actually undergoing HDCT/ASCT. No heterogeneity of treatment effect was observed according to ISS, age, renal function, response to re-induction, prior therapy lines, single vs. tandem front-line HDCT/ASCT, and TTP1. Subgroup effects regarding PFS and/or OS benefit from HDCT/ASCT were seen favoring patients with front-line HDCT/ASCT and patients with low risk according to LDH, cytogenetics and R-ISS.

 Baertsch: Takeda: Consultancy; Novartis: Consultancy, Research Funding. Raab:Celgene: Consultancy, Honoraria; BMS: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Amgen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding. Hillengass:Celgene: Consultancy, Honoraria, Other: Advisory Board, Research Funding; amgen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Other: Advisory Board; Novartis: Honoraria, Other: Advisory Board; Janssen: Honoraria, Other: Advisory Board; Takeda: Honoraria, Other: Advisory Board; BMS: Honoraria, Other: Advisory Board; Sanofi: Research Funding. Graeven:Roche: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; AbbVie: Honoraria. Fenk:Bristol-Meyers Squibb: Honoraria, Other: travel grant; Takeda: Honoraria; Amgen: Honoraria; Janssen: Honoraria; Celgene: Honoraria, Other: Travel grant, Research Funding. Haenel:Takeda: Honoraria; Novartis: Honoraria; Amgen: Honoraria; Roche: Honoraria. Scheid:Amgen: Honoraria; BMS: Honoraria; Celgene: Honoraria; Janssen: Honoraria; Novartis: Honoraria, Research Funding; Takeda: Honoraria, Research Funding. Salwender:Janssen: Honoraria, Other: travel support, Research Funding; Celgene: Honoraria, Other: travel suppport, Research Funding; Novartis: Honoraria, Other: travel suppport, Research Funding; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Honoraria, Other: travel suppport, Research Funding; Amgen: Honoraria, Other: travel suppport, Research Funding; Takeda: Honoraria. Weisel:Amgen, Celgene, Janssen, and Sanofi: Research Funding; Amgen, BMS, Celgene, Janssen, Juno, Sanofi, and Takeda: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Amgen, BMS, Celgene, Janssen, and Takeda: Honoraria. Goldschmidt:Celgene: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Takeda: Consultancy, Research Funding; Novartis: Honoraria, Research Funding; Mundipharma: Research Funding; Janssen: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Adaptive Biotechnology: Consultancy; ArtTempi: Honoraria; Bristol Myers Squibb: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Chugai: Honoraria, Research Funding; Sanofi: Consultancy, Research Funding; Amgen: Consultancy, Research Funding.


Case: Two patients with cancer involving their proximal tibia required proximal tibial replacement (PTR). One had a soft-tissue sarcoma that involved her posterior cortex, and the other had extensive metaphyseal destruction from metastatic breast cancer. Their anterolateral cortex and tibial tubercle were uninvolved, permitting tubercle-sparing PTR. A plate was applied to the bone bridge in the latter patient in anticipation of radiotherapy. Both healed uneventfully and had minimal extensor lag 2 weeks postoperatively. Conclusion: Tubercle-sparing PTR preserves extensor mechanism function with minimal lag. It should be considered in patients with cancer when sparing the anterolateral cortex is oncologically safe.


Two polymorphic microsatellite markers were selected to identify 24 bread wheat cultivars commonly grown in France and to estimate the proportions of cultivar and hybrid grains in the harvests of four 4-cultivar mixtures (CM 1-4) planted in equal proportions in farmers' fields. This technology was used not only to determine whether a mixture comprises the declared cultivars, but also whether there is any contamination with other cultivars, to identify the contaminants and to estimate their proportions. At harvest, the cultivar proportions ranged from 15 to 37%. Only in the mixture CM2 ('Malacca', 'Somme', 'Renan' and 'Soissons'), did the cultivars contribute equally to the harvest. The other cultivar mixtures CM1 ('Malacca', 'Somme', 'Renan' and 'Camp Remy'), CM3 ('Malacca', 'Texel', 'Apache' and 'Aligre') and CM4 ('Malacca', 'Somme', 'Apache' and 'Virtuose') showed significantly unequal cultivar proportions with 'Somme' dominating 'Renan' and 'Camp Remy' in CM1, and 'Apache' dominating 'Malacca' and 'Aligre' in CM3 and 'Malacca' in CM4. Similar cultivar proportions were measured with gliadin and glutenin markers in the mixtures CM3 and CM4, confirming the results with microsatellites. No contamination was found. Hybrids accounted for between 1.3 and 6.3% of the grains produced in the four cultivar mixtures.


Multi-drug resistance has been increasing in the treatment of urinary tract infections, especially complicated. The prevalence of plasmid-mediated resistance genes among urinary pathogens has nether been studied in Ukraine. So, the aim of our study was to identify the plasmid-mediated resistance genes and to determine their impact on the efficacy of the treatment. A total of 105 adult patients with chronic pyelonephritis were included in the study. Among them, 32 patients were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus. The diagnosis of pyelonephritis was verified according to the criteria EAU, 2013. Plasmid-mediated resistance genes were determined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The prevalence of plasmid-mediated resistance mechanisms among patients with pyelonephritis were 44,4%. ESBLs was the most common isolated genes. Favorable clinical response was seen in 11/31 (35,5%) infected with ESBL-producing organisms compared with 59/74 (79,7%) patients with non-ESBL-producing organisms (p<0,05). In 16% of patients with resistance organisms antimicrobial agent was changed. Antibiotic efficiency was reduced in patients with complicated pyelonephritis due to presence of plasmid-mediated resistance genes. Therefore, prоpеr mаnagеment fоr prescriptiоn of аntibiоtics and also idеntificаtiоn of ESBL-prоducing bаcteria in cоmmunitiеs arе impоrtant fоr prevеntion.


Music and conservation unite to tell the enchanting story of one of the world's most elusive birds.

In a world premiere, the enchanting story of one of the world's most elusive birds will come to life through an intimate night of chamber music.

For nearly a century, the night parrot was believed to be extinct. That is until recently, when the species was sighted nestled amongst the spinifex in regional Queensland. Now, for the first time ever, the extraordinary story of this mysterious bird is being shared through music, with the world premiere of a commissioned work by revered Australian composer, Jessica Wells.

Inspired by the melodic and haunting call of the night parrot, the composition features Mackay-born soprano Morgan England-Jones and Acacia Quartet to evocatively convey the plight of this elusive species.

The concert will also feature additional repertoire inspired by birds from Australian composers Colin Brumby, Alfred Hill, John Spence, Alan Tregaskis and Sally Whitwell.


Recent field observations and large-eddy simulations have shown that the impact of fast running waves (swell) on the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) might be stronger than previously assumed. In low to moderate wave following winds, swell propagates faster than the mean wind, resulting on increasing values of the wave age ( p c / U ). The total stress (momentum flux) above the sea surface will therefore have two major components: the turbulent shear stress, and the wave-induced stress, directed downward and upward, respectively. For sufficiently high wave age values, the wave-induced component becomes increasingly dominant, and the total momentum flux will be directed into the atmosphere. Recent field measurements have shown that this upward momentum transfer from the ocean into the atmosphere has a considerable impact on the surface layer flow dynamics and on the turbulence structure of the MABL.The vertical wind profile will no longer exhibit a logarithmic shape, since an acceleration of the air flow near the surface will take place, generating a low level wave-driven wind maximum (a wind jet).The picture that emerges from this feedback process is of momentum being transferred from the wind into the ocean. Part of this momentum will be used to drive ocean currents, but some will be responsible by the wave generation process along storm tracks. As waves propagate away from their generation area as swell, some of the (*) Corresponding author address: Uppsala University, Villavägen 16, SE-752 36 Uppsala, Sweden firstname.lastname@example.com momentum will be returned to the atmosphere in the form of wave-driven winds. A model that reproduces quantitatively and qualitatively the wave following atmospheric flow and the wave generated wind maximum, as seen from measurements, is proposed. The model has no previous assumptions or restrictions on the turbulence structure of the surface layer of the MABL. New parameterizations for the wave-induced stress at the surface (expressed as a function of the wave damping ratio and wave slope) and the variation of the wave-induced stress with height are included in the model.


This study searched for abnormalities of the atrial electrophysiological substrate in young subjects with unexplained ischaemic cerebrovascular accidents. Thirty-seven patients (18 to 45 years) underwent programmed atrial stimulation at 2 sites in the right atrium after an unexplained ischaemic cerebrovascular accident. Seventeen of them underwent repeat study at 6 months. The following parameters were analysed: indices of atrioventricular conduction and sinus node automaticity; indices related to atrial hyperexcitability: effective refractory period; adaptation of the refractory periods to heart rate, intraatrial conduction and the index of latent vulnerability; the inducibility test by the extrastimulus technique. The following results were obtained: 54% of patients had an inducible atrial arrhythmia; the effective refractory periods and index of latent vulnerability were lower (204 +/- 21 ms and 2.25 +/- 0.7) in the inducible patients than in the non-inducible patients (232 +/- 28 ms and 3.4 +/- 1.1) (p < 0.001 and p < 0.002 respectively); 76% of patients had latent atrial vulnerability indicating and underlying arrhythmogenic substrate; this substrate was still present 6 months later in 80% of these cases; in patients with an abnormality of the interatrial septum, there was an abnormality of the electrophysiological investigation in 85% of cases compared with 65% in those with normal transoesophageal echocardiography. These results confirm the presence of an arrhythmogenic substrate similar to that of patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation in over two thirds of cases. Programmed atrial stimulation is a reproducible technique. The relationship between latent atrial vulnerability and abnormalities of the interatrial septum requires confirmation in a series with a larger numbers of patients.


The effect of fentanyl, 8 μg/kg. used as an adjunct to thiopental for induction of anesthesia, on the circulatory response to tracheal intubation was investigated in 36 patients undergoing major vascular surgery. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either thiopental, 6 mg/kg, alone (N = 181, or thiopental, 3 mg/kg, along with fentanyl, 8 μg/kg (N = 181, for induction of anesthesia. The electrocardiogram, arterial pressure, pulmonary capillary wedge pressure, cardiac output, and central venous pressure were measured during induction of anesthesia, laryngoscopy, and intubation. Mean arterial blood pressure increased more following intubation in patients given thiopental than in patients given fentanyl-thiopental, reaching a peak value of 144 ± 4 torr in patients receiving thiopental only, compared with 108 ± 6 torr in those receiving fentanyl and thiopental (p < 0.0001). Increases in systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and pulmonary capillary wedge pressure with intubation were also significantly greater following administration of thiopental than following fentanyl-thiopental. Doses of fentanyl that are low enough to cause little postoperative respiratory depression significantly blunt postintubation hypertension when used as an adjunct to thiopental.


This study deals with the issue of "The Islamic Military Alliance" (IMA), which has been announced by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (henceforth KSA) on 15 December 2015, and has been linked to combating terrorism under the Saudi leadership. The study aims at explaining the impact of regional and international changes that affected the Saudi security perspective towards the establishment of this alliance - which includes 41 Arab and Islamic countries. The study also endeavors to explore the motives, objectives and interests that endorse the members especially KSA to join this kind of alliances. The study then attempts to analyze the nature of the security strategy adopted by IMA in achieving its objectives. The study sets out from the premise that there is a correlation between the growth of Saudi security needs and the maintenance of its security and national interests through the establishment of this alliance. To examine this hypothesis, the study poses a series of questions and has answered them. The study methodology is based on employing the historical, descriptive and analytical approaches to the research problem, objectives and questions to reach the research outcomes. Finally, the study concludes that KSA aims at achieving a range of national interests through this alliance besides the declared main goal on combating terrorism. The most important of these interests has been to balance the rise of Iranian power and restore the Saudi regional and international prestige in the region


An improved formulation of the one-step model of photoemission from crystal surfaces is proposed which overcomes various limitations of the original theory. The model is formulated within a spin-polarized, fully relativistic framework. It applies to semi-infinite lattices with perfect lateral translational invariance and arbitrary number of atoms per unit cell. Furthermore it includes a realistic description of the solid surface to vacuum interface. Considering the result of an electronic structure calculation in the form of the electronic density functional theory potential as a given quantity, we apply the theory to magnetic thin films and multilayers and compare it with recent experimental results.


Pneumomediastinum and epidural pneumatosis are rare findings. Simultaneous occurrence of spontaneous pneumothorax, pneumomediastinum, pneumopericardium, and epidural emphysema is particularly rare. These findings are even more unusual when there is no history of trauma, underlying pathology, or history of asthma. We present a case of a young male who was referred to the emergency department by his primary care physician for rule out meningitis and was found to have all the above-mentioned findings. It is important to recognize the clinical signs and symptoms of air trapping in various tissues and investigate appropriately. This may prevent potentially life-threatening complications. Subcutaneous emphysema, pneumomediastinum, and epidural emphysema associated with spontaneous bilateral pneumothoraces represents an extremely rare presentation.


A simple and rapid flow-injection method is reported for the determination of dithiocarbamate fungicides (maneb, nabam and thiram) based on chemiluminescence detection. The method involves the photodegradation of dithiocarbamate fungicides via UV light in an alkaline medium. Photoproducts are then reacted with luminol in the absence of an oxidant. Linear calibration graphs were obtained in the range 0.01 – 4.0 mg L^−1 for maneb and nabam and 0.05 – 1.0 mg L^−1 for thiram with relative standard deviations ( n = 4) in the range 1.0 – 2.6%. The detection limits ( S / N = 3) of maneb, nabam and thiram were 10, 8.0 and 5.0 ng mL^−1, respectively, with a sample throughput of 100 h^−1. The method was successfully applied to determine these dithiocarbamate fungicides in spiked natural water samples.


Since the Revolution, Americans have debated what action the military should take toward civilians suspected of espionage, treason, or revolutionary activity. This important book-the first to present a comprehensive history of military surveillance in the United States-traces the evolution of America's internal security policy during the past two hundred years. Joan M. Jensen discusses how the federal government has used the army to intervene in domestic crises and how Americans have protested the violation of civil liberties and applied political pressure to limit military intervention in civil disputes. Although movements to expand and to constrain the military have each dominated during different periods in American history, says Jensen, the involvement of the army in internal security has increased steadily. Jensen describes a wide range of events and individuals connected to this process. These include Benedict Arnold's betrayal of West Point; the colonial wars in Cuba, where Lt. Andrew Rowan, the nation's first officer spy, won a medal for carrying a "Message for Garcia"; the development of "War Plans White" in the 1920s to guide the army's response in the event of domestic rebellion; the activities of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI in the 1950s and 1960s; the use of the National Guard in the South at the height of the civil rights movement; and the surveillance of and violence against protesters during the Vietnam War. Scrutinizing the historic workings of the American government at closer range than has ever been done before, Jensen creates a vivid picture of the growing invisible intelligence empire within the United States government and of the men who created it.


Summary form only given. The low pressure vacuum arc cleaning is a smart processing way of removing an oxide layer. The chemical and mechanical ways are mostly used to remove it, currently. However, both have severe problems such as liquid wastes, dust and noise. In the case of low pressure arc cleaning, there is only one place where the waste comes, from the oxide layer. In addition, because the cathode spot is very high in temperature, it has enough energy to remove the oxide layer. In this paper, removing an thin oxide layer on a thin metal plate was discussed. Scanning electron microscope(SEM) was used to observe the surface of the metal layer, and glow discharge spectrometry (GDS) and Auger spectroscopy was used to analyze O2 and Fe constitutions. In addition, high speed video camera was used to inspect the cathode spot movement on the metal surface. As a result, the low pressure arc can process thin oxide layers from a thin metal plate in a very short time (less than a second). However, some places on the plate after the treatment has a dip like a crater size about 50 mum in diameter at 20 A. The diameter of the crater gets smaller as the oxide layer gets thicker. And the constitution analysis shows that the amount of oxygen which was left over after the treatment didn't depend on the depth of the oxide layer before the treatment. So we can figure out that the dip does not depend on the leftover oxygen. From the numerical analysis, when the oxide layer gets thick, it needs more energy density to evaporate the layer. Therefore, smaller cathode spot would be needed. However, if the cathode spot is too small (too high in energy density), the spot does not only evaporate the oxide layer, but it will start to evaporate the metal surface. Therefore, that is one of the reasons why the crater gets larger when the oxide layer gets thinner.


The Early Career Awards, given for the first time in 1974, recognize the large number of excellent early career psychologists. Recipients of this award may not have held a doctoral degree for more than nine years. For purposes of this award, psychology has been divided into 10 areas: animal learning and behavior, comparative; developmental; health; cognition/human learning; psychopathology; behavioral and cognitive neuroscience; perception/motor performance; social; applied research; and individual differences. Five areas are considered each year, with areas rotated in two-year cycles. The areas considered in 2020 were animal learning and behavior, comparative; developmental; health; cognition/ human learning; and psychopathology. Each year, panels are selected for the areas under consideration, and these panels recommend nominees to the Committee on Scientific Awards. The 2020 recipients of the APA Scientific Contribution Awards were recognized by the 2019 Board of Scientific Affairs and selected by the 2019 Committee on Scientific Awards. For outstanding contributions to the cognitive and neural bases of language production. By carrying out incisive experimental studies of impaired and unimpaired speakers and developing computational models of the production process, Nazbanou Nozari discovered how errors in production are detected and corrected. More generally, her work provides a fresh look at how attention and control modulate language use and demonstrates the applicability of domain-general computational principles of cognition to the activities of speaking, writing, and typing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).


Finite-difference seismograms are calculated for the 1990 Odawara earthquake. Using a basin structure derived from a geotechnical survey and a double-couple solution determined from the P first-motion data, a two-dimensional SH finite-difference calculation reproduces the observed spatial variation in amplitude and waveform of the transverse records at the Ashigara Valley Blind Prediction Sites for frequencies lower than 2 Hz. Comparison of the synthetics and the observed seismograms suggests that the observed amplitude variation of the transverse records in the Ashigara Valley is mainly due to the source radiation pattern rather than the basin structure. Several different double couples are used in the waveform modeling to show the sensitivity of ground motion to the source mechanism. We thus conclude that it is important to use an appropriate focal mechanism to model near-field ground motion.


Autonomous driving at intersections is one of the most complicated and accident-prone traffic scenarios, especially with mixed traffic participants such as vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. The driving policy should make safe decisions to handle the dynamic traffic conditions and meet the requirements of on-board computation. However, most of the current researches focuses on simplified intersections considering only the surrounding vehicles and idealized traffic lights. This paper improves the integrated decision and control framework and develops a learning-based algorithm to deal with complex intersections with mixed traffic flows, which can not only take account of realistic characteristics of traffic lights, but also learn a safe policy under different safety constraints. We first consider different velocity models for green and red lights in the training process and use a finite state machine to handle different modes of light transformation. Then we design different types of distance constraints for vehicles, traffic lights, pedestrians, bicycles respectively and formulize the constrained optimal control problems (OCPs) to be optimized. Finally, reinforcement learning (RL) with value and policy networks is adopted to solve the series of OCPs. In order to verify the safety and efficiency of the proposed method, we design a multi-lane intersection with the existence of large-scale mixed traffic participants and set practical traffic light phases. The simulation results indicate that the trained decision and control policy can well balance safety and tracking performance. Compared with model predictive control (MPC), the computational time is three orders of magnitude lower.


The Forensic Unit of the Alberta Hospital Edmonton has moved from evaluating the performance of a client in a work setting by observation to providing a comprehensive data base on the client through the use of a work history, interest screening and commercial work evaluation systems. A standardized approach, to evaluation has enabled the Occupational Therapists to develop a unique treatment programme for the individual client as a result of the evaluation process and provided reliable data in returning the client to competitive employment.