Increasing evidence indicates that DNA polymerase epsilon (POLE), which mediates DNA damage repair, is significantly associated with tumor prognosis. This study aimed to analyze POLE expression in tumor samples and its prognostic value for patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). We found significantly elevated POLE expression in ccRCC tissues compared with normal tissues of multiple independent cohorts. The POLE expression levels of 523 patients with ccRCC (The Cancer Genome Atlas RNA-seq data) and 179 patients with ccRCC with immunohistochemical data (Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center) were analyzed to investigate the prognostic implications of POLE expression. Cox regression analyses were implemented to explore the effect of POLE expression on the prognosis of pan-cancer. These findings revealed that elevated POLE expression levels significantly correlated with shorter overall survival (p < 0.001, n = 701) of patients with ccRCC. These data indicate that POLE expression may serve as a prognostic biomarker for cancers. Although POLE mutations were not significantly associated with survival benefits conferred upon patients with ccRCC, a CD4+ T cell-regulated immune microenvironment was significantly activated. Moreover, we found that POLE expression in cancers significantly correlated with an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, higher intratumoral heterogeneity, and expression of immune checkpoint genes PDCD1, CTLA4, and CD86, possibly mediated via the JAK/STAT and Notch signaling pathways. In conclusion, the present study is the first to our knowledge to indicate that elevated POLE expression is significantly associated with poor survival and an immune-suppressive tumor microenvironment in ccRCC. These findings suggest that POLE can serve as a biomarker for guiding molecular diagnosis and facilitating the development of novel individual therapeutic strategies for patients with advanced ccRCC.


ABSTRACT Luo, W.; Yang, X.-Z.; Dong, H.; Huang, Z.-H.; Dou, H.-H.; Zhang, X.-H., and Li, M.-L., 2020. Multidimensional research on synergic evolution of China's marine economic system oriented by high-quality development. In: Al-Tarawneh, O. and Megahed, A. (eds.), Recent Developments of Port, Marine, and Ocean Engineering. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 110, pp. 282–286. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. This paper constructs the multi-dimensional model on synergic evolution of China's marine economic system oriented by high-quality development. Through the steps of order parameters selection, order degree of subsystems, and synergy degree of system, the results show: (1) From the dimension of industry, the order degree of marine primary and secondary industry shows "wave" growth, the marine tertiary industry shows "linear" growth, three subsystems are in "non-synergy" state, the primary industry has serious obstacles for development. (2) From the dimension of region, the order degree of three marine economic circles from high to low is "North, East, and South", the southern one has late-developing advantage, three subsystems are in "non-synergy" state, the synergy between adjacent regions is greater than non-adjacent ones. (3) From the dimension of element, the order degree of three subsystems continues to rise and presents similar trajectory, while three subsystems are in "non-synergy" state with continuous downward trend. Furthermore, the policy implications are proposed from muti-dimension.


EDITORIAL

This editorial marks the first anniversary of the launch of Geography Compass at the Annual Meetings of the Association of American Geographers in San Francisco in April 2007. A year on, we have 104 articles published, 64 received and in-process and the section editors are now commissioning the next round of contributions. The first editorial meeting was actually held at the Association of American Geographers meetings in Boston in 2006 and the initial work planning the journal took place in late 2005, so a great deal of work has already gone into making Geography Compass a reality. Geography Compass is part of a suite of journals being developed by Wiley-Blackwell. The first, History Compass was launched in 2003 and today there are a total of eight Compass journals and it is possible to use the Geography Compass site to search across all the journals. Recently, we have published our first two cross-Compass theme issues that bring together articles across the range of the journals dealing with a particular issue, the first was on Race and Racism and the second on Violence and Conflict.

What attracted me to Geography Compass was the fact that it is an entirely new format for journal publishing in Geography. First, it is a peer-reviewed journal aimed at students, researchers and non-specialist scholars. As such, it aims to produce review articles that are of the highest quality and that are accessible to a range of novice readers. Therefore, its target audience is different from the Progress journals, which tend to publish specialist reviews written for other specialists. Second, Compass journals are purpose-built for the electronic age, they are only published electronically, there is no paper version, and they are only available on subscription to institutional libraries. Because we do not have to worry about the limitations of paper printing, we are able to publish in full colour and to support a wide variety of digital resources. This year we are publishing our first video, which will be hosted by YouTube.

The current editorial and publishing structure of Geography Compass is the result of much thought and discussion on the part of the two Editors-in-Chief, myself and Basil Gomez, and Helen Ashton and Vanessa Lafaye at Wiley-Blackwell. Geography Compass publishes across the entire field of Geography and therefore we had to come up with an editorial structure that could handle the diversity of the discipline. At present, we have thirteen subsections, with a fourteenth – Global Issues – soon to be added. This will be a virtual subsection, managed by the Editors-in-Chief, which pulls together topical articles dealing with issues of global significant. Each of the other subsections has a section editor or editors, who essentially run a mini-journal dedicated to their particular field of interest. The job of the Editors-in-Chief is to manage the section editors. It is the section editors who commission papers, manage the peer-review process and make the editorial decisions that are finally approved by the Editor-in-Chief for human or physical geography. If you are interested in contributing to Geography Compass, then the first person to contact is the relevant section editor. Obviously, getting the right people as section editors has been crucial to the successful launch of Geography Compass. Together, the editorial team has been working hard to establish a niche for the journal and to create a sense of what a 'Compass paper' looks like. Writing review articles is not easy, choosing a manageable topic and setting the right tone are major challenges; but writing a successful article is very rewarding. Because we use an online manuscript handling system, journal print runs do not hold us up and we are able to publish quickly. We do organise articles into volumes and issues, but papers are made available via 'online early' as soon as they are ready. We can also respond quickly to produce articles on topical issues; for example, Shepherd and Knutson's article on global warming and hurricanes was published in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. If there is a topic that you feel we have neglected, contact the relevant section editor and we will see if we can cover that gap. Better still, offer to write the article yourself, but remember that it will be subject to rigorous review.

I am often asked, what is a 'Compass article'? One way of thinking is that it forms the bridge between textbooks and research journals. Textbooks use a wide brush and discuss the fundamentals, but they seldom provide sufficient detail on a given topic to make the journal literature accessible. This is as true for the student reader as it is for the researcher looking into a new field. A Compass article surveys the field or reviews the approaches to a particular issue and provides the reader access to the relevant literature. Having read a Compass article on a particular topic, the reader not only knows where to go to read more, but also has the knowledge to access that literature from a critical viewpoint. Thus, Geography Compass is not only invaluable in a classroom context, but it is also an indispensable tool for research. To aid in this process, we are producing 'Teaching and Learning Guides' that summarise the key issues and learning outcomes related to a particular article, suggests tasks for the classroom and identify key readings and web resources.

Geography Compass is constantly evolving. We have struggled over the journal's structure and have made changes as the journal has evolved, for example, splitting social and cultural geography into two sections. We decided not to have a specialist section on methodology; instead, articles on methodology are welcome within their systematic context. We are now working hard to coordinate our efforts across the subsections. At the end of the day, the sections are only a mechanism to commission and evaluate articles; once articles are accepted into Geography Compass, they can be searched across subsection by key words. This means that getting your title and key words right are critical, as is writing a good abstract that will be picked up by electronic searches.

The world of academic publishing is constantly changing; Geography Compass is at the forefront of these changes. This is an exciting project to be involved in. If you have not used Geography Compass get your librarian to sign up to a trial subscription, details can be found on the website. If you want to contribute contact the relevant section editor or Editor-in-Chief; equally if you can think of ways we can improve Geography Compass please do not hesitate to contact us, we welcome your feedback.


Hydrazines (HZ) are toxic compounds which have numerous industrial applications including their use as missile propellants in advanced aircraft such as the F-16 and space vehicles. The extremely high toxicity of HZs and the recurrent accidental exposure due to routine storage, use, and disposal of these compounds have created a significant health hazard among aerospace and defense industry personnel. HZ exposure can result in lethal complications involving repeated seizures and eventual respiratory collapse. Acute HZ exposure produces repeated tonic-clonic seizures in animals and man due to the strong convulsant properties of these compounds. In order to develop effective therapies for HZ toxicity, it is important to determine the mechanisms by which HZs produce their neuronal excitatory effects. Initial studies in our laboratory of the electrophysiological effects of HZs have shown that HZ exposure induces spontaneous and evoked epileptiform activity in mammalian hippocampus, recorded in vitro. In cultured hippocampal neurons, we have found that HZs decrease the postburst afterhyperpolarization, a primary postsynaptic mechanism utilized by many types of neurons to terminate bursts, and maintain a check on hyperexcitability. As expected, this AHP reduction by HZs increases the rate of sustained repetitive firing in these neurons, and may be one mechanism contributing to HZ convulsant actions. The overall objective of this study is to describe and pharmacologically characterize HZ-induced epileptiform actions in hippocampus, and to examine the effects of HZs on ion conductances in mammalian hippocampal neurons, in order to provide insight into the mechanisms of HZ toxicity which may underlie the excitatory and epileptogenic properties of these compounds. We have combined electrophysiological, biophysical, and pharmacological techniques to examine the effects of HZs at both a single neuron and a systems level in mammalian


We studied the persistence of naturally acquired cell-mediated immunity to rubella during early pregnancy. We compared lymphocyte transformation responses to phytohemagglutinin and rubella virus in 35 naturally immune women aged 17-37 years, in the first trimester of pregnancy, with 49 naturally immune age-matched nonpregnant controls. A significant lower lymphocyte transformation response to phytohemagglutinin was observed during the first trimester of pregnancy (P = 0.008), but lymphocyte transformation responses to rubella virus were not significantly different (P = 0.901). These data indicate that, in naturally immune women, cell-mediated immunity to rubella virus is not significantly altered by the physiological changes in early pregnancy.


Mechanosensitivity of enteric neurons has been reported in the small intestine and colon, but not in the esophagus. Our earlier in vivo studies show that mechanical stretch of the esophagus in the axial direction induces neurally mediated relaxation of the lower esophageal sphincter, possibly through mechanosensitive motor neurons. However, this novel notion that the motor neurons are mechanosensitive has not been examined in isolated esophageal myenteric motor neurons. The goal of our present study was to examine the mechanosensitivity of esophageal motor neurons in primary culture and elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms. Immmunocytochemical analysis revealed that >95% cells were positive for the neuronal marker protein gene product 9.5 and that 66% of these cells costained with protein gene product 9.5 and neuronal nitric oxide (NO) synthase. Hypotonic solution induced an increase in the cytoplasm volume in all cells that was independent of extracellular Ca(2+). Hypotonic solution and mechanical stretch induced cytoplasmic free Ca(2+) signaling in ~65% of neurons in the presence, but not absence, of extracellular Ca(2+). Neurons grown on the elastic membrane responded to mechanical stretch by an increase in neuronal size and Ca(2+) signaling simultaneously. Hypotonic stretch-induced cytoplasmic free Ca(2+) signaling was not affected by extracellular Mg(2+), 5-nitro-2-(3-phenylpropylamino)benzoic acid, and nifedipine but was attenuated by 2-aminoethoxydiphenyl borate, Gd(3+), and Grammostola mechanotoxin 4, blockers of the stretch-activated ion channels. In ~57% of the neurons, hypotonic stretch also induced Ca(2+)-dependent cytoplasmic NO production, which was abolished by Grammostola mechanotoxin 4. These results prove that the esophageal inhibitory motor neurons possess a mechanosensitive property and also provide novel insights into the stretch-activated ion channel-Ca(2+)-NO signaling pathway in these neurons.


Metal additive manufacturing (AM) is a disruptive technology which has the potential to deliver numerous benefits over conventional manufacturing including design freedom, increased innovation and shorter lead times. However, adoption of the technology by the automotive industry is currently restricted by the cost, limited availability of suitable engineering alloys and the lack of robust process control. These issues are all relevant in the present discussion on the application of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) to the nickel-base superalloy IN713C. This alloy, along with other precipitation strengthened nickel-base superalloys, is considered to be "un-weldable" due to its susceptibility to cracking; an issue which makes it similarly challenging to process via LPBF. This thesis addresses both the business case for LPBF in terms of turbocharger componentry, and the behaviour of IN713C under LPBF in terms of understanding the defect response.
Statistical design of experiments (DOE), advanced material characterisation and analysis techniques, analytical melt pool modelling, thought experiments and the application of literature models have all been employed, facilitating the development of a process map for LPBF of IN713C. The process map illustrates the thresholds for the onset of defect formation and can be used to direct future work on the design of processing strategies for complex components. Use of the process map alongside statistical response surface methodology enabled the identification of process settings for which porosity in test cube specimens was minimised. The application of literature models for solidification cracking provided insight into the relationships between process settings, solidification conditions and crack susceptibility.


This study investigates methods for controlling Hovenia dulcis natural regeneration. The experiment was conducted in Sao Joao do Triunfo, PR, using randomized blocks with three treatments (control - A, root removal - B and base cut - C) and fi ve replications. Number of seedlings, saplings and small trees were recorded at the beginning, 60, 120 and 180 days after treatment. A high number of seedlings were observed, but over time mortality became evident regardless of treatment. Root removal reduced the number of seedlings when compared to base cut. Root removal diff ered statistically from the control and base cut treatments. Base cut did not diff er statistically from the control. Root system plays an important role in survival and regrowth of juveniles of the target species. Root removal prevents regrowth and survival based on natural regeneration. By its attributes, this species may be considered a relevant alien invasive tree in the Araucaria Forest.


Ti films having a thickness of 180 nm and a length of 8 mm were heated to 400 °C in air while a constant voltage Us of 0-100 V dc was connected to the sample edges in series with a 100 k resistance. The film resistance generally increased with time, but the resistance-time dependence had a plateau from 5 to 10 - 15 min of heating with Us10 V. During this period, the film resistance was reduced by three orders of magnitude at Us = 100 V, as compared to Us = 0 and 1 V. It was shown by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) that the oxygen concentration in the films decreased with increasing applied voltage.


Two experiments investigated the psychological impact of two velocity conditions (constant low velocity (V1) and variations of low and high velocity (V2)) in two temperature conditions (Experiment 1: an air temperature increase from 21°C to 24°C; Experiment 2: an air temperature increase from 25°C to 27°C) in females and males, aged 16 to 18 years, under realistic classroom conditions during an exposure period of 80 min. It was predicted that the V2 room condition compared to the V1 room condition would be more beneficial for subjects' perceived room temperature and air quality, self-reported affect and cognitive performance. The results obtained showed no significant effects on cognitive performance. However and as predicted, in Experiment 1, the subjects in the V2 compared to those in the V1 room condition felt that the air temperature decreased (while it de facto increased) and reported a constant level of high activation. In Experiment 2, the subjects in the V2 room condition felt that the air temperature increased less and reported that their unactivated unpleasantness increased less and activated pleasantness decreased less than it did for subjects in the V1 room condition. All this indicates, as was suggested by Wigö et al. (2002), that a cooling effect, induced by air velocity variations, might be beneficial for subjects in a ventilated room and that their perceived pleasantness of the indoor climate could be met at a higher room temperature than otherwise.


In postcolonial Indian writings, the shock and aftermath brought by the 1947 Partition of the Indian subcontinent is very difficult for people either to confront or to neglect. Whereas most of the postcolonial Indian writers engage with the questions of the nation-state, as they enter into an explicit dialogues with the political disputes and conflicts in both colonial and postcolonial Indian society, Anita Desai, a female Indian writer known for her modernist writing style, chooses to lead readers to approach her country from a different angle—the struggles for life of Indians, mentally displaced by the 1947 partition, and the conflicted mentality of her characters. In Clear Light of Day, readers can notice her detailed, careful observations about her hometown Old Delhi and how the native Indians face the social transformations in the postcolonial era. By representing India through individual histories rather than national narratives, she provides an alternative entrance for us to get closer to postcolonial India and its people. What's more, the elegiac and nostalgic atmosphere throughout the whole novel also draws readers' attention to the fleeting reality of the twentieth-century Indian society. Although the story centers on the collapse of the middle-class Das family around 1947 and their later temporary reconciliation, it is almost impossible to ignore the beautiful descriptions and the congealed tensions created by Desai's appropriation of Western modernism. Accordingly, in my thesis, I assert that Desai portrays the complicated inner feelings of the native people and delineates a different postcolonial India through her sophisticated combination of modernism and the rapidly changing Indian cultures. Starting from exploring the language and the form Desai adopts to write the story and then turning my focus to her representations of the entangled sisterhood and the social misfits either inside or around the Das family, I read Desai as a postcolonial writer that, with her alternative modernist techniques, registers in Clear Light of Day a poetic and melancholic social reality that is seldom known to readers outside India.


: A study was made of the effect of experimental hyperinsulinemia, caused by daily administration of the increasing doses of a crystalline insulin-zinc suspension (up to 6 Units per animal) during 14 days, on the parameters of 125I-insulin binding by the insulin receptors of plasma membranes of adipose and liver tissues of intact rats and those with disturbed liver innervation. In intact rats, hyperinsulinemia led to the fall of the concentration of the insulin receptors and their affinity for insulin in the membranes of both tissues. In rats with disturbed liver innervation, analogous changes were observed for the receptors of adipose tissue, whereas the parameters of the receptors of liver were unchanged under the effect of hyperinsulinemia. It is concluded that nerve fibers that innervate the liver take part in the regulation of activity of the insulin receptors.


Four hundred laboratory bred male Swiss strain albino mice, seven to ten weeks old, were experimentally used to determine the effective mode of immunization against T. spiralis infection. In this regard, active immunization using repeated injection of T. spiralis muscle larval antigen was used in comparison with three, commonly used immunosuppressive drugs (Kenacort, Endoxan and Cyclosporin). Also, the minimal oral dose of T. spiralis larvae that can cause the infection was estimated. The use of T. spiralis muscle larval antigen was found promising for vaccination against the spiralis infection. Although Cyclosporin has an immunosuppressive effect, yet it has a direct lethal effect on both adult and larvae of T. spiralis, and being recommended for treatment of trichinosis. The minimal oral dose of T. spiralis larvae that lead to formation of adult worms in the intestine and larvae in muscles was 20 larvae/mouse. Meanwhile, neither adults nor larvae were formed below this dose.


The purpose of this investigation was to study the effect of incorporating three preventative mechanical principles into the practice sessions of an eighth grade girls' basketball team over the duration of one season on the players' knee stability. Three mechanical principles were utilized by 17 females (age=13.7 yrs, mass=52.2 kg, ht=166.8 cm) during each practice: (a) bent knee landings, (b) accelerated rounded turns, and (c) two-three step stops.
Knee stability was assessed prior to and at the conclusion of the season by measuring three variables:
(a) knee range of motion in extension and flexion tested by a goniometer,
(b) comparative strength of the hamstrings and quadriceps muscles tested by an Orthotron at 60 and 180 deg/s, and
(c) end of the season joint laxity as an indicator of anterior cruciate ligament displacement tested by a KT-2000 at 28 deg of flexion. A control group of 9 female basketball players (age=12.8 yrs, mass=52.8 kg, ht=160.7 cm) were used for comparison. No significant differences were revealed between groups for knee ROM or joint laxity (L ROM = 145 deg, R ROM = 144 deg; L ACL d = 5.7 mm, R ACL d = 6.5 mm). Significant increases were revealed between pre- and post-season testing for flexion/ extension ratios in both legs at both speeds for experimental subjects (L 60 deg/s = 14%, L 180 deg/s = 15%, R 60 deg/s = 13%, and R 180 deg/s = 8%). A significant decrease was revealed between preand post-season testing for flexion/ extension ratios in the right leg at 180 deg/s for control subjects (7%). Significant increases were revealed between preand post-season testing for p~ak torque of L flexion (6%) at 60 deg/s, L flexion (7%) and extension (13%) at 180 .deg/s, and R flexion (6%) and extension (6%) at 180 deg/s for experimental subjects. A significant increase (p<.05) was revealed between pre- and postseason testing for peak torque of the R leg at 60 deg/s for control subjects (8%).
It was concluded that inclusion of the three preventative mechanical principles into practice sessions of eighth grade female basketball players improved flexion/ extension ratios and peak torque values. Therefore, the findings of this study suggest that learning the preventative mechanical principles for landing, pivoting, and stopping skills may increase knee stability, thereby reducing predisposition for knee injuries in female basketball players.


This paper was to report some of findings from a larger study with more than 800 participants that explored the altruistic, intrinsic, and extrinsic reasons of student teachers to become a teacher by choosing teacher education programs at one public university in Jambi, Indonesia. Particularly, this paper was to present the survey findings of the 65 male student teachers from all cohorts in one English education program. The data of this study were collected through demographic backgrounds and a questionnaire on student teachers' reasons in choosing English study program. The data indicated that a variety of reasons influencing student teachers to choose the English study program. It was found that male student teachers were influenced more first by the intrinsic reasons, followed by the extrinsic, and then the altruistic reasons. The paper also discusses the implications of the findings and draws conclusions which may be supportive to teacher education providers and policy makers on measures to recruit prospective students to initial teacher education.


Light-activated therapies are ideal for treating cancer because they are non-invasive and highly specific to the area of light application. Photothermal therapy (PTT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT) are two types of light-activated therapies that show great promise for treating solid tumors. In PTT, nanoparticles embedded within tumors emit heat in response to laser light that induces cancer cell death. In PDT, photosensitizers introduced to the diseased tissue transfer the absorbed light energy to nearby ground state molecular oxygen to produce singlet oxygen, which is a potent reactive oxygen species (ROS) that is toxic to cancer cells. Although PTT and PDT have been extensively evaluated as independent therapeutic strategies, they each face limitations that hinder their overall success. To overcome these limitations, we evaluated a dual PTT/PDT strategy for treatment of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells mediated by a powerful combination of silica core/gold shell nanoshells (NSs) and palladium 10,10-dimethyl-5,15-bis(pentafluorophenyl)biladiene-based (Pd[DMBil1]-PEG750) photosensitizers (PSs), which enable PTT and PDT, respectively. We found that dual therapy works synergistically to induce more cell death than either therapy alone. Further, we determined that low doses of light can be applied in this approach to primarily induce apoptotic cell death, which is vastly preferred over necrotic cell death. Together, our results show that dual PTT/PDT using silica core/gold shell NSs and Pd[DMBil1]-PEG750 PSs is a comprehensive therapeutic strategy to non-invasively induce apoptotic cancer cell death.


Strategic information is fundamental to the formulation and delivery of effective HIV programmes, but generating that information is a complex process, for which most countries in south and south-east Asia lack capacity and supporting structures. Although most countries in this region have made tremendous strides in collecting relevant data, advances in the ability to translate that data into strategic information and evidence for action, have not kept pace. To overcome these shortcomings, this paper presents a comprehensive approach to collecting strategic information and building the capacity to use it effectively, which is based on experience in the successful use of data in different countries in south and south-east Asia. The system recommended here requires that staff and resources carry out four major functions: implement an early alert and response system allowing for the timely collection, synthesis and use of information to respond quickly to emerging epidemics; carefully analyze data to develop policy scenarios and resource projections to guide decision-making; periodically evaluate the impact of the current response and make recommendations to improve it; and engage policy-makers in ways that proactively promote improvements to current programmes based on evidence. At present, countries in this region are carrying out these functions in an ad-hoc and uncoordinated manner, if at all. The establishment and resourcing of structures dedicated to fulfilling these functions in an organized and coordinated manner are required to counteract the formidable barriers and challenges that inhibit the use of Asia's wealth of data for maximum benefit.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate efficacy of combined therapy with ozonated water and oil on patients with tinea pedis.
 Methods: A total of 60 patients with tinea pedis were divided into 2 groups in a randomized and blinded test. Patients in a control group were treated with naftinfine hydrochloride and ketoconazole cream once a day. Patients in an ozone group were treated with ozonated water bath and then ozonated oil topical application once a day. Patients in the 2 groups were treated for 4 weeks. Clinical and laboratory data were collected for both groups at the end of the 1st week, the 2nd week, and the 4th week. The Pearson chi-square was performed to compare scores of the clinical signs and symptoms (CSS) and the mycological result between the 2 groups. Independent samples T-test was performed to compare the curative effect between the 2 groups.
 Results: After 4 weeks' treatment, 6 patients were positive in the control group determined by mycological examination while 1 patient was positive in the ozone group, with no significant difference between the 2 groups (P>0.05). Changes in CSS at the end of the 1st week, 2nd week, and 4th week were obtained and showed no significant difference between the 2 groups at the 3 different time points (P>0.05). No side effects were observed.
 Conclusion: Combination of ozonated water with oil is effective on treatment of tinea pedis and it shows no side effects.


An efficient and accurate large-domain higher order two-dimensional (2-D) Galerkin-type technique based on the finite-element method (FEM) is proposed for analysis of arbitrary electromagnetic waveguides. The geometry of a waveguide cross section is approximated by a mesh of large Lagrangian generalized curvilinear quadrilateral patches of arbitrary geometrical orders (large domains). The fields over the elements are approximated by a set of hierarchical 2-D polynomial curl-conforming vector basis functions of arbitrarily high field-approximation orders. When compared to the conventional small-domain 2-D FEM techniques, the large-domain technique requires considerably fewer unknowns for the same (or higher) accuracy and offers a significantly faster convergence when the number of unknowns is increased. A comparative analysis of solutions using p- and h-refinements shows that the p-refinement represents a better choice for higher accuracy with lesser computation cost. In addition to increasing the field-approximation orders, the geometrical orders of elements (where needed) should also be set high for the improved accuracy of the solution without subdividing the elements. However, in general, an arbitrarily high accuracy cannot be achieved by performing the p-refinement in arbitrarily coarse meshes alone; instead, a combined hp-refinement should be utilized in order to obtain an optimal modeling performance.


Classic black-box adversarial attacks can take advantage of transferable adversarial examples generated by a similar substitute model to successfully fool the target model. However, these substitute models need to be trained by target models' training data, which is hard to acquire due to privacy or transmission reasons. Recognizing the limited availability of real data for adversarial queries, recent works proposed to train substitute models in a data-free black-box scenario. However, their generative adversarial networks (GANs) based framework suffers from the convergence failure and the model collapse, resulting in low efficiency. In this paper, by rethinking the collaborative relationship between the generator and the substitute model, we design a novel black-box attack framework. The proposed method can efficiently imitate the target model through a small number of queries and achieve high attack success rate. The comprehensive experiments over six datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method against the state-of-the-art attacks. Especially, we conduct both label-only and probability-only attacks on the Microsoft Azure online model, and achieve a 100% attack success rate with only 0.46% query budget of the SOTA method [49].


A quantitative assay of subtle morphologic changes that are induced in the trabecular structure of weight-bearing bones as a result of immobilization prescribed as part of routine clinical management is investigated. It is postulated that a clinically meaningful structural measure can be inferred from comparatively small, relatively uniform regions of trabecular bone, which are easily isolated from conventional transmission radiographs. This approach derives from the observation that common transmission radiographs of alveolar bone contain trabecular regions with spatial attributes that are statistically independent of image magnification over a reasonable range of spatial frequencies. Selecting these regions for analysis is advantageous because certain attributes of the resulting data are theoretically independent of the focal-object distance used to produce the original radiograph. Therefore, the size and shape of the irradiated tissue mass do not influence the measurement, as they do in morphometric-based analysis.<<ETX>>


Constitutions are often born out of tumultuous moments—after a war or in a moment of collective reconciliation. By contrast, the European Constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters last spring sought to translate half a century of peace into a formal political settlement. Although proponents of the constitution, especially within the European left, were dismayed by the No votes, some of them believe that it is possible to turn the rejection into an opportunity both for the left and for the European Union project as a whole.


(This article was first published in the Financial Times Mastering Risk series, 2000 under the title of 'Power and Influence in Risk Regulation'). Introduction The regulation of business and corporate risk management are inextricably related. Regulation is one way in which risks are managed in modern societies and corporate risk management is a form of self-regulation, although senior management would not articulate it in such terms. In practice, the distinction between regulation and risk management is becoming blurred as risk management blueprints influence the design of regulatory systems. This is particularly evident in the latest thinking of the UK Financial Services Authority, which is required to maintain market confidence and protect consumers. The FSA's new operating framework builds on its earlier risk based approaches to regulation and recognises that the nature and intensity of its relationship with a regulated firm will depend on the risk assessment of that firm. Accordingly, there is a pronounced convergence in form between the FSA's approach to regulation and the risk management practice of the very entities that it regulates. This trend is also visible in other areas...


Recently, more and more research has been conducted on what sustainable nutrition could look like. Stockfree-organic agriculture is one possible approach but a relatively new and unstudied cultivation method. In addition to organic agriculture, it excludes any animal by-products during the whole cultivation process. Among the consumers of organic food are especially many vegetarians and vegans. To attract this target group, first farms in Europe have started to follow the stockfree-organic agriculture principles. As it is important to know the consumers' point of view on new developments in agriculture at an early stage of the diffusion process, this study deals with consumers' evaluation of stockfree-organic agriculture to draw conclusions about a possible market potential. This is especially important for stockfree-organic farmers, as well as for organic farmers who are considering converting their cultivation method, and for retailers who wonder whether it is worthwhile to offer these products. The data was collected in 2019 by means of an online survey. The sample consisted of 500 German respondents. Principal component and cluster analyses were used to identify consumer segments according to their attitudes towards the acceptance, advantages, and disadvantages of stockfree-organic agriculture. Additionally, the different segments were compared with each other according to various attitudes and eating behaviours. Overall, animal welfare considerations and environmental aspects were of particular importance to consumers. Animal usage was clearly rejected by one segment, which contained 24% of the sample. Nearly all vegetarians and all vegans supported stockfree-organic agriculture, whereas heavy meat consumers tended to refuse the support of stockfree-organic agriculture. The supporting group valuing high animal welfare and health concerns was much larger than the current status of this niche segment would suggest. This could be a major challenge for the agricultural sector in the long term, but could also include opportunities for greater sustainability.


Sexual violence (SV) occurs at rates higher among sexual minority youth than heterosexual youth, but the mechanisms explaining this higher risk are understudied. We examined if binge drinking and depression explain the higher rates of SV victimization among sexual minority middle and high school girls. Female students (N = 1,145) in Grades 7th to 10th completed a survey that assessed for SV, binge drinking, depression, sexual orientation identification, and sex at birth. Sexual minority girls had higher rates of SV victimization compared with heterosexual girls. Binge drinking and depression fully mediated the relationship between sexual orientation status and SV victimization among girls. SV prevention programming for sexual minority girls are urgently needed. Programs that seek to reduce binge drinking and depression may be especially impactful in reducing the risk of violence among sexual minority girls.


World population is about 7 billion in 2010 and is expected to grow much more. The expected growth is highest in parts of the world that are vulnerable to hunger and adverse climatic conditions, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This then translates into the likely need for more food in these regions.
The situation is exacerbated by the lack of appropriate farming technologies and the many constraints limiting production and productivity of major commodities. Apart from hunger, unless the situation is addressed through a holistic approach to research, there is a very real danger that environmental
degradation will escalate. UNEP (2009) found that the recent food crisis could even exacerbate in the next decade if there are no explicit answers to the growing new problems, such as declining agricultural production, faltering distribution network and worldwide environmental deterioration. It concluded that food production, processing and consumption across the globe needs to change and that such changes can both lead to food security for the world's rising population and assure the environmental services that are the foundation of agricultural production. Organic agriculture is one of the most promising approaches to this situation (IAASTD, 2008; FAO, 2008; ORCA, 2009). In addition, organic agriculture is a promising option with regard to further aspects, such as climate change adaptation and mitigation (see Chapter 5). Unfortunately, research funds for organic agriculture are still very low, and only very limited research is going on to enhance the best practices used in organic agriculture. This chapter discusses the research needs to support organic agriculture as a livelihood strategy, thereby using Sub-Saharan Africa as an illustration. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the biggest lack of direct research involvement, financing and infrastructure for organic agriculture in the world. While we will partly focus on those aspects relevant for this region, there are clearly many important aspects that are of relevance for organic agriculture research on a global level. Research in the context of this book has the main aim to improve livelihoods – not to provide fundamental insights on the world. Linking this discussion to the livelihood framework presented in Chapter 1, and accounting for the particular characteristics of agriculture, we identify five broad areas into which research activities can be grouped. First, there is the physical basis: how best to grow various crops and rear livestock organically. In addition, one may ask how best to react to external changes, such as increasing water scarcity. This physical basis has to be understood in a broad sense, also covering the questions related to the farm household, community and landscape seen as sustainably managed systems, decidedly going beyond the level of single crops and practices and their costs and returns for the single household. This point in particular is also stressed by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD, 2008) report, which talks about moving from focusing on increased productivity alone to holistic integration of natural resource management with food and nutritional security. Second, there is the social basis, which has a farming household focus but takes into account aspects of all the different realities, spaces and capitals beyond the physical basis, such as emotional and cultural aspects, the relation of the individual to the community, etc. (see Chapter 1). Third, there is the institutional context. This addresses questions such as which policies would be optimal for the support of organic agriculture, which certification approach is most adequate in a certain situation, and also information provision, education and communication. This includes a focus on how optimally to communicate research findings such that they are actually implemented at the farm level, for example. Fourth, trade and sale of the products is important. This also covers how optimally to process and store the produce. It also covers consumer acceptance of new, pest-resistant varieties, for example. Fifth, a particular focus needs to be put on power relations and inequalities, e.g. in the context of various certification schemes and valuechain types (see Chapters 6 and 7), but also on a within-household level, e.g. regarding gender issues and how income is distributed in the household. While discussing these research needs, we do not want to merely report or copy the results from earlier initiatives to compile research needs, such as TP Organics (2009, 2011) or ORCA (2009). Those documents are very broad, highly valuable and should be consulted. There are nevertheless some topics that are not addressed at all or that we propose to address differently. It is those topics we are most interested in. This chapter therefore complements existing work. In the next section, we briefly present research networks, initiatives and institutions of organic agriculture already present and active in SSA or of general relevance also for this region. We then assess research needs and offer a synthesis of this assessment in the final and concluding section.


Eight years after Hurricane Katrina struck, the New Orleans region is being ringed by a more than $14-billion system of stronger and higher levees, improved floodwalls, and new storm surge barriers that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says provides the best defenses against hurricanes that the region has ever known. This special report examines what was constructed, how it is expected to work, and why various experts and groups have such strong feelings pro and con about the new system.


The implementation of regional autonomy after the end of the New Order Regime in Indonesia has become the focus of many discussions nowadays. This new spirit has affected many sectors in the society, including education. One of the elements of the regional autonomy is the demand for decentralisation in education. That means the distribution of the power from the center to the pheriphery. Needless to say, decentralisation is the substance of every educational reform but this demand has become greater due to the new demand of the implementation of the Total Quality Management in education field. Within this perspective, this paper will discuss the implementation of the TQM in education which in its very substance means the distribution of some power from the higher authority to the lower one and in the second place the empowering of the development of the human resources in the shoop-floor level. As happens in the industrial sector, the quality of product much depends on the quality of the workers who involve in the process of production. The quality of the education result – the educated and skilled person – depends on the quality of those who are involved in the educational process.


The British Isles has the highest rates of skin cancer in children and adolescents in Europe, a study has found ( European Journal of Cancer 2006;42:2170-82).

The incidence of malignant melanoma in adolescents is also increasing faster in the British Isles than in other regions, the study concludes, based on cases in 20 European countries.

On average, the incidence in Europe increased annually in adolescents, by 4.1% for melanoma and 2.5% for skin carcinoma, between 1978 and 1997.

"Increases in incidence over time were observed only for adolescents, possibly reflecting a change in risk factors relevant to adolescents and adults, but not to children," say the authors, from the Erasmus Medical Centre and the Comprehensive Cancer Centre South in the Netherlands; the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the Gustave-Roussy Institute in …


This paper studies the performance of multi-agent systems (MAS), the usage area of which is constantly expanding, under the fading effect of wireless communication channels. The main principle of multi-agent systems lies in solving difficult problems of high complexity and cost to single agents by employing many agents that can function without a central control unit. The consensus problem, which is used in order to achieve a common decision making by utilizing communication between agents, has been studied since long ago. However, even though MAS function through wireless communication channels, the effect of fading channel models on the consensus problem, have not been yet investigated in detail. This study analyzes this effect on the linear average consensus protocol. Monte Carlo simulations have been done on fixed topologies with different agent numbers and fading channel models for increasing SNR values.


Trapped in a metaphor articulated at the founding of modern corporate law, the study of corporate governance has - for some thirty years - been asking the wrong questions. Rather than a singular race among states, whether to the bottom or the top, the synthesis of William Cary and Ralph Winter's famous exchange is better understood as two competitions, each serving distinct normative ends. Managerial competition advances the project that has motivated corporate law since Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means - effective regulation of the separation of ownership and control. State competition, by contrast, does not promote a race to either the top or the bottom in shareholder-managerial relations. Rather than the vertical allocation of wealth between shareholders and managers, state competition is directed to its horizontal allocation between the state and the firm as a whole. Even as state competition shifts surplus from state to firm, thus, it is agnostic as to the distribution of that surplus within the firm. Although it may generate effective rules of corporate law, it is not determinative of the substantive quality of corporate governance. Understood as such, the metrics of "efficiency" in corporate governance - and hence the core inquiries of the corporate law literature - must necessarily shift. Prevailing approaches to questions from the potential utility of federal corporate law to the long persistence of state antitakeover statutes must likewise be reconsidered.


In recent years, implicit functions have drawn attention in the field of 3D reconstruction and have successfully been applied with Deep Learning. However, for incremental reconstruction, implicit function-based registrations have been rarely explored. Inspired by the high precision of deep learning global feature registration, we propose to combine this with distance fields. We generalize the algorithm to a non-Deep Learning setting while retaining the accuracy. Our algorithm is more accurate than conventional models while, without any training, it achieves a competitive performance and faster speed, compared to Deep Learning-based registration models. The implementation is available on github1 for the research community.


The objective of this study was to propose and empirically examine a consolidative conceptual model which tests the effect of perceived quality, brand awareness, perceived value and brand uniqueness on brand loyalty and the effect of brand loyalty on positive WOM. The study adopted a quantitative methodology involving data collection through structured questionnaire from 410 young consumers of national brands by adopting convenience sampling technique. Structured Equation Modelling was used to analyse the data through AMOS 24. The empirical results support the predictions of this study. The findings revealed that perceived quality, brand awareness, perceived value and brand uniqueness have positive relationship with brand loyalty. Moreover, brand loyalty was positively related to the positive WOM. The current study makes its significant contribution to the field of brand management by investigating effect of four dimensions of brand equity on brand loyalty. In addition, the study provides new insights to literature and practice by investigating the effect of brand loyalty on positive WOM. The findings of this study will help brand managers and marketers to identify the appropriate and effective strategies to establish and improve the consumer brand loyalty.


Titanium is one of the most interesting materials in modern manufacturing thanks to its good mechanical properties and light weight. These features make it very attractive for use in the aeronautical and aerospace industries. Important alloys, such as Ti6Al4V, are extensively used. Nevertheless, titanium alloys present several problems in machining processes. Their machinability is poor, affected by low thermal conductivity, which generates very high cutting temperatures and thermal gradients in the cutting tool. Lubricants and cutting fluids have traditionally been used to solve this problem. However, this option is unsustainable as such lubricants represent a risk to the environment and to the health of the operator due to their different chemical components. Therefore, novel, sustainable and green lubrication techniques are necessary. Dry machining is the most sustainable option. Nevertheless, difficult-to-machine materials like titanium alloys cannot be machined under these conditions, leading to very high cutting temperatures and excessive tool wear. This study is intended to describe, analyse and review the non-traditional lubrication techniques developed in turning, drilling and milling processes since 2015, including minimum quantity of lubricant, cryogenic lubrication, minimum quantity of cooling lubrication or high-pressure coolant. The aim is to provide a general overview of the recent advances in each technique for the main machining processes.


OBJECTIVE
To compare health care utilization in people with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and fee-for-service (FFS).

METHODS
A structured survey was administered to a cohort of 982 people with SLE who were assembled between 2002 and early 2005. A total of 2,656 person-years of observation were completed by the end of 2005. In each year, respondents reported their health care utilization and whether they had HMO or FFS coverage. We compared health care utilization of those in HMOs and FFS, with and without adjustment for socioeconomic, demographic, and health characteristics using repeated-measures regression techniques.

RESULTS
Compared with people with SLE who were in FFS, those in HMOs were younger (3.3 years), received a diagnosis at an earlier age (3.6 years), had slightly less disease activity (0.4 on a 10-point scale), were more likely to be nonwhite (8.8%), were less likely to be below the poverty line (7.8%), and were less likely to have public insurance (29.7%). The 2 groups did not differ in other characteristics. On an unadjusted basis, subjects with SLE in HMOs had significantly fewer physician visits (3.1; 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1.7, 4.5) and were less likely to report one or more outpatient surgical visits (6.3%; 95% CI 2.5, 10.0), and hospital admissions (5.5%; 95% CI 1.7, 9.3) than those in FFS. Adjustment reduced the differences in physician visits (2.3; 95% CI 1.1, 3.5), outpatient surgical rates (4.4%; 95% CI 0.6, 8.1), and hospital admission rates (4.0%, 95% CI 0.4, 7.7).

CONCLUSION
Subjects with SLE in HMOs utilized substantially less ambulatory care and were less likely to have outpatient surgery and hospital admissions than those in FFS; the effects were not completely explained by socioeconomic, demographic, and health characteristics.


Experiments in the system Au-Cu-Fe-S were carried out at temperatures of 400° to 700°C to determine how much gold could be accommodated by bornite and chalcopyrite, the two most common ore minerals in porphyry copper-gold deposits. Our results show that for all temperatures bornite contains one order of magnitude more gold than chalcopyrite (or intermediate solid solution (iss), its high-temperature equivalent). The range of gold concentrations in bornite and chalcopyrite (or iss) decreases with decreasing temperature from 1,280 to 8,200 ppm Au in bornite and 100 to 125 ppm Au in iss at 600°C, to 235 to 364 ppm Au in bornite and 5 to 16 ppm Au in chalcopyrite (or iss) at 500°C, and to 13 to 80 ppm Au in bornite and 2 to 4 ppm Au in chalcopyrite (or iss) at 400°C. The amount of gold in bornite is also strongly dependent on the composition of bornite, being highest in "stoichiometric" bornite compositions (Cu5FeS4), and decreasing toward Cu-rich and Cu-poor compositions.

Phase equilibrium constraints for solutions with geologically reasonable reduced sulfur contents indicate that high-temperature porphyry copper-gold deposits will contain bornite and magnetite, whereas lower temperature deposits (whether primary or overprinted by phyllic alteration) will contain chalcopyrite and pyrite. If gold is present in the ore-forming solutions, more of it will be deposited in high-temperature porphyry copper-gold deposits where it will be closely associated with bornite. Coexisting magnetite in these deposits should generate magnetic anomalies. Lower temperature deposits will contain less gold, which is hosted by pyrite as well as chalcopyrite, and will lack magnetic anomalies. Comparison of the amount of gold hosted by natural porphyry copper-gold ores to that hosted by bornite and chalcopyrite in our experiments suggests that significant amounts of gold can be lost from these deposits into surrounding hydrothermal systems.


Pt nanoparticle (NP)-modified polycrystalline boron-doped diamond (pBDD) disk electrodes have been fabricated and employed as amperometric sensors for the determination of dissolved oxygen concentration in aqueous solution. pBDD columns were cut using laser micromachining techniques and sealed in glass, in order to make disk electrodes which were then characterized electrochemically. Electrodeposition of Pt onto the diamond electrodes was optimized so as to give the maximum oxygen reduction peak current with the lowest background signal. Pt NPs, >0-10 nm diameter, were found to deposit randomly across the pBDD electrode, with no preference for grain boundaries. The more conductive grains were found to promote the formation of smaller nanoparticles at higher density. With the use of potential step chronoamperometry, in which the potential was stepped to a diffusion-limited value, a four electron oxygen reduction process was found to occur at the Pt NP-modified pBDD electrode. Furthermore the chronoamperometric response scaled linearly with dissolved oxygen concentration, varied by changing the oxygen/nitrogen ratio of gas flowed into solution. The sensor was used to detect dissolved oxygen concentrations with high precision over the pH range 4-10.


The effects of glycosylation and membrane environment on the structural stability of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) from Torpedo have been investigated to improve our understanding of factors that influence eukaryotic membrane protein crystallization. Gel shift assays and carbohydrate-specific staining show that the deglycosylation enzyme, Endo F1, removes at least 50% of membrane-reconstituted nAChR glycosylation. The extent of deglycosylation with Endo F1 increases upon detergent solubilization. Removal of between 60-100% of high mannose moieties from the nAChR has no effect on nAChR secondary structure, stability, or flexibility. Deglycosylation does not influence either agonist binding or the ability of the nAChR to undergo agonist-induced conformational change. In contrast, nAChR structural stability, flexibility, and function are all negatively influenced by simple changes in reconstituted membrane lipid composition. Our results suggest that deglycosylation may represent a feasible approach for enhancing the crystallizability of the nAChR. Our data also demonstrate that the dependence of nAChR structural stability on lipid environment may represent a significant obstacle to nAChR crystallization. Some membrane proteins may have evolved complex interactions with their lipid environments. Understanding the complexity of these interactions may be essential for devising an appropriate strategy for the crystallization of some membrane proteins.


OBJECTIVES: To gain a more detailed understanding, from a biopsychosocial perspective, of the sexuality of women living with diabetes. DESIGN: Anonymous questionnaire study. METHOD: Thirty-six women with type 1 diabetes, 27 women with type 2 diabetes and 67 women without diabetes completed anonymous, detailed surveys about their sexual desire, sexual satisfaction, sexual self-view and sexual function. Various features of diabetes that have potential sexual relevance were also addressed. RESULTS: Women with diabetes recognized that the following factors are associated with their disease and affect their sexuality: diabetes-associated fatigue, fear of becoming dependent on a sexual partner and an impairment of body image that is associated with diabetes. Other potential diabetes-associated concerns, including issues of fertility, birth control, difficulty finding an accepting partner and the perception of being an eilli woman, were not found to be relevant to sexual desire or sexual function. Women with diabetes were found to be similar to women without diabetes in terms of sexual desire, sexual responses and sexual function. Dyspareunia, which was disconcertingly common in all groups, is discussed. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the likelihood of diabetesassociated impairment of genital sexual physiology in women, any effect on womenis sexual function appears to be limited. Sexual satisfaction, however, may be affected by factors to do with living with diabetes.


This paper presents morphometric and genetic barcoding analyses of the first record of the Cocoa Damselfish, Stegastes variabilis in the Mediterranean Sea. A single specimen was captured from Senglea waterfront, Malta (Central Mediterranean) on the 15th of September 2013. The species is non-indigenous in the Mediterranean, as it is native to the tropical Western Atlantic. Apart from undertaking identification through meristics and morphometric measurements of the specimen, genetic analyss of the 3410 bp mtDNA genes were carried out to confirm the species' identity. The latter was useful given that the genus Stegastes is known to be composed of morphologically very similar species, with variable colour patterns.


The time comes now to really think about the national policy over contraceptive pill after COVID-19 mental depression This planet might face an adverse effect on biodiversity after using such contraceptive pills After preventing unwanted pregnancy, the consumed birth control pills pass from human to water system and start their undesirable second innings to suppress the fertility in aquatic lives, domestic or wild animals Besides the aquatic lives, the presence of pill chemicals in urban and suburban water supplies can be boomeranged to innocent people Thus, a considerable debate is raised in consequence on limit level concern but need to be stopped immediately to stop the infertility problem already, before COVID-19 In detail, steroidal estrogens at pollutant levels can develop breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men The steroidal estrogens at pollution level can suppress the growth of root flowering and germination Ethinyl estradiol (EE2) is a synthetic estrogenic pill, which induces intersex in freshwater fish and caused significant drops in populations It is the high time to retrospect the national policies on using the estrogenic pill © Engineered Science Publisher LLC 2021


Poled and unpoled chromophore-containing polymers offer some unique advantages in device functionality and fabrication. UV light and electron beam (e-beam) can bleach out the color of chromophores and reduce the index of refraction of the polymer. The photobleaching and e-beam bleaching methods form optical waveguides in a single step and do not involve solvents or wet chemicals, and can be applied to polymers that are not compatible with other waveguide fabrication techniques. A variety of microring resonator devices for fiber-optic telecommunication and sensors have been realized with chromophore-containing polymers. A novel broadband fiber-optic electric field sensor is presented as an example. The sensor uses a polymer with chromophores preferentially aligned after electric poling, and the microring resonator is directly coupled to the core of optical fiber. The feasibility of vertical integration of a poled electrooptic polymer waveguide device interfaced with silicon microelectronic circuits is also demonstrated.


The authors describe a case of benign myoclonic jerks in a man aged 45 years, followed-up during 3 years. The disease had a benign course and a tendency was observed for decreasing intensity of symptoms. Apart from disseminated myoclonic jerks and longer lasting muscle spasms no other neurological abnormalities were found. EMG demonstrated spontaneous and asynchronous discharges of groups of motor units corresponding to the observed myoaclonic jerks but no other pathological findings were elicited. Other laboratory investigations including CT of the brain gave normal results. Taking into account the onset and course of the disease, the objective state and the results of laboratory investigations a functional background of the disease could not be ruled out.


Studying institutions as part of the research on cultural evolution prompts us to analyze one very important mechanism of cultural evolution: institutions do distribute cultural variants in the population. Also, it enables relating current research on cultural evolution to some more traditional social sciences: institutions, often seen as macro-social entities, are analyzed in terms of their constitutive micro-phenomena. This article presents Sperber's characterization of institutions, and then gives some hints about the set of phenomena to which it applies.Culture evolves through the advent of cognitive causal chains, which span across individuals and their environment, and which distribute mental representations and public production in the population and its habitat. Institutions are characterized by the specific causal chains that distribute representations. These chains include representations that cause the recurrence of a series of events and thus regulate the distribution of a set of representations to which they themselves belong. Saying that some cultural phenomenon is an institution is, in this theoretical framework, explaining that some representations that are part of the cultural phenomenon cause it to endure.This technical characterization applies to what is usually understood as institutions, from marriage to money. It also opens the way for the analysis of complex phenomena in cultural evolution, such as the maintenance of cultural niches and the distribution of labor.


ABSTRACT With a large number of sequenced microbial genomes available, tools for identifying groups or classes of proteins have become increasingly important. Here we present an improved pattern for the identification of cell wall-attached proteins (CWPs), a group of proteins with diverse and important functions in gram-positive bacteria. This tripartite pattern is based on analysis of 65 previously described cell wall-attached proteins and takes into account the three principal requirements for cell wall sorting; a sortase target region (LPXTGX), a membrane-spanning region, and a charged stop-transfer tail. In five different genomes of gram-positive bacteria, the tripartite pattern identified a total of 35 putative CWPs, 19 of which were novel. The specificity and sensitivity of the tripartite pattern are higher than those of the classical pattern, which is based solely on the sortase target region. Several putative CWPs with atypical sortase target regions were identified. In the complete genome of the important human pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes, the tripartite pattern identified 14 putative CWPs. Seven of the putative S. pyogenes proteins were novel, and two of these were a 5′ nucleotidase and a pullulanase. This study represents the first whole-genome screening for CWPs, and we conclude that the tripartite pattern is highly suitable for this purpose. Identification of CWPs using this pattern offers important possibilities in the study of the pathogenesis and physiology of gram-positive bacteria.


During September 1992-August 1993, stool samples from 157 children with diarrhoea and 157 matched healthy controls were examined for the presence of Aeromonas and other enteropathogens. Aeromonas strains were tested for haemolytic activity, haemagglutination patterns, and antibiotic susceptibility. In total, 62 Aeromonas were isolated, of which 27 (17.2%) were from children with diarrhoea and 35 (22.3%) from healthy controls. Only 23 (14.6%) of the diarrhoeal children and 28 (17.8%) of the healthy controls were positive for Aeromonas; of which, 4 (2.5%) of the diarrhoeal children and 6 (3.8%) of the healthy controls showed multiple species. Aeromonas hydrophila was isolated from 5 (3.2%) children with diarrhoea and from 9 (6.4%) controls, A. veronii bv sobria from 8 (5.1%) and 7 (4.5%), A. caviae from 13 (8.3%) and 17 (10.8%), and A. schubertii from 1 (0.6%) and 2 (1.3%) respectively. No significant difference in the haemolytic activity of Aeromonas was found between diarrhoeal and healthy children. However, a significant difference (p < 0.002) was observed in mannose-resistant haemagglutination (MRHA) by diarrhoeal isolates of Aeromonas (7/27, 26%) compared to the healthy controls (1/35, 3%). Aeromonas strains were uniformly sensitive to ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, and nalidixic acid. The results of this study suggest that A. caviae strains may be associated with diarrhoea in children and MRHA may be used as one of the virulence markers for distinguishing between Aeromonas isolated from diarrhoeal children and healthy controls or environmental isolates.


This report focuses on our examination of extant data which have been sourced with respect to intentional violence perpetrated or experienced by males in regional and remote Australia. The nature of intentional violent acts can be physical, sexual or psychological or involve deprivation or neglect. We have presented under the headings of: self-harm including suicide; homicide; assault, sexual assault and the threat of assault; child abuse; other family and intimate partner violence; harassment, stalking and bullying; alcohol related social violence; and animal abuse. State variations in interpersonal violence are also presented. Additional commentary resulting from exploration, examination and analyses of secondary data is published online in complementary reports in this series.


MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS ENGINEERING Admission Admission to the program as a regular student requires a BS degree in Engineering. Students with a degree in computer science or engineering can be admitted provisionally and must take certain undergraduate courses to pave the way for graduate work. Undergraduate degrees must be from an accredited program, and for regular admission must be with an average of B or better. Each applicant should present one complete, official transcripts of all prior college work. In special cases, it may be necessary for applicants to schedule an interview with the program director to review completeness of undergraduate preparation and other qualifications.


Abstract Seventeenth-century French descriptions of Asian peoples testify to a constant fascination with 'oriental' gender roles. The concubine enclosed in the harem of a despotic monarch, and the tragic sati, are among the most familiar figures of the women of the East. This article examines a manifestation which has received less attention: that of the female royalty about whom travellers claimed to have garnered privileged eye-witness testimony. The reports of traders, ecclesiastics, ambassadors, or mercenaries reflect the heterogeneous nature of French contacts with Asia and with different strata of diverse societies. Vivid manifestations of female royalty are depicted at various levels of power: virtuous warrior princesses from Persia, immoral Chinese queens, or the creators or supporters of factions within the intrigues attributed to eastern courts. Yet these women remain distanced, to varying extents, from the traveller. Isolated from sight, or far removed in space or in time, they are often represented in histoires or anecdotes of considerable moral or dramatic interest. In an East made recognisable through fictional strategies, they characterise the governance of Asia, while edifying or entertaining readers.


3D finger vein representation is the premise of 3D finger vein authentication. In this paper, a data organization model called liana model is presented for 3D finger vein representation. Firstly, four strategies including caliber uniformity, bine classification, node partition and spread restriction are proposed to covert the complex structure of 3D finger vein into a simple binary tree structure. Then, the liana model is developed based on the binary tree. Finally, the elements, attributes and mathematical descriptions of the model are described in detail. The new model is helpful for 3D finger vein representation and 3D features extraction.


OBJECTIVE
To gauge women's flexibility about seeing a nurse or an unfamiliar physician, to assess their interest in telephone visits, and to identify the characteristics of women who are least flexible.

STUDY DESIGN
Telephone surveys, focus groups, and in-person interviews with women.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
A random, demographically stratified sample of 1500 English-speaking female members of a health maintenance organization (ages 18-80 years) completed a 20-minute telephone survey (with a 72% response rate). A random subgroup of 500 women were asked about care preferences during acute illness and routine visit scenarios. Women (n = 242) from the full sample with a chronic illness were asked about their openness to telephone visits and care managers. Qualitative information was gathered from 10 focus groups and 75 in-person interviews.

RESULTS
Most women (72%) were open to seeing a different physician for a minor acute illness, but they were less so (35%) for a routine checkup. If their physician was not available, the majority said they would be willing to see a registered nurse for the flu (72%) or a nurse-practitioner for a checkup (64%). Half (59%) of the chronically ill women were comfortable with telephone visits, and one third (37%) were "very interested" in care managers. Across scenarios, approximately one third of the women were strongly committed to seeing only their regular physician. They were more likely to be middle-aged or older, to have lower health plan satisfaction and perceived coordination of care, and to recall rude encounters with clinicians.

CONCLUSION
The flexibility of most women regarding redesigned models of healthcare is encouraging. More attention needs to be paid, however, to education of women about multidisciplinary roles, enhancement of coordination of care, and customization of care to match patients' preferences.


Urban farming is growing in popularity for taking advantage of unused spaces on the rooftop in cities. This issue is becoming fundamentals due to the scarcity of land issue, urbanisation and urban poverty. This paper presents a brief method used in exploring the potential of implementing urban farming on the rooftop areas. The research aims to measure the potential of the rooftop as urban farming at George Town, Penang. This study adopted quantitative method using the questionnaire to conduct a survey. The result shows significant findings of reliability test of Cronbach's Alpha.


ABSTRACTClimate Change in the Daily PressAn Analysis of the Representation Swedish Daily Papers Convey Through Their Editorials About the Climate ChangeThe purpose of this essay is partly to present how swedish daily papers describe the climate change through their editorials and partly to examine if their politcal affiliation effect their point of view about the climate change. The search incluedes editorials from 6 daily papers (Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, Goteborgstidningen, Nerikes Allehanda and Svenska Dagbladet) from the year 1997 to the year 2003. Three discourses and the order between them, found by a former analysis (Adger and others, 2001) of the international politics of climate change, are used as types of ideal in a form of an analysis of idea.The analysis reveals that the swedish daily papers don't give the problem any major attention. Only a total of 65 editorials about the climate change could be found even though the papers produces several thousands during the period. Most attention occurs at the years 2000 and 2001, both are years of conflicts and demands on taking up a stand in important questions. Further the analysis shows that the representation of climate change in the editorials is being in accordance with the three discourses, and it also reproduce the order between them. The majority of the daily papers, 3 papers, dominates by the manegerial discourse, the challenger, the profligacy discourse, dominate 2 papers and the denial discourse dominate only 1 paper.When it comes to the political aspect the konservative paper is, as presumed, the one and only that dominates by the denial discourse and the social democratic paper dominates by the profligacy discourse, also as presumed. However, the liberal papers do not confirm the presumption of them all being dominated by the manegerial discourse. Three of them are, but one is dominated by the profligacy discourse. The reason is presumably the difference between traditional liberalism and neoliberalism.Keyword: climate change, discourse, daily press, editorial, Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, Goteborgstidningen, Nerikes Allehanda, Svenska Dagbladet, the manegerial discourse, the profligacy discourse, the denial discourse.


Seismic data and core from the shallow cartographic Pilzno P-7 borehole were used to construct a new model of the Carpathian orogenic front between Tarnow and Pilzno, in the Pogorska Wola area (southern Poland). The most external, frontal thrust of the orogenic wedge (the Jaśniny structure) was identified as a syn-depositional fault-propagation fold detached above the Upper Badenian evaporites. Its formation was controlled by the presence of mechanically weak foredeep evaporites and by the morphology of the sub-Miocene Meso-Paleozoic foreland plate (Jaśniny and Pogorska Wola palaeovalleys). The frontal zone of the Carpathian orogenic wedge (the Skole thrust sheet and the deformed foredeep deposits of the Zglobice thrust sheet) is characterized by significant backthrusting of the foredeep succession towards the south, and by the presence of a triangle zone, with  strongly deformed Upper Badenian evaporites of the Wieliczka Formation in its core. The triangle zone was formed during the latest thrusting movements of the Carpathians. An indication of the existence of the triangle zone in the vicinity of Debica has also been provided by reinterpretation of the archive regional geological cross-section. The youngest foredeep deposits, brought to the surface above the backthrust, have been dated as Sarmatian (NN7 nannoplankton zone), which indicates that the latest thrust movements within the frontal Carpathian orogenic in the vicinity of Tarnow–Debica took place approx. 11–10 million years ago. Thermochronological studies (AFT and AHe) indicated that the foredeep succession drilled by the Pilzno P-7 borehole has not been buried deeper than 1.5–2 km, which is compatible with reconstruction based on the seismic data.


Nitrogen plasmas at atmospheric pressure produced by 2.45 GHz microwaves at a power density of approximately 10 MW m-3 have a degree of ionization less than about 10-7. Nevertheless they have interesting and potentially important effects on polymer and metal surfaces exposed to them. An experimental programme is underway to identify the active species in the plasma and its afterglow. This paper describes a simplified model of the chemical kinetics in the plasma that allows species concentrations to be estimated in a range of conditions, for comparison with experimental data. It predicts a high degree of dissociation combined with low gas temperature in microwave-generated plasmas.


EDIPO 2 (the upgraded EDIPO test facility) will provide a unique testbed for superconducting cables for fusion magnets, accelerators, and other applications. Compared to the previous magnet assembly, the magnetic field is enhanced from 12.35 T to 15 T, the aperture is enlarged from 90×141 mm2 to 144×144 mm2 and the uniform field length is increased from 680 mm to 1000 mm (assuming a 1% drop of the field along the sample axis). A number of magnet designs have been proposed for EDIPO 2 since the conceptual design activities started in 2017. The design iterations have converged into a flared-end block-coil dipole design with a purely rectangular cross-section (coil windings aligned on the high and the low-field side). The use of a two-stage cable design is considered in order to increase the operating current, reduce the coil inductance and consequently limit the discharge voltage. The magnet structural design keeps the pre-compression applied to the coil winding pack to a minimum and allows a gap to open between the coils and the test well during operation. Progress on the magnet design activities is reported, including the results of magnetic and mechanical analyses, as well as quench protection studies. The procurement of the helium vessel required to contain the liquid helium bath for magnet cooling is also discussed.


Multichannel seismic lines, sonobuoy and gravity data across the Marquesas Islands are used to study volcano growth, island mass wasting, and crustal underplating at island chains with overfilled moats. The Marquesas bathymetry reflects the changing thickness of the sedimentary infill rather than the basement topography. The moat contains two major regions of differing seismic stratigraphy: (1) the moat edges, where a unit of continuous layered reflectors is present containing minor lenses of chaotic diffractors and, (2) the central moat, where the deep moat basins are overfilled by an acoustically opaque unit of discontinuous reflectors of up to 2 km thickness, in places capped by a ponded unit. Plate flexure models require broad underplating of the crust by low-density (crustal?) material at the Marquesas Islands to explain the depth to volcanic basement and gravity observations. The seismic velocities and seismic stratigraphy, as well as the general structure of the islands and surrounding seafloor, indicate the apron is mostly debris from island mass wasting. Reflectors of the outermost moat generally onlap the flexural arch in the lower section and offlap and overfill it in the upper section. In the central moat, reflectors change shape from concave up in the lower section to convex in the upper section. Three-dimensional diffusion models of sedimentation, which incorporate a time-dependent seafloor deflection from progressive island loading and vary sediment influx as islands are formed and mass waste, suggest that three main factors make the moat stratigraphy at the Marquesas different from Hawaii: (1) the Marquesas moat is overfilled, while the Hawaiian moat is underfilled, (2) sediment diffusivities are lower at the Marquesas, and (3) the Marquesas islands are separated by deep sedimentary basins, in contrast to Hawaii, where islands are separated by a shallow ridge. The lower sediment diffusivity at the Marquesas may reflect a larger proportion of "blocky", massive material in the central Marquesas moat or alternatively a change in the dominant process of sediment transport. While there is similar sediment supply for a given along-moat distance at both the Marquesas and Hawaii, the underfilled moat at Hawaii is apparently a consequence of greater moat volumes due to the larger size of the Hawaiian volcanoes, and possibly variations in underplating, that load the plate. The difference in sediment/edifice ratios is likely related to the larger eruption rates at Hawaii and different styles of volcano construction between Hawaii and the Marquesas.


By means of a case study, we analyze the implementation of collective creativity in an industrial SME. Employees are invited to participate in creativity seminars in order to develop new product concepts. The case is analyzed in terms of the C-K theory. The creativity seminar allows moving away from the dominant design through the permanent creation of new concepts. Although the company seeks to innovate through the creation of new concepts, it does not try to introduce a radical change. Its aim is to ?be creative while keeping one foot in the box?. This regime allows the company to maintain a competitive advantage, whilst at the same time limiting costs, risks and delays related to the development of innovative products. JEL Codes: M11, M19


A screen printing apparatus and method for printing deposits of a print medium on workpieces, the apparatus comprising: a frame support unit for supporting a printing screen unit which comprises a screen sheet which includes at least first and second patterns of print apertures; a workpiece support unit; a print head unit; and at least one screen cleaning unit; wherein the at least one screen cleaning unit and the print head unit are operated in parallel, whereby, when the printing screen unit is in the first printing position, the at least one screen cleaning unit cleans the underside of the screen sheet at a location corresponding to one of the first and second sets of print apertures and the print head unit prints print medium onto workpieces through the other of the first and second sets of print apertures.


The author examines the trends in the average annual gonadal dose of ionising radiation on Britain, and the trends in childhood leukaemia rates, in relation to the hypothesis of induction of childhood leukaemia by parental germ-cell injury. The incidence rates of childhood leukaemia 1961-85 in South East England were obtained from the Thames Cancer Registry and the average annual background radiation doses in Britain were obtained from NRPB and UNSCEAR reports. Models were fitted to the annual incidence rates using the statistical software package GLIM. The incidence rates for the 0-4 age group peaked in the 1970s and a model fitted to the annual incidence rates included a statistically significant term in the square of the year of diagnosis. The quinquennial rates suggested that the peak was confined to the boys aged 0-4 years. No evidence of a trend in rates was observed in children aged 5-14 at diagnosis.


Consider the space of double cosets of the product of $n$ copies of $\SU(2)$ with respect to the diagonal subgroup. We get a parametrization of this space, the radial part of the Haar measure, and explicit formulas for the actions of the group of outer automorphisms of the free group $F_{n-1}$ and of the braid group of $n-1$ strings.


This paper relates to a novel graphical system named "Click-a-Secret" that allows entering a secret through interactions with an image. Seamless modifications of the image will create a new image and derive corresponding secret. In this article, we will focus on access control related applications. However, other usages are possible in various cryptographic systems (e.g.: secret key to encrypt data, etc.). It is well known that humans use long-term memory for storing pictures therefore leading to better recall of images compared to text. This leads to improved memorization of graphical passwords.


The Government is required to provide open access information to the public in cases such as when the COVID-19 pandemic occurred in Indonesia and affected many aspects of life. Transparency in the provision of public information is an important part of good governance. The Government must build trust by being open and transparent about the information. Transparency is key to the success of the response to the pandemic. This study aimed to explain the need for transparency, especially in public information disclosure, during the handling of the pandemic and after; the strategies that need to be carried out to realize good information governance; and the challenges faced. Qualitative methods were used with secondary data. We argue that adjusting the disclosure of information according to the elements of good governance must be followed by a policy of providing information that is integrated, systematic, accurate, and clear.
Keywords: good information governance, government transparency, information, public policy


In the phenomenon of trinucleotide repeat (TNR) expansion, an important interplay exists between DNA damage repair of 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine (8-oxoG) and noncanonical structure formation. We show that TNR DNA adapts its structure to accommodate 8-oxoG. Using chemical probe analysis, we find that CAG repeats composing the stem-loop arm of a three-way junction alter the population of structures in response to 8-oxoG by positioning the lesion at or near the loop. Furthermore, we find that oligonucleotides composed of odd-numbered repeat sequences, which form populations of two structures, will also alter their structure to place 8-oxoG in the loop. However, sequences with an even number of repeats do not display this behavior. Analysis by differential scanning calorimetry indicates that when the lesion is located within the loop, there are no significant changes to the thermodynamic parameters as compared to the DNA lacking 8-oxoG. This contrasts with the enthalpic destabilization observed when 8-oxoG is base-paired to C and indicates that positioning 8-oxoG in the loop avoids the thermodynamic penalty associated with 8-oxoG base-pairing. Since formation of stem-loop hairpins is proposed to facilitate TNR expansion, these results highlight the importance of defining the structural consequences of DNA damage.


The liquidity ratio is used to measure the company's ability to meet obligations to parties outside the company or within the company that have matured. If the company is able to meet its obligations, the company said in a liquid state. Current Ratio (CR) is a ratio to measure a company's ability to pay short-term obligations or debt immediately due at the time billed as a whole .The ratio is the ratio of profitability to assess the ability of the company to make a profit. The results of these measurements can be used as an evaluation of the performance of management, whether they are working effectively or not. Return on Assets is a measure of a company's ability to generate profits with all the assets owned by the company (Kasmir 2008). Return on equity is a financial analysis tool for measuring profitability. This ratio measures the company's ability to generate profits based on certain capital. Return on equity is a profitability measure from the point of view of shareholders Market ratio is a ratio that is often used in special and capital markets that describes a situation or state of the company's achievements capital market (Harahap, 2004). Price Earning Ratio (PER) is a way of measuring how much investors assess corporate profits generated. Darmadji and Fakhrudin (2006) Price Earning Ratio (PER) describe the market appreciation of the company's ability to generate profits. Price Book Value (PBV) is a ratio used to measure the market performance of the stock market price of the book value (Ang, 1997). According Ratnasari (2003) Value Price Book Value (PBV) which indicates greater market price of such shares higher as well. Keyword : Stock Returns


Tourmaline is ubiquitous at the Tsa da Glisza emerald prospect, Yukon Territory, occurring as porphyroblasts in greenschistfacies metavolcanic and ultramafic rocks and as crystals in granites, aplites, and quartz-tourmaline veins. The principal occurrence of emerald is along contacts between the quartz-tourmaline veins and mafic country rocks, but it also occurs in the aplites. We assess the potential of using tourmaline compositions as a guide to emerald mineralization at Tsa da Glisza based on major element, trace element (Li, Be, Sc, Cr, V, Mn, Ni, Co, Cu, Zn, As, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, Cd, Mo, Sn, Sb, Cs, Ba, Ta, W, Bi, Pb, Th, and U), REE (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Yb, Lu), and boron isotope data. The tourmaline compositions encompass Na-Fe schorl, Na-Mg dravite, and Ca-Mg uvite and show a strong dependence on host-rock chemistry. Tourmalines closely associated with emeralds (intergrown in same hand specimen) are slightly more iron rich dravites compared with those from schists and alteration zones lacking emerald. Binary and ternary plots of major and trace element concentrations show that emerald-associated tourmalines occupy restricted ranges of composition, albeit considerably overlapping those not associated with emerald. Trace element concentrations in tourmaline associated with emerald mineralization include 20 to 40 ppm Co, ~50 ppm Ni, 0.5 ppm La, 0.5 ppm Y, 100 to 200 ppm Li, and 300 to 600 ppm Zn. Boron isotope (δ11B) values range from − 15.6 to − 4.2 per mil for all tourmalines ( n = 80). Low values are most common and are consistent with a dominantly granitic source of boron. Higher isotope ratios (>− 8‰) are confined to tourmalines from country rocks and quartz veins, suggesting a contribution of isotopically heavy B from the maficultramafic series. The three emerald-related samples have a restricted, intermediate range of − 10.3 to − 7.9 per mil.

Multivariate cluster analysis defines two populations of tourmalines corresponding to host-rock type. One cluster includes tourmaline from country rocks and quartz-tourmaline veins and the other is dominated by samples from granites and aplites. The latter cluster also includes all tourmalines associated with emeralds. With trace element concentrations and boron isotope values as input variables, one stepwise discriminant function analysis model produces a 91 percent correct classification matrix and an 88 percent correct jackknifed classification matrix. This result suggests that tourmaline has potential as an indicator mineral at the Tsa da Glisza prospect and possibly also in the exploration for emeralds elsewhere.


Molecular imprinting technology is a promising method for detecting chloramphenicol (CAP), a broad-spectrum antibiotic with potential toxicity to humans, in animal-derived foods. This work aimed to investigate the interactions between the CAP as a template and functional monomers required for synthesizing efficient molecularly imprinted polymers for recognition and isolation of CAP based on density functional theory. The most suitable monomer, methacrylic acid (MAA), was determined based on interaction energies and Gibbs free energy changes. Further, the reaction sites of CAP and MAA was predicted through the frontier molecular orbitals and molecular electrostatic potentials. Atoms in molecules topology analysis and non-covalent interactions reduced density gradient were applied to investigate different types of non-covalent and inter-atomic interactions. The simulation results showed that CAP was the main electron donor, while MAA was the main electron acceptor. Moreover, the CAP–MAA complex simultaneously involved N-H···O and C=O···H double hydrogen bonds, where the strength of the latter was greater than that of the former. The existence of hydrogen bonds was also confirmed by theoretical and experimental hydrogen nuclear magnetic resonance and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic analyses. This research can act as an important reference for intermolecular interactions and provide strong theoretical guidance regarding CAP in the synthesis of molecularly imprinted polymers.


We consider an abstract version of the Cauchy–Kowalewski Problem with the right-hand side being free from the Lipschitz-type conditions, and prove the existence theorem.


In the past few decades, many studies have proposed different approaches to multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) systems and have found application in a variety of domains such as swarm robotics coordination, traffic-light control, and supply chain management. These methods usually fall under the two categories of centralized and decentralized systems, with each approach having certain advantages at a cost of some drawbacks. In the former approach, a single top-level centralized controller is used for making the action decisions of every agent in the world, whereas in the latter method, each individual agent is responsible for choosing its actions and learning its own individual behavior policy using the local rewards received during the process. While the decentralized systems can avoid the scalability problem of the centralized monolithic approach in complex problems, coordinating the agents in order to produce a coherent collective behavior that satisfies the global criteria still remains a challenge. In this thesis, we compared both the centralized and decentralized approaches to MARL systems in coordinating multiple agents in a shared 2-dimensional environment that consists of two separate goal locations. We explored several approaches of communication in the decentralized systems to enhance the coordination among the independent learners and assist them to overcome their limited observation of the environment. Five variations of decentralized MARL systems are proposed that differ in the range of communication they provide between the independent agents. In order to evaluate the effect of the communication mechanisms and compare the performance of the MARL systems under different conditions, four experiment scenarios were designed in which the difficulty of the task was altered using different world configurations and limited vision of independent learners. The results of our experiments show that the communication mechanisms can substantially enhance the performance of the baseline decentralized MARL system in the complex setups and also accelerate the convergence in the average scenarios. Our method of enabling the agents to shape and communicate their intention using multi-objective reinforcement learning managed to demonstrate a faster learning process than the centralized MARL system in the complex scenarios, even with limited observability of the environment. Similarly, policy-sharing outperforms the centralized MARL system in scenarios with a large number of agents and needs significantly shorter training sessions.