The moduli space of abelian surfaces with a polarisation of type (1,p2) for p a prime was studied by O'Grady in [7], where it is shown that a compactification of this moduli space is of general type if p≥17. We shall show that in fact this is true if p≥11. Our methods overlap with those of [7], but are in some important ways different. We borrow notation freely from that paper when discussing the geometry of the moduli space.


A Precast Prefabricated Bridge Column using steel tube and prestressing bar was proposed for the application of precast method on substructure. A column specimen designed by the proposed bridge column system was made and performed a quasi-static test. The failure mode appeared to be a flexural failure and there is no damage on column segment connection. And it is good use of the self-centering ability by prestressing force. Test results showed that a column specimen satisfy the earthquake specification, and the structural stability was verified. Nonlinear finite element analysis was performed and compared with the test results. Force-displacement relation and location of crack from the analysis results were compared with the test results and it agreed well. The quantitative analysis was also performed by a parametric study using this modeling technique.


Abstract Cancer metastasis often leads to death and therapeutic resistance. This process involves the participation of a variety of cell components, especially cellular and intercellular communications in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Using genetic sequencing technology to comprehensively characterize the tumor and TME is therefore key to understanding metastasis and therapeutic resistance. The use of spatial transcriptome sequencing enables the localization of gene expressions and cell activities in tissue sections. By examining the localization change as well as gene expression of these cells, it is possible to characterize the progress of tumor metastasis and TME formation. With improvements of this technology, spatial transcriptome sequencing technology has been extended from local regions to whole tissues, and from single sequencing technology to multimodal analysis combined with a variety of datasets. This has enabled the detection of every single cell in tissue slides, with high resolution, to provide more accurate predictive information for tumor treatments. In this review, we summarize the results of recent studies dealing with new multimodal methods and spatial transcriptome sequencing methods in tumors to illustrate recent developments in the imaging resolution of micro-tissues.


A solar assisted dehumidification system has been designed, fabricated, and evaluated. The main components of the drying system consist of a solar collector, an energy storage tank, an auxiliary heater, two blowers, two adsorber columns, two water-air heat exchanger, two water circulating pumps, a drying chamber and other ancillary equipment. A simulation program program has been developed to predict the performance of the drying system. The predicted results are compared with those obtained from experiments. The performance indices considered to calculate the performance of the drying system are: Pick up efficiency (ηP), Solar Fraction (SF) and Coefficient of Performance (COP). The results indicated that the maximum values of the pick up efficiency (ηP), solar fraction (SF) and coefficient of performance (COP) was found 70%, 97% and 0.3, respectively with initial and final wet basis moisture content of Centella Asiatica L 88% and 15%, respectively at an air velocity is 3.25 m/s. Good agreement was found between predicted results and measured results.


Global climate change has led to an increase in large-scale bark beetle outbreaks in forests around the world, resulting in significant impacts to forest ecosystems, timber economies, and forest-dependent communities. As such, prediction models that utilize temperature for estimating future bark beetle locations and consequential tree mortality are critical for informing forest management decision-making in an attempt to mitigate and adapt to pending and current outbreaks. This is especially true for physiological models that account for the effects of overwinter temperatures on bark beetle survival, as seasonal temperatures, specifically during winter months, exert the greatest impact on bark beetle mortality during various stages of life cycle development. Yet, how temperature observations are used to predict bark beetle survival can significantly under- or over-estimate the role that temperature variability plays in annual tree mortality, especially under current climate change trajectories. This study evaluates how representations of winter temperature influence bark beetle survival estimates. Using the recent outbreak of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) across the western USA as a case study, single-year to decade-long winter temperature averages were used as inputs into a physiological beetle survival prediction model, the results of which were compared against beetle-induced tree mortality observations using temporal autoregressive models. Results show that using longer-term survival averages of seven to ten years significantly increases the likelihood that temperature alone can predict general levels of beetle survival and hence beetle-induced mortality. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering the role of long-term temperature observations when forecasting bark beetle outbreaks, and that year-to-year temperature variability may be constrained in predicting beetle survival during outbreak periods.


BACKGROUND: Proteinuria has been considered to be a prognostic marker for persons with diabetes mellitus, but only a limited number of studies about the relationship between proteinuria and mortality among general population has been available. METHODS: The subjects were 10,897 individuals who participated in the National Cardiovascular Survey conducted in 1980 and who were aged 30 years or older living in 300 districts that had been randomly selected throughout Japan. The vital records were confirmed in 1999 and 7,203 subjects (3,180 males and 4,023 females) without a history of hypertension, stroke, heart disease, renal disease, or diabetes mellitus at the start of the study were investigated. RESULTS: There were 126,825 person-years of follow-up. During the observed period of time, 371 died of cardiovascular causes, including 171 stroke deaths and 74 coronary deaths. The risk of proteinuria for cardiovascular mortality was greater than unity for those with a normal serum creatinine level, after adjusting for age and other cardiovascular disease risk factors. CONCLUSIONS: When contrasted with other cardiovascular disease risk factors, urinary protein is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular death among the Japanese population.


Radiocarbon enables a distinction between contemporary and fossil carbon, which can be used for the apportionment of biogenic and anthropogenic sources in environmental studies. In order to apply this approach to carbonaceous atmospheric aerosols, it is necessary to adapt pretreatment procedures to the requirements of 14C measurements. In this work, we followed an approach in which total carbon (TC) is subdivided into fractions of different chemical and physical properties. 14C data of ambient aerosols from Zürich (Switzerland) are presented for the 2 sub-fractions of TC, organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC). Furthermore, OC is separated into water-insoluble OC (WINSOC) and water-soluble OC (WSOC). Results demonstrate the importance to differentiate between these fractions for 14C-deduced source apportionment, as the contributions can range between both extremes, nearly exclusively biogenic and anthropogenic.


A qualitative study was undertaken of 31 self-selected egalitarian couples with children. Using "grounded theory" to generate themes, couple were interviewed to discover the role of the perception of fairness in marriage; how it is defined by couples attempting to live by an egalitarian ideology, and how this perception is developed and maintained over time. The relationship themes found were divided into those related to the outcome of having a perception of fairness, and the conditions leading to a fairness perception. Equity theory is used to explain the results and add to our understanding of the way perceptions of fairness are evidenced in day-to-day interactions. Excerpts from the interviews are offered and implications for therapists are discussed.


Kinematic and Thomas capture mechanisms are studied in fast (MeV) electron-transfer collisions between fast protons or He2+ ions and neutral helium.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the diagnostic value of neutrophil CD64 index in sepsis patients in intensive care unit (ICU).

METHODS
A prospective case-control study was conducted, the patients admitted to ICU of Jiangbei People's Hospital Affiliated to Nantong University from December 2016 to June 2020 were enrolled. According to the criteria of Sepsis 3, 107 patients diagnosed with sepsis were classified as the sepsis group, 112 patients without infection were classified as control group. Peripheral venous blood samples were collected within 24 hours after ICU admission, neutrophil CD64 index, C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT), white blood cell count (WBC) were detected. Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC curve) was used to evaluate the diagnostic value of neutrophil CD64 index, CRP, PCT and WBC for sepsis.

RESULTS
The neutrophil CD64 index, CRP and PCT in sepsis group were significantly higher than those in control group [neutrophil CD64 index: 9.03±5.59 vs. 3.18±1.50, CRP (mg/L): 146.9±68.3 vs. 46.5±35.8, PCT (ng/L): 31.82±14.71 vs. 1.87±1.42, all P < 0.05]. ROC curve analysis showed that neutrophil CD64 index, CRP and PCT had certain diagnostic value for sepsis, the area under ROC curve (AUC) were 0.924, 0.915 and 0.879, respectively, the 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were 0.871-0.978, 0.855-0.975, 0.807-0.951, respectively, P values were 0.016, 0.017 and 0.026, respectively. Among the three indicators, the diagnostic value of neutrophil CD64 index was much higher. When the optimal cut-off value was 4.32, the sensitivity and specificity were 83.6% and 88.7%, respectively, which were higher than the sensitivity (75.1%, 76.3%) and specificity (87.2%, 82.5%) of CRP and PCT.

CONCLUSIONS
Neutrophil CD64 index is a valuable biomarker for the diagnosis of sepsis in ICU.


In this paper, an aircraft speed hold flight control problem is addressed only in one loop via sliding mode control with parameter uncertainties in flight speed and altitude without any reconfiguration of control parameters. Complete nonlinear longitudinal flight dynamics model is built for a conventional aircraft for speed hold problem. Control commands are assumed to be elevator angle deflection and trust input of jet-engine/propeller. Actuator limits are calculated to determine violation limits. A design example is given to illustrate effectiveness of proposed control system with compared simulations for three different flight conditions.


A predisposition to developing immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) has not been reported in survivors of childhood cancer. We report a case series of childhood cancer survivors who developed an isolated thrombocytopenia in the presence of a normocellular bone marrow. Five children, two with endodermal sinus tumors and three with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, developed ITP at a median of 4 years (range: 0.2–8 years) after completion of therapy. We suggest the association of ITP in survivors of childhood malignancy may not be co‐incidental as chemotherapy may cause persistent immune dysfunction. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


There is a burgeoning body of consumer scholarship that identifies a consumer-citizen identity, reconstructing the consumer as a social and political actor and not just an economic actor. In food systems dominated by supermarkets, some hail the coming of the consumer-citizen as an antidote to the power of large retailers. Drawing on an empirical study of the Australian grocery sector, this paper interrogates the claim that consumer-citizenry will fulfil this promise. It emphasises the need for tempering any optimism in this regard, taking account of the impact of socio-economic constraints facing most consumers, and for which the supermarkets must be held in part responsible. The paper explores the role of government in supporting citizen-inspired consumer concerns and argues that the prevailing adherence to a neo-liberal paradigm of managing markets explains why thus far the state has failed in providing this support. Using a focus on competition regulation, the paper concludes that market-related policies need to be sensitive to the social effects of concentration, on inequality in particular, and that in the face of substantial private economic power, faith in self-regulation and self-correcting markets is misplaced.


Aiming to improve the Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) outputs with a post-processing step, ASR error correction (EC) techniques have been widely developed due to their efficiency in using parallel text data. Previous works mainly focus on using text or/ and speech data, which hinders the performance gain when not only text and speech information, but other modalities, such as visual information are critical for EC. The challenges are mainly two folds: one is that previous work fails to emphasize visual information, thus rare exploration has been studied. The other is that the community lacks a high-quality benchmark where visual information matters for the EC models. Therefore, this paper provides 1) simple yet effective methods, namely gated fusion and image captions as prompts to incorporate visual information to help EC; 2) large-scale benchmark datasets, namely Visual-ASR-EC, where each item in the training data consists of visual, speech, and text information, and the test data are carefully selected by human annotators to ensure that even humans could make mistakes when visual information is missing. Experimental results show that using captions as prompts could effectively use the visual information and surpass state-of-the-art methods by upto 1.2% in Word Error Rate(WER), which also indicates that visual information is critical in our proposed Visual-ASR-EC dataset.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the role of the artificial urinary sphincter (AUS) in the management of sphincter weakness incontinence in neuropathic patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Ninety patients (75 male and 15 female, mean age 26 years, range 13-62) with neurogenic bladder dysfunction (71 with congenital and 19 with acquired cord lesions) who underwent implantation of an AUS were reviewed. All patients were followed up for a minimum of one year after the initial implantation of the sphincter (mean 4 years, range 1-10). Pre-operative video-urodynamics demonstrated sphincter weakness incontinence in all patients, with 24 patients having an acontractile-type bladder. Of 66 patients with intermediate-type bladders, 52 underwent cystoplasty.

RESULTS
Eighty-three patients (92%) were continent both night and day, three were occasionally damp and controlled by pharmacotherapy, and four had a persistent poor result. Of the 66 patients with detrusor hyper-reflexia, 52 (79%) required a cystoplasty to achieve continence and 14 (21%) were controlled with anti-cholinergic therapy. The re-operation rate was 28% (25/90) and complications included six infections, seven erosions, eight system failures, two pump failures, one sheered tube and one rectal and one bladder perforation. Seventy (78%) of the patients currently perform intermittent catheterization to treat high post-voiding residual urine volumes.

CONCLUSIONS
A rate of continence > 90% was achieved in these neurogenic patients after implantation of an AUS and we recommend a simultaneous cystoplasty in patients with detrusor overactivity.


Among 40 fresh isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae 12, 25 and 3 strains, respectively, exhibited large round, small round and compact colonial morphologies in soft-agar medium. Every large round strain possessed a capsule, almost half of the small round strains had capsules, while all of the large round type growth showed very high mouse virulence and 1.0 mg of these organisms was capable of absorbing a minimal amount of passive protective antibody in rabbit antiserum, prepared with the homologous strain, against challenge infection with homologous organisms in mice. Its variant showing compact type growth in soft-agar was mouse avirulent and a similar amount of the mouse passive protective antibody could not be absorbed with 100 mg of these organisms. These experimental results indicate that the soft-agar technique can be used for the identification of encapsulated strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae.


The authors report two cases of giant fibroadenoma of the breast and discuss the diagnostic and therapeutic problems and the value of the "dermal vault" technique. A giant fibroadenoma is a fibroadenoma with a diameter exceeding 6 centimeters. This benign tumor has an inflammatory growth during pregnancy. An exact histological diagnosis is necessary to differentiate GFA from sarcoma phyllodes. The reconstructive concern should not jeopardize the quality of the removal. The "dermal vault" technique seems to meet these requirements: diagnosis and removal are made through a posterior approach and symmetrization of the volumes is easily obtained on clamp. The new location of the NAC should be outlined while bearing in mind that a cutaneous retraction of the upper parts will systematically occur.


Alzheimer disease (AD) is a widely known type of dementia. It is an irreversible brain disease that slowly affects memory, thinking, and behavior. In the brain, brain cells talk to each other with special signals, helping people control their minds and bodies. People with AD have lower amounts of these signals. One possible reason for this is that people with AD also have a buildup of a specific protein called amyloid-β that prevents their brain cells from communicating with each other. When this happens, a person begins to act and think differently. They may start to show strange behavior or experience delusions. The person may also start showing mood symptoms like aggression, depression, or anxiety. Together, mood symptoms are also called neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS). In addition, people with AD gradually lose cognitive function. Loss of cognitive abilities are separate from NPS. They include things like troubles with reasoning, memory, problem solving, or mathematical or verbal skills.


A new fuzzy inference based on piecewise polynomial interpolation similar to spline technique is proposed. The signed membership function which can encode more information than the usual membership function is also introduced and used together with this new inference method. The fuzzy system using this inference method is more compact compared to other types of fuzzy systems. Online recursive training algorithm is also proposed to tune these polynomials if numerical training data is available. In contrast to neural network where the trained network is only a function of training data, both the heuristic prior knowledge and available training data are used. A simulation example is given to show how this new fuzzy inference can be applied in model reference closed-loop control system.


In this study the identities of youth, ages I l-12, who live in a multicultural neighbourhood in Geneva, Switzerland were investigated. In an attempt to capture the multiple dimensions that comprise these identities, the authors generated a methodological approach that allowed participants to describe themselves in their own terms. Using the metaphor of a flower, they developed a "cultural flower," in which respondents fill in the many petals descriptors they choose to represent themselves. In addition to this open-ended qualitative approach, a sociometric questionnaire was also administered. Three main categories emerged from this study: individual social identities, territorial collective identities, and cultural heritage identities. From these findings, it is suggested that the identities of youth in this sample cannot be reduced to only one descriptive element such as nationality or ethnicity. Rather, these findings suggest that youth have multidimensional identities that may be expressed in "youth culture" (music, clothes, sports). This study stimulates the area of research on intercultural relations by highlighting commonalties among youth from varying cultural backgrounds who live in a multicultural neighbourhood.


A novel magnetic thread power take-off (PTO) that converts slow linear motion, first to fast rotary motion and then to electricity, is introduced here. The proposed PTO can be used with any wave energy converter (WEC) type that has a reciprocating linear motion. Here it is deployed in one of floating-structure, direct-extraction type WEC. The magnetic thread is unique in that the components of the PTO can slip harmlessly when overloaded, thereby overcoming a significant disadvantage of direct-extraction technologies that are susceptible to higher stresses.In the chosen floating-structure WEC, the PTO is driven by a point absorber: a buoy working against a reaction plate. A dynamic model representing the control and behavior (mechanical and electrical) of the WEC is developed to accept wave data as an input resulting in an effective output power.A stochastic model that generates a spatial and temporal wave characteristic data set for Banks Peninsula, New Zealand, is developed using available measurements. Different configurations of wave farm are assessed under a condition typical to this location, well suited for such an energy harvesting device. The variability of the aggregate farm output, compared to that of a single buoy, is examined. Reduction in variability is maximized when the outputs of individual buoys are uncorrelated. A criterion that determines the extent of correlation is derived.


In this paper, we propose an efficient implementation of support vector machines (SVMs) on a low-power and low-cost 8-bit microcontroller. The proposed solution can be advantageously used to implement smart sensors and sensor networks for intelligent data analysis and pervasive computing. A new model selection algorithm that allows fitting the resource constraints imposed by the hardware architecture is proposed. Moreover, the performance of an optimized implementation which exploits the CORDIC algorithm is detailed and discussed


This study was a case study to explore the interventions being offered at one institution to support students from low-income backgrounds. The institution experienced higher than average graduation rates compared to low-income serving institutions with similar characteristics. The purpose of this study was to discover the institutional interventions that were helpful for the persistence to degree completion for students from low-income backgrounds.

The study employed three data collection methods to learn about the interventions. The methods used were individual interviews with professionals who supported students from low-income backgrounds, group interviews with students from low-income backgrounds who earned at least 60 credits, and the review of the relevant documents that pertained to supporting low-income students. The data gathered from this study found that the institution had institutional initiated, professional initiated, and impeding interventions on the persistence to completion for students from low-income backgrounds.

The institutional initiated interventions were supported with funding, human resources, or by the documents of the institution. These interventions were directly or indirectly helpful for students from low-income backgrounds and included bridge programs and external alliances, the deconstruction of access and success barriers, emerging persistence and attainment initiatives, a financial aid office oriented for student success, and the targeting of intersecting populations with lower than average graduation rates.

The professional initiated interventions were provided by the professionals of the institution, or advocated for by the professionals and obtained some assistance from the institution. These interventions were also helpful for supporting students from low-income backgrounds and included the informal network, optimism for support and success, and the survival initiatives.

The impeding interventions were institutional strategies that had the unintentional consequence of causing additional challenges for students. These interventions had an adverse impact on the persistence to completion for students from low-income backgrounds and included a conflict of support for the current and espoused population, the counter initiatives, fiscal and human resources limitations, and an unclear coordination of interventions.


This study was designed to test the hypothesis that elevated maternal thyroid hormone concentrations in midpregnancy are responsible for the observed differences in lamb follicle characteristics as a result of mid-pregnancy shearing. The study involved 51 twin-born lambs in a 2 x 2 factorial design involving dams that were either shorn or unshorn in mid pregnancy and had either normal or elevated thyroid hormone levels. All ewe groups were thyroidectomised except for unshorn-normal ewes which were sham-operated. The thyroxine implant and injection regimes used to manipulate maternal thyroid hormone levels in mid-pregnancy were successful in mimicking the levels previously reported in mid-pregnancy shorn ewes. Lambs born to shorn dams had significantly (P<0.05) higher coefficients of variation of mean fibre diameter. Dam shearing treatment had no effect on any other follicle or wool characteristic. Lambs born to ewes with elevated thyroid levels in mid-pregnancy had a significantly (P<0.05) higher numbers of secondary fibres, and tended to have more primary fibres (P=0.08) and whiter wool (P=0.06). The absence of any dam shearing-treatment effect on secondary and primary fibre numbers, fibre diameter and length, suggests that the changes observed in follicles and wool characteristics of lambs born to mid-pregnancy shorn dams are primarily due to elevations in maternal thyroid hormone levels in mid-pregnancy. More work is required to confirm this hypothesis.


This paper investigates how the introduction of an index security directly or indirectly impacts the underlying-index spot-futures pricing. Using intraday data for financial instruments related to the CAC 40 index, we do not find that the spot-futures price efficiency improvement observed after ETF introduction is explained either by the direct effect of ETF shares being used in arbitrage trades or by the indirect effect of ETF trading improving the liquidity of index stocks in the short run. Some of our findings suggest that the efficiency improvement could rather result from a structural change in the way index traders distribute across index markets, with the ETF market absorbing the liquidity demand from some hedgers or passive index traders.


We have characterized a glutamate rich Plasmodium falciparum antigen, GLURP, which by immunoassays appears to be present in both the pre-erythrocytic and erythrocytic stages of the vertebrate life cycle. The gene, which is located on chromosome 10, encodes a polypeptide of 1271 residues with a predicted molecular mass of 145 kDa. Rabbit antiserum against a fusion protein expressing the C-terminal end of the molecule detects a protein with a molecular mass of 220 kDa. The sequence includes two hydrophobic regions: one consisting of 23 residues and located by the N-terminus which may act as signal peptide, and the second located at the C-terminus consisting of 33 predominantly hydrophobic residues. Except for these hydrophobic regions the protein is hydrophilic and highly charged. The sequence has two tandem repeats designated as R1 and R2. These regions were found to be conserved in isolates from different geographical areas. High levels of anti-GLURP antibodies have been shown to correlate with low parasite density. The indication of GLURP being present in all stages of the parasite in the human host raises significantly the prospects of the potential of this molecule.


Abstract A research study was conducted at the radiation oncology department of a large teaching hospital in Ghana, to determine whether the use of a pain questionnaire would facilitate a contribution by the radiation therapists (RTs) to the management of pain in the patients undergoing external beam radiotherapy. The rationale for the study was to test the pain questionnaire as a tool for routine use by RTs and to increase the knowledge and skill of the RTs with regard to pain assessment in order that they could have an effective role in the multidisciplinary approach to pain management. The pain questionnaire for administration by RTs was adapted as a tool for assessing pain. The tool and the process were tested in a prospective study of 90 participants who willingly consented to participate. The data was analysed as a means of evaluating the questionnaire and learning about pain in this group of cancer patients. The results of this analysis were integrated with the findings from textual data published in a previous paper. Findings revealed that RTs could administer a limited pain questionnaire and use this for clinical assessment of patients with pain, refer patients who need urgent medical attention to the doctors, monitor the patients receiving radiotherapy and adjuvant chemotherapy as well as provide meaningful suggestions to the multidisciplinary team on the management of pain. Through this reflective process it is recommended that because RTs have daily contact with patients during external beam radiotherapy treatment and because the majority of cancer patients in the study population experience pain, the RTs should enhance their knowledge of pain and participate in routine pain assessment. Through engagement in this role development the quality of care to the patient population in Ghana will be improved.


The development of product is a complex process. Collaboration is necessary to this process to support multi-function teams' participation in this process at the same time. Effective task decomposition is the prerequisite of collaborative design and constraint network was used to express the relationship among design participants. In order to make the coupling collaborative design go smoothly, a constraint satisfaction model based on dynamic constraint is put forward. An integrated-based conflict resolution model is advanced to resolve the complex conflict during the process of collaborative design.


Administration of LY171555, a specific dopamine D2 receptor agonist, (10-1000 micrograms/kg i.v.) produced dose-related increases in mean arterial pressure in conscious Sprague-Dawley rats. Pretreatment with metoclopramide (5 mg/kg i.v.) abolished the pressor action of LY171555, whereas pretreatment with domperidone (2.5 mg/kg i.v.) and propranolol (10 mg/kg i.p.) did not affect the pressor action of LY171555. The vasopressor antagonist of arginine vasopressin (AVP), d(CH2)5Tyr(Me)AVP (10 micrograms/kg i.v.) and phenoxybenzamine (1 mg/kg i.v.) partly blocked and hexamethonium (25 mg/kg i.v.) enhanced the pressor action of LY171555. After combined treatment with both d(CH2)5Tyr(Me)AVP and phenoxybenzamine, LY171555 induced a depressor response which was completely blocked by pretreatment with domperidone. LY171555 administration induced a rapid, short-acting depressor response followed by a pressor response in conscious adrenomedullectomized Sprague-Dawley rats which was smaller in magnitude than that seen in intact Sprague-Dawley rats. LY171555 administration increased plasma norepinephrine, epinephrine and AVP in conscious Sprague-Dawley rats. These results suggest that the pressor action of LY171555 in conscious rats is dependent on activation of sympathetic outflow and AVP release through the central D2 dopaminergic system and that the central pressor effects of LY171555 could mask a depressor effect of LY171555 at the peripheral D2 dopamine receptor.


Abstract. CellLab-CTS 2015 is a Python-language software library for creating two-dimensional, continuous-time stochastic (CTS) cellular automaton models. The model domain consists of a set of grid nodes, with each node assigned an integer state code that represents its condition or composition. Adjacent pairs of nodes may undergo transitions to different states, according to a user-defined average transition rate. A model is created by writing a Python code that defines the possible states, the transitions, and the rates of those transitions. The code instantiates, initializes, and runs one of four object classes that represent different types of CTS models. CellLab-CTS provides the option of using either square or hexagonal grid cells. The software provides the ability to treat particular grid-node states as moving particles, and to track their position over time. Grid nodes may also be assigned user-defined properties, which the user can update after each transition through the use of a callback function. As a component of the Landlab modeling framework, CellLab-CTS models take advantage of a suite of Landlab's tools and capabilities, such as support for standardized input and output.


Nonhuman primates (NHPs) have provided robust experimental animal models for many human‐related diseases due to their similar physiologies. Nonetheless, profound differences remain in the acquisition, progression, and outcome of important diseases such as AIDS and Alzheimer's, for which the underlying basis remains obscure. We explored the utility of human high‐density oligonucleotide arrays to survey the transcription profile of NHP genomes. Total RNA from prefrontal cortices of human (Homo sapiens), common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), cynomolgous macaque (Macaca fascicularis), and common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) was labeled and hybridized to Affymetrix U95A GeneChip probe arrays. Corresponding data obtained previously from common chimpanzee and orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) were added for comparison. Qualitative (present or not detected) and quantitative (expression level) analysis indicated that many genes known to be involved in human neurological disorders were present and regulated in NHPs. A gene involved in dopamine metabolism (catechol‐O‐methyltransferase) was absent in macaque and marmoset. Glutamate receptor 2 was up‐regulated, and transcription‐associated genes were down‐regulated in NHPs compared with humans. We demonstrate that transcript profiling of NHPs could provide comparative genomic data to validate and better focus experimental animal models of human neurological disorders.


The effects of light and ammonium levels on net production, fluorescence parameters and non-structural carbohydrates of the seagrass Zostera noltii under different phosphate conditions were studied. A fully factorial design was used with light (low/high levels), ammonium supply and phosphate preculture conditions of the plants as the experimental variables. Both ammonium supply and low light caused negative and synergistic effects on net production, while ammonium toxicity was more severe at high light levels; in this case, it was independent of the non-structural carbohydrate (sucrose and starch) content. Preculturing of plant with added phosphate alleviated the ammonium toxicity, and also attenuated the negative production balance of plants grown at low light levels. The results indicated that phosphate preculture ameliorated the plant's short-term response against the assayed stressors (low light, high ammonium) significantly. An overall consumption of non-structural carbohydrates in response to environmental stressors was recorded throughout the experiment, indicating the importance of carbon and phosphorus reserves to cope with adverse conditions. In addition, phosphate deficiency increased the vulnerability of plants, which could have negative ecological consequences for seagrass species thriving under phosphate deficiency conditions, or in developing seagrass transplantation programs.


BACKGROUND
Monitoring of hemoglobin A(1c) (HbA(1c)) is important in the management of diabetes. The IFCC reference measurement procedure for HbA(1c) is based on the ratio of glycated to nonglycated N-terminal hexapeptides of the beta-chains of hemoglobin after digestion with Glu-C endoproteinase. We developed a modification of the original reference measurement procedure with HPLC-electrospray ionization/mass spectrometry (ESI/MS).

METHOD
We performed chromatographic separation of the hexapeptides using a C12 reversed-phase column and a binary gradient system consisting of a mixture of H(2)O/acetonitrile/formic acid.

RESULTS
Using this method, we obtained higher signal intensities and improved system stability compared with the reference measurement procedure. In the range of 3% to 14% HbA(1c), intralaboratory CVs were 0.71% to 1.86%. Deviations from IFCC target values were -0.87 to 1.00 relative %. These values fulfill acceptability criteria for HbA(1c) determination set by the IFCC Working Group on HbA(1c) Standardization.

CONCLUSIONS
This procedure for the determination of HbA(1c) improves the existing reference measurement procedure.


Summary This article describes how The Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale (the Hebrew Home), a non-profit geriatric care center, has established one of the nation's first long term care based elder abuse prevention and intervention programs for elderly living in the community. This program, known as the Weinberg Center for Prevention, Intervention and Research in Elder Abuse (the 'Weinberg Center'), received start-up funding in the form of a matching grant challenge from the Weinberg Foundation of Baltimore, which has a history of funding innovative geriatric programs throughout the United States. Utilizing the Hebrew Home's extensive integrated service model, a multidisciplinary team works with a network of private and governmental agencies. This model was designed based upon the needs of this population as described in the nascent research, evaluation of the few programs in existence, and the emerging state of elder abuse as a matter of public policy. The goals are to increase public awareness, intervene to make the home safe, and provide a secure and fulfilling short or long term shelter. Research in prevalence and efficacious use of the shelter is being conducted.


Up to now, UAV are widely used, but only in special conditions, both in space and time, which leads to the notion of "segregated airspace". Sense and avoid systems must be installed on board the UAV to allow their insertion in the general air traffic. Such systems will include cooperative and non-cooperative sensors for reliability. The radar is likely the most useful non-cooperative sensors because it is an "all-weather" sensor and it provides, by essence, accurate ranging and closing speed. The paper discusses solutions in three radar bands: S, X and Ka bands. For each of them, one or two solutions are presented and the pros and cons are discussed. It will be seen that X band is an interesting solution to be pursued.


The operation of making up one's mind about a sentence phi is a belief change operation that takes the agent to a belief state in which either phi or phi is believed. Apart from being practically important, this operation is technically interesting since the standard approach of intersecting a set of optimal outcomes is not workable. A construction based on descriptor revision is provided in which the operation can be modelled. This construction is axiomatically characterized with a set of plausible postulates, and additional postulates that correlate with properties of the construction are investigated.


Recent observations show that the strain reversal affects significantly and in a complex way both the static recrystallisation (SRX) and strain-induced precipitation (PPT) kinetics in Nb-microalloyed steel. It is already known that the recrystallisation stagnation is a consequence of the competition between the driving pressure for recrystallisation and the pinning pressure caused by the strain-induced precipitation of Nb (C,N) precipitates. Both of these parameters depend in turn on the local dislocation density. Thus, it is expected that a variation of the local dislocation density due to reversal of the strain will affect at the same time the local driving and the pinning pressures, which will cause the difference in the hardening levels. In the present paper, the influence of strain path change on microstructure evolution and mechanical behaviour in Nb-microalloyed steel (API X-70 grade) was studied. The deformation schedules were designed in order to investigate an effect of strain reversal on both static recrystallisation and strain-induced precipitation process kinetics. Flow curves recorded during deformation of X-70 steel showed clear influence of applied strain path on both static recrystallisation kinetics and strain-induced precipitation process.


ABSTRACT Thailand has experienced dramatic growth of large national and international modern food retailers, such as supermarkets, hypermarkets and convenience stores in large cities and regional centres in the last two decades. Nevertheless, Thai consumers continue to purchase perishables (fruits, vegetables and animal products) from fresh markets (wet markets, talat sot) contradicting predictions from analysts that modern food retail chains will rapidly replace fresh markets as the preferred venue for purchasing all types of foods. This paper examines trust in food retail systems as an under-explored dimension lying behind the continued patronage by Thais of fresh markets to purchase perishable items. It derives from a research program commenced in 2005 that includes fieldwork visits, interviews and questionnaires. In the context of the Thai food retail transition, we propose that trust affects relationships between consumers and (1) individual fresh market-based vendors, (2) the food products sold at fresh markets and (3) the food retail system more broadly. If fresh markets can be maintained in the face of sustained pressure from modern national and international food retailers, Thais will continue to use them. Meanwhile, trust is a relatively unrecognised dimension that is supporting the continued existence of traditional food retail formats.


The role of indirect taxes in social policy is investigated by 1) comparing the distributional pattern of indirect taxes with the one of personal income taxes and social security contributions; 2) calculating the indirect tax liabilities for recipients of social benefits; 3) assessing the distributional impact of shifting the financing of social security from contributions to indirect taxes. For this purpose we combine the data of the Household Budget Survey and the Socio-Economic Panel, as well as two microsimulation models, namely ASTER (for the calculation of indirect taxes) and MISIM (for the calculation of personal income taxes and social contributions)


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the compliance of parents in purchasing iron-containing drugs for their infants. In addition, we looked for possible socioeconomic characteristics of the parents who prevent their infants from accessing these medications.

DESIGN
All infants (4-12 months) whose parents bought (from January to August 1999 and from January to August 2000) the iron-containing drugs as recommended by the Israeli Ministry of Health were retrieved from a database. The socioeconomic status of the citizens was determined according to the "mean real income" (INCMV) and "relative income" (INCMS). The percentage of parents who purchased the medication from each district was compared with the socioeconomic status of this population.

RESULTS
Forty-four pediatricians' offices in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area were included. The data of 4929 infants was summarized. Only 27% of the parents bought the drugs. Only 11.5% to 20% of parents from the 5 highest socioeconomic classes purchased the medication compared with 43.6% to 57.1% of the parents from the 5 lowest socioeconomic classes.

CONCLUSION
There was low compliance by parents in obtaining iron-containing medications for their infants, mainly among parents from high socioeconomic classes.


The investigation of novel electronic phases in low-dimensional quantum materials demands for the concurrent development of measurement techniques that combine surface sensitivity with high spatial resolution and high measurement accuracy. We propose a new quantum sensing imaging modality based on superconducting charge qubits to study dissipative charge carrier dynamics with nanometer spatial and high temporal resolution. Using analytical and numerical calculations we show that superconducting charge qubit microscopy (SCQM) has the potential to resolve temperature and resistivity changes in a sample as small as $\Delta T\leq0.1\;$mK and $\Delta\rho\leq1\cdot10^{4} \,\Omega\cdot$cm, respectively. Among other applications, SCQM will be especially suited to study the microscopic mechanisms underlying resistive phase transition, such as the superconductor-insulator-transition in twisted bilayer graphene, to investigate novel topological boundary modes found in higher order topological insulators and to optimize the transport properties of nano- and mesoscopic devices.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of a positive form of leadership, particularly authentic leadership, on ambidexterity, as ambidexterity has shown to improve financial performance. What is less clear, however, is how to create the organisational context towards ambidexterity or balanced exploitative and explorative innovation. This study set out to fill that gap in researching the direct influence of authentic leadership as well as indirect effect through innovation climate on ambidexterity.

Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative research approach was followed, with an online survey to employees in South African organisations. There were 733 useable questionnaires. Structural equation modelling was used to test proposed hypotheses of direct, indirect and moderation effects.

Findings
The results revealed that authentic leadership has a significant and positive direct effect on ambidexterity and a significant indirect effect through an innovation climate. Environmental dynamism lessened the regression weight of the relationship between authentic leadership and ambidexterity.

Research limitations/implications
The data collected were cross-sectional and respondents were South African employees; therefore, caution should be exercised when generalising the results to other organisations in a broader African context.

Practical implications
Understanding that both authentic leadership and innovation climate are required to significantly influence ambidexterity allows organisations to direct their leadership selection and development.

Originality/value
The main contribution of this research lies in clarifying the influence of authentic leadership on ambidexterity in the South African context.


1Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The Cancer Hospital of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Zhejiang Cancer Hospital), Institute of Basic Medicine and Cancer (IBMC), Chinese Academy of Science, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People's Republic of China; 2Key Laboratory of Head & Neck Cancer Translational Research of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People's Republic of China; 3Cancer Institute of the Second Affiliated Hospital and Institute of Translational Medicine, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People's Republic of China Abstract: Cullin-RING E3 ligases (CRLs) are the largest family of E3 ubiquitin ligases, responsible for about 20% of the protein degradation by the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS). Given their vital roles in multiple cellular processes, and over-activation in many human cancers, CRLs are validated as promising targets for anti-cancer therapies. Activation of CRLs requires cullin neddylation, a process catalysed by three neddylation enzymes. Recently, our group established an AlphaScreen-based in vitro cullin neddylation assay and employed it for high-throughput screening to search for small-molecule inhibitors targeting cullin neddylation. During our pilot screen, gossypol, a natural product extracted from cottonseeds, was identified as one of the most potent neddylation inhibitors of cullin-1 and cullin-5. We further demonstrated that gossypol blocks cullin neddylation by binding to cullin-1/-5 to inactivate CRL1/5 ligase activity, leading to accumulation of MCL-1 and NOXA, the substrates of CRL1 and CRL5, respectively. The combination of gossypol and an MCL-1 inhibitor synergistically enhanced the anti-proliferative effect in multiple human cancer cell lines. Our study unveiled a rational combination of two previously known inhibitors of the Bcl-2 family for enhanced anti-cancer efficacy and identified a novel activity of gossypol as an inhibitor of CRL1 and CRL5 E3s, thus providing a new possibility in the development of novel CRL inhibitors for anti-cancer therapy.


Packet switching has been proposed as an effective technology for integrating voice and data in a single network. An important aspect of packet-switched voice is the reconstruction of a continuous stream of speech from the set of packets that arrive at the destination terminal, each of which may encounter a different amount of buffering delay in the packet network. The magnitude of the variation in delay may range from a few milliseconds in a local area network to hundreds of milliseconds in a long-haul packet voice and data network. This paper discusses several aspects of the packet voice synchronization problem, and techniques that can be used to address it. These techniques estimate in some way the delay encountered by each packet and use the delay estimate to determine how speech is reconstructed. The delay estimates produced by these techniques can be used in managing the flow of information in the packet network to improve overall performance. Interactions of packet voice synchronization techniques with other network design issues are also discussed.


The above paper introduced the construction of a modified reachability tree (MRT) for (unbounded) Petri nets and its application to reachability, liveness, and deadlock analysis. This note shows via a counterexample that some of the MRT properties claimed in the above paper are incorrect.


The authors have developed an L2 analogue of R-matrix theory to calculate the bound and scattering states of helium using large Sturmian basis sets. The first application is to the lowest several doubly excited 1P resonances in the synchrotron photoionisation of the helium ground state. To facilitate comparison with experiment, the resonance shape parameters introduced by Fano were redefined in terms of Siegert boundary conditions to allow their ab initio calculation without fitting. Excellent agreement with recent highly precise experiments is obtained.


Rhabdomyolysis is characterised by acute kidney injury (AKI) resulting from skeletal muscle injury. Lipid peroxidation‐mediated oxidant injury and pro‐inflammatory cytokine‐mediated inflammatory response play critical roles in the pathogenesis of rhabdomyolysis‐induced AKI. The present study aimed to investigate the short‐term effects of both lipid peroxidation and inflammatory responses on rhabdomyolysis‐induced AKI in a rat model of glycerol‐induced rhabdomyolysis. Rhabdomyolysis was induced by the intramuscular injection of 50% glycerol in saline (10 mL/kg) into the hind limbs of rats. Rats were killed 1 or 3 hours after glycerol injection. Time‐dependent increases in serum biochemical parameters, including blood urea nitrogen, creatinine, lactate dehydrogenase and creatine phosphokinase levels, were observed 1 hour after glycerol injection. In kidneys, glycerol injection resulted in histopathological changes such as renal tubular injury and renal tubular myoglobin deposition. Levels of Nε‐(hexanoyl)lysine‐modified, 4‐hydroxy‐2‐nonenal‐modified, and nitrotyrosine‐modified proteins in rat kidneys were unaltered at 1 hour after glycerol injection, but increased significantly at 3 hours. Increases in renal nitric oxide production and the expression levels of inducible nitric oxide synthase, interleukin‐6 and tumour necrosis factor‐α in the renal parenchyma were observed at 1 hour after glycerol injection and plateaued at 3 hours. Our findings suggest that the pro‐inflammatory cytokine‐mediated inflammatory response may cause rhabdomyolysis‐induced AKI very shortly after glycerol injection, and lipid peroxidation‐mediated oxidant injury may promote the development of these pathophysiological processes.


Due to the high connectivity and great convenience, many Ecommerce application systems have a high transaction volume. Consequently, the system state changes rapidly and it is likely that customers issue transactions based on out-of-date state information. Thus, the potential of transaction abortion increases greatly. To address this problem, we proposed an Mtransaction model. An M-transaction is a generalized transaction where users can issue their preferences in a request by specifying multiple criteria and optional data resources simultaneously within one transaction. In this paper, we introduce the transaction grouping and group evaluation techniques. We consider evaluating a group of Mtransactions arrived to the system within a short duration together. The system makes optimal decisions in allocating data to transactions to achieve better customer satisfaction and lower transaction failure rate. We apply the fuzzy constraint satisfaction approach for decision-making. We also conduct experimental studies to evaluate the performance of our approach. The results show that the M-transaction with group evaluation is more resilient to failure and yields much better performance than the traditional transaction model.


Lower limb exercise increases upper limb conduit artery blood flow and shear stress, and leg exercise training can enhance upper limb vascular function. We therefore examined the contribution of shear stress to changes in vascular function in the nonexercising upper limbs in response to lower limb cycling exercise training. Initially, five male subjects underwent bilateral brachial artery duplex ultrasound to measure blood flow and shear responses to 30-min cycling exercise at 80% of maximal heart rate. Responses in one forearm were significantly (P < 0.05) attenuated via cuff inflation throughout the exercise bout. An additional 11 subjects participated in an 8-wk cycle training study undertaken at a similar intensity, with unilateral cuff inflation around the forearm during each exercise bout. Bilateral brachial artery flow-mediated dilation responses to a 5-min ischemic stimulus (FMD%), an ischemic handgrip exercise stimulus (iEX), and endothelium-independent NO donor administration [glyceryl trinitrate (GTN)] were measured at 2, 4, and 8 wk. Cycle training increased FMD% in the noncuffed limb at week 2, after which time responses returned toward baseline levels (5.8 ± 4.1, 8.6 ± 3.8, 7.4 ± 3.5, 6.0 ± 2.3 at 0, 2, 4 and 8 wk, respectively; ANOVA: P = 0.04). No changes in FMD% were observed in the cuffed arm. No changes were evident in response to iEX or GTN in either the cuffed or noncuffed arms (P > 0.05) across the 8-wk intervention period. Our data suggest that lower limb cycle training induces a transient increase in upper limb vascular function in healthy young humans, which is, at least partly, mediated via shear stress.


Backgroud: The Tumorzentrum Berlin (TZB) amalgamates the clinical data of lung cancer pts. in order to improve pt. care by means of joint quality assurance. Aims: to evaluate the effect of changing therapeutic concepts on survival times in pts. with newly diagnosed NSCLC stage II/III from 2000 to 2008. Methods: In this retrospective case study, the pooled data of the TZB of pts. with newly diagnosed lung cancer during 2000 and 2008 were analyzed. Pts. were divided into three 3-year groups (G1: 2000-2, G2: 2003-5 and G3: 2006-8). Results: The total cohort comprised 14,302 pts. For pts. with NSCLC stage II/III, the proportions of pts. with surgery and adjuv. therapy increased in G2 and G3. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis could not demonstrate significant differences between G1 and G2/3 in general, but for pts. with NSCLC stage II and III. Conclusions: According to the pooled data of the TZB, the analysis of therapeutic concepts spotted an increase of surgery and adjuv. therapy among pts. with NSCLC stage II/III over time corresponding with an improvement in survival in these groups.


Automated diagnosis of software faults can improve the efficiency of the debugging process, and is therefore an important technique for the development of dependable software. In this paper we study different similarity coefficients that are applied in the context of a program spectral approach to software fault localization (single programming mistakes). The coefficients studied are taken from the systems diagnosis/automated debugging tools Pinpoint, Tarantula, and AMPLE, and from the molecular biology domain (the Ochiai coefficient). We evaluate these coefficients on the Siemens Suite of benchmark faults, and assess their effectiveness in terms of the position of the actual fault in the probability ranking of fault candidates produced by the diagnosis technique. Our experiments indicate that the Ochiai coefficient consistently outperforms the coefficients currently used by the tools mentioned. In terms of the amount of code that needs to be inspected, this coefficient improves 5% on average over the next best technique, and up to 30% in specific cases


: An 11-year-old boy who had soiled daily for six years since entering school had threatened to commit suicide. Following an initial assessment, a parent was trained to monitor an experimental procedure that effectively reduced soiling to a level where the only occurrence noted in two months resulted from a bout of diarrhoea.


Mosquitoes cause significant human health issues. However, very few studies have attempted to examine the question of how abiotic and biotic factors affect the abundance of Culicidae in the larval habitat. The objective of this study was to analyze the influence of biotic and abiotic factors on the increase of the most common mosquito species in the Fez region (Central Morocco). Larvae mosquitoes were sampled by standard dipping technique in four different types of macrohabitats, between November 2015 and November 2016. Each mosquito specimen was morphologically identified by the Moroccan Culicidae key and the Brunhes key. The analysis was done using R analysis software. We collected a total of 772 mosquito larvae belonging to nine different species, five of which are considered of medical interest. Culex pipiens (Linnaeus, 1758), known as the major vector in the transmission of West Nile virus fever (WNV), was the most common species of all mosquito larvae collected. The results of Poisson regression analysis showed that factors such as the presence of green filamentous algae, vegetation cover, and debris were found to be positively significant in the distribution of the genus Culex. However, there was insufficient evidence to determine the parameters that are capable of estimating the abundance of Anopheles. The findings have also estimated that biotic and abiotic factors can lead to significant variation in the abundance of Culex perexiguus (Theobald, 1903), Culex theileri (Theobald, 1903), and Culex pipiens (Linnaeus, 1758). Identifying the priority parameters governing the proliferation of mosquitoes in the region of Fez can be one of the key elements for better vector control.


This paper highlights the importance of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in language teaching and learning. In the rapidly developing world, information sharing and communication have become quite easy via web applications. However, learners still face some difficulties as they do not know how they can benefit from technology for learning a language, or they are not given the opportunity and guidance they need for effective use of ICT. In this paper, first some background information is given about the development of ICT and its place and role in language teaching, and then, effective language learning through ICT is discussed considering the advantages and disadvantages of integrating this technology into language classes. It is also pointed out that various technological devices should be used in classroom language teaching to familiarise learners with ICT and motivate them to learn on their own with the technological tools and sources available for their use. It should be kept in mind that learners need guidance, particularly in the initial part of their formal education, about the sources they can use as the number of tools such as softwares, applications and websites is increasing day by day. They cannot cope with the devices and sources without help of the teachers.


In this paper, we investigate the performance persistence of hedge funds over time horizons between 6 and 36 months based on a merged sample from the Lipper/TASS and CISDM databases for the time period from 1994 to 2008. Unlike previous literature, we use a panel probit regression approach to identify fund characteristics that are significantly related to performance persistence. We then investigate the performance of two-way sorted portfolios where sorting is based on past performance and one of the additional fund characteristics identified as persistence-enhancing in the probit analysis. We find statistically and economically significant performance persistence for time horizons of up to 36 months. Although we identify several fund characteristics that are strongly correlated with the probability of observing performance persistence, we find only one fund characteristic, a strategy distinctiveness index that attempts to measure manager skills and the uniqueness of the hedge fund's trading strategies, to have the ability to systematically improve performance persistence up to a time horizon of 24 months. The economic magnitude of this improvement amounts to a sizeable increase in alpha by approximately 4.0% and 2.3% p.a. for annual and biennial rebalancing, respectively.


The Italian Renaissance which occurred during the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries played a vital role in the history of Europe. It influenced almost all the civilizations in this world. Though the Italian Renaissance was initiated by humanists, it revolutionized different fields such as architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, philosophy, religion, science, exploration, political science and education. In all these fields, during the renaissance period, ancient Greek works were revived. As a result, influence of ancient Greek civilization during the Renaissance period was immense. In this book, the influence of Greek philosophy on Renaissance philosophical works of Francesco Petrarca, Lorenzo Valla, Gianozzo Manetti, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Pietro Pomponazzi is discussed in detail. In addition, important philosophical concepts of some of the distinguished ancient Greek philosophers are also discussed in this book.


Effects of alkaline (kraft and soda) and organosolv pulping were evaluated relative to the structural properties of lignin isolated from coconut husk (CH) biomass. The various types of functional groups within the isolated lignin samples were characterized and compared using a variety of complementary analyses including Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, gel permeation chromatography (GPC), and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). All isolated CH lignin samples contained a significant quantity of non-condensed guaiacyl-type (G) and syringyl-type (S) units but a lesser amount of p-hydroxyphenyl (H) units, as demonstrated and supported by previous research. The alkaline CH lignin produced lignin with higher molecular weight (Mw SL: 959 g mol-1 > Mw KL: 769 g mol-1) than the organosolv lignin (Mw OL: 606 g mol-1) sample, resulting in smaller fragments and a higher degree of solubility in water or other solvents. Because of significant differences in the physicochemical characteristics of the various lignin polymers, their properties and structure were improved with respect to alternative approaches in lignin-based applications.


Fine-grained classification involves distinguishing between similar sub-categories based on subtle differences in highly localized regions, therefore, accurate localization of discriminative regions remains a major challenge. We describe a patch-based framework to address this problem. We introduce triplets of patches with geometric constraints to improve the accuracy of patch localization, and automatically mine discriminative geometrically-constrained triplets for classification. The resulting approach only requires object bounding boxes. Its effectiveness is demonstrated using four publicly available fine-grained datasets, on which it outperforms or achieves comparable performance to the state-of-the-art in classification.


High-titer self-inactivating human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1)-based vectors expressing the green fluorescent protein reporter gene that contained the central polypurine and termination tract and the woodchuck hepatitis virus posttranscriptional regulatory element were constructed. Transduction efficiency and biodistribution were determined, following systemic administration of these improved lentiviral vectors. In adult severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice, efficient stable gene transfer was achieved in the liver (8.0% +/- 6.0%) and spleen (24% +/- 3%). Most transduced hepatocytes and nonhepatocytes were nondividing, thereby obviating the need to induce liver cell proliferation. In vivo gene transfer with this improved lentiviral vector was relatively safe since liver enzyme concentration in the plasma was only moderately and transiently elevated. In addition, nondividing major histocompatibility complex class II-positive splenic antigen-presenting cells (APCs) were efficiently transduced in SCID and normal mice. Furthermore, B cells were efficiently transduced, whereas T cells were refractory to lentiviral transduction in vivo. However, in neonatal recipients, lentiviral transduction was more widespread and included not only hepatocytes and splenic APCs but also cardiomyocytes. The present study suggests potential uses of improved lentiviral vectors for gene therapy of genetic blood disorders resulting from serum protein deficiencies, such as hemophilia, and hepatic disease. However, the use of liver-specific promoters may be warranted to circumvent inadvertent transgene expression in APCs. In addition, these improved lentiviral vectors could potentially be useful for genetic vaccination and treatment of perinatal cardiac disorders.


The discovery of short interfering RNA has admitted the development of facile regulated methods for disruption of gene expression. However, this method continues to grow in popularity, designing effective siRNA can be demanding. So we have developed siRNA Scanner, a siRNA selection program that automatically selects Small Interfering RNA from the given RNA sequences. siRNA Scanner uses a fuzzy logic-based system to calculate siRNA qualities. This program is fully built in Practical Extract Report Language (PERL 184.108.40.206 Build 820) and accessible in a command line interface. siRNA Scanner's high performance, minimal user interaction, and its fast algorithm, make this program useful for selecting Small Interfering RNA for gene expression studies.


ABSTRACT:
Closed tracheal injuries are rare but are more
frequent in northern India. Ladies wear Dupatta
(A Scarf ) around the neck which causes
strangulation injury when entangled in the rear
wheel of motorcycle or rickshaw. Because of
rarity of such cases, it is often difficult for
physicians at periphery to diagnose it early
adding to the morbidity. We report a12-years old
girl who presented to us with severe stridor and
grade III tracheal Stenosis following dupatta
strangulation while she was riding motorcycle.
She was previously treated with T-tube
placement in the trachea for 6 months, which
was removed a week back. The patient
underwent urgent tracheostomy followed by
CECT which showed 2cm grade III tracheal
tenosis below the cricoid cartilage. The patient
underwent tracheal resection and anastomosis.
The patient recovered well, without any change
in voice and restenosis on bronchoscopy in 5
months follow-up


Agricultural headwater streams have a close hydrologic connection with adjacent farmland ecosystems. Based on the aggravation of agricultural nonpoint source of nitrogen (N) pollution, these streams can become an important sink of N and source of indirect nitrous oxide (N2O) emission. In this study, indirect N2O emissions from an agricultural headwater stream in the hilly area of purple soil in the upper reach of the Yangtze River were measured in situ using the closed static chamber-GC technique during the rainy season (June to September 2015). The results show that the headwater stream is a source of indirect N2O emissions, with a mean emission rate of 12.8 μg·(m2·h)-1, which is close to the direct N2O emission level from local farmland during the same season. The indirect N2O emission factor (EF5r=0.01%) determined in this study is much lower than the default value proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (0.25%; IPCC, 2006) for the estimation of indirect agricultural N2O emissions and far lower than the recalculated mean value (0.20%) based on available global data. However, based on the limited number of studies on EF5r and the high spatial variations among them, more in situ observations are needed and vital to generate more accurate EF5r values and reduce the uncertainty of indirect N2O estimations calculated based on the EF5r. The indirect N2O fluxes are positively correlated with the NO3--N concentrations of the stream. Thus, denitrification is the main process of N2O production. Moreover, the indirect N2O fluxes could be notably promoted by the rapid increase of the NO3--N concentrations that were driven by rainfall>9 mm during days with continuous rain.


The reduced TiO2-graphene oxide heterostructure as an alternative broad spectrum-driven efficient water splitting photocatalyst has become a really interesting topic, however, its syntheses has many flaws, e.g., tedious experimental steps, time-consuming, small scale production, and requirement of various additives, for example, hydrazine hydrate is widely used as reductant to the reduction of graphene oxide, which is high toxicity and easy to cause the second pollution. For these issues, herein, we reported the synthesis of the reduced TiO2-graphene oxide heterostructure by a facile chemical reduction agent-free one-step laser ablation in liquid (LAL) method, which achieves extended optical response range from ultraviolet to visible and composites TiO(2-x) (reduced TiO2) nanoparticle and graphene oxide for promoting charge conducting. 30.64% Ti(3+) content in the reduced TiO2 nanoparticles induces the electronic reconstruction of TiO2, which results in 0.87 eV decrease of the band gap for the visible light absorption. TiO(2-x)-graphene oxide heterostructure achieved drastically increased photocatalytic H2 production rate, up to 23 times with respect to the blank experiment. Furthermore, a maximum H2 production rate was measured to be 16 mmol/h/g using Pt as a cocatalyst under the simulated sunlight irradiation (AM 1.5G, 135 mW/cm(2)), the quantum efficiencies were measured to be 5.15% for wavelength λ = 365 ± 10 nm and 1.84% for λ = 405 ± 10 nm, and overall solar energy conversion efficiency was measured to be 14.3%. These findings provided new insights into the broad applicability of this methodology for accessing fascinate photocatalysts.


Based on the results of modern clinical and experimental studies, the review article discusses issues of pharmacotherapeutic feasibility, pathogenetic validity and safety of the first and most studied phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor – sildenafil – in general clinical practice according to «non-classical» (non-erectogenic) indications in the framework of an interdisciplinary approach modern medicine. As it is known, at present, phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors are both the «first line» therapy for treating erectile dysfunction (as monotherapy), as well as an effective option for monotherapy or combined pharmacotherapy of lower urinary tract symptoms on the background of benign prostatic hyperplasia in men with erectile dysfunction. However, given the universality and fundamentality of the mechanisms of their pharmacological action (first of all, the effect on the metabolism of one of the key vasomodulators of the vascular bed, nitric oxide NO), the list of potential and promising indications for prescribing these drugs is constantly expanding due to the presence of various «non-classical» (non-erectogenic) effects, which makes them very attractive for wider application not only in urological practice, but also in other medical specialties. The article describes in more detail and purposefully the accumulated to date scientific and practical data on the effectiveness of the use and potential mechanisms of action of sildenafil in cardiology, endocrinology, neurology, nephrology, obstetrics and gynecology, andrological reproductology and oncology, and also presents the results of studies confirming its safety in the treatment of relevant specialized diseases.


The influence of intracellular and extracellular angiotensin II (Ang II) on the L-type calcium current of cardiomyocytes isolated from cardiomyopathic hamsters was investigated. The results indicated that Ang II (10−8 mmol/L), added to the bath, increased the peak inward calcium current (ICa) density by 37±3.4% (P<0.05), an effect that depends on the activation of protein kinase C. Intracellular administration of the same dose of Ang II (10−8 mmol/L) also elicited an increase of peak ICa density but enhanced the rate of ICa inactivation, an effect not seen with extracellular Ang II. Moreover, in control animals, no change in the rate of ICa inactivation was seen with intracellular Ang II. Thapsigargin (1 &mgr;mol/L), a potent inhibitor of sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) ATPase, which depletes the SR, decreased the rate of ICa inactivation elicited by intracellular Ang II, although the cytoplasmic calcium concentration was highly buffered with 10 mmol/L EGTA. These findings might indicate that intracellular Ang II releases calcium from the SR and inactivates ICa. The effect of intracellular Ang II on peak ICa was not altered by extracellular losartan (10−7 mmol/L), supporting the notion that the peptide acted intracellularly. Other studies showed that intracellular Ang I administration (10−8 mmol/L) enhanced the peak ICa density and the rate of ICa inactivation, an effect that was reduced by intracellular enalaprilat (10−8 mmol/L). Moreover, intracellular enalaprilat by itself reduced the peak ICa density. These observations might indicate that endogenous Ang II is contributing to ICa modulation in the failing heart.


IP multicast is an effective technology for one-to-many and many-to-many communications. Multicast applications use UDP (User Datagram Protocol) as transport protocol and have responsibility for reliable communications. It is difficult to apply these implementations to other applications because implementations of multicast protocols have been pushed into application programs. We propose a reliable multicast architecture which extracts the process for reliability from multicast applications. We also designed a procedure for dynamic protocol selection which is the main part of our architecture. Thus, we show the effect of applying the dynamic protocol selection by using simulation and consider the overhead of dynamic protocol selection. We were able to achieve a high performance using this architecture as a result of these considerations.


This presentation will explore several important issues related to Computer Science education in the United States. In an increasingly standards driven education system, what role does the teacher membership organization play? National standards, advocacy for rational teacher certification, graduation requirements, teacher professional development and forging strong vertical partnerships are a few. How can we leverage the current national spotlight on computer science education to implement real and lasting changes?


To the Editor Not much is known about the life of Dorotea Bucca, an Italian woman who lived in 14th century, except that she held her father's Chair in Medicine and Philosophy for over 30 years at University of Bologna. But she was both an exception and exceptional. We are still far from affirming that, in modern society, there is no gender inequality in scientific field. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization data showed a low percentage (28.8%) of female contribution in research among all fields with the highest percentage in Central Asia (48.1%) and a lower one in South and West Asia (18.5%).1 Until the publication by Miller et al,2 little data were available to assess female contribution to research in anesthesiology. For this reason, we evaluated female authorship in 2018 in anesthesiology journals by inspecting research papers published in the 16 journals with the highest impact factor based on the Journal Citation Report (Table). Five journals were excluded because authors are presented without their full first name, making it impossible to understand the gender of the author. We manually screened all the regular issues of the remaining 11 journals, excluding special issues, looking for all original research papers. We did not consider editorials, reviews, case reports, and letters to the editor. We identified a total number of 1070 papers. We analyzed both the percentage of female first authorship and the overall female authorship, considering the stable over time for a given institution. Therefore, we would argue that charges are a reasonable proxy of costs for institutions seeking to track and reduce costs of care over time.


Though global positioning system is a well-accepted technology for outdoor positioning, it is ineffective for indoor environment. Therefore, the search for effective and cheap solutions still continues. In this work, it is aimed to enhance the performance of indoor positioning system by a hybrid approach integrating WiFi and magnetic field sensor data. The positioning accuracy is improved by taking advantages of these sensor types. Besides, significant improvements in terms of computation time are achieved thanks to 'ReliefF' feature selection and 'k-means' clustering algorithms employed within the work. The results of the tests, which are obtained using Extreme Learning Machine models constituted for each region acquired after clustering, approves the effectiveness of the proposed method.


A. M. TURING. Solvable and unsolvable problems. Science news (Penguin books, Melbourne-London-Baltimore), no. 31 (1954), pp. 7-23. This is a good popular article in which Turing expounds the ideas used in proofs of unsolvability since 1936 and enumerates some of the results and open problems. To sketch such a proof, he argues that puzzles (from a given position by a succession of moves under given rules to reach a certain position) can be normalized as substitution puzzles (or semi-Thue systems XI I 90) P{R, S) in which the starting position is a word S and the rules (codifiable by a word if) allow the replacement of the first of certain pairs of words by the second. The rules are unambiguous, if from any position only one move is possible; a puzzle with unambiguous moves comes out with a given word, if that word is reached and from it no further move is possible. Were there a systematic procedure by which one could tell whether any puzzle is solvable, one could use it to set up unambiguous rules K such that P(K, R) would come out with the one-letter word B or W, according as it is true or not that R are unambiguous rules and P[R, R) comes out with W; and this then leads to contradiction by taking K as the R. Here he slips in asserting on page 19 that one can tell effectively whether given rules R are unambiguous, but it would serve his purpose as well to impose a convention specifying which substitution should be made in case of ambiguity. Turing's argument with other normalizations would give the impossibility of telling effectively whether A-formulas have normal forms (173(2)), or whether (ExjT^a, a, x) (1138(1)).


: Presented in this article is a brief overview of cranial anatomy and physiology, highlights of surgical indications, and the surgical procedure for craniotomy. Nursing interventions and their rationales are emphasized.


Nitrogen/phosphorus-containing melamines (NPCM), a durable flame-retardant, were prepared by the successive treatment of ArOH (Ar = BrnC6H5−n, n = 0, 1, 2, and 3) with POCl3 and melamine monomer. The prepared flame-retardants were grafted through the CH2 unit to lignocellulose nanofibers (LCNFs) by the Mannich reaction. The resulting three-component products were characterized using FT-IR (ATR) and EA. The thermal behavior of the NPCM-treated LCNF fabric samples was determined using TGA and DSC analyses, and their flammability resistances were evaluated by measuring their Limited Oxygen Index (LOI) and the UL-94V test. A multitude of flame retardant elements in the fabric samples increased the LOI values as much as 45 from 20 of the untreated LCNFs. Moreover, the morphology of both the NPCM-treated LCNFs and their burnt fabrics was studied with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The heat release lowering effect of the LCNF fabric against the water-based paint was observed with a cone calorimeter. Furthermore, the mechanical properties represented as the tensile strength of the NPCM-treated LCNF fabrics revealed that the increase of the NPCM content in the PP-composites led to an increased bending strength with enhancing the flame-retardance.


Stellar multiplicity properties have been studied for the lowest and the highest stellar masses, but intermediate-mass stars from F-type to late A-type have received relatively little attention. Here, we report on a Gemini/NICI snapshot imaging survey of 138 such stars in the young Scorpius–Centaurus (Sco–Cen) region, for the purpose of studying multiplicity with sensitivity down to planetary masses at wide separations. In addition to two brown dwarfs and a companion straddling the hydrogen-burning limit which we reported previously, here we present 26 new stellar companions and determine a multiplicity fraction within 0.″1–5.″0 of 21% ± 4%. Depending on the adopted semimajor axis distribution, our results imply a total multiplicity in the range of ∼60%–80%, which further supports the known trend of a smooth continuous increase in the multiplicity fraction as a function of primary stellar mass. A surprising feature in the sample is a distinct lack of nearly equal-mass binaries, for which we discuss possible reasons. The survey yielded no additional companions below or near the deuterium-burning limit, implying that their frequency at >200 AU separations is not quite as high as might be inferred from previous detections of such objects within the Sco–Cen region.


Multiple hydraulic fractures are often generated simultaneously from a wellbore to increase efficiency of reservoir stimulation. Numerical modeling of such a system of fractures is computationally costly, especially if the goal is to simulate numerous stages, each containing multiple fractures, on different wells, which is the current trend in the petroleum industry. To address the challenge, this study defines a method and a workflow to represent the simultaneous propagation of multiple fractures with a reduced number of equivalent fractures that accurately describes the overall fracture geometry, the created surface area, the propped surface area, the fluid leakoff, and the resulting induced stresses, as resulting from the original configuration. A hybrid approach is used, in which a combination of physical modeling and data science is involved. We first develop a database of numerical solutions using a fully coupled hydraulic fracturing simulator. The equivalent fracture representation is quantified for each set of problem parameters presented in the database. Then, the results of the database solutions are used to tackle more general cases with field pumping schedules and rock properties. Several numerical examples are presented to validate and illustrate the developed concept.


Aneurysm of the splenic artery is found in up to 10% of the elderly. Usually, the lesion is discovered by change and does not produce symptoms unless rupture occurs. Although there is general agreement that surgery is required in symptomatic patients and in women of childbearing age, controversy persists as to management for the asymptomatic patient. Since rupture is uncommon, and surgical mortality low, those patients over the age of 60 can be followed up, and not operated on because of the diagnosis alone.


Herpes zoster is a relatively common disease which affects predominantly the middle-aged and elderly. The segmentally distributed cutaneous eruption, sensory changes, and pain make up the well known zoster syndrome. Motor loss is another aspect of this syndrome which is less well known but occurs in a significant number of cases, and is probably far more frequent than is recognised because the weakness is readily obscured by pain. Four cases of herpes zoster with motor involvement are described. Two cases had zoster paresis affecting the arm and hand, and one of these had, in limb, and one case had urinary retention owing to an atonic bladder. These cases serve to illustrate many of the clinical features of the zoster syndrome with motor involvement. The significant functional implications of unrecognised motor deficit, particularly in the elderly, are a prominent feature and highlight the importance of early accurate diagnosis and management. The pathogenesis and clinical features of this syndrome are discussed in the literature review.


Left ventricular (LV) dysfunction paves the final pathway for a multitude of cardiac disorders. With the non-invasive high-frequency transthoracic dobutamine stress echocardiography in humans, a reductionist investigation approach to unmask subtle changes in cardiac function has become possible. Here, we provide a protocol for using this technique in mice to facilitate expanded analysis of LV architecture and function in physiology and pathology enabling the observation of alterations in models of cardiac disease hidden in unstressed hearts. This investigation can be performed in one and the same animal and allows both, basal and pharmacologically stress-induced measurements. We outline detailed criteria for appropriate anesthesia, imaging-based LV analysis, consideration of intra- and interobserver variability, and obtaining positive inotrope response that can be attained in mice after intraperitoneal injection of dobutamine under near physiological conditions. To recapitulate the characteristics of human physiology and disease in small animal models, we highlight critical pitfalls in evaluation, e.g., a pronounced Bowditch effect in mice. To further meet translational objectives, we compare stress-induced effects in humans and mice. When used in translational studies, attention must be paid to physiological differences between mice and human. Experimental rigor dictates that some parameters assessed in patients can only be used with caution due to restrictions in spatial and temporal resolution in mouse models.


The Small-Size Telescope with single-mirror (SST-1M) is a 4 m Davies-Cotton telescope and is among the proposed telescope designs for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). It is conceived to provide the high-energy ($>$ few TeV) coverage. The SST-1M contains proven technology for the telescope structure and innovative electronics and photosensors for the camera. Its design is meant to be simple, low-budget and easy-to-build industrially.
Each device subsystem of an SST-1M telescope is made visible to CTA through a dedicated industrial standard server. The software is being developed in collaboration with the CTA Medium-Size Telescopes to ensure compatibility and uniformity of the array control. Early operations of the SST-1M prototype will be performed with a subset of the CTA central array control system based on the Alma Common Software (ACS). The triggered event data are time stamped, formatted and finally transmitted to the CTA data acquisition.
The software system developed to control the devices of an SST-1M telescope is described, as well as the interface between the telescope abstraction to the CTA central control and the data acquisition system.


We consider the vacuum Einstein flow with a positive cosmological constant on spatial manifolds of product form. In spatial dimension at least four we show the existence of continuous families of recollapsing models whenever at least one of the factors or admits a Riemannian Einstein metric with positive Einstein constant. We moreover show that these families belong to larger continuous families with models that have two complete time directions, i.e. do not recollapse. Complementarily, we show that whenever no factor has positive curvature, then any model in the product class expands in one time direction and collapses in the other. In particular, positive curvature of one factor is a necessary criterion for recollapse within this class. Finally, we relate our results to the instability of the Nariai solution in three spatial dimensions and point out why a similar construction of recollapsing models in that dimension fails. The present results imply that there exist different classes of initial data which exhibit fundamentally different types of long-time behavior under the Einstein flow whenever the spatial dimension is strictly larger than three. Moreover, this behavior is related to the spatial topology through the existence of Riemannian Einstein metrics of positive curvature.


Anti-Semitism in Poland has always been a deeply problematic subject. In the years since the Holocaust, much has been written about the willingness of Poles to collaborate with the Nazis, willingly handing over Polish Jews and often profiting from it in the process. Such assertions have led to a widespread and ongoing stereotype that Poles are a deeply, inherently anti-Semitic people. In fact, Adam Michnik argues, while there are certainly antiSemites among Poles, resistance to anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in the culture. The essays he has gathered in this unique and important anthology-with contributions by a who's who of Polish writers and intellectuals across the decades-both testify to and elaborate on that premise.


Research to meet the demand for ever more efficient dust cyclones continues after some eighty years. Recent trends emphasize design optimization through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and testing design subtleties not modeled by semi-empirical equations. Improvements to current best available control technology will need to be energy-neutral, or the emissions associated with producing additional electricity will offset any emission reductions at the gin.


Today, the concept of participation is an important tool to improve the effectiveness of mangers in organizations. Participatory management has also to be introduced in which power is shared, everyone is given an opportunity to participate, work is conducted by consensus and multidisciplinary teams are utilized to implement processes. The type of management is one of the new phenomena that has emerged in recent years. Management confidence to staffs, distribution of decision making in planning and consultation, implementing the staffs' suggestions, communicative system, friendly space, participating of the staff in determination of styles of implementation the activities, monitoring and evaluation, noticing personal affairs, and flexibility in regulations are the major components of participatory management. The general goal of this paper is to investigate the managerial policies in the Education Organization of Golestan state in Iran. The particular goal of the paper is to find out the challenges faced by participatory management and also recognize its solutions to develop participatory management in this state.


Multi-feature, especially multi-temporal, remote-sensing data have the potential to improve land cover classification accuracy. However, sometimes it is difficult to utilize all the features efficiently. To enhance classification performance based on multi-feature imagery, an improved rotation forest, combining Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and a boosting naive Bayesian tree (NBTree), is proposed. First, feature extraction was carried out with PCA. The feature set was randomly split into several disjoint subsets; then, PCA was applied to each subset, and new training data for linear extracted features based on original training data were obtained. These steps were repeated several times. Second, based on the new training data, a boosting naive Bayesian tree was constructed as the base classifier, which aims to achieve lower prediction error than a decision tree in the original rotation forest. At the classification phase, the improved rotation forest has two-layer voting. It first obtains several predictions through weighted voting in a boosting naive Bayesian tree; then, the first-layer vote predicts by majority to obtain the final result. To examine the classification performance, the improved rotation forest was applied to multi-feature remote-sensing images, including MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) imagery time series, MODIS Surface Reflectance products and ancillary data in Shandong Province for 2013. The EVI imagery time series was preprocessed using harmonic analysis of time series (HANTS) to reduce the noise effects. The overall accuracy of the final classification result was 89.17%, and the Kappa coefficient was 0.71, which outperforms the original rotation forest and other classifier ensemble results, as well as the NASA land cover product. However, this new algorithm requires more computational time, meaning the efficiency needs to be further improved. Generally, the improved rotation forest has a potential advantage in remote-sensing classification.


This article presents the cross-motion invariant group—CMI(3)—whose group operation is defined over unit dual quaternions such that rigid motions are cross-motion invariant; that is, the resultant translation does not depend on rotation and vice-versa. We present the main properties of CMI(3) and the differences between this group and the standard group Spin(3) R 3 of unit dual quaternions, as well as the kinematic equations under a sequence of CMI(3) operations. Two numerical examples are presented in order to illustrate the main characteristics of CMI(3).


A new approach to deriving effective dielectric constants for two-component systems is developed. For metal-dielectric mixtures three classes of problem are discussed: two where one constituent exists as particles embedded in the other, and the third where both are in particle form.


The effect of increased vertical bite dimension on fricative sound productions was studied in five adults who wore dentures. Oral port size and sound intelligibility were evaluated at different degrees of artificially induced open bite. The data demonstrate that rapid compensatory adjustments occurred and oral port size changed minimally at all degrees of opening tested. However, in three of the subjects, sound intelligibility declined at the 6-mm opening, and in all subjects, a four-fold increase in sound distortions occurred in the edentulous state. This finding suggests the possibility that either physiological parameters are controlled more successfully than acoustical parameters or that compensatory efforts to maintain constrictor size may, under certain circumstances, adversely affect sound intelligibility.


The present investigation was conducted in the guava orchard of Department of Horticulture, Khalsa College, Amritsar during the year 2018–19 to study the effect of pruning intensity and time on yield and quality of winter guava cv. L-49. Different pruning levels and time of pruning viz., pruning of 10, 20 and 30 cm of apical shoots during 30th April, 15th May, 30th May and 15th June comprised the treatment combinations. The experiment was laid out in factorial randomized block design. The results of the study revealed that among the various pruning treatments the pruning of 30 cm of apical shoots on 15 May proved to be the best in increasing the yield and yield attributes in terms of number of fruits per tree and also fruit size, weight and yield. It also improved the fruit quality by increasing TSS, sugars, ascorbic acid and pectin content of guava fruits. Hence, the pruning of 30 cm of apical shoots during mid May can be recommended for commercial fruit production with enhanced yield and good quality in guava cv. L-49.


In this paper, we aim to provide guidelines for the design of teaching materials for sustainable development education based on the Transdisciplinary Case Study (TCS) approach. This work is based on our experience in the Conference des Grandes Ecoles = CGE's Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation Working Group in France. The members of our multidisciplinary working group are teachers and researchers in divers HEI's (engineering, agriculture, management, etc.) who have a specific interest to make a contribution to sustainable development education. We consider sustainable development as one of the major issues of our modern society, and our work is motivated and founded on this common interest.