Regulation of the environment is often characterized as a polarizing issue that pits public health against economic growth. Although researchers have examined the decisions of federal district court judges in environmental civil penalty cases and examined the decision making of administrative law judges (ALJ), there has been no research which has examined factors that influence ALJ decision making in environmental civil penalty cases at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I theorize that ALJ decisions, like federal district court judge decisions, are a function of personal policy preferences, hierarchical controls by higher courts, separation of powers influences, and case and defendant characteristics. Results demonstrate that the size of civil penalties issued by ALJs at the EPA is influenced by personal policy preferences, political constraints via Congress, hierarchical control by the Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) and the Supreme Court, litigant characteristics, and case characteristics. Overall, EPA ALJs seem to put more emphasis on their role as judge than their role as bureaucrat. The influence of attitudes raises normative concerns regarding the level of independence that is provided to ALJs as the weighing of public health versus economic growth seems to be based in personal policy preferences rather than technical expertise.


This research investigated relationships between moral reasoning, personality variables, and moral behavior. Three hypotheses about these relationships were proposed. The first was that moral reasoning is positively related to moral behavior; the second was that certain personality variables are positively related to moral behavior. The third and major hypothesis was that a combination of moral reasoning and personality variables is the better predictor of moral behavior than either moral reasoning or personality variable separately. This research was an extension of a previous study by Krebs and Rosenwald (1977). The method involved administering a measure of moral reasoning and a measure of personality to 74 subjects from undergraduate psychology courses. The measure of moral reasoning was the short form Rest's (1974) Defining Issues Test: the personality measure was the California Personality Inventory. These two tests were administered to a subject in the context of single group session. During a session the experimenter told the subjects that he would have to cut the session short because of room scheduling problems, and that he would have to give them a third test to take home and complete, and then return by mail. This arrangement with subjects presumably had a moral character in part because they were dismissed with the reminder that since they had received extra class credit for a certain amount of participation, and since they had signed up for participation, they had essentially contracted to complete all tests. The experimenter also made clear that he was trusting the subjects to complete and return the third test. The main measure of oral behavior was whether or not subjects returned this test. Application of discriminant analysis technique to the data revealed that neither a combination of moral reasoning variables alone nor a combination of personality variables alone could significantly predict return/nonreturn behavior. Hence the first and second hypotheses of the research were not confirmed in this study. The third hypothesis, however, was confirmed by a further discriminant analysis finding. This was that a discriminant function involving a combination of six moral reasoning and personality variables could be used to significantly predict return/nonreturn behavior. The percentage of return/nonreturn cases correctly classified when using this function was 86.54%. In discussing the results in was noted that the particular pattern of six discriminating variable involved in this function was not entirely predicted in advance, and that this increased the need to replicate the present findings. Nevertheless, conventional interpretation of the more important variables in this pattern yielded a composite moral reasoning/personality picture that seemed sensibly related to return and nonreturn behavior. Moreover, the findings served to point to the potential usefulness of employing a combination of characteristics of persons in order to predict moral behavior.


Mobile devices play a crucial role and have become an essential part of people's life particularly with online applications such as shopping, learning, mailing, etc. Android OS has continued to drive the market for other operating systems since 2012. Traditional Android malware detection methods, such as static, dynamic, hybrid analysis, or the Bayesian model, may show less accuracy to detect recent Android malware. We propose a deep learning method for Android malware detection using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM). CNN provides efficient feature extraction from data and the use of additional LSTM layers improves prediction accuracy. According to the test results, CNN-LSTM can provide reliable malware prediction in Android applications. We train and test our approach using the CICMalDroid2020 dataset. The test results show that the CNN-LSTM classifier exceeds with an accuracy of 94%.


Luminescent nanoparticles with dual-mode long-lived luminescence are of great importance for their attractive applications in biosensing, bioimaging and data encoding. Herein, we report the realization of up- and down-conversion emission of Mn2+ dopants in multilayer nanoparticles of NaGdF4:Yb/Tm@NaGdF4:Ce/Mn@NaYF4 upon excitation at 980 and 254 nm, respectively. The dual-mode emission of the Mn2+ dopants at 531 nm have a long-lived lifetime up to ~ 30 ms as a result of the spin-forbidden optical transition of Mn2+ within the 3d5 configuration. After ceasing steady excitation at the two wavelengths, the long-lived feature of Mn2+ luminescence allows a longer persistent time than lanthanide emissions, thereby enabling the ease of data decoding by a cell phone camera under a burst mode. The long-lived green upconversion emission also permits the generation of a long green tail-emission upon dynamic excitation at 980 nm. These attributes make the as-prepared Mn2+-doped multilayer nanoparticles particularly attractive for multilevel anti-counterfeiting.


The Arabic web content is growing rapidly and the need for its efficient management is gaining importance and the morphological complexity of Arabic raises many challenges in this regard. This paper reports on some of our work aimed at designing text mining and query pre-processing tools that are able to efficiently process and search large quantities of Arabic web data. In our research we try to address the challenges Arabic poses for natural language processing (NLP) and information retrieval: root extraction, language detection, and Arabic query correction, suggestion and expansion. While not reported in detail here, we are also developing tools for automatic Arabic document categorization. All through, we employ a statistical/Corpus-based approach based on data obtained from a variety of sources. Based on corpus statistics we constructed databases of words and their frequencies as single, double and triple expressions and used that as the infrastructure for the well structured search aid tools that are able to handle the sophisticated nature of Arabic, and capable of being integrated into existing web search engines and document processing systems. We also utilize context analysis and spellchecking of the user queries to enable a more complete and efficient search. While the results reported here are promising, they must be viewed as work in progress, still in need of testing, refining, integration and deployment in real life settings.


Antibiotic resistance of Staphylococcus epidermidis isolates from the pharynx of persons in various regions of Krasnoyarsk was tested. The highest percentage of the isolates was resistant to beta-lactam antibiotics in both the ecologically comparatively favourable regions and the regions exposed to diverse technogenic loads. However, the isolates from the ecologically unfavourable regions were highly resistant to a greater variety of antibiotics. The neuronet analysis as well revealed high informative value of the results.


Reports on seizure outcomes following surgery for lesional epilepsy consistently cite extent of resection as a significant predictor of outcome. Unfortunately, gross-total resection is not technically feasible in all cases of medically refractory tumor-associated epilepsy. Here, the authors present the case of a 4-year-old girl whose epilepsy was medically controlled after 1-stage electrocorticography-guided subtotal resection (STR) of a large diffuse protoplasmic astrocytoma. They also review the modern literature on epilepsy associated with brain tumors. Outcomes are compared with those following surgical treatment of focal cortical dysplasia and vascular lesions. Gross-total lesional resection shows significant superiority across pathologies and anatomical regions. Despite a considerable number of STRs yielding seizure freedom, other favorable treatment factors have not been defined. Although gross-total lesional resection, if possible, is clearly superior, tailored surgery may still offer patients a significant opportunity for a good outcome. Treatment factors yielding successful seizure control following STR remain to be fully elucidated.


Analogical reasoning is a fundamental capacity of human cognition that allows us to reason abstractly about novel situations by relating them to past experiences. While it is thought to be essential for robust reasoning in AI systems, conventional approaches require significant training and/or hard-coding of domain knowledge to be applied to benchmark tasks. Inspired by cognitive science research that has found connections between human language and analogy-making, we explore the use of intuitive language-based abstractions to support analogy in AI systems. Specifically, we apply large pre-trained language models (PLMs) to visual Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM), a common relational reasoning test. By simply encoding the perceptual features of the problem into language form, we find that PLMs exhibit a striking capacity for zero-shot relational reasoning, exceeding human performance and nearing supervised vision-based methods. We explore different encodings that vary the level of abstraction over task features, finding that higher-level abstractions further strengthen PLMs' analogical reasoning. Our detailed analysis reveals insights on the role of model complexity, in-context learning, and prior knowledge in solving RPM tasks.


Endoscopic spray cryotherapy is a unique advancement in the endoscopist's toolbox. Not long ago, the technology of cryotherapy in spray form was limited to dermatology, where it still enjoys frequent use and efficacy for the elimination of epithelial neoplasia and other unwanted tissue. Non-contact endoscopic ablation modalities include laser, photodynamic therapy (PDT), argon plasma coagulation (APC), and spray cryotherapy. Cryotherapy is distinguished from these other technologies by the use of intensely cold temperatures to disrupt cellular and extracellular functions and to induce apoptosis. Two very different systems are commercially available for endoscopic cryotherapy: liquid nitrogen (CryoSpray Ablation, CSA Medical, Baltimore, Maryland, USA) and carbon dioxide (CO2; Polar Wand, GI Supply, CampHill, Pennsylvania, USA). The CO2 system relies on the Joule–Thompson effect, whereby rapid expansion of CO2 freezes the tissue to –78°C as it exits the specialized catheter. The liquid nitrogen system delivers actual liquid nitrogen at a temperature of –196°C to the target tissue. It is not hard to imagine that the difference of –100°C would translate into differences in the technical application, efficacy, and risk profile of each method of endoscopic cryotherapy. The liquid nitrogen system has been shown to be effective in eradicating Barrett's esophagus with high grade dysplasia and intramucosal carcinoma even for patients in whom other ablation modalities have failed, according to early reports [1,2]. The liquid nitrogen system gained acceptance in academic centers with experience in the ablation of Barrett's esophagus after retrospective studies demonstrated efficacy rates comparable to radiofrequency ablation (RFA), as reported in a multicenter registry study by Ganz et al. [3–5]. In this issue of Endoscopy, Xue et al. present a prospective nonrandomized, case series of CO2 cryotherapy for Barrett's esophagus, with the primary outcome measure of complete eradication of specialized intestinal metaplasia [6]. Previously, the CO2 system was marketed primarily for the treatment of vascular lesions of the gastrointestinal tract [7], with reports in Barrett's esophagus limited to abstract form. The current study, although involving Barrett's esophagus, is not comparable to liquid nitrogen ablation studies. The two primary liquid nitrogen studies [4,5] included only those with high grade dysplasia and intramucosal carcinoma, whereas the current study by Xue et al. specifically excluded these histologies. Most experts agree that nondysplastic Barrett's mucosa is easier to ablate than Barrett's with neoplasia. Trials also show a decline in ablation success rates when moving along the spectrum from nondysplastic Barrett's and low grade dysplasia to high grade dysplasia and intramucosal carcinoma. Whether endoscopic ablation of nondysplastic Barrett's esophagus should be performed at all outside of the research setting remains debated. There are similarities between the current study and the previous liquid nitrogen studies. The authors in both allowed enrollment of patients in whom prior ablation had failed (in Xue et al. this was APC), unlike other more rigorous trials of RFA and PDT. And like Dumot et al. [1], a prospective cohort designwas used. However, there are major limitations to the data presented by Xue et al. The authors' choice of ablating nondysplastic epithelium is probably based on the low incidence of Barrett's esophagus with dysplasia in their population. The sample size is small, treatment dosimetry is vague, the dose of proton pump inhibitor is low by Western standards, follow-up is limited to the 6-month exam, and the biopsy protocol was less than rigorous in the surveillance period. The durability of CO2 ablation remains unclear. Three of nine patients with long-segment Barrett's esophagus had recurrent specialized intestinal metaplasia on 6-month follow-up, and an overall recurrence rate of 15% was reported at


This paper presents characterization of a new high flux solar simulator consisting of a 10 kW Xenon arc via indirect heat flux mapping technique for solar thermochemical applications. The method incorporates the use of a heat flux gauge (HFG), single Lambertian target, complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) camera, and three-axis optical alignment assembly. The grayscale values are correlated to heat flux values for faster optimization and characterization of the radiation source. Unlike previous work in heat flux characterization that rely on two Lambertian targets, this study implements the use of a single target to eliminate possible errors due to interchanging the targets. The current supplied to the simulator was varied within the range of 120–200 A to change the total power and to mimic the fluctuation in sun's irradiance. Several characteristic parameters of the simulator were studied, including the temporal instability and radial nonuniformity (RNU). In addition, a sensitivity analysis was performed on the number of images captured, which showed a threshold value of at least 30 images for essentially accurate results. The results showed that the flux distribution obtained on a 10 × 10 cm2 target had a peak flux of 6990 kWm−2, total power of 3.49 kW, and half width of 6.25 mm. The study concludes with the illustration and use of a new technique, the merging method, that allows characterization of heat flux distributions on larger areas, which is a promising addition to the present heat flux characterization techniques.


The CCAAT/enhancer binding protein (CEBP) family of transcription factors includes five genes. In the ovary, both Cebpa and Cebpb are essential for granulosa cell function. In this study we have explored the role of the Cebpd gene in ovarian physiology by expression and functional studies. Here we report that Cebpd (C/EBPδ) is expressed in the mouse ovary in a highly restricted temporal and spatial pattern. In response to luteinizing hormone (LH/hCG), CEBPD expression is transiently induced in interstitial cells and in theca cells of follicles from the primary to pre-ovulatory stage, and overlaps in part with expression of the alpha-smooth muscle actin protein. Efficient down-regulation of CEBPD was dependent on a functional Cebpb gene. Proliferating human theca cells in culture also express Cebpd. Cells from patients with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) exhibited higher Cebpd expression levels. However, deletion of Cebpd in mice had no overt effect on ovarian physiology and reproductive function. Very little is known at present about the molecular mechanisms underlying theca/interstitial cell functions. The expression pattern of CEBPD reported here identifies a novel functional unit of mouse theca cells of primary through tertiary follicles responding to LH/hCG together with a subset of interstitial cells. This acute stimulation of CEBPD expression may be exploited to further characterize the hormonal regulation and function of theca and interstitial cells.


Boron nitride (BN) is a wide bandgap semiconductor with a structure analogous to graphite. Mono- and few-atomic-layer BN sheets have been grown on silicon substrates by microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition from a gas mixture of BF3–H2–N2 without using any catalysts. Growth of the BN sheets can be ascribed to the etching effects of the fluorine-containing gases and the thickness control down to mono- and few-atomic-layers was realized by decreasing the concentrations of BF3 and H2 in N2. A large decrease of the BF3 and H2 concentrations was achieved by increasing the gas flow rate of N2 and keeping the BF3 and H2 flow rates constant and the mono- and few-atomic-layered BN sheets were obtained at the BF3, H2 and N2 flow rates of 3, 10, and 1200 sccm. The present mono- and few-atomic-layer BN sheets are promising for applications in catalyst supports, composites, gas adsorption, nanoelectronics, etc.


Concrete masonry unit commonly known as concrete block has been widely used in Malaysia. Concrete masonry units (CMU), commonly referred to as concrete blocks, are the most common construction material utilized throughout the Malaysia and neighboring region for exterior walls of conventional structures. A binding agent such as mortar and concrete are able to increase the compressive strength. Additional material use in this experimental will increase the probability strength of concrete masonry unit. Pavement waste are used as an additional aggregate material in order to decrease the space of landfill. By recycling this pavement waste, it help to reduce the quantity of disposed materials. So, there is an initiative to use this pavement waste in structural work since there is an increase the number of construction work in Malaysia. The concrete masonry wall has significant crack pattern when applied with static loading. This investigation present the result of structural behavior of concrete masonry unit wall and to observe the cracking pattern under static loading. The dimension of wall panel is about 1 meter in height and approximately 1.5 meter in width. Strain gauge and linear variable differential transformer (LVDT) was placed in correct position in order to collect the data. The maximum load was applied where the stress develop on the specimen and the data was collected. The displacement and stress-strain result was tabulate accordingly by graph and cracking pattern was observed during the experiment.Concrete masonry unit commonly known as concrete block has been widely used in Malaysia. Concrete masonry units (CMU), commonly referred to as concrete blocks, are the most common construction material utilized throughout the Malaysia and neighboring region for exterior walls of conventional structures. A binding agent such as mortar and concrete are able to increase the compressive strength. Additional material use in this experimental will increase the probability strength of concrete masonry unit. Pavement waste are used as an additional aggregate material in order to decrease the space of landfill. By recycling this pavement waste, it help to reduce the quantity of disposed materials. So, there is an initiative to use this pavement waste in structural work since there is an increase the number of construction work in Malaysia. The concrete masonry wall has significant crack pattern when applied with static loading. This investigation present the result of structural behavior of concrete masonry unit w...


History, clinical presentation and first laboratory results were analyzed in three patients with cystinosis and in three patients with distal renal tubular acidosis. Growth failure, gastrointestinal tract disturbances, polydipsia, and polyuria were the most constant findings on history. Patients with distal renal tubular acidosis had a shorter period of clinical symptoms. All patients presented with dystrophy and dehydration. First laboratory investigation uniformly showed metabolic acidosis, high urinary-pH, and in spite of dehydration a low osmolarity of the first voided urine specimen. There were lower values of serum potassium and of urine osmolarity in cystinosis. In addition, metabolic acidosis was not so pronounced. Our study shows that history, clinical presentation and the results of a few simple laboratory investigations can indicate the presence of a renal tubular disorder even on admission of the patients.


The presence of damage layers close to the interface of Schottky barriers causes local band distortion in this region. This band bending is shown, under certain conditions, to produce a current flow in the opposite sense to that usually expected during emission from trap levels in a Schottky barrier depletion layer. The influence of this anomalous current flow on thermally stimulated current and transient current measurements is discussed. It is shown that this can produce erroneous results from these techniques, and measurements on GaAs Schottky barriers are given as specific examples.


A new type of RANEY® metal catalyst supported by polymer was developed for the clean preparation of n-butanol. Unlike traditional supported catalysts, the newly developed alkalescent polyamide 6 (PA6) supported RANEY® nickel catalyst provided a 100.0% conversion of n-butyraldehyde without producing any detectable n-butyl ether, the main byproduct in industry. The significantly enhanced catalyst selectivity of the polymer-supported RANEY® metal catalyst was attributed to the elimination of the acid-catalyzed side reaction associated with RANEY® metals and traditional catalyst supports, such as Al2O3 and SiO2. By eliminating acid-catalyzed side reactions, therefore, green chemistry could be achieved through reducing resources and energy consumption in chemical reactions. Furthermore, the preparation and recycling of the polymer-supported catalysts are also much more eco-friendly than for traditional Al2O3-/SiO2-supported catalysts. The methodology developed in this study to use alkalescent polymers as the catalyst support could be applied to the whole catalyst family, including a series of important RANEY® metal catalysts (e.g., RANEY® nickel, RANEY® cobalt, RANEY® copper) used routinely in the chemical industry.


The concept of peace is as old as humanity itself and one phenomenon today in our world that is well sought after by all and sundry. Peace has been viewed differently by great thinkers such as Einstein, Tolstoy, Kant and others. While some thinkers see peace as the absence of war, others see it as calmness or tranquility in the face of hostilities and war. The existential realities of humans such as fear, dread, death, anguish, absurdity, necessitate the contemplation of peace. Because of the outcry everywhere in the world for peace, this paper seeks to join the foray of persons and institutions whose search for a lasting peace in our world has reached its crescendo. The eclectic posture of this work adopts various postulations from different philosophers who have written on the subject of peace. The approach on the issue of peace here is from a philosophical perspective using the postulations of these peace philosophers to proffer ideas on understanding the nature of peace.


The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for understanding the antecedents of employee deviance in emergency services personnel. Emergency services are a labour intensive sectors and their employees are entrusted to protect life and property of victims during emergencies. Their decisions during the emergency situation is critical and able to minimize the post-disaster impacts. Emergency services personnel are normatively exposed traumatic experiences and work pressure during emergencies and these may resulted them to demonstrate negative reactions such as employee deviance. This paper discusses possible antecedents that determine an emergency services personnel's deviant behaviors and offers a conceptual framework based on Job Demands-Resources Model and the existing literature to explain employee deviance in emergency services.


This study investigates the species richness and abundance of Drosophila Fallen, 1823 attracted to dung and carrion baited pitfall traps in natural areas with heterogeneous habitats at the Sierra de Minas, Eastern Serranias, southeastern Uruguay. Collecting was carried out on a monthly basis (May 2002 through April 2003). Drosophilids accounted for 0.84% (n = 131) and 3.61% (n = 158) of the Diptera collected from dung (n = 15,630) and carrion (n = 4,382) pitfall traps, respectively. A total of 12 species were identified, 11 of which belong to the subgenus Drosophila (the richest) and one to the subgenus Sophophora Sturtevant, 1939. Over 90% of the Drosophila specimens collected belong to five species of the subgenus Drosophila, namely D. gaucha Jaeger & Salzano, 1953, D. immigrans Sturtevant, 1921, D. mediovittata Frota-Pessoa, 1954, D. aff. nappae Vilela, Valente & Basso-da-Silva, 2004, and D. ornatifrons Duda, 1927. Drosophila cardini Sturtevant, 1916 is recorded for the first time from Uruguay. Drosophila abundance and species richness in the four habitats sampled in the Uruguayan Eastern Serranias, namely woodlands sierra, riparian forest, pine plantation and grazing grassland, were considered to be a function of habitat conservation. Diversity indices were low in all habitats. Different habitats supported particular coprophilous and necrophilous Drosophila species. The woodland sierra represents the most preserved habitat, and contributed with the highest species richness observed. Drosophila ornatifrons was the dominant species, with a restricted habitat distribution. On the other hand, grazed grassland, an environment modified by livestock management, had the lowest species richness: only a few specimens of D. repleta Wollaston, 1858. Regarding species composition, significant differences were found in some pairwise comparisons of groups of Drosophila species that included D. ornatifrons. Fly attraction to dung can be exploited as an alternative and/or complementary collecting method in ecological studies of Drosophila assemblages in natural areas.


The paper deals with the issue of station delay in token-ring networks. It explains why one-bit-delay is the minimum possible delay at every station and shows that the station delay depends on the distributed computations performed in the ring. Then, the paper introduces the distributed priority mechanism for token-rings, as approved by the IEEE-802.5 standard. This mechanism attaches to the token, that circulates around the ring and controls the access to the shared medium, a priority field P and a reservation field R. These two fields work together in an attempt to match the service priority of the ring to the highest priority message that is waiting to be sent.
It is shown that due to the computation restrictions imposed by the one-bit-delay requirements, this priority mechanism has a grave deficiency as follows. When the token priority is higher than the maximum reservation (P > R), the token should make up to P round-trips, where P is the number of priority levels, before P is reduced to R. During this time period, no station may seize the token and send a message. This leads to loss of bandwidth.
The paper presents a new priority mechanism that retains the desired properties of the standard. However, in the new protocol when P > R holds, P is reduced to R in at most 1 round-trip rather than in up to P round-trips.


Aiming at the oscillation drag reduction tool that improves the extension limit of coiled tubing downhole operations, the fluid hammer equation of the oscillation drag reducer is established based on the fluid hammer effect. The fluid hammer equation is solved by the asymptotic method, and the distribution of fluid pressure and flow velocity in coiled tubing with oscillation drag reducers is obtained. At the same time, the axial force and radial force of the coiled tubing caused by the fluid hammer oscillator are calculated according to the momentum theorem. The radial force will change the normal contact force of the coiled tubing which has a great influence on frictional drag. The results show that the fluid flow rate and pressure decrease stepwise from the oscillator position to the wellhead position, and the fluid flow rate and pressure will change abruptly during each valve opening and closing time. When the fluid passes through the oscillator, the unit mass fluid will generate an instantaneous axial tension due to the change in the fluid velocity, thereby converting the static friction into dynamic friction, which is conducive to the extend limit of coiled tubing.


Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a mine field of moral dilemmas. Even when carefully planned for and continuously critically reflected upon, conflicts are likely to occur as part of the process. This paper illustrates the lessons learned from "Building on Strengths in Naujaat", a resiliency initiative with the objective of promoting sense of belonging, collective efficacy, and well-being in Inuit youth. Naujaat community members over time established strong meaningful relationships with academic researchers. Youth took on the challenge of organizing community events, trips out on the land, and fundraisers. While their creativity and resourcefulness are at the heart of the initiative, this paper explores conflicts and pitfalls that accompanied it. Based on three themes – struggles in coming together as academic and community partners, the danger of perpetuating colonial power structures, and the challenges of navigating complex layers of relations within the community – we examine the dilemmas unearthed by these conflicts, including an exploration of how much we as CBPR researchers are at risk of reproducing colonial power structures. Acknowledging and addressing power imbalances, while striving for transparency, accountability, and trust, are compelling guiding principles needed to support Indigenous communities on the road toward health equity.


The syntax and semantics of a particular tactic language are defined. The language uses lazy evaluation to manage backtracking in the search space. It also uses pattern matching to associate names with formulae that will subsequently be passed as arguments to an inference rule. The result of the inference rule is accompanied by a revision of the association, so that corresponding formulae in the result may be passed as arguments to the next inference rule. The combination of this revision with lazy evaluation raises some problems for efficient implementation.


An ultrasonic compound horn
is designed and manufactured, and the horn is analyzed by wave equation, finite
element method and test. The modal frequencies and frequencies of the first and
second longitudinal vibration of the horn are obtained by the finite element
analysis. The horn is made and modal testing is carried out. The modal
frequencies of the first and second longitudinal vibration are obtained
respectively. The test results are in good agreement with the theoretical
calculation. Experimental results show the maximum amplitude of the horn can
reach 9 nm with applied excitation voltage of amplitude 7 V and frequency 21,450 Hz, when the amplitude of
voltage increases to 80 V, the horn of maximum amplitude reaches 23 μm. The maximum amplitude of the horn is approximately
proportional to the amplitude of excitation voltage. The horn has the
characteristics of high sensitivity and large amplitude, and can be used in
ultrasonic machining and other fields.


"Fat talk" is defined as a negative critique of one's physical appearance with friends and family. There is limited research on fat talk in the context of romantic relationships; only two studies have examined men's perceptions of women engaging in fat talk using vignettes. The present study developed and validated vignettes capable of manipulating various levels of fat talk by a heterosexual woman with her male partner in the context of a committed romantic relationship. A 2 (Gender: male or female) X 3 (Vignette: 1) Excessive fat talk 2) Minimal fat talk or 3) Self-accepting body talk between-subjects design was used to examine men's and women's perceptions of a target woman's 1) likeability, 2) perceived body size (Pulvers, 2004, rating scale), and 3) perceived amount of fat talk using the Fat Talk Questionnaire (FTQ; Royal, MacDonald, & Dionne, 2013). Findings suggest that these vignettes are a valid method of manipulating fat talk for use in future research regarding fat talk within heterosexual relationships. When the target woman engaged in excessive fat talk, she was seen as less likeable and participants perceived her body size to be greater – indicating that minimal levels of fat talk may be normative.


OBJECTIVES
The aim of the present study is to assess the means and methods being suggested by Greek orthodontists to their patients for cleaning their removable devices.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A questionnaire survey was conducted among a total of 418 Greek orthodontists found from the registry of orthodontists in Greece. The clinicians were asked about the means and methods of daily cleaning they usually advise their patients for removable appliances. Furthermore, the questionnaire included questions related to possible complications of these devices and data about the use and type of applied devices.

RESULTS
From 418 Greek orthodontists, 279 filled the questionnaire and participated in this study. All but one reported that they use removable appliances in their practice for patients of almost any age. All orthodontists recommend routine manual toothbrushing, but the majority of them also suggest at the same time other oral hygiene aids complementary to brushing, such as immersion in denture cleaners (70.06%), in disinfecting solutions (12.73%) and in vinegar (36.94%). Some 15% of all the practitioners advise the use of ultrasonic instruments for cleaning removable orthodontic appliances. At last, clinicians have faced complications from the use of removable devices in the oral cavity at a statistically significant percentage. The most usual is trauma of the mucosa, mycosis and hyperplasia.

CONCLUSION
Greek orthodontists use removable orthodontic appliances, active or passive, in their practice. Brushing with a toothbrush and the use of cleaning products for removable prostheses are the preferred methods for cleaning removable orthodontic appliances regardless of the orthodontic specialty programme they had graduated from.


This paper is a theoretical reflection about the time working with my final start-up project ProZea at Lund University during my study period in Master's program in Entrepreneurship. This study uses autoethnographical methodology to analyze the work of an entrepreneur on a new venture. The aim of this paper is to provide readers an insight of how product development takes place in an early stage life science oriented company, and how its innovation process looks like. I will discuss the theoretical researches within the fields of product development and innovation process. By applying the theories to ProZea case and the activities I have done within ProZea, I hope to draw a clear picture of a commercialization process of an early-stage life science oriented project.


The spatial-temporal baseline threshold method is commonly used to select interferograms for the Small BAseline Subset interferometric synthetic aperture radar (SBAS-InSAR) technique. However, this selection strategy is rather empirical and prone to including highly contaminated interferograms or excluding those with high quality. To overcome these limitations, this study first derives the relationship between the measurement accuracy of unknown parameters and the number of selected interferograms with their corresponding qualities. Subsequently, an adaptive interferogram selection method is proposed on the basis of Graph Theory (GT) and the turbulence atmospheric effects of interferogram. This proposed method first identifies and deletes the SAR image that is severely polluted by atmospheric phase. Second, high-quality interferograms are selected for SBAS-InSAR based on their corresponding turbulence atmospheric variance. Compared with the traditional selection method, this approach can significantly reduce the effect of turbulence atmosphere on SBAS-InSAR. A set of simulated experiments and real Sentinel-1A data in Hawaii, United States, validate the good performance of the proposed method.


This paper examines how the rise of a market economy in urban China redefines the rules governing economic activities and affects on earnings inequality. We identify three causal mechanisms linked to institutional change that are transforming the firm's employment practices: the higher marginal productivity of a private enterprise economy relative to state-owned enterprises, competition by firms for skilled and semi-skilled labor following emergence of labor markets and the end of state monopoly on labor allocation, and increased emphasis on merit-based reward systems in firms. Analyses of survey data from urban China show how these three causal mechanisms stemming from the transition to a market economy contribute to new patterns of earnings differentiation that increase income returns to human capital and private-sector entrepreneurship.


The polarization of the 100 micron continuum emission has been measured at 14 positions in the dense, warm molecular cloud associated with the arched filaments, or the 'bridge', of the radio arc near the Galactic center. At all positions the percent polarization is found to be quite large, ranging up to 6.5 percent. The polarization is interpreted in terms of thermal emission by magnetically aligned dust grains. The directions of the polarization vectors then indicate that the magnetic field is (1) parallel to the long dimension of the thermal radio filaments, and (2) very uniform on scales of 1-10 pc. Of several explanations for the inferred field geometry, the simplest is that it results from the unusually large dynamical shear in the emitting cloud.


Structure constants of the su(N) (N odd) Lie algebras converge when N goes to infinity to the structure constants of the Lie algebra sdiff(T 2) of the group of area-preserving diffeomorphisms of a 2D torus. Thus Zeitlin and others hypothesized that solutions of the Euler equations associated with su(N) algebras converge to solutions of the Euler equations of incompressible fluid dynamics on a 2D torus. In the paper we prove the hypothesis. Our numerical experiments show the Galerkin method applied to Euler equation of hydrodynamics is computationally more efficient in the range of time in which it is stable than that based on the SU(N) approximation. However, the latter is stable for much longer time. These numerical results agree with theoretical expectations. PACS Numbers: 03.40.60 Gc— Fluid dynamics; ∗corresponding author: firstname.lastname@example.com, Los Alamos NM 87545, USA


The association between tangible assistance, a single-item measure of social support, and serious perinatal complications was prospectively measured in 548 rural pregnant women. Those 38 women who reported no or one reliable helper in the third trimester (low tangible assistance) had a higher rate of poor outcomes (at least one of the following: neonatal death, transfer to neonatal intensive care unit, birthweight less than 2500 g or 5-min Apgar score less than 7) than those with 2 or more helpers (13.2% vs. 5.7%, p = 0.08). All of the increase in poor outcomes occurred in women with high sociodemographic risk (at least one of the following: age less than 18, no male partner, or less than high school education). In this subgroup of 121 women, the difference in poor perinatal outcomes was striking (28.6% vs. 7.6%, p = 0.03). The association between tangible assistance and poor outcome remained after controlling for biomedical risk. A simple question about the availability of supportive companions may be clinically useful.


Posterior fossa (PF) tumors are among the most frequent primary neoplasms in children. Proximity to the fourth ventricle, and therefore cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pathways, predisposes children with PF tumors to the development of obstructive hydrocephalus. Some patients with PF tumors require a permanent CSF diversion procedure prior to or after tumor removal. However, management of hydrocephalus in children with resectable PF tumors is still controversial. In order to minimize the use of permanent shunts and to avoid associated complications, some investigators have advocated routine preoperative application of endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) only in selected patients. We showed a clinical video case who experienced a preoperatively ETV before the surgical resection of their posterior fossa tumor. The patient is a 5 year-old boy presented with progressive headaches, vomits and somnolence. Young children with severe preoperative hydrocephalus and a midline tumor should be considered at risk when preoperative treatment decisions are made.

*de Oliveira RS and Ballestero MFM contributed equally to this manuscript


Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph) orbiting the Milky Way are complex objects often with complicated star formation histories and internal dynamics. In this work, we search for stellar substructures in four of the classical dSph satellites of the Milky Way: Sextans, Carina, Leo I, and Leo II. We apply two methods to search for stellar substructure: the minimum spanning tree method, which helps us find and quantify spatially connected structures, and the "brute-force" method, which is able to find elongated stellar substructures. We detected the previously known substructure in Sextans and also found a new stellar substructure within Sextans. Furthermore, we identified a new stellar substructure close to the core radius of the Carina dwarf galaxy. We report a detection of one substructure in Leo I and two in Leo II, but we note that we are dealing with a low number of stars in the samples used. Such old stellar substructures in dSphs could help us shed light on the nature of the dark matter halos, within which such structures form, evolve, and survive.


279 ONGOING PHASE 1/2 STUDY OF INCB050465, A SELECTIVE PI3Kδ INHIBITOR, FOR THE TREATMENT OF PATIENTS (PTS) WITH RELAPSED/ REFRACTORY (R/R) B‐CELL MALIGNANCIES (CITADEL‐101) P. Caimi* | R. Ramchandren | T.J. Phillips | M.S. Wertheim | M.E. Gutierrez | W.J. Edenfield | L.P. Akard | J.A. Call | D.O. Persky | D.J. DeMarini | L. Zhou | S. Yeleswaram | A. Forero‐Torres Department of Medicine‐Gastroenterology, University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center, Cleveland, OH, USA; Hematology/Oncology, Karmanos Cancer Center, Detroit, MI, USA; Hematology/Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Hematology/Oncology, Hematology/ Oncology Associates of Treasure Coast, Port St Lucie, FL, USA; Drug Discovery and Phase I Unit, Hackensack University Medical Center, Hackensack, NJ, USA; Hematology, Greenville Health System Cancer Institute, Greenville, SC, USA; Hematology, Indiana Blood & Marrow Transplantation, LLC, Indianapolis, IN, USA; Hematology/Oncology, Utah Cancer Specialists‐Network, Salt Lake City, UT, USA; Hematology/ Oncology, University of Arizona Cancer Center, Tucson, AZ, USA; Clinical Development, Incyte Corporation, Wilmington, USA; Hematology/Oncology, University of Alabama Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA


Infections associated with gas-producing organisms are known to be among the most serious that may befall a patient. Traditionally one associates these infections with contused, contaminated injuries such as battle casualties and automobile accidents. Abdominal operations complicated by infection by members of the Clostridium genus are considered to be quite unusual, but a surprising number are reported in the surgical literature. It is not difficult to understand how this type of infection might complicate a surgical procedure in which the operative field is soiled by intestinal contents; but in gallbladder surgery, where one feels at a safe distance from the flora of the gastrointestinal tract, the presence of a Cl perfringens infection constitutes a definite enigma. At times this infection is associated with acute cholecystitis and obviously was present before surgery; at other times it becomes manifest in the early postoperative period following an elective cholecystectomy. Early diagnosis and vigorous


Abstract Industrial Estate of Rasht is one of the oldest Industrial Estate of Iran in Guilan province .It was established before the Islamic republic of Iran's revolution in 1974 . The Industrial Estate of Rasht that is the greatest active Industrial Estate in the province is located at 18kilometer of western south side of Rasht city. In this article, solid waste management has been studied as one of the problems of this Industrial Estate. The method of this article has been on the basis of observation and completion of subjective questionnaires distributed among 61% of the active industrial units. Study of finding show that majority of industries, have a passive approach toward remarks of environment protection, absorption of environment experts and scientific management of Solid wastes. In this regard, only 13.4% of the units have environment experts, 14.9% of industrial units have taken an action for studying their solid wastes. For this reason, two industrial units have been able to selected as Green unit in Guilan province. Metal and nonmetal mineral Industries groups have the most amount of industrial solid waste with 26.80% and 20.72% respectively, and Metal Industrial groups with 19% and textile industries with 15.23% have the most weight of House-hold solid wastes. About 4.45% of the units have recycled their solid wastes and 21.20% of them do the recycling together with other management activities such as source reduction, incineration and Sanitary Land fill. About 1.51% of industrial units have incinerated their Solid Wastes but no precise control is made on air pollution. In summary the industrial units under study in Industrial Estate of Rasht produce 3903.8 tons of industrial solid wastes per year and 217.2 tons of House-hold solid wastes per year. According to the obtained results, upon development of industrial activities in factories and increase of the number of staffs, the volume of produced solid wastes will increase in future. Accumulation of these wastes in the Industrial Estate will create undesirable environmental effects and more consumption of resources. By applying an integrated solid waste management system in Industrial Estate of Rasht, production of solid waste is decreased and increasing industrial development will be maintained.


Pragmatics of society takes a socio-cultural perspective on pragmatics and gives a broad view of how social and cultural factors influence language use. The volume covers a wide range of topics within the field of sociopragmatics. This subfield of pragmatics encompasses sociolinguistic studies that focus on how pragmatic and discourse features vary according to macro-sociological variables such as age, gender, class and region (variational pragmatics), and discourse/conversation analytical studies investigating variation according to the activity engaged in by the participants and the identities displayed as relevant in interaction. The volume also covers studies in linguistic pragmatics with a more general socio-cultural focus, including global and intercultural communication, politeness, critical discourse analysis and linguistic anthropology. Each article presents the state-of-the-art of the topic at hand, as well as new research.


ABSTRACT Mindfulness refers to the state of being aware, taking note of what is going on within oneself, without any judgment. Mindfulness has been shown to affect decision-making, empathy, and sustainability in non-tourism contexts. We conducted an experiment to see if mindfulness can promote sustainable behaviours in a tourism context. After listening to a mindfulness-inducing audio track, participants expressed a lower preference for a group tour to Uluru, NT, Australia, that prominently featured climbing the sandstone formation as part of the package. Process data suggested that being mindful made participants more aware of the environmental and cultural consequences of their decisions. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on the many positive impacts of mindfulness on individual and social well-being – this time within a tourism context in which both mindfulness and sustainability are showing important applications as well as consequences.


: Background and objective: The increased incidence of new-onset epilepsy in the elderly has been recognized for some time. Therefore, the main objective of the study is to compare the analysis of valproate and carbamazepine among elderly patients with newly diagnosed epilepsy. Material and methods: This comparative study was conducted in Rawalpindi Medical College during 2019 to 2020. Briefly, patients aged ≥ 16 years who had experienced two or more unprovoked seizures in the previous 2 years with at least one during the previous 6 months were included. At screening, the investigator decided whether LEV or CBZ would be the standard first-line treatment. Results: The data was collected from 100 patients. Within the VPA stratum 36/100 patients (36.0 %) had generalized seizures only, and within the CBZ stratum 87 patients (90.3 %) had focal seizures only. The majority of patients had epilepsy either due to an unknown cause or cerebrovascular accident. Conclusion: It is concluded that patients remained in the LEV treatment arm longer than those in the CBZ arm, most likely because of the better tolerability of LEV.


This paper introduces a community science project, Citizen Data Harvest in Motion Everywhere (CHIME), and the findings from our pilot study, which investigated potential concerns regarding data curation. The CHIME project aims to build a cyclist community–driven data archive that citizens, community scientists, and governments can use and reuse. While citizens' involvement in the project enables data collection on a massive, unprecedented scale, the citizen-generated data (cyclists' video data recorded with wearable cameras in the CHIME context) also presents several concerns regarding curation due to the grassroots nature of the data. Learning from our examination of cyclists' video data and interviews with them, we will discuss the curation concerns and challenges we identified in our pilot study and introduce our approach to addressing these issues. Our study will provide insights into data curation concerns, to which other citizen science projects can refer. As a next step, we are in the process of developing a data curation model that will consider other factors related to this community science project and can be implemented in future community science projects.


We consider radial solutions to the Schr\"odinger-Poisson system in three dimensions with an external smooth potential with Coulomb-like decay. Such a system can be viewed as a model for the interaction of dark matter with a bright matter background in the non-relativistic limit. We find that there are infinitely many critical points of the Hamiltonian, subject to fixed mass, and that these bifurcate from solutions to the associated linear problem at zero mass. As a result, each branch has a different topological character defined by the number of zeros of the radial states. We construct numerical approximations to these nonlinear states along the first several branches. The solution branches can be continued, numerically, to large mass values, where they become asymptotic, under a rescaling, to those of the Schr\"odinger-Poisson problem with no external potential. Our numerical computations indicate that the ground state is orbitally stable, while the excited states are linearly unstable for sufficiently large mass.


Burger's equations, an extension of fluid dynamics equations, are typically solved by several numerical methods. In this article, the laplace-Somé Blaise Abbo method is used to solve nonlinear Burger equations. This method is based on the combination of the laplace transform and the SBA method. After reminders of the laplace transform, the basic principles of the SBA method are described. The process of calculating the Laplace-SBA algorithm for determining the exact solution of a linear or nonlinear partial derivative equation is shown. Thus, three examplesof PDE are solved by this method, which all lead to exact solutions. Our results suggest that this method can be extended to other more complex PDEs.


Chrysanthemum indicum L. (Asteraceae) is a common traditional herbal medicine used for the treatment of inflammation, hypertension, and respiratory diseases due to its strong antagonistic function against inflammatory cytokines. In this study, the effects of Chrysanthemum indicum L. extract (CIE) on the function of osteoblastic MC3T3-E1 cells and the production of local factors in osteoblasts were investigated. CIE (100 ) significantly increased the growth of MC3T3-E1 cells and caused a significant elevation of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, and the deposition of collagen and calcium in the cells (p tamoxifen, suggesting that CIE`s effect might be partly involved in estrogen-related activities. These results indicate that the enhancement of osteoblast functionality by CIE may prevent osteoporosis and inflammatory bone diseases.


Ever since the beginning of recorded history, Ancient Egypt was dependent upon the goodwill of the Phoenician overlords of the mountain land of the Lebanon for supplies of timber in the long running lengths required for the construction of large ships, especially those intended for use on long voyages by sea ; fine timber was also in considerable demand for the making of the elaborate wooden sarcophagi of nobles and of members of the royal family as well as for furniture of superior quality. This lack of suitable native timber made the Egyptians late comers in sea-trading ; indeed, it restricted progress so seriously that their water-borne commerce was limited to traffic with Nubia and the South by way of the Nile waterway, to occasional expeditions down the Red Sea to Southern Arabia and to Somaliland (Punt) and to short coasting trips to Phoenicia to buy timber logs and to the coasts of the Sinai Peninsula in search of copper.


In recent years, with the explosive growth of data traffic, communication base stations (BSs) need to serve more and more users. Offloading traffic from BSs has become an efficient way to reduce the burden on BSs. Device-to-Device (D2D) communications have emerged to improve spectrum utilization by reusing the frequency spectrum of the cellular frequency band. In the general environment, Heterogeneous Cellular Networks (HCNs) including millimeter wave (mm-wave) have appeared. Since the D2D link allows to share of spectrum resources with the cellular user, it will bring potential interference to the cellular user. Fortunately, an emerging technology called Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) can mitigate the severe interference caused by D2D links by shaping the incident beam and improving the multipath phase shift. In this paper, we study the resource allocation scheme to maximize the system sum rate, in the RIS-assisted single-cell heterogeneous D2D communication scenario. To solve the Block Coordinate Descent (BCD) problem, the problem of maximizing the sum rate is decomposed into three sub-problems. The resource allocation sub-problem is solved by a coalitional game method based on the game theory. The power allocation problem of the coalition converts the concave function into a convex optimization by mathematical transformation. The problem is solved by the gradient descent method. The local search method is adopted to find the optimum for the phase conversion problem. Then iterate until the difference of sum rate is less than the threshold. The simulation results show that the designed algorithm is superior to other benchmark schemes in the literature.


This study aims to determine the effect of Consumer Engagement, Brand Image, Ease of Use, and Social Media Marketing on Post-Purchase Actions from Wardah Cosmetics on Instagram @wardahbeauty followers of the Surabaya area, either partially or simultaneously. The population in this study are consumers of Wardah Cosmetics on Instagram @wardahbeauty who are domiciled in Surabaya who have made a purchase transaction at least 2 times. This study used a sample of 100 respondents. In this study using non-probability sampling technique. The data analysis technique uses Multiple Linear Regression analysis method with IBM Statistic 25 software which uses validity test, reliability test and classical assumption test analysis first to make the right regression test. The results of this study indicate that Consumer Involvement, Brand Image, Ease of Use, and Social Media Marketing together have a significant influence on Post-Purchase Actions, where each variable has a positive and significant influence on Post-Purchase Actions, except for the Ease of Use variable which has a negative and insignificant effect on Post-Purchase Actions.
Keywords: Consumer Involvement, Brand Image, Ease of Use, Social Media Marketing and Post-Purchase Actions.


Microstructural evolution, interfacial reaction and fracture during vacuum brazing of 50Mo-50Re alloys using amorphous alloy Fe-5.6Si-2.6B(wt%) were investigated. A binary intermetallic compound, σ(Mo2Re3) formed as parallel contiguous layers in the diffusion zone. In addition, Fe from the braze alloy, in combination with dissolved Mo from the substrate, formed two layers of binary compounds μ-Mo6Fe7 and λ-MoFe2, adjacent to diffusion zone. The unreacted Fe-based filler metal solidified as α-Fe solid solution. Fracture analysis showed that the mode of failure was mainly transgranular cleavage with partly intergranular and the fracture located on the interface of 50Mo-50Re alloy and the central area of brazing seam.


Continuous observation of micro-earthquakes has been done by a network of the Tottori Micro-earthquake Observatory since 1964 and it has been done by a network of the Hokuriku Micro-earthquake Observatory since 1971. These networks were improved by setting up the telemeter observation system and by the development of recording system since 1976. Signals of three components of short period seismic waves observed at 8 satellite stations are transmitted continuously through the telephone lines to the Tottori Observatory. Signals observed at 7 satellite stations are transmitted to the Hokuriku Observatory. Only vertical components of selected three stations are transmitted from the Tottori and the Hokuriku Observatory to the Disaster Prevention Research Institute in Uji and continuously recorded by long term ink-writing recorders. These seismic waves are recorded by three kinds of recording systems at each observatory. Seismic activity is continuosly monitored by newly developed long term ink-writing recorders for vertical components of all stations. Earthquakes observed at more than two of key stations are recorded by data-recorder and pen-recorder with 14 channel recording units started by a triggering signal. Overall frequency range of the telemetering observation system is from 1 to 50 Hz and dynamic range is about 40 db. Maximum time delay of lines is about 20 msec. This time delay is constant for each line and can be corrected for the accurate calculation.


Implementation of mega geotechnical engineering projects requires a systematic approach and detailed planning. A mega land reclamation and ground improvement project which consists of various components of geotechnical engineering applications was planned and implemented in the Republic of Singapore from 1990 till 2005, a total period of one and a half decades. Due to the extensive ground improvement required to treat the underlying highly compressible soil, with the presence of highly variable ground profile and ground conditions due to the natural geological process, a detailed ground investigation was necessary. This was furthermore necessary due to the importance of various critical infrastructure planned for future usage in the land reclamation site. Extensive ground investigation was planned based on input from desk study and reconnaissance survey carried out using geophysical method under foreshore conditions. Progressive ground investigation included ground investigation carried out in foreshore area prior to land reclamation, on land prior to ground improvement, during and after ground improvement to assess the degree of improvement. The ground investigation involved large numbers of in-situ tests using numerous methods and collections and testing of undisturbed soil sample for further laboratory testing to drive necessary geotechnical parameters for design purpose or decision making for acceptance of ground improvement works. Due to the nature and speed of the project on-site geotechnical and geotextile laboratories were set up for characterization and quality control. In addition to the improvement of underlying soils, hydraulically filled granular soils were required to be densified by application of deep compaction methods to minimize future immediate settlement and to increase resistance to liquefaction. A large quantity of geotechnical instrumentation were installed and monitored for construction control as well as performance monitoring of ground improvement works. This paper describes the procedure and process of implementation of geotechnical works in the mega Changi East Land Reclamation and Ground Improvement project in Singapore.


Composition of particulate organic matter inputs within Marennes-Oleron Bay (France) was investigated over various times scales through multiple measurements (SPM, C:N, Chl. a, δ 13 C ). Oceanic and terrestrial end-members show little δ 13 C variations over the seasonal cycle or between years. Seasonal variations in chemical and isotopic composition of riverine POM reflect the relative contribution of riverborne phytoplankton, but, except during spring bloom, POM appears to be mainly detrital. Between years, differences in rainfall regime greatly affect all the measured parameters. At the estuary mouth, seasonal variations observed within the river are blurred by sedimentation-resuspension processes linked to hydrodynamic constraints, leading to only little variations in the δ 13 C values. The larger variations were observed here in C:N values and were ascribed to the effect of high floods bringing more nitrogenous detritus in the lower part of the estuary. At the marine pole of the bay, POM is mainly dominated during winter by aged terrestrial detritus during low river flow periods, and reflects new "fresh" continental inputs during run off events. In spring and fall, its composition appears to be primarily controlled by primary production. 13 C/ 12 C ratios of bay phytoplankton are markedly more negative than true oceanic values, probably due to differences in species composition. In Marennes-Oleron Bay, POM composition cannot be described by a simple mixing model between oceanic and terrestial end-members, since many biological and physical processes alter their chemical and isotopic signatures. Variations between years emphasize also the need of considering meteorological events such as high floods or long drought periods.


The aim of this study was to evaluate the geographical distribution of zebu breeds in Brazil and correlate their occurrence with environmental variables and human development indicator. The herds of purebred zebu cattle in Brazil were classified as beef breeds (Brahman, Polled Brahman, Nelore, Polled Nelore and Tabapuã), dairy breeds (Gir and Polled Gir), and dual-purpose breeds (Guzerá, Indubrasil, Polled Indubrasil, Sindhi and Polled Sindhi), all breeds being spatialized in ArcGIS program. Variables examined included environmental and human development indicator. The statistical analysis included analysis and logistic regression.The lower distribution of zebu cattle in the states of Northeast compared to other locations is probably due to its extreme climate, highly susceptible to long periods of high temperatures and lower precipitation, which directly affects local livestock. The beef breeds were evenly spread throughout the country. The location occupied for beef breeds was influenced by environmental variables, showing a higher incidence with increased precipitation, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), temperature, relative humidity and temperature humidity index (THI), as well as establishments without family agriculture and rivers and streams with forest protection. The location used for dual-purpose and dairy breeds was influenced by areas with cultivated cutting forages, areas with integrated crop-livestock forest systems and areas with rotational grazing system, indicating a higher occupation in fertile lands. The Gir breed, the only one with dairy exploration in this study, showed herds in establishments with family agriculture, characterized by small to medium farms, and in regions with higher altitude.


This paper considers the development of an estimation scheme for parameters of nonlinear models of DC motors using neural networks. The neural network used in this paper is a linear recurrent neural network. This scheme is considered as an online identification method based on minimization of the least square error between the actual and the estimated parameters. The stability and convergence of the proposed estimation scheme are presented. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme for parameters estimation of nonlinear model of a DC series motor.


The cardiac surgical procedures are increasingly performed each year up to a number >700000 (data in 1997 in US) per year, of which >600000 are coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures. After 1997, there has been a gradual decrease in CABG procedures as percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) grow. In 2005, a total of 699000 cardiac surgical procedures were reported, including 469000 surgical coronary revascularization procedures. It is still debated whether CABG procedures will continue to decrease as relative benefits of PCI continue to be evaluated. As the number of aging population increases and risk factors (e.g.,obesity and diabetes) occur, cardiovascular diseases are also estimated to increase; however, it is not clear that changes in life style or advancing medical management will reduce the prevalance and incidence of these diseases. Although the cardiac surgery is not the primary solution, CABG procedures are still the most commonly performed cardiac procedures and it will remain one of the management options (Thys,2009;London et al,2008). There is an explosive growth in these procedures due to improvements in operative outcomes, inclusion of older and sicker patients for cardiac surgeries and expansion of these surgeries to community hospitals. However, although the physicians develop greater confidence and capacity to perform the procedures, the morbidity, mortality and resource utilization are still higher in the elderly population; especially in octagenarians. Scott et al. (2005) reported longer intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital stay with higher rates of postoperative renal failure and neurologic complications; and Baskett et al. (2005) reported more death and stroke after CABG in octagenarians. As the cardiac surgical procedures grow with an aging population with increased mortality and morbidity, more anesthesiologists become specialized in cardiovascular anesthesiology, practicing cardiac anesthesia excusively in active cardiac surgical centers; changing their focus from anesthetic management of patients with cardiovascular diseases to cardiovascular medicine; medical and surgical management of cardiovascular patients (Thys,2009).


In this article, we introduce the solution we used in the VSPW 2021 Challenge. Our experiments are based on two baseline models, Swin Transformer and MaskFormer. To further boost performance, we adopt stochastic weight averaging technique and design hierarchical ensemble strategy. Without using any external semantic segmentation dataset, our solution ranked the 5th place in the private leaderboard. Besides, we have some interesting attempts to tackle long-tail recognition and overfitting issues, which achieves improvement on val subset. Maybe due to distribution difference, these attempts don't work on test subset. We will also introduce these attempts and hope to inspire other researchers.


This paper explores website link structure considering websites as interconnected graphs and analyzing their features as a social network. Factor Analysis provides the statistical methodology to adequately extract the main website profiles in terms of their internal structure. However, due to the large number of indicators, a genetic search of their optimum number is proposed, and applied to a case study based on 80 Spanish University websites. Results provide coherent and relevant website profiles, and highlight the possibilities of Genetic Algorithms as a tool for discovering new knowledge related to website link structures.


A 71-year-old man presented to our dermatological clinic with a 3-month history of a wound on his leg. He complained of weakness for the past few months. On his dermatological examination he had a 3x3-cm necrotic ulcer on his left tibia (Figure 1). On physical examination, there was 1 x 1-cm axillary lymphadenopathy. There was no other lymph node enlargement, hepatosplenomegaly, or gingival hypertrophy. Peripheral blood results showed 2.4x103/mm3 leukocytes (normal range 4-11 x 103/mm3) with 66% neutrophils. The hemoglobin value was 10.1 g/dL (13-18 g/dL), and the platelet count was 63x103/mm3 (150-440 x 103/mm3). No blasts were detected in a peripheral blood smear. His lactate dehydrogenase level was 567 U/L (240-480 U/L). All other results of blood chemistry were within normal limits. Punch biopsy of the skin lesion showed ulceration and dense dermal acute and chronic inflammation. There was a superficial and deep perivascular and periadnexal infiltrate of neoplastic cells composed of relatively abundant eosinophilic cytoplasm and large nuclei with blastic chromatin and occasional small nucleoli (Figure 2). Mitotic figures were prominent. Immunohistochemical stains were performed, and the neoplastic cells were CD3, CD20, CD138, and S100 protein negative. Myeloperoxidase and CD68 were positive. The histopathological findings were consistent with leukemic infiltration. Examination of bone marrow biopsy revealed that the blastic cells constituted more than 20% of the bone marrow cellularity. Cytogenetic analysis of bone marrow aspiration with fluorescence in situ hybridization was negative for inversion 16, t(8;21) and t(15;7). Histochemical stains for myeloperoxidase, sudan black, periodic acid-Schiff, and alpha naphthyl acetate were also negative. Blastic cells were DR, CD13, CD117, and CD34 positive and CD5, CD7, CD10, CD14, CD19, CD20, CD33, CD41, CD56, CD64, and CD79 negative according to flow cytometry immunophenotyping. Blastic cells were 35% in the bone marrow. Based on the findings of bone marrow examination, the patient was diagnosed as having acute myeloblastic leukeamia (AML) with minimal differentiation (subtype MO) according to French-American-British and World Health Organization classification. The examination of abdominal ultrasonography and thorocic and abominal computed tomography revealed no metastases. The patient was treated with chemotherapy that consisted of cytarabin and daunorubicin. After chemotherapy, the lesion regressed. One month after chemotherapy, the patient presented to the hospital with a complaint of fever. He was diagnosed with febrile neutropenia. He died of cardiac failure 12 months after appearance of skin infiltration.


List of Figures ix Preface: Legacies and Cultural Heritage xi Introduction The Vibrant Body of the Grimms' Folk and Fairy Tales, Which Do Not Belong to the Grimms 1 Chapter One German Popular Stories as Revolutionary Book 33 Chapter Two Hyping the Grimms' Fairy Tales 58 Chapter Three Americanization of the Grimms' Folk and Fairy Tales: Twists and Turns of History 78 Chapter Four Two Hundred Years after Once Upon a Time: The Legacy of the Brothers Grimm and Their Tales in Germany 109 Chapter Five How Superheroes Made Their Way into the World of Fairy Tales: The Appeal of Cooperation and Collective Action from the Greek Myths to the Grimms' Tales and Beyond 131 Chapter Six The Grimmness of Contemporary Fairy Tales: Exploring the Legacy of the Brothers Grimm in the Twenty-First Century 152 Epilogue A Curious Legacy: Ernst Bloch's Enlightened View of the Fairy Tale and Utopian Longing, or Why the Grimms' Tales Will Always Be Relevant 187 Appendix: "About Pincaruolo's Good Feat," by Giovanni Sercambi 197 Notes 205 Bibliography 219 Filmography 247 Index 255


Entomopathogenic nematodes can be considered effective biocontrol agents of pest insects in aquatic habitat. Larvae of Culex quinquefsciatus Say were exposed to infective juveniles of Heterorhabditis bacteriophora , H. indica , Steinernema carpocapsae , and S. feltiae under laboratory conditions. The bioassay studies revealed the suppressive role of H. bacteriophora and H. indica nematode in controlling the mosquito, C. quinquefasciatus . They successfully established themselves in the host cadaver and produced infective juveniles. On the other hand, both S. carpocapsae and S. feltiae failed to establish in the host larvae or attain significant host mortality values. This is the first report of parasitism of entomopathogenic nematodes isolates from Egypt against larvae of C. quinquefasciatus , with promising results. Therefore, further studies must be carried out to determine if these nematodes would be effective as autochthonous agents for the control of Culex sp. and other mosquitoes of sanitary interest.


Ana Maria supports ICRAF's Gender unit in developing an operational framework for effectively integrating gender and inclusion into ICRAF's work and in the coordination of the gender cross-cutting theme in the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry. Before joining ICRAF she worked with the Statistics Division and the Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division at FAO, supporting the capacity development strategy for Member Countries on production and use of genderdisaggregated agricultural data and addressing gender and social equality in agricultural and food security programmes. She has nine years of work experience on the design, planning, execution, and M&E of development projects, particularly on indicators design with a gender lens.


The lack of publicly accessible text corpora is a major obstacle for progress in natural language processing. For medical applications, unfortunately, all language communities other than English are low-resourced. In this work, we present GGPONC (German Guideline Program in Oncology NLP Corpus), a freely dis tributable German language corpus based on clinical practice guidelines for oncology. This corpus is one of the largest ever built from German medical documents. Unlike clinical documents, clinical guidelines do not contain any patient-related information and can therefore be used without data protection restrictions. Moreover, GGPONC is the first corpus for the German language covering diverse conditions in a large medical subfield and provides a variety of metadata, such as literature references and evidence levels. By applying and evaluating existing medical information extraction pipelines for German text, we are able to draw comparisons for the use of medical language to other corpora, medical and non-medical ones.


INTRODUCTION
The objective of the study was to determine the trend of malaria, the epidemiological characteristics, the frequency of local transmission and the preventive and control measures taken.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We analysed the epidemiological records of all reported malaria cases maintained by the Communicable Diseases Division, Ministry of Health, from 1983 to 2007 and the Anopheles vector surveillance data collected by the National Environment Agency during the same period.

RESULTS
The annual incidence of reported malaria ranged from 2.9 to 11.1 per 100,000 population, with a sharp decline observed after 1997. There were 38 deaths, 92.1% due to falciparum malaria and 7.9% due to vivax malaria. Of the reported cases, 91.4% to 98.3% were imported, with about 90% originating from Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Among the various population groups with imported malaria, the proportion of cases involving work permit/employment pass holders had increased, while that of local residents had decreased. Between 74.8% and 95.1% of the local residents with imported malaria did not take personal chemoprophylaxis when they travelled overseas. Despite the extremely low Anopheles vector population, a total of 29 local outbreaks involving 196 cases occurred. Most of the larger outbreaks could be traced to foreign workers with imported relapsing vivax malaria and who did not seek medical treatment early. One of the outbreaks of 3 cases in 2007 was caused by Plasmodium knowlesi, a newly recognised simian malaria which was probably acquired in a forested area where long-tail macaques had been sighted.

CONCLUSIONS
Singapore remains both vulnerable and receptive to the reintroduction of malaria and a high level of vigilance should be maintained indefinitely to prevent the re-establishment of endemicity. Medical practitioners should highlight the risk of malaria to travellers visiting endemic areas and also consider the possibility of simian malaria in a patient who has no recent travel history and presenting with daily fever spikes and with malaria parasite morphologically similar to that of P. malariae.


Purpose of review The diagnosis and management of acute and chronic infections with the microorganism Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes Chagas disease, is important in solid organ transplantation in both endemic and nonendemic countries. In this review, we examine recently published data on the topic of Chagas disease in solid organ transplantation, with an emphasis on data relevant to heart transplantation. Recent findings Most people with chronic T. cruzi infection have the intermediate form of disease, but approximately 2% of infected persons will progress to Chagas cardiomyopathy per year. The risk of T. cruzi transmission with liver or kidney transplantation appears to be substantially less than that with heart transplantation. For patients with Chagas cardiomyopathy undergoing heart transplant, a structured clinical and laboratory monitoring protocol is necessary to monitor for T. cruzi reactivation. Recent data indicate that laboratory monitoring of peripheral blood with polymerase chain reaction testing can identify reactivation prior to the occurrence of symptoms and allograft injury. Summary Transplant clinicians should exercise vigilance in surveillance for Chagas disease in both organ donors and recipients. Although Chagas disease may seem uncommon, it is pervasive in endemic and several nonendemic countries, including the United States and Spain.


Background & Objective: Computed tomography angiography (CTA) in acute stroke has been widely used to demonstrate arterial occlusion. Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score (ASPECTS) is used to detect early ischemic signs in non-contrast computed tomography (NCCT) in the middle cerebral artery region. We hypothesized that computed tomography angiography source image (CTA-SI) is superior to NCCT in predicting final infarct volume, 24 hour National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score and 90-day clinical outcome.
Methods: Patients who had an acute ischemic stroke due to middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion and treated with tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) were retrospectively evaluated. ASPECTS was evaluated by two experienced stroke neurologists in acute NCCT, CTA-SI, and follow up imaging. The final ASPECTS was compared with the mean baseline ASPECTS of NCCT and CTA-SI. The relation of both scores with 24-hour NIHSS and clinical outcome was compared. The Modified Rankin Scale (mRS) was utilized to evaluate the 90-day outcomes. mRS score of 0-2 was considered a "good outcome".
Results: Fifty-three patients were evaluated. We observed a significant relation among CTA-SI ASPECTS and after treatment 24hr ASPECTS (y= -3.9 + 1.4 x; 95% CI, -7.6 to -0.2) (y= -26.04 + 3.5 x; CI, -41 to -10). The median baseline 24-hr NHISS was 6 (0 - 22). We found a better correlation between CTA-SI ASPECTS and 24-hr NHISS (y= 363.06 + -37.03 x; CI, -148 to 864) than between NCCT ASPECTS and 24h NHISS (y=529.80 + -62.55 x; CI, 180 - 829). Median 90 days mRS score was 2 (0 - 6). According to Deming regression analysis, the CTA-SI ASPECTS (y= 76.10 + -7.69 x; 95% CI, -36 to 188) was more consistent with the 90 day mRS compared to NCCT ASPECTS (y=149.86 + -17.67 x; 95% CI, 23 - 267) CTA-SI was superior in predicting 24hr NIHSS and day 90 mRS compared to NCCT ASPECTS.
Conclusion: Prediction of CTA-SI ASPECTs is better than NCCT ASPECTs at 24hr NIHSS, 3-month mRS and final infarct size in acute ischemic stroke patients treated with tPA.


Abstract Purpose/Background The favorable effect of clozapine on psychotic symptoms in patients with treatment-resistant (TR) schizophrenia (SCZ) in short-term studies is well established. However, prospective studies of the long-term outcome of clozapine treatment on psychopathology, cognition, quality of life, and functional outcome in TR-SCZ are limited. Methods/Procedures Here, we have examined the long-term (mean duration of follow-up 14 years) effects of clozapine on those outcomes in a prospective, open label study in 54 TR-SCZ patients. Assessments were performed at baseline, 6 weeks, 6 months, and at the last follow-up. Findings/Results Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) total, positive symptoms, and anxiety/depression at the last follow-up improved significantly from baseline, as well as from the 6-month evaluation (P < 0.0001), with a 70.5% responder rate (≥20% improvement at the last follow-up from baseline). Quality of Life Scale (QLS) total improved by 72% at the last follow-up, with 24% of patients rated as having "good" functioning compared with 0% at baseline. Suicidal thoughts/behavior was significantly reduced at the last follow-up from the baseline. No significant change in negative symptoms was found at the last follow-up in the total sample. Short-term memory function declined at the last follow-up from baseline, but there was no significant change in processing speed. The QLS total showed a significant negative correlation with BPRS positive symptoms but not with cognitive measures, or negative symptoms, at the last follow-up. Implications/Conclusions For patients with TR-SCZ, improving psychotic symptoms with clozapine seems to have a more significant impact than negative symptoms or cognition on improving psychosocial function.


The authors report the results of automated percutaneous diskectomy in the treatment of the herniated disk. During an 18-month period this procedure was used on 39 patients with both evident radicular pathology that had not regressed even after 4-6 weeks of medical and physical therapy as well as clear disk herniation revealed by diagnostic imaging. The level of the herniated disk was L4-L5 in 30 cases. L5-S1 in 7 cases, and L3-L4 in 2 cases. The clinical diagnosis was confirmed by CAT scan in 20 cases, by both CAT scan and x-ray of the spinal region in 14 cases, and by x-ray only in 5 cases. The patients were reviewed 2, 6, and 12 months after surgery. The results were classified according to Watters' criteria based on both the relief of pain and the resumption of everyday work activity. The satisfactory results (excellent and good) totaled 59% at the 6-month follow-up, with no substantial variation at the 1-year follow-up. Hemilaminectomy was performed in 12 cases with unsatisfactory results, confirming the diagnosis of disk herniation in 10 cases (extruded in 9 cases and protruded in 1 case). Diskectomy is a non-invasive, atraumatic method which is indicated for both protruded (non-sequestrated) and subumbilical hernias and allows rapid functional recovery. The rate of success can be increased with more accurate selection of patients based on imaging diagnosis (CAT scan and MRI).


Internet of things has proved to be the enabler of many technologies such as smart grids, smart environment, smart transportation and smart cities. This paper proposes a system that can be used to monitor current, voltages and other parameters of UPS systems installed in home and office. The proposed system uses internet of things technologies like IBM cloud, node-RED and MQTT to acquire transmit and display different parameters. A microcontroller is used to acquire data from sensors and then data is sent to the WiFi Module. Data is then sent to a online MQTT broker. An online application running on IBM cloud platform acquires the data from MQTT broker and displays the data using a graphical user interface therefore providing real time information on sensor data. This scheme uses two way communication between different application which will allow the user to take actions by providing control over I/O pins of microcontroller. Using IBM cloud service allows this application to be accessed online.


Background. Partial anomalous pulmonary venous return (PAPVR) is an uncommon congenital abnormality, which may present in the adult population. It is often associated with sinus venosus defect (SVD). The diagnosis and therapy for this condition may be challenging. Case Presentation. We describe a case of an elderly woman who presented with NYHA Class IV dyspnea and was suspected to have symptomatic pulmonary hypertension. She was later found to have anomalous right upper pulmonary vein return to the superior vena cava and associated SVD with bidirectional shunting. Therapeutic options were discussed and medical management alone with aggressive diuresis and sildenafil was adopted. Follow-up visits revealed success in the planned medical therapy. Conclusions. PAPVR is a rare congenital condition that may present during late adulthood. The initial predominant left-to-right shunting associated with this anomaly may go undetected for years with the gradual development of pulmonary hypertension and right heart failure due to right heart volume overload. Awareness of the condition is important, as therapy is time-sensitive with early detection potentially leading to surgical therapy as a viable option.


Centrosomes are the organelles that organize microtubule networks and establish the bipolar mitotic spindle, which is essential for the segregation of chromosomes during cell division. Proper duplication of centrosomes is necessary to prevent genetic instability, thus control of this organelle is important in the suppression of tumorigenesis. The BRCA1 dependent ubiquitination activity regulates centrosome number in breast derived cell lines, and this activity is likely critical for the tumor suppression activity of BRCA1. This review will focus on the importance of controlling centrosome number, and on the effect of BRCA1 on the centrosome duplication cycle in mammary cells.


We present new Lyapunov stability results for discrete-time interconnected dynamical systems and we apply these results in the qualitative analysis of certain classes of high-order fixed-point digital filters. We consider two classes of dynamical systems: those which are endowed with arbitrary interconnections and those which can be transformed into a block lower triangular form. To circumvent difficulties which often arise in the qualitative analysis of complex dynamical systems, we phrase our results in terms of the qualitative properties of the subsystems and in terms of the properties of the interconnecting structure of the classes of systems which we consider. In doing so, the concept of stability preserving mappings arises naturally in the characterization of the interconnections of systems in block lower triangular form. Although the development presented herein is fairly general, we emphasize results which make use of computer-generated Lyapunov functions, using the constructive algorithm of Brayton and Tong.


Adsorption of bacteriophages phi 29 and 22a to protoplasts of Bacillus subtilis 168 is described. The number of binding sites on bacilli and protoplasts is determined for each phage. Bacilli and protoplasts possess roughly the same number of sites per unit area for phi 29, i.e., approximately 700 sites per bacillus. There are also approximately 700 sites per bacillus for 22a, but only about one-third as many sites per unit area on the protoplast surface. A model for phi 29 adsorption is proposed.


This paper proposes a multi-level inverter (MLI) which has two or more unequal DC voltage source with lesser number of components. The proposed MLI composed of many basic DC source units, where each basic DC source unit are stacked in series to get higher voltage levels. The proposed topology of MLI is derived from a basic MLI cascaded H-bridge inverter. The designed AMLI is capable of handling negative current and hence capable of operating in all 4 quadrants due to absence of components like diode which is seen in the proposed topology, the phase opposition disposition PWM technique is used to trigger the switches. By utilizing three different DC voltage source as input to AMLI, we get an output waveform in staircase form of 15 level. The THD of output staircase waveform is 8.25% in which it has majority of higher harmonics distortion, by using LCL filter the THD of 0.1% can be achieved. The work is carried out on MATLAB / SIMULINK 2020Ra.


Tillage system affects many soil parameters that may influence plant growth. This study evaluated the effect of liming on corn (Zea mays L.) yield and chemical characteristics of a Humic Hapludox (clayey, kaolinitic, goethitic, termic) under both conventional tillage (CT) and no-tillage (NT) systems. Rates of dolomitic lime, from 0 to 18 t ha -1 , were plowed into the soil in 1992 in southern Brazil; our study was conducted from 1996 through 1999. Lime rate was allocated to subplots, and tillage systems to main plots, in a split-plot design. Corn yield increased with liming in all years and was higher with CT than with NT in 2 of 3 yr. Averaged across years and systems, liming increased yield by 66%, which ranged from 4.4 to 7.8 t ha -1 . The highest average yield (7.8 t ha -1 ) was obtained at pH 6.5; yields at pH 6.0 or 5.5 were 97 and 89% of the maximum, respectively. Liming reduced soil organic matter (SOM) in both systems, but nutrients (P, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Cu, Zn, and Mn) remained above sufficiency on all treatments. Aluminum, pH, SOM, and other nutritional parameters did not differ between tillage systems, partly because limestone was initially incorporated in all plots and partly due to dilution effects in the plow layer because sampling was not stratified in small depths. Some soil restriction impaired by absence of plowing, probably increases in bulk density, offset the benefits of NT on plant growth and was responsible for the smaller yield in this tillage system compared with CT.


An exact solution of the coupled Einstein-Maxwell equations describing an infinite, straight, massive, conducting cosmic string is presented. Equations of motion of test particles and light rays are derived. Radial motion, motion in a plane perpendicular to the string, and motion along a line parallel to the string are discussed. When the string is represented by a line singularity and its linear mass density is not too large and it is carrying electric current then radially moving test particles very close to the string encounter a repulsive force.


: Following vasectomy, the patient had right testicular pain. The sperm granuloma regressed under antibiotic therapy but another painful nodule followed. Antibiotics and prostatic massage were not helpful. A nerve block alleviated the pain for several hours. A recurring sperm granuloma was diagnosed. Many of these undergo spontaneous resolution. Bed rest and antiinflammatory agents such as Tandearil (oxyphenbutazone) are indicated. Nerves may be incorporated in the vasectomy site by scar tissue or suture material. Other proposed treatment is excision of the vasectomy site. If this is not successful, then an epididymectomy is indicated.


(Added to the original text) A fundamental solution to the issue of congestion cannot be reached without addressing the question of life-style. This paper reviews the definitions of life-style found in the literature, and identifies variables that have been commonly associated with life-style. Using US consumer expenditure data, life-styles are analyzed longitudinally (examining trends during the 1953–1983 time frame) and cross-sectionally (comparing segments of the population stratified by income, life-cycle stage, and age), and likely relationships to travel behavior are noted. The usefulness of existing empirical findings to long-range forecasting is explored by speculating on shifts of behavioral units across life-style segments, and on shifts in the behavioral patterns within each life-style segment.


Recent strategy formation process literature has claimed organisations increasingly have to adjust dynamically their characteristics to the requirements of the environment by constantly changing their strategies and strategic capabilities (e.g. Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997; Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1998; Mintzberg, 1994). Behind these claims lies the interest to develop an interdisciplinary view of strategy that captures the interplay between the company and its business environment. This thesis makes a marked contribution to this debate by arguing that a key component in a firm's strategic response to a change in market conditions is the result of the interpretation people develop about the event itself. It is argued that this development is a context dependent process, with outcomes emerging not merely as a product of bounded rational debates, but also shaped by the interest, commitment, and perception of individual organisational members. This study therefore argues that an understanding of the development of this cognition/action relationship is critical. This research seeks to shed light on the question: "How do managers of multinational firms perceive and respond to the impact of the Euro over time?"

A qualitative case study methodology was used to examine the context dependent cognition/action relationship in eight multinational organisations by tracing the intended strategy before the event took place, and compare it with the realised strategy after the Euro was introduced. In total 87 interviews and 16 focus group discussions were conducted to capture the plausible and coherent explanations. Our study suggests the probability of firms introducing new strategies quickly and proactively depends on the anticipation, interpretation and capability of managers to recognise and to exploit changes. Motivation to do so is based on the perceived match or mismatch of the developments with the strategy in use prior to change.


According to guidelines for willow short rotation coppice (SRC), weeding is needed during establishment, while weed populations which develop later under a well-established willow canopy do not require control. However, farmers are concerned that weeds which develop in SRC may result in long-lasting weed infestations in succeeding crops after SRC termination. We assessed the effects of two SRC-termination methods (with shallow and deep soil cultivation) on the development of the weed flora in a cereal system (CS) and in SRC during six seasons. Richness, ground cover, life-cycle strategy and composition of the weed species, and their environmental requirements (inferred from Ellenberg index) were evaluated. SRC-termination method had no effect on the weed community trajectories in the succeeding SRC and CS. However, cropping system and growing season had significant impacts on species richness, ground cover and composition of the weed flora. Differences in weed communities over time and between cropping systems were related to the impact of cropping systems on factors such as light, soil moisture, nitrogen level, and soil reaction, as inferred from the Ellenberg index. After termination of the old willow cultivation, the weed flora of the SRC and CS rapidly diverged and approached the weed flora characteristic for old willow stands and non-weeded old cereal plot, respectively. We conclude that willow stands can be converted, regardless of termination method, either into willow or cereal cultivations without additional risk of weed infestations other than those specific for their respective cropping systems. Furthermore, willow cultivations in agriculture contribute to floristic diversity at the landscape scale.