The extraction of metallic pure vanadium powder from raw oxide has been tried by Mg-reduction. In first stage, powders as initial raw material was reduced by hydrogen gas into phase. powder was reduced in next stage by magnesium gas at 1,073K for 24 hours. After reduction reaction, the MgO component mixed with reduced vanadium powder were dissolved and removed fully in 10% HCl solution for 5 hours at room temperature. The oxygen content and particle size of finally produced vanadium powders were 0.84 wt% and 1 , respectively


Programme evaluation has become an important component of many rehabilitation initiatives in both institutional and community environments. Of key importance is a need for information on developing an evaluation framework to determine and address programme processes and outcomes. This paper presents a programme logic model used to guide the evaluation of a community rehabilitation programme for adults with brain injury. Programme logic models are visual models that provide a framework to organize and integrate information about programme inputs, processes and outcomes. The model is also used in this programme to incorporate the client-centred values of the programme. It was developed through the consensus of the entire team, and was used to plan implementation and outcome evaluations. A similar programme logic model will be useful to occupational therapists and other health care professionals planning programme evaluations of their services.


Gratings at widely different wavelengths (250 nm) are written with single chirped and unchirped phase masks. The tuned gratings are assessed for repeatability and characteristics. Under the current arrangement, it is demonstrated that a grating may be inscribed at wavelengths separated by over 250 nm to within 1 nm. It is shown that the bandwidth of the chirped grating changes as the wavelength is tuned, becoming smaller at wavelengths shorter than the chirped phase-mask designed wavelength, and broader as the inscribed grating is shifted to longer wavelengths.


In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission made their final recommendations for Canadian society to address cultural genocide: by affirming stories of survivors, taking personal and professional inventory of their practices and making concrete steps to meet the Calls to Action. In particular, the TRC recognized damage done by museums and art galleries to perpetuate colonialism and yet, believed that these institutions could be sites of justice, particularly in relation to arts and artists The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, an institution steeped in colonialism and under pressure to create accountable relationships with Indigenous communities, began to act by revamping their education program for school age children entitled the Gallery in the Schools art program. My study asked Indigenous artists and educators to contribute their ideas for a new art program. I used a blended research of community based and decolonizing research models, contextualized within decolonizing and critical theoretical frameworks. Overall, research findings suggest that process is as important as the end product in the context of reconciliation and decolonization. Significantly, relationships were esteemed over the concept of reconciliation. These finding further imply that a successful art program would ground pedagogical content within a critical historical framework, be informed by a fluid understanding of identity and search out possibilities of hope. The theoretical implications of this study support increased contributions by Indigenous artists as key policy makers, who will challenge the deeply embedded power structures of institutions and offer alternative ways to share power and support Indigenous envisioned futures.


Abstract Background The study examined whether Vietnamese mothers of children with cognitive delay experienced more parenting stress compared to mothers of children without delay, and the factors that contribute to the parenting stress. Method The study sample included 225 mothers of children with and without cognitive delays from Hue City in Vietnam. The study protocol included mothers reporting on the scales of parenting stress and perceived social support, and on demographic questions. Results Mothers of children with cognitive delay experienced more stress. They were poorer and less educated, and perceived less social support. More mothers of these children had health issues. Having a child with cognitive delay was the strongest predictor of stress after controlling other demographic and psychosocial variables. Conclusion Special education and early intervention services should be developed and available to educate the children with cognitive delay and support their mothers in Vietnam. Effective services also need to address their poverty and health care needs.


An understanding of epigenetics is indispensable to our understanding of gene regulation under normal and pathological states. This knowledge will help with designing better therapeutic approaches in regenerative tissue medicine. Epigenetics allows us to parse out the mechanisms by which transcriptional regulators gain access to specific gene loci thereby imprinting epigenetic information affecting chromatin function. This epigenetic memory forms the basis of cell lineage specification in multicellular organisms. Post-translational modifications to DNA and histones in the nucleosome core form characteristic epigenetic codes which are distinct for self-renewing and primed progenitor cell populations. Studies of chromatin modifiers and modifications in renal development and disease have been gaining momentum. Both congenital and adult renal diseases have a gene-environment component, which involves alterations to the epigenetic information imprinted during development. This epigenetic memory must be characterized to establish optimal treatment of both acute and chronic renal diseases.


Aim: The underlying mechanisms of cluster headache (CH) have not been fully understood yet. The cranial autonomic activation suggests that both sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are impaired in the clinical presentation; however, the systemic autonomic involvement during pain-free episodes is not well-known. Methods: Thirty-five subjects were included in 24 h Holter monitoring and electrophysiological studies in this controlled study. Results: In Holter monitoring, heart rate variability parameters, RMSSD (P = 0.001), and pNN50 (P = 0.024) were significantly higher in patients compared to age and gender-matched controls. The R-R variations during breathing and deep breathing and sympathetic skin responses of all patients were normal. Conclusions: High RMSSD and pNN50 levels are the two indicators of increased parasympathetic activity in CH patients. Considering the intense stress because of severe pain of the CH patients, who are mostly adult men and smokers, there is an urgent need for broader studies with prospective follow-up in terms of cardiac health.


This paper describes the development of a xanthine oxidase/poly-m-phenylenediamine (XOD-PPD)-modified electrode. The biosensor was constructed by encapsulating XOD in a sol-gel matrix deposited onto a platinum based screen-printed electrode functionalized with a permselective PPD membrane. The hydrogen peroxide generated as a final product of the enzymatic reaction between the hypoxanthine and the XOD or by the spontaneous dismutation of superoxide radicals was selectively monitored at +700 mV. The use of a highly selective PPD layer blocked the nonspecific oxidation of other oxidizable molecules. Finally the biosensor was applied to the determination of the antioxidant capacity of acetylsalicylic acid.


Otolith morphology analysis is one of the main tools used for fish or fish stock identification. Moreover, otolith shape can also be used in fish dietary studies (stomach content) for the identification of prey fishes and their size according to the relationship between fish and otolith sizes. In the present study, the relationship between fish length and otolith morphological dimensions was investigated for the sabre squirrelfish, Sargocentron spiniferum (Forsskål, 1775) (family: Holocentridae). Samples of 185 fish were collected from the coast of the Red Sea, Egypt. To analyze the relationship between fish and otolith, otolith morphometric measurements (length, width, area, perimeter, weight, sulcus, and ostium) and shape factors (aspect ratio, compactness, form factor, rectangularity, roundness, ellipticity, squareness) describing outline shape were extracted using image analysis. Generalized linear models were applied for the relationship between body length and each otolith morphology feature. From the relationships between the total length of fish and fourteen morphology features, only otolith length, caudal length, and squareness were significantly correlated with fish size. Our results provide more information for the relationship between fish length and otolith morphometric features.


For the organizational silence which is developed in the environment where the culture of injustice is lived, in the framework of sub-dimensions for organizational justice and causal and relational theory of participative climate perception; a structural equation model was generated in order to research the role of organizational silence in the perceptions of organizational justice on direct and indirect relations of participative climate perception. The relations between the dimensions of organizational justice perception, organizational silence, and perception of participative climate and the negative results of organizational silence were evaluated and suggestions were offered.


We have developed a novel geometrical configuration for NbN-based superconducting single photon optical detector (SSPD) that achieves two goals: a much lower intrinsic impedance, and a consequently greater bandwidth, and a much larger signal amplitude compared to the standard meandered configuration. This has been obtained by implementing a properly designed parallel stripline structure where a cascade switching mechanism occurs when one of the striplines is hit by an optical photon. The overall switching occurs synchronously and in a very short time, giving rise to a strong and fast voltage pulse. The SSPD have been realized using state of the art NbN deposition technology and e-beam lithography. The strips are 100 nm wide and 5 μm long and have been realized with 4 nm NbN film on sapphire and Si substrate. We report on experimental characterization of such novel devices. The performances of the proposed novel type of SSPD are compared with standard SSPD design and results in terms of signal amplitude, risetime and effective detection area.


Abstract Background COVID-19 and pneumonia of other etiology share similar CT characteristics, contributing to the challenges in differentiating them with high accuracy. Purpose To establish and evaluate an artificial intelligence (AI) system in differentiating COVID-19 and other pneumonia on chest CT and assess radiologist performance without and with AI assistance. Methods 521 patients with positive RT-PCR for COVID-19 and abnormal chest CT findings were retrospectively identified from ten hospitals from January 2020 to April 2020. 665 patients with non-COVID-19 pneumonia and definite evidence of pneumonia on chest CT were retrospectively selected from three hospitals between 2017 and 2019. To classify COVID-19 versus other pneumonia for each patient, abnormal CT slices were input into the EfficientNet B4 deep neural network architecture after lung segmentation, followed by two-layer fully-connected neural network to pool slices together. Our final cohort of 1,186 patients (132,583 CT slices) was divided into training, validation and test sets in a 7:2:1 and equal ratio. Independent testing was performed by evaluating model performance on separate hospitals. Studies were blindly reviewed by six radiologists without and then with AI assistance. Results Our final model achieved a test accuracy of 96% (95% CI: 90-98%), sensitivity 95% (95% CI: 83-100%) and specificity of 96% (95% CI: 88-99%) with Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) AUC of 0.95 and Precision-Recall (PR) AUC of 0.90. On independent testing, our model achieved an accuracy of 87% (95% CI: 82-90%), sensitivity of 89% (95% CI: 81-94%) and specificity of 86% (95% CI: 80-90%) with ROC AUC of 0.90 and PR AUC of 0.87. Assisted by the models' probabilities, the radiologists achieved a higher average test accuracy (90% vs. 85%, Δ=5, p<0.001), sensitivity (88% vs. 79%, Δ=9, p<0.001) and specificity (91% vs. 88%, Δ=3, p=0.001). Conclusion AI assistance improved radiologists' performance in distinguishing COVID-19 from non-COVID-19 pneumonia on chest CT.


We evaluated the temporal stability of diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder in 432 male alcohol dependent patients. Indicators for temporal stability were criterion continuation (i.e., the proportion of current or recent diagnoses among those with a lifetime diagnosis) and criterion duration (i.e., the length of time between the first occurrence and the last occurrence). In addition, the effect of diagnostic status (ASPD- versus ASPD+) on stability was examined. Among the criteria, "no regard for the truth" showed consistently high stability; "recklessness" showed moderate to high stability; "inconsistent work behavior," "failure to meet financial obligations," "failure to plan ahead" and "parental irresponsibility" showed consistently low stability. The continuation and duration parameters diverged with respect to "nonconformism" and "irritability/aggressiveness." Temporal stability for "nonconformism" was consistently greater among those with ASPD than among those without. It was concluded that both continuation and duration rates clearly differentiated among criteria. This new criterion-based approach seems to be useful as a strategy for improving the ASPD criteria set.


Catecholamines function via G protein-coupled receptors, triggering an increase in intracellular levels of 3′,5′-cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) in various cells. Catecholamine biosynthesis and the β-adrenergic receptor exist in melanocytes; thus, catecholamines may play critical roles in skin pigmentation. However, their action and mechanisms mediating melanogenesis in human skin have not yet been investigated. Therefore, we examined the potential anti-melanogenetic effect of carvedilol, a nonselective β-blocker with weak α1-blocking activities. Carvedilol reduced melanin content and cellular tyrosinase activity without compromising cellular viability in normal human melanocytes as well as in mel-Ab immortalized mouse melanocytes. Carvedilol downregulated microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF), tyrosinase, tyrosinase-related protein (TRP)-1, and TRP-2. Carvedilol treatment led to the downregulation of phosphor-cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB). Moreover, the increase in cAMP levels upon treatment with forskolin reversed the anti-melanogenic action of carvedilol. In addition, carvedilol remarkably reduced the melanin index in ultraviolet-irradiated human skin cultures. Taken together, our results indicate that carvedilol effectively suppresses melanogenesis in human melanocytes and ex vivo human skin by inhibiting cAMP/protein kinase A/CREB signaling. The anti-melanogenic effects of carvedilol have potential significance for skin whitening agents.


Antimicrobial peptides (AMP) which kill microbes by a fundamentally different mechanism of action than do traditional antibiotics are a new category of compounds capable of fighting resistant pathogens. The cationic AMP isolated from insects comprise a significant group among those 2000 peptides already registered in The Antimicrobial Peptide Database. The novel AMP include lucifensins – the insect defensins isolated from medicinal larvae of flies which are routinely used in maggot therapy and AMP ranking among ?-helical amphipathic peptides isolated from the venom of stinging hymenopterans. The AMP isolated from the venom show strong antimicrobial activities and low or moderate toxicity to eukaryotic cells. Systematic structure modification of these naturally occurring AMP resulted in their analogs with enhanced antimicrobial activities.


PT. PAMA is a company engaged in mining and is a contractor of PT. Indominco Mandiri which has been running since 1996. The work contract given is blasting, from blasting activities many impacts arise, one of which is ground vibration, therefore it is necessary to measure the level of ground vibration in the west block area where there are several critical areas in the form of buildings such as offices , solar (fuel oil) storage, and PT. Indominco Mandiri, where there have been complaints regarding large vibrations and the potential for diesel spills from fuel oil. In the study the peak vector sum (pvs) value produced in December 2022 was 1.57 mm/s with the closest distance of 785 meters and in January 2023 4.21 mm/s with a distance of 500 meters. The maximum use of explosives item for explosive holes in December 2022 and January 2023 is 2,513 kg. This pvs value is still safe, because it is still below 5.0 mm/s and according to SNI 7572: 2010.


Ecological interpretation is an interpretation made with the object of Quranic verses related to ecological themes, using ecology-based scientific analysis, with a nuance of partiality towards environmental problems. The formulation of  environmental preservation in the perspective of the Quran is a necessity, as  conceived by Mujiyono Abdillah and Mudhofir Abdullah. This is related to the function of the Quran as a source of values in Islam that has a high concern for environmental problems.  it c ould even be said to be an environmentally sound holy book. The method used in this paper is descriptive-analytical. This paper finds that: 1) Mujiyono Abdillah made an ecological interpretation as the basis for developing the concept of eco-theology in response to environmental problems. 2) Mudhofir Abdullah  made ecological interpretation as the basis for developing eco-sharia concepts as an alternative solution to environmental problems.


Abstract. The city of Johannesburg contains over 10 million trees and is often referred to as an urban forest. The intra-urban spatial variability of the levels of vegetation across Johannesburg's residential regions has an influence on the urban heat island effect within the city. Residential areas with high levels of vegetation benefit from cooling due to evapo-transpirative processes and thus exhibit weaker heat island effects; while their impoverished counterparts are not so fortunate. The urban heat island effect describes a phenomenon where some urban areas exhibit temperatures that are warmer than that of surrounding areas. The factors influencing the urban heat island effect include the high density of people and buildings and low levels of vegetative cover within populated urban areas. This paper describes the remote sensing data sets and the processing techniques employed to study the heat island effect within Johannesburg. In particular we consider the use of multi-sensorial multi-temporal remote sensing data towards a predictive model, based on the analysis of influencing factors.


The goal of this dissertation is to analyze issues that arise when policy makers try to learn about the economy while their policies are affecting it. The dissertation takes the form of three essays. The first essay examines how optimal policy affects equiUbrium economic outcomes in environments in which agents are both imperfectly informed about the state of the economy and able to learn by observing the actions of others. This type of environment, in which there is social learning, has received growing attention, but to date there has been little examination of strategic policy making in such settings. In particular, the question of whether policy, in the absence of a commitment technology, can be designed to increase the speed of information revelation remains open. The essay builds on a real options model of investment and shows how this framework can be extended to derive time consistent policies and the related equilibrium outcomes in social learning environments. By comparing the equilibrium induced by a policy maker to both the laissez-faire outcome and the social optimum, it is shown that the policy maker is able to achieve the second best outcome and reduce delay to the efficient level even in the absence of commitment. The second essay raises the question of whether the fact that policy makers play a dual role, as both information gatherers and economic managers, can explain the flattening of the Phillips Curve relationship between inflation and real activity that has been observed in both Canada and the U.S over the 1990s. The paper models the central bank as both a provider of liquidity in a world where pre-set prices would otherwise cause potential gains from trade to go unrealized and a gatherer of information about real developments in the economy. The bank's information complements that of private agents so that, the central bank and private agents both wish to learn from the other. In equilibrium, this interaction gives rise to a Phillips curve relationship which both exhibits causality running from real activity to prices and justifies a feedback from prices to the setting of monetary instruments. The model implies that a decline in the slope of the Phillips curve may be a result of improvements in the manner in which central banks gather information about the economy. An investigation of the data for Canada and the U.S finds support for the model. The third essay attempts a more thorough empirical investigation of the issues raised in the previous chapter. The paper enriches the dynamic aspects of the model to further examine its properties, but focuses mainly on attempting to uncover whether the types of changes to the Phillips curve relationship which had been previously documented in Canada and the U.S have occurred in other OECD countries. The paper investigates this question using both single country and panel estimation and finds that the phenomenon of a declining slope in the Phillips curve relationship is prevalent in OECD countries throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, the paper attempts to exploit the cross country data to provide more formal tests of the model's predictions regarding policy innovations and inflation targeting regimes. The results suggest that the model compares favourably to other potential explanations of the decline in the slope of the Phillips curve.


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Background: Only about one third of AML patients with mutant IDH1 respond to IDH1 inhibitor monotherapy with a median response duration of 7 months, indicating the strong need for combination treatments. We have previously shown that BAY-1436032 is a highly effective oral pan-mutant IDH1 inhibitor, which has strong anti-leukemic activity in patient derived xenograft (PDX) models of IDH1 mutant leukemia in vivo. In the present study, we assessed the combination of azacitidine with IDH1 inhibitor BAY-1436032 in a preclinical PDX model of IDH1 mutated AML. Methods: We tested the activity of BAY-1436032 alone or in combination with escalating doses of azacitidine in IDH1 mutated and IDH1 wildtype AML patient cells in vitro evaluating the effects on colony formation, apoptosis, cell cycle, differentiation and global gene expression changes. Leukemic cells from an AML patient with mutated IDH1, NPM1, FLT3-TKD and NRAS were xenografted in immunocompromised mice and treatment was started 28 days after transplantation. The control groups were treated with either vehicle, BAY-1436032 150 mg/kg once daily p.o. continuously, or azacitidine 1 mg/kg once daily s.c. days 1-5, repeated once after 28 days. The test groups were treated with BAY-1436032 and azacitidine in the doses mentioned above either starting both drugs on day 1 (parallel group) or starting azacitidine on day 1 but BAY-1436032 on day 6 (sequential group). The treatment was stopped after 84 days. Results: Our IDH1 inhibitor reduced colony formation specifically in human IDH1 mutated AML cells, while IDH1 wildtype cells were not affected (IC50 100 nM). Combination of BAY-1436032 (100 nM) with azacitidine 100 nM further reduced colony formation by 50% in IDH1 mutated AML cells, while the IC50 for IDH1 wildtype AML cells was not reached even at 1000 nM azacitidine in the presence of 100 nM BAY-1436032. For in vivo experiments human AML cells from an IDH1 mutated AML patient were transplanted into sublethally irradiated NSG mice and treatment was started four weeks after transplantation. Leukemic cells in peripheral blood constantly increased in vehicle and azacitidine treated mice, while leukemic cells declined from week 4 until the end of treatment at week 12 in mice treated with BAY-1436032 alone as well as in the parallel and sequential combination groups treated with BAY-1436032 and azacitidine. However, in week 20 (8 weeks after stopping the BAY-1436032 treatment) leukemia relapsed in the BAY-1436032 alone as well as the sequential combination groups. Interestingly, the frequency of leukemic cells remained low in peripheral blood in mice treated in parallel with the combination of BAY-1436032 and azacitidine even at 24 weeks after starting the treatment (Figure 1). To obtain mechanistic insights into the efficacy of the combination treatment we treated human IDH1 mutant and IDH1 wildtype AML cells in vitro with either 100 nm BAY-1436032 or 100 nm azacitidine alone or in combination (in parallel). Vehicle treatment served as control. There were no significant differences in percentage of apoptotic cells between BAY-1436032 or azacitidine treatment as single agents or in combination. However, the proportion of cells in S phase of the cell cycle was synergistically decreased by the combination treatment compared with either monotherapy or vehicle. Gene expression profiling showed that the target genes of EGR1-3 and GFI1 transcription factors were upregulated by the combination treatment over BAY-1436032 treatment alone, while target genes of NFkB and its targets ELF1 and STAT1/3 were down regulated, suggesting synergy in induction of differentiation and inhibition of self-renewal of the combination treatment through distinct pathways. Conclusion: Our study provides the first evidence of synergistic activity of an IDH1 inhibitor with hypomethylating agents through inhibition of the cell cycle by dysregulating EGR, GFI1 and NFkB signaling, and strongly argues for simultaneous application of the IDH1 inhibitor BAY-1436032 with azacitidine in future clinical trials. Clinical development is ongoing with phase 1 studies using BAY-1436032 in IDH1 mutant solid tumors and AML. Figure 1: Development of human IDH1 mutated AML in peripheral blood of NSG mice treated with BAY-1436032 and azacitidine alone or in combination (PRL, in parallel; SEQ, sequential, i.e. first azacitidine days 1-5, then BAY-1436032 from day 6 onwards). Disclosures Chaturvedi: Bayer Pharma AG, Berlin, Germany: Research Funding. Kaulfuss: Bayer Pharma AG, Berlin, Germany: Employment. Panknin: Bayer Pharma AG, Berlin, Germany: Employment. Wagner: Bayer Pharma AG, Berlin, Germany: Employment, Equity Ownership. Jeffers: Bayer Pharma AG, Whippany, NJ, USA: Employment. Haegebarth: Bayer Pharma AG, Berlin, Germany: Employment, Equity Ownership.


The durability of thermal sprayed coating-substrate components is greatly influenced by the distribution of their thermal residual stress. The thermal residual stress can be effectively reduced by introducing functionally gradient material (FGM) between the coating and the substrate. In this paper, the numerical method is used for researching the influence of random distribution of porosity on the thermal residual stress in the coating-substrate component. The relationship between the thermal residual stress, the stress intensity factors of interface crack and the number of layers of FGM is also obtained, and the conclusions obtained are verified by experimental results. This paper consists of four parts. First, the history of development and the present applications of thermal spraying technology are summarized; Secondly, the research of the influence of random distribution of porosity in the coating to the thermal residual stresses is presented; Thirdly, the influence of the number of layers of FGM to the thermal residual stress is analyzed; And finally, the influence of the number of the layers of the FGM to the stress intensity factors of the interface crack is researched. The main conclusions are: Either the coating porosity obeys the Gaussian distribution or the uniform distribution, the thermal residual stress in the coating-substrate component have basically little difference as long as the expectation and the variation of the random distribution being the same; The thermal residual stress decreases when the number of the layers of the FGM increases (i.e. the gradient of the material properties is more smooth) under the condition that the relative thickness of the coating, the FGM and the substrate keeps the same; The stress intensity factors of the interface crack decrease when the number of the layers of the FGM increases under the condition that the relative thickness of the coating, the FGM and the substrate keeps the same.


Electrocaloric and magnetic refrigeration are two emerging, solid-state based technology, which could constitute a real chance to overcome vapor compression refrigeration limits. To underline the differences and the affinities concerning such solid-state techniques, in this paper electrocaloric and magnetic refrigeration are compared through some performance parameters. For this purpose, it has been introduced a two-dimensional model, capable to reproduce, in room temperature range, the behaviors of both AMR and AER parallel plates regenerator. AMR and AER are the acronyms of Active Magnetic/Electrocaloric Regenerative cycle, respectively, which are inverse Brayton based thermodynamical cycles. In the model have been tested as refrigerant the most promising magnetic and electrocaloric materials, like Gd, Gd5(SixGe1-x)4, LaFe11.384 Mn0.356Si1.26H1.52, LaFe11.05Co0.94Si1.10, as magnetocaloric, P(VDF-TrFE-CFE)/BSTs, 0.93PMN-0.07PT, PLZTs, as electrocaloric ones. Among them, the PLZT thin film class confers the best results, higher than every magnetocaloric material tested, conferring to electrocaloric refrigeration the real role of the environmental friendly technology of the future.


This research aims to investigate the optimal hydrolysis temperature and sulfuric acid (H2SO4) concentration in isolating nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) from kepok banana pseudostem fiber with the best yield and water solubility. In this research, cellulose fiber was delignified with NaOH at 80°C for 5 minutes, then followed by bleaching with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) for 30 minutes twice. NCC was isolated through acid hydrolysis with H2SO4 (40%, 45%, 50%, 55% v/v) at 45 °C, 50 °C, 55 °C, 60 °C for 1 hour and ultrasonicated for 5 minutes. NCC crystal was then characterized through Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), and water solubility. TEM analysis showed the isolated NCC has a measured length of 125 – 144 nm. The highest NCC yield was obtained at 60°C and 55% H2SO4 at 26.75%. This analysis showed that NCC yield increases with increasing H2SO4 concentration and hydrolysis temperature. The lowest water solubility obtained is 0%, which shows the purity of the cellulose used to isolate NCC.


This article proposes an international theoretical overview of the participatory journalism. This openness has influenced on a diverse media ecosystem, theoretically more transparent, but also with an unpredictable and fluid nature. At this stage journalism has lost control and exclusivity of content and has been forced to open its doors to the collaborative production and active audiences. These new publics have caused the revival of the profession, the emergence of new ways of influence, limitations, responsibilities and concerns that mark the present and the future of journalism.


We employ a novel Monte Carlo simulation scheme to elucidate the stabilization of neutral colloidal microspheres by means of highly charged nanoparticles [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 98, 8950 (2001))]]. In accordance with the experimental observations, we find that small nanoparticle concentrations induce an effective repulsion that prevents gelation caused by the intrinsic van der Waals attraction between colloids. Higher nanoparticle concentrations induce an attractive potential which is, however, qualitatively different from the regular depletion attraction. We also show how colloid-nanoparticle size asymmetry and nanoparticle charge can be used to manipulate the effective interactions.


In this highly accessible new edition, Hauser systematically provides a humanistic account of what transpires when people communicate for some purpose. His masterful blend of classical and contemporary thinking about the use of language and the value of symbolic inducements for social cooperation illuminates fundamental rhetorical precepts and their implications for shaping human realities. The new chapter on publics theory complements the four chapters that introduce the broad themes and issues essential for a rhetorical approach to communication. The new chapter on narrative theory bridges the four chapters devoted to the content of rhetoric and the concluding chapters that emphasize symbolic processes by which humans induce social cooperation and constitute social reality. Throughout the text, Hauser skillfully underscores the power of language to present a particular reality. He explores the fundamental relationship between public discourse and judgment, helping students understand the core of rhetoric's civic function. Through relevant, current examples, he illustrates how knowledge and power shape our social and political practices and how both are formed through discourse.


Recent studies have highlighted the importance of social media brand communities to brand loyalty. This paper aims to stress the role of the brand in that relationship, suggesting a conceptual model in mass-market products in which consumers ' engagement in social media brand communities, brand identity, and consumer-brand identi fi cation are related to brand outcomes, such as trust and loyalty. A qualitative analysis was conducted, through in-depth interviews with experts and focus group discussions with consumers, so as to evaluate their experience with brands on social media. The fi ndings indicated that in mass-markets, consumers engaged in social media brand communities may develop positive attitudes towards the brand, such as trust and loyalty, and that consumer-brand identi fi cation may have a fundamental role in transforming consumer-brand community interactions into consumer-brand relationships.


The localization of the repeating fast radio burst (FRB) 121102 to a low-metallicity dwarf galaxy at z = 0.193, and its association with a luminous quiescent radio source, suggests the possibility that FRBs originate from magnetars, formed by the unusual supernovae that occur in such galaxies. We investigate this possibility via a comparison of magnetar birth rates, the FRB volumetric rate, and host galaxy demographics. We calculate average volumetric rates of possible millisecond magnetar production channels, such as superluminous supernovae (SLSNe), long and short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), and general magnetar production via core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe). For each channel, we also explore the expected host galaxy demographics using their known properties. We determine for the first time the number density of FRB emitters (the product of their volumetric birth rate and lifetime), Gpc−3, assuming that FRBs are predominantly emitted from repetitive sources similar to FRB 121102 and adopting a beaming factor of 0.1. By comparing rates, we find that production via rare channels (SLSNe, GRBs) implies a typical FRB lifetime of ∼30–300 years, in good agreement with other lines of argument. The total energy emitted over this time is consistent with the available energy stored in the magnetic field. On the other hand, any relation to magnetars produced via normal CCSNe leads to a very short lifetime of ∼0.5 years, in conflict with both theory and observation. We demonstrate that due to the diverse host galaxy distributions of the different progenitor channels, many possible sources of FRB birth can be ruled out with host galaxy identifications. Conversely, targeted searches of galaxies that have previously hosted decades-old SLSNe and GRBs may be a fruitful strategy for discovering new FRBs and related quiescent radio sources, and determining the nature of their progenitors.


Since cocaine in blood rapidly hydrolyzes to benzoylecgonine, cocaine concentrations determined in postmortem blood may not reflect the presence or concentration of cocaine in the body at the time of death. The interpretative value of the determination of cocaine and benzoylecgonine in brain tissue was investigated. Cocaine and benzoylecgonine were quantitated by coextraction and formation of the propyl derivative of benzoylecgonine followed by selected ion monitoring gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) using electron ion impact ionization. Cocaine and benzoylecgonine were found to be evenly distributed throughout the brain. Cocaine and benzoylecgonine concentrations were stable in frozen brain tissue (-4 degrees C) on reanalysis after 1 to 3 months of storage, and in refrigerated tissue (10 degrees C) after 30 days of storage. Blood, brain, and liver concentrations of cocaine and benzoylecgonine in 37 cocaine overdose cases and 46 cases in which cocaine was incidental to the cause of death were reviewed. The ratios of cocaine/benzoylecgonine in the toxic cases (brain mean 14.7 and blood mean 0.64) were clearly different from those found in the incidental cases (brain mean 0.87 and blood mean 0.27). The brain/blood ratios of cocaine and benzoylecgonine concentrations generally were characteristic of the time elapsed since cocaine dosing. In cocaine overdose cases, the mean ratio was 9.6 for cocaine and 0.36 for benzoylecgonine. These are within the range found in animal studies for brain/blood ratios of cocaine and benzoylecgonine 0.5 to 2 h after cocaine administration. In incidental cases, the brain/blood ratios were mean 2.5 for cocaine and 1.4 for benzoylecgonine.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


OBJECTIVE
Primary aldosteronism (PA) and sleep apnea syndrome (SAS) are common form of secondary hypertension. Some papers reported the group of high risk of SAS was higher rate of complication with PA than that of low risk of SAS. However, there are few reports which evaluated CPAP implementation rate of the PA patients with SAS diagnosing by Polysomnography (PSG). We aim to clarify clinical characteristics of patients of PA with SAS.

DESIGN AND METHOD
We screened with Apnomonitor 284 PA patients who underwent adrenal venous sampling (AVS). 144 cases with high score of apnea hypopnea index (AHI) or oxygen desaturation index (ODI) were examined by PSG to decide application of CPAP. We compared systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), plasma aldosterone concentration (PAC), plasma renin activity (PRA), PAC/PRA ratio (ARR) body mass index (BMI) and AHI.

RESULTS
AHI: 30.7 ± 2.3/hr(Average ± SEM). 68 PA patients were severe SAS (302, was significantly correlated with AHI (r = 0.3568, P < 0.001). SBP: 150.2 ± 1.2 mmHg, DBP: 94.0 ± 0.9 mmHg, PAC: 26.5 ± 1.1 ng/dl, PRA: 0.35 ± 0.02 ng/ml/hr and ARR: 164.6 ± 11.1 ng/dl per ng/ml/hr were not significantly correlated with AHI.

CONCLUSIONS
This study demonstrated the high prevalence rate of SAS in PA patients. To detect a SAS complication, the screening by apnomonitor and PSG should be performed in PA patients.


Radar Cross Section (RCS) is a technique to identify objects through electromagnetic scattering of an incident wave. Consequently, there are techniques to reduce RCS such as passive cancelation method. This technique was applied to a metallic cylinder where a dielectric load can be identified through a gap in the middle of cylinder. In this paper we present comparisons between experimental results and simulation using Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method. RCS results in the frequency domain were analyzed from 0.8 to 2 GHz using three different sizes of gap and two different materials as load. The frequency where RCS reduction occurs experimentally is close to simulated ones. Experimental results showed a disturbance due to mechanical misalignment that was analyzed. Tridimensional RCS simulations at 1 GHz for PVC and Teflon loads are presented as well.


The growth of online education has created a learning environment that permits nontraditional students the opportunity for degree completion without the burden of relocation. Given the shortage of nurses at all educational levels, many institutions of higher learning have created online programs to meet the needs of both the student and the profession as a whole. Although convenient for the student and beneficial for the nursing profession, the online learning environment can present numerous challenges. Among these challenges are acts of student incivility-creating a difficult work environment for faculty and, at times, negatively affecting other students. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to review problems associated with student incivility and share the experience in creating as well as implementing a professionalism policy that addresses student incivility. Recommendations for policy creation are summarized.


In spite of intense research efforts and after the dedicated Decade of Pain Control and Research, there are not many alternatives to opioid-based narcotic analgesics in the therapeutic armamentarium to treat chronic pain conditions. Chronic opioid treatment is associated with sedation, tolerance, dependence, hyperalgesia, respiratory depression, and constipation. Since the affective component is an integral part of pain perception, perhaps it is inevitable that potent analgesics possess the property of impacting pain pathways in the supraspinal structures. The question still remains to be answered is that whether a powerful analgesic can be devoid of narcotic effect and addictive potentials. Local anesthetics are powerful analgesics for acute pain by blocking voltage-gated sodium channels that are involved in generation and propagation of action potentials. Antidepressants and anticonvulsants have proven to be useful in the treatment of certain modalities of pain. In neuropathic pain conditions, the complexity arises because of the notion that neuronal circuitry is altered, as occurs in phantom pain, in that pain is perceived even in the absence of peripheral nociceptive inputs. If the locus of these changes is in the central nervous system, commonly used analgesics may not be very useful. This review focuses on the recent advances in nociceptive transmission and nociceptive transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 channel as a target for treating chronic pain conditions with its agonists/antagonists.


In practical situations, it is very often desirable to detect multiple optimally sustainable solutions of an optimization problem. The population-based evolutionary multimodal optimization algorithms can be very helpful in such cases. They detect and maintain multiple optimal solutions during the run by incorporating specialized niching operations to aid the parallel localized convergence of population members around different basins of attraction. This paper presents an improved information-sharing mechanism among the individuals of an evolutionary algorithm for inducing efficient niching behavior. The mechanism can be integrated with stochastic real-parameter optimizers relying on differential perturbation of the individuals (candidate solutions) based on the population distribution. Various real-coded genetic algorithms (GAs), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and differential evolution (DE) fit the example of such algorithms. The main problem arising from differential perturbation is the unequal attraction toward the different basins of attraction that is detrimental to the objective of parallel convergence to multiple basins of attraction. We present our study through DE algorithm owing to its highly random nature of mutation and show how population diversity is preserved by modifying the basic perturbation (mutation) scheme through the use of random individuals selected probabilistically. By integrating the proposed technique with DE framework, we present three improved versions of well-known DE-based niching methods. Through an extensive experimental analysis, a statistically significant improvement in the overall performance has been observed upon integrating of our technique with the DE-based niching methods.


The study of agriculture supply response to prices has received immense prominence in recent years and is an important agenda for future research. The objective of the research is to understand the factors affecting the acreage basmati rice supply response in Pakistan covering the period from 1975-76 to 2012-13. The study empirically examines the own and cross price elasticity demand of basmati rice. The analysis of the own price and cross price elasticity indicates that a change in price of a single crop not only affects the land allocation and other resources for that particular crop but also changes the allocation of land to other crops depending upon their competitive relationship. The study concludes that own price and the price of irri rice significantly affect acreage under basmati rice. Regarding cotton the study found that the farm gate price of cotton is insignificant determinant of the basmati rice area while high price of fertilizer have negative impact on basmati rice acreage. Policy makers should formulate such a comprehensive agricultural policy that should treat all the determinants of basmati rice acreage as a group because prices of other crops like irri rice also have significant impact on acreage supply response of basmati rice. Fertilizer price has negative relation with the rice production in this regard to sustain higher rice production government should provide subsidized fertilizers to rice farmers. Technological change is at the heart of high growth strategies so there is need to evolve new high yielding varieties of basmati rice.


This paper describes a recording photoelectric spectral hygrometer developed by the D. S. Weather Bureau for detersiining the amount of water vapor in a vertical column of the atmosphere. Basically, the hygrometer monitors the relative radiant intensity of direct solar energy transmitted in a water-vapor absorption band. A sensing path directed at the sun is maintained by means of a motor-driven equatorial mounting. The intensity of the radiation in the selected region of absorption is compared to that of a nearby region having essentially no absorption. The region of absorption is centered at 0.935 micron and the reference region at 0.881 micron. Narrow band-pass interference filters isolate the two spectral regions. Silicon solar cells are used as radiation detectors. The instrument is designed so that the ratio of the photocurrents is proportional to the ratio of the transmitted radiant energies. Continuous ratio measurements are automatically obtained on a recording, self-balancing ratio bridge. Calibra tion depends on an empirical method involving simul taneous values of total precipitabla water calcu lated from radiosonde observations. Both laboratory testa and trial operation have demonstrated the dependability of the spectral hygrometer. Its stable design makes it suitable for use in the operational activities of meteorology as well as in research.


Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to address an under-explored and under-theorised aspect of gender work in UK academia in that it looks at the professional lives of middle and senior women managers and leaders who are responsible for initial teacher training in their institutions. As Maguire (2002) and Murray (2002, 2006) point out, within academia, teacher trainers occupy a particularly under-researched space despite some recent interest (Korthagen and Vasalos, 2005; Thompson, 2007).

Design/methodology/approach

– This research draws on a larger study which explored how 22 middle and senior managers and leaders in ten institutions in England try to come to terms with carrying out their roles in the education marketplace. In-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with these women and data were also collected from field notes from participant observation undertaken at three of the institutions.

Findings

– Whereas some women are moving into positions of authority in the education marketplace, some existing women managers are being marginalised within new internally differentiated layers of managerial structures. Simultaneously, many women who manage teacher training are engaged in a struggle for survival individually and professionally. Those who succeed have managed to re-invent themselves to endorse neo-liberal discourses.

Originality/value

– Original empirical research which sheds new light on previous discourses related to women managers in neo-liberal academia.


A list of spider species is presented for the Belém Area of Endemism, the most threatened region in the Amazon Basin, comprising portions of eastern State of Pará and western State of Maranhão, Brazil. The data are based both on records from the taxonomic and biodiversity survey literature and on scientific collection databases. A total of 319 identified species were recorded, with 318 occurring in Pará and only 22 in Maranhão. About 80% of species are recorded at the vicinities of the city of Belém, indicating that sampling effort have been strongly biased. To identify potentially high-diversity areas, discounting the effect of variations in sampling effort, the residues of a linear regression between the number of records and number of species mapped in each 0.25°grid cells were analyzed. One grid, representing the Alto Turiaçu Indigenous land, had the highest deviation from the expected from the linear regression, indicating high expected species richness. Several other grid cells showed intermediate values of the regression residuals, indicating species richness moderately above to the expected from the model.


Meat quality is essential for consumer acceptance, it ultimately impacts pork production profitability and it is subject to genetic control. The objective of this study was to map genomic regions associated with economically important meat quality and carcass traits. We performed a genome-wide association (GWA) analysis to map regions associated with 38 meat quality and carcass traits recorded for 948 F2 pigs from the Michigan State University Duroc × Pietrain resource population. The F0, F1, and 336 F2 pigs were genotyped with the Illumina Porcine SNP60 BeadChip, while the remaining F2 pigs were genotyped with the GeneSeek Genomic Profiler for Porcine Low Desnisty (LD) chip, and imputed with high accuracy ( = 0.97). Altogether the genomic dataset comprised 1,019 animals and 44,911 SNP. A Gaussian linear mixed model was fitted to estimate the breeding values and the variance components. A linear transformation was performed to estimate the marker effects and variances. Type I error rate was controlled at a False Discovery Rate of 5%. Seven putative QTL found in this study were previously reported in other studies. Two novel QTL associated with tenderness (TEN) were located on SSC3 [135.6:137.5Mb; False Discovery rate (FDR) < 0.03] and SSC5 (67.3:69.1Mb; FDR < 0.02). The QTL region identified on SSC15 includes Protein Kinase AMP-activated ɣ 3-subunit gene (), which has been associated with 24-h pH (pH24), drip loss (DL) and cook yield (CY). Also, novel candidate genes were identified for TEN in the region on SSC5 [A Kinase (PRKA) Anchor Protein 3 (], and for tenth rib backfat thickness (BF10) [Carnitine O-Acetyltransferase ()] on SSC1. The association of gene polymorphisms with pork quality traits has been reported for several pig populations. However, there are no SNP for this gene on the chip used, thus we genotyped the animals for 2 non-synonymous variants ( and ). We then performed a GWA conditioning on the genotype of both SNP and was associated with pH24, DL, protein content (PRO) and CY ( < 0.004) and T30N with Juiciness, TEN, shear force, pH24, PRO, and CY < 0.04). Finally, we performed a GWA conditioning on the genotype of the SNP peak detected in this study, and T30N remained associated only with PRO ( < 0.02). Therefore, in this study we identified 2 novel QTL regions, suggest 2 novel candidate genes, and conclude that other SNP in PRKAG3 or nearby gene(s) explain the observed associations on SSC15 in this population.


Ab initio Hartree-Fock molecular orbital calculations were applied to the crystalline imidazole and its derivatives in order to examine systematically the effect of possible N-H---N type hydrogen bond-ing on the nuclear quadrupole interaction parameters in these materials. The nitrogen quadrupole coupling constant (QCC) and the asymmetry parameter (η) of the electric field gradient (EFG) were found to depend strongly on the size of the molecular clusters, from single molecule, to dimer, trimer and to the infinite molecular chain, i.e., crystalline state, implying that the intermolecular N-H -N hydrogen bond affects significantly the electronic structure of imidazole molecule. A certain correla-tion between the QCC of 14N and the N-H bond distance R was also found and interpreted on the basis of the molecular orbital theory. However, we found that the value of the calculated EFG at the hy-drogen position of the N-H group, or the corresponding QCC value of 2 H, increases drastically as R-3 when R is shorter than about 0.1 nm, due probably to the inapplicability of the Gaussian basis sets to the very short chemical bond as revealed in the actual imidazole derivatives. We suggested that the ob-served N-H distances in imidazole derivatives should be re-examined.


The formation of noncovalent complexes between the HIV-1 nucleocapsid protein p7 (NC) and RNA hairpins SL2-SL4 of the Psi-recognition element was investigated by direct infusion electrospray ionization-Fourier transform mass spectrometry (ESI-FTMS). The high resolution afforded by this method provided the unambiguous characterization of the stoichiometry and composition of complexes formed by multiple equilibria in solution. For each hairpin, the formation of a 1:1 complex was found to be the primary binding mode in solutions of intermediate salt content (150 mM ammonium acetate). Binding of multiple units of NC was observed with lower affinity and a maximum stoichiometry matching the limit calculated from the number of nucleotides in the construct and the size of the footprint of NC onto single-stranded nucleic acids, thus implying the defolding of the hairpin three-dimensional (3D) structure. Dissociation constants of 62 +/- 22 nM, 178 +/- 64 nM, and 1.3 +/- 0.5 microM were determined for SL2, SL3-2, and SL4, respectively, which are similar to values obtained by spectroscopic and calorimetric methods with the additional confidence offered by a direct, rather than inferred, knowledge of the binding stoichiometry. Competitive binding experiments carried out in solutions of intermediate ionic strength, which has the effect of weakening the electrostatic interactions in solution, provided a direct way of evaluating the stabilizing contributions of H-bonding and hydrophobic interactions that are more sensitive to the sequence and structural context of the different hairpins. The relative scale of binding affinity obtained in this environment reflects the combination of contributions provided by the different structures of both the tetraloop and the double-stranded stem. The importance of the stem 3D structure in modulating the binding activity was tested by a competitive binding experiment that included the SL3-2 RNA construct, a DNA analogue of SL3 (SL3(DNA)), and a DNA analogue in which all four loop bases were replaced with abasic nucleotides (SL3(abasic)). NC was found to bind the A-type double-stranded stem of SL3-2 RNA at least 30 times more tightly than the B-type helical structure of SL3(DNA). Eliminating the stabilization provided by the interactions with the tetraloop bases made the binding of SL3(abasic) approximately 50 times weaker than that of SL3(DNA).


Industrial development and continuity, which are indispensable for countries, depend on sustainability, which can be defined as Permanent Capability. In the basic steps of industrial sustainability, there are social, economic, and environmental factors. ISO 14001, 14004, 14005, and26000 regarding sustainability are important standards in this field. Research & Development and Technology Transfer are among the main factors that foster industrial development and continuity. Research & Development has three basic steps; it includes basic research, applied research, and experimental development, and its most important output is innovation. The industrial application of innovation or its transfer is possible with Technology Transfer, and this systematic process consists of five steps: providing the most suitable technology source to determine the most suitable option, selecting the optimum technology, having the necessary equipment and license, transferring knowledge and experience, and ensuring maximum benefit. Training and measurements are required to manage the process and for the internalization of the transferred technology. In this context, this review provides a basic and brief view of Research & Development, Technology Transfer, and Sustainability concepts and interactions, which are critical for the pharmaceutical industry.

Peer Review History:
Received: 1 May 2021; Revised: 12 June; Accepted: 27 June, Available online: 15 July 2021
Academic Editor: Dr. Ali Abdullah Al-yahawi, Al-Razi university, Department of Pharmacy, Yemen, email@example.com
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Reviewer(s) detail:
Dr. Govind Vyas, Compliance & Regulatory Officer Inva-Tech Pharmaceuticals LLC, New-Jersey, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Dr. Mohammad Bayan,  Faculty of Pharmacy, Philadelphia University, P.O. Box: 1 Philadelphia University 19392 Jordan, firstname.lastname@example.com


The author of the article considers prerequisites for forming the concept of local community building and its main points. He analyzed approaches to building communities on the basis of exogenous and endogenous types of development and identified their characteristics and methods of implementation as well.The article focuses on the importance of the problem which is caused by the necessity to comprehend theoretically phenomena of social transformations within the frames of local collective bodies and to substantiate the appropriate methodology for developing local communities, taking into account national traditions of self-government.The main conclusions: the concept of local community building stipulates the transition of local communities from the objects of government to the subjects of government; getting free from external dependence; creating conditions for an individual to participate in the community life, their self-actualization and self-determination. The concept implies that the source and resources for development are not placed outside the local community but are enclosed in it itself; external government is succeeded by self-government; the driving force of transformations is a local community which firmly establishes itself while changing its environment.


The aim of this article is to describe which of the different available discourses women relate to as revealed in the way they talk about menopause. We use a discourse analytic approach, which implies that meaning is ascribed to things according to how we talk about them. Twenty-four menopausal women from Denmark were interviewed. They were selected to cover a broad spectrum of Danish women with different menopausal experiences and social background factors. Seven previously identified discourses could be found in the interviews, though to varying degrees from woman to woman. Nearly all women used terms from the biomedical sphere like `a period of decline and decay', even if they did not necessarily agree with this view. Also the existential discourse permeated most of the interviews, especially when the conversation turned to the ageing process, femininity and self-development. The way the menopause was talked about almost became kaleidoscopic when images speedily changed from the decrepit osteoporotic woman or a woman with lack of vitality and sex-appeal to a healthy and strong woman with control over her body and self. Since many women contact doctors in relation to menopause, and since the way doctors talk about menopause is influential, doctors should carefully consider which words and images they use in the counselling. The medical way of perceiving menopause is just one of many, and doctors must be aware that there are other different and partially contradicting discourses at play in society and in the women's universes.


Recently, an improved digital signature scheme was proposed by He. However, there is a weakness in He's scheme, where the forgers can forge valid signatures. In this paper, we show that there is also a drawback that a public key may have more than one corresponding secret key, where the verifier cannot determine who the real signer is. As a result, we improve He's scheme to overcoming the above flaws. Moreover, we propose a message-passing protocol. In the proposed protocol, the delivered message can be extended by the valid senders, and the appended signatures are used to ensure the integrity of the message and to verify each signer of each sub-message


Tourism collaboration in Pan-Pearl River Delta area is a systematic project that calls for all-out cooperation and concerted push forward from all parties of "9+2" and related departments of the central government. By employing the modes and ideas of game theory and Pareto optimization theory,the paper tries to make clear the problems and obstacles existing in the tourism collaboration and constructs a series of scientific tourism industry policies and tourism collaboration mechanism. Different and flexible tourism industry policies in different regions are formulated so as to realize the ideal state of tourism collaboration in Pan-Pearl River Delta area——regional equilibrium.


This paper examines Aristotle's concept of happiness as encapsulated in his Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle argues that happiness is the supreme practical good because it is perfect, final, self-sufficing and complete in itself. For him, happiness is simply defined as rational eudaemonism (an activity of the soul according to reason in contrast with mere sensual pleasure). In view of the foregoing, this paper raises the question of whether happiness is actually an end as Aristotle posits. What is happiness and how can we find it? Our objective is to critically evaluate Aristotle's position on the questions raised here and to see whether we can develop a new moral thesis that can truly reflect our existential realities. Although Aristotle's position gives us a moral leap and is quite commendable in its ethicoepistemological profundity, this paper, however, maintains that happiness is an elusive concept. It argues that if at all anything termed happiness exists in this world, it might only be transient, ephemeral and illusory and cannot be seen as an end in the physical absolute terms when viewed from the standpoint of Plato's metaphysical dualism. The paper also argues that Aristotle did not say enough about what we are supposed to do to attain happiness. He gives detailed descriptions of many of the virtues, moral and intellectual, but with a persistent 'air of indeterminacy'. The paper concludes that moral virtues are a necessary component, but not a sufficient condition for happiness. Keywords : Happiness, rationality, virtue, means, end


Zinc Oxide (ZnO) is considered as one of the best materials already used as a window layer in solar cells due to its antireflective capability. The ZnO/MgF2 bilayer thin film is more efficient as antireflective coating. In this work, ZnO and ZnO/MgF2 thin films were deposited on glass substrate using pulsed laser deposition and thermal evaporation deposition methods. The optical measurements indicated that ZnO thin layer has an energy gap of (3.02 eV) while ZnO/MgF2 bilayer gives rise to an increase in the energy gap. ZnO/MgF2 bilayer shows a high energy gap (3.77 eV) with low reflectance (1.1-10 %) and refractive index (1.9) leading to high transmittance, this bilayer could be a good candidate optical material to improve the performance of solar cell window.


This research is a classroom action research conducted in two cycles. Each cycle has 4 steps, namely: Planning, Implementation, Observation and Reflection. The data source for this study was Class V students at MI Islamiyah Brokoh, Wonotunggal District, Batang Regency for the 2019/2020 academic year with a total of 22 students, consisting of 10 male students and 12 female students. Data collection techniques by observation, ability tests and learning outcomes research determine the volume of geometric shapes. The data analysis technique used in this research is qualitative descriptive statistics.

 Based on the results of the study it can be concluded that the analysis obtained a significant increase from cycle I and cycle II. Study results determine the volume of the geometric shape. in pre-cycle I in the complete category was 59.09% the number of students who completed was 13 students. In cycle II there was an increase in the percentage of student learning outcomes in the complete category of 100%, while 22 students completed.

 The results of this study suggest for students to be more active so that fun and meaningful learning can be achieved. Suggestions for teachers should use the STAD Type Cooperative approach to improve learning outcomes in determining the volume of geometric shapes. in order to measure the ability of students as a whole.


In this paper coincidence summing corrections in gamma-ray spectrometry have been analyzed in depth. Experimental setup included a n-type germanium detector and two efficient geometries of measurement (Marinelli beaker and air filter) calibrated with multi gamma radionuclides in the energy range of 40-1500 keV. Monte Carlo simulations were carried out using the GEANT4 code in order to develop this work. Firstly an optimization of the detector dimensions was performed to obtain the full-energy peak efficiency curve. Next, the simulation of the decay schemes for involved multi gamma radionuclides were appended to the GEANT4 code including beta, alpha, EC decay, together with the subsequent relaxation process consisting of a cascade of fluorescent X-rays and Auger electrons. In order to test the simulations an comparison between an experimental and a calculated spectra of 133Ba point source was carried out. Finally coincidence summing effects for gamma-ray emission and X-ray, Auger electron, beta and EC electron were studied in detail.


Introduction: Hydrological phenomena are often multidimensional and very complex. Hence, the joint modeling of two or more random variables is required to investigate the probabilistic behavior of them. To this aim, the copulas can be efficiently utilized to derive multivariate distributions. In addition, the copula functions can quantify the dependence structure between correlated random variables. Estimation of low flow is necessary in different fields of hydrological studies such as water quality management, determination of minimum required flow at downstream for producing electricity and cooling purposes, design of intakes, aquaculture, design of irrigation systems and assessing the effect of long-term droughts on ecosystems. Low flows can be determined based on low flow indices. There are many types of low flow indices which among them the 7-days low flow with different return periods are more popular. Heretofore, numerous studies have been performed in the field of univariate analysis of river low flows, but the low flows of two river branches can be simultaneously analyzed using copula functions. Copula is a flexible approach for constructing joint distribution with different types of marginal distributions. Indeed, the copula is a function which links univariate marginal distributions to construct a bivariate or multivariate distribution function.
Materials and Methods: Hydrological phenomena often have different properties, where for their frequency analysis; they may be examined either individually or concurrently. These variables are not independent, rather they are interconnected and the change in one of them affects the other. Thus, the univariate frequency analysis can bring about some error due to neglecting the interdependence between these random variables. the copula is a function which joint the marginal distribution functions for constructing a bivariate or multivariate function. Development of copula functions is alleged to Sklar (1959) who described how univariate distribution can be jointed to form a multivariate distribution. Generally a copula function is a transfer of a multivariate function from to . This transfer separate marginal distributions from F function and the copula function, C, is only related to dependency among variables, therefore it present a full description of inner dependency structure. In other words, the Sklar's theorem states that for multivariate distributions, the inner dependency among the variables and univariate marginal distributions is separated and the dependency structure explained by copula function. The copula function divided into many families which among them then the Archimedean copula is widely used in multivariate analysis of hydrological events and also has an explicit formula for its cumulative form which is an important advantage in comparison with elliptical copula functions that have not explicit formula. Application of the copulas can be useful for the accurate multivariate frequency analysis of hydrological phenomena. There are many copula functions and some methods were proposed for estimating the copula parameters. Since the copula functions are mathematically complicated, estimating of the copula parameter is an effortful work. In this study, five different copula functions including, Ali - Mikhail – Haq, Clayton, Frank, Gal ambos and Gumbel-Hougaard were used for multivariate analysis of 7-days low flow in Dez basin.
Results and Discussion: In this study, the low flow of the Dez basin at junction of river branches during 1956-2012 were investigated using copula functions. For this purpose, firstly the 7-days low flow series of considered stations were extracted and then the homogeneity of the series was examined using Mann-Kendall test. The results showed that the 7-days low flow series of Dez basin are homogenous. In the next step, 11 different distribution functions were fitted on low flow series and the Logistic distribution was selected as the best fitted marginal distribution for considered stations. After specifying the marginal distributions, the Archimedean and Extreme value families of copula functions were used for multivariate frequency analysis of 7-days low flow. For this study, the best-fitted copula was specified in two ways. For the first specification, the nonparametric empirical copula was computed and compared with the values of the parametric copulas. The parametric copula that was closest to the empirical copula was defined as the most appropriate choice. The second specification was based on the statistical approach. The results indicated that for pair data of Sepid Dasht Sezar and Sepid Dasht Zaz stations, the Gumbel-Hougaard copula had the most accordance with empirical copula. In order to investigate the joint return periods, we used the joint return periods in two cases of AND and OR forms and also conditional joint return period.
Conclusion: Based on the obtained results from joint analysis of the low flow at upstream of the junction of two river branches, it was specified that two river branches of Sepid Dasht Sezar and Sepid Dasht Zaz may experience sever simultaneous drought events every 200 years.


Graphene is a mono-layer of sp 2 bonded carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern. It is considered a promising candidate for the next generation of electronic materials as it exhibits both electron and hole conduction with extremely high carrier mobilities. Graphene films were prepared via chemical vapor deposition and then transferred to doped Si/SiO 2 wafers. It was washed in toluene several times to remove any organic deposits left behind during the transfer process. Atomic force microscopy images shows that the graphene surface is very rough. The graphene device was then electrically characterized in a field effect transistor configuration as a function of temperature and the resistance calculated at the Dirac point minimum of the device transconductance curve. The Dirac point resistance showed weak temperature dependence characteristic of graphene. Thermally evaporating 1nm of silver (Ag) over the device reduced the surface roughness and made the graphene surface more planar. Electrically characterizing the device again showed that there was reduced mobility but no change in the charge transport mechanism. Our results imply that the charge mobility in graphene is largely governed by the contact with the substrate and the charge transport mechanism is unaffected after covering the surface with 1nm of silver.


The long-term success of a hamstring tendon graft depends not only on the type of device that is used for fixation but also on the mechanical interlocking of the soft tissue between the fixation device and bone. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of screw insertion torque on the structural properties of soft tissue fixed to bone with a spiked metal washer. Two bovine tendons, one similar in size to a human semitendinosus tendon and the other similar in size to a human gracilis tendon, were secured to a bovine femur using a figure-of-8 technique with screws and metal spiked washers. A single load to failure was applied at 25 mm/sec. A significant positive linear correlation was observed between fixation screw insertion torque magnitude and the ultimate failure load value. An increase in the fixation screw insertion torque produced an increase in the ultimate failure load value. Similarly, there was a significant positive linear correlation between fixation screw insertion torque magnitude and the average maximum linear load value. No relationship was detected between screw insertion torque magnitude and the linear stiffness values of the tendon-fixation construct, indicating that a reproducible model was used. This study demonstrates that screw insertion torque is an important variable that controls the initial strength of soft tissue fixation to bone.


We explore the problem of classification within a medical image data-set based on a feature vector extracted from the deepest layer of pre-trained Convolution Neural Networks. We have used feature vectors from several pre-trained structures, including networks with/without transfer learning to evaluate the performance of pre-trained deep features versus CNNs which have been trained by that specific dataset as well as the impact of transfer learning with a small number of samples. All experiments are done on Kimia Path24 dataset which consists of 27,055 histopathology training patches in 24 tissue texture classes along with 1,325 test patches for evaluation. The result shows that pre-trained networks are quite competitive against training from scratch. As well, fine-tuning does not seem to add any tangible improvement for VGG16 to justify additional training while we observed considerable improvement in retrieval and classification accuracy when we fine-tuned the Inception structure.


Electroluminescence (EL) measurements have been performed on a set of In(Ga)As-GaAs quantum-dot (QD) structures with varying spacer layer growth temperature. At room temperature and low injection current, a superlinear dependence of the integrated EL intensity (IEL) on the injection current is observed. This superlinearity decreases as the spacer layer growth temperature increases and is attributed to a reduction in the amount of nonradiative recombination. Temperature-dependent IEL measurements show a reduction of the IEL with increasing temperature. Two thermally activated quenching processes, with activation energies of ~ 157 meV and ~ 320 meV, are deduced and these are attributed to the loss of electrons and holes from the QD ground state to the GaAs barriers. Our results demonstrate that growing the GaAs barriers at higher temperatures improves their quality, thereby increasing the radiative efficiency of the QD emission.


ABSTRACT In this work, the toxicity of imidazolium-based ionic liquids (ILs) and the enhancement of high-solid anaerobic digestion by pretreatment were studied. Compared with [Bmim]Cl, [Bmim]OAc and [Bmim]BF4, [Bmim]PF6 had the highest toxicity. When the mass ratio of [Bmim]PF6 to grass was higher than 1:10, biogas was not produced within 30 days. The ability to remove lignin and hemicellulose followed the sequence of [Bmim]OAc, [Bmim]Cl, [Bmim]BF4 and [Bmim]PF6. The crystallinity index of grass pretreated with [Bmim]OAc, [Bmim]Cl, [Bmim]BF4 and [Bmim]PF6 reduced by 73.83%, 54.44%, 17.52% and 7.47%, respectively. The pretreatment with ILs enhanced the methane yield of grass by reducing crystallinity and particle size. The grass pretreated with [Bmim]OAc had the highest methane yield, about 221 mL/g volatile solids, due to its good lignin removal ability and relative low toxicity. After 10 times recycling, the cumulative methane yield of grass pretreated by recycled [Bmim]OAc decreased by 11.95%.


Introduction: Clostridium difficile is the leading cause of hospital-acquired diarrhoea, driven mainly by the consumption of 4C antibiotics (co-amoxiclav, clindamycin, cephalosporins and ciprofloxacin). In order to support secondary care clinicians in prescribing antibiotics, an algorithm helping to identify patients at high risk of contracting Clostridium difficile infections (CDI) has been created. The aim of this study was to identify factors that are influencing the implementation of a risk predictive tool in secondary care, focusing on podiatrist as potential users. Methods: Four podiatrists from NHS Fife were interviewed to gather their perception of CDI, the antibiotic prescription process, and the usefulness of a CDI tool in supporting their antibiotic prescribing decisions. The interviews were thematically analysed in NVivo using the consolidated framework for implementation research. Result: A facilitator emerged during the interviews suggested that, although podiatrists tend to not prescribe 4C antibiotics, they comprehend the risks involved with CDI. Therefore, for patient's safety netting purposes, the use of the CDI tool during consultations was considered useful. However, a barrier emerged suggested that, although implementing the tool into their electronic system was deemed favourable, this isn't feasible, due to patient data in secondary care being allocated in different systems. Therefore, standalone app or website platforms were perceived as more appropriate to develop the CDI tool. Conclusion: In general it was understood that podiatrists are supportive in having a CDI tool, however, due to the impossibility of implementation of the tool into their system, a website or app will be developed.


: Novel three-dimensional (3D) mesostructured ZnCo 2 O 4 cubes are prepared through a convenient and practical hydrothermal route combined with an annealing treatment. The as-prepared ZnCo 2 O 4 cubes range from 3 - 4 µm in size, and are composed of a large number of nanoparticles and pores. According to N 2 adsorption-desorption measurements, the as-synthesized ZnCo 2 O 4 cubes have a high BET surface area (41.4 m 2 ∙ g - 1 ) and mesoporous (6.32 nm) nature. Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) are assembled using the as-prepared ZnCo 2 O 4 nanomaterial and metallic lithium as the anode and the cathode, respectively, and their lithium storage performance is investigated. The electrode material exhibits highly reversible lithium storage capacity and strong cycling stability at high current density for 100 cycles. More importantly, the ZnCo 2 O 4 cube electrode still presents a relatively high specific capacity at high rate. The excellent lithium storage performance is attributed to the novel structure of the 3D mesostructured cubes, which can facilitate Li + diffusion, increase electrode/electrolyte contact area, and endure volume changes the during Li + insertion/extraction process.


A family in which the mother and two of four daughters had a diagnosis of pseudotumor cerebri and one son developed communicating hydrocephalus is described. The other two daughters both have a long history of headaches but no signs of intracranial hypertension. The argument is advanced that there exists a defect of cerebrospinal fluid absorption common to pseudotumor cerebri and communicating hydrocephalus.


BACKGROUND
Lead poisoning is associated with physical, cognitive and neurobehavioral impairment in children and many household interventions to prevent lead exposure have been trialled.

OBJECTIVES
To determine the effectiveness of household interventions in preventing or reducing lead exposure in children as measured by reductions in blood lead levels and/or improvements in cognitive development.

SEARCH STRATEGY
Trials were identified through electronic searches of CENTRAL 2006 (Issue 1), MEDLINE 1966 to March 2006, and thirteen other electronic databases and contacting experts to find unpublished studies.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised and quasi randomised trials of household educational or environmental interventions to prevent lead exposure in children where at least one standardised outcome measure was reported.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two reviewers independently reviewed all eligible studies for inclusion, assessed study quality and extracted data. Triallists were contacted to obtain missing information.

MAIN RESULTS
Twelve studies (2239 children) were included. All studies reported blood lead level outcomes and none reported on cognitive or neurobehavioural outcomes. Studies were subgrouped according to their intervention type. Meta-analysis of both continuous and dichotomous data was performed for subgroups where appropriate. Educational interventions were not effective in reducing blood lead levels (continuous: WMD 0.13, 95% CI -0.30, 0.56, I2 = 41.6; dichotomous >/= 10 microg/dL (>/= 0.48 micromol/l): RR 1.02 (95% CI 0.79, 1.30, I2 = 0); dichotomous >/= 15 microg/dL (>/=0.72 micromol/l): RR 0.60, 95% CI 0.33, 1.09, I2 = 0). Meta-analysis of the dichotomous data for the dust control subgroup found no evidence of effectiveness. The studies using soil abatement (removal and replacement) and combination intervention groups were not able to be meta-analysed due to substantial differences between studies.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
Currently there is no evidence of effectiveness for household interventions for education or dust control measures in reducing blood lead levels in children as a population health measure. There is insufficient evidence for soil abatement or combination interventions. Further trials are required to establish the most effective intervention for prevention of lead exposure. Key elements should include longer term follow up and measures of compliance as well as performing trials in developing countries and differing socio-economic groups in developed countries.


Pyridoxine deficiency produced in rats during the period of development of the central nervous system resulted in a decreased incorporation of (1-14C) acetate into total lipid extracts of brain. It also resulted in a uniform decrease in the incorporation of the labeled precursor into the cholesterol, glycolipid and phospholipid fractions of brain. The specific radioactivity of purified cerebrosides and sulfatides was decreased by 78% in pyridoxine-deficient rats with respect to controls. The decreased incorporation of labeled precursor in the deficient rats was not due to the labeled precursor, since the specific radioactivity of brain acetate and the brain concentrations of acetyl coenzyme A and acetate were similar in both deficient and control rats. The results indicate that in pyridoxine deficiency established in the young rat there is an impaired formation of myelin.


In the present paper, the effects of adding nanoscale metallic particles 3 2 O Al γ on the hydrodynamic and thermal characteristics of laminar liquid flow (water and ethylene glycol) through two-dimensional and axi-symmetric passages are numerically investigated. The present numerical results are obtained using a 2D finite-volume code which solves the governing equations in polar and Cartesian coordinate systems. The pressure field is obtained with the well-known SIMPLE algorithm. Advective volume-face fluxes are approximated using the upstream quadratic interpolation scheme, QUICK. It is assumed that the passages examined in this investigation are under constant wall heat flux boundary condition. For each passage, numerical results are obtained at two Reynolds numbers of 100 and 250. The nanoparticle volume concentration is varied between 1 to 10%. It is found that the addition of nanoparticles increases both the wall heat transfer coefficient and wall shear stress. In general, the inclusion of nanoparticles to the base fluid has more pronounce effect on the wall shear stress than on the wall heat transfer coefficient. Results show that the ethylene glycol 3 2 O Al γ nanofluid gives higher heat transfer enhancement and shear stress rise


There is global interest in utilization of biomass energy through thermochemical processes such as gasification. The crucial step in many gasification processes is the upgrading of the produced gas, removing for example problematic components, such as tar, preferably with a flexible solution that adapts to several feedstock compositions, gasification technologies, and conditions. The present work focuses on the underpinning modeling for the development of a burner for partial combustion in an autothermal tar reformer. A design and modeling study considering the effect of the burner geometry and inlet locations on flame stability was performed. The model and the constructed burner is verified and validated against experimental results, displaying a successful operation of the combustion zone, verifying and validating the developed model against specific requirements. The verified model was finally applied for an extended process window.


.. Objectives: The objective of our study was to evaluate the endocrine and cardiac complications in survivors of childhood ALL. Study Design: Descriptive Cross Sectional study. Setting: Department of Pediatric Hematology-oncology, Endocrinology and Cardiology at The Children Hospital & Institute of Child health Multan (CH& ICH). Period: January 2019 to June 2019. Material & Methods: Sixty patients were enrolled after taking informed consent from patient/parents. Endocrine complications include (growth failure, overweight/obesity, hyperlipidemia, thyroid disorders, precocious puberty) and cardiac complications include hypertension and low ejection fraction were evaluated. Results: Out of 60 ALL survivors 32 were males (53.3%) and 28 were females (46.7%). At diagnosis patient's age range was 7-17 years with median age of 11.6 years. At study median age was 17 years with age range of 13 to 23 years. Among our ALL survivors 56.6% had one complication and 25% had multiple problems. Obesity (25%), overweight (20%) and hyperlipidemia (26.4%) were the three common complications followed by short stature (5%), thyroid disorders (3.3%) and hypertension (3.3%). Conclusion: We report high prevalence (56.6%) of these complications from south Punjab. Therefore extended follow up of ALL survivors is needed in order to identify an abnormality and timely treatment and improved quality of life.


0 false 14 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false In 1920, after only eighteen months at the studio, Gloria Swanson was a major star at Paramount. The five films she had made with Cecil B. DeMille had been massive box office successes, often generating ten times their cost in revenues. Paramount was happily planning to transition Swanson smoothly (and less expensively) into work with another director. So the studio heads were stunned and appalled when Swanson announced that she was pregnant, and that she hoped to have a large family. The received wisdom at the time was that no woman with a child could portray a romantic lead on screen, and Swanson was cautioned to abandon her plans for a family. This paper looks at how Swanson and other early Hollywood players considered their parenting options and how the public received the news that female stars were mothers. It considers in detail how Swanson—the first to pull off motherhood and return to romantic stardom—negotiated with the studio to survive the challenge of maternity. It also considers the strategies the studio employed to minimize its risk in using Swanson, including re-partnering her with DeMille for one more feature. Paramount chose the material for her first postnatal venture, The Affairs of Anatol , shrewdly. This paper draws on the extensive archival research that is the basis for the biography I am preparing of the actress, Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close-Up.


The infection risks of Biden, Wallace, and the audience by Trump and the first lady were assessed during the first presidential debate. The debate scene was established numerically, and two cases, i.e., only Trump being infected and both Trump and the first lady being infected, were set up for risk analysis. The infection probabilities at different positions were assessed by using the Wells–Riley equation with consideration of the effects of air distribution and face mask. It was concluded that (1) the infection risks of Biden and Wallace were lower due to the reasonable distance from Trump, with the maximum probability of 0.34% at 40 quanta/h for both Trump and the first lady being infected; (2) the infection probabilities in the audience area were lower for the long distance from the debate stage, with the maximum probability of 0.35%. Wearing masks resulted in a notable decrease in the infection probability to 0.09%; and (3) there was a certain local area surrounding Trump and the first lady with a relatively greater infection probability. The preliminary analysis provides some reference for protection of the next presidential debate and other public events.


Distributed synchronized GPU training is commonly used for deep learning. The resource constraint of using fixed GPUs makes large-scale deep learning training jobs suffer, and also lowers the cluster utilization. However, incorporating resource elasticity often introduces non-determinism in model accuracy, which is mainly due to the lack of capability to isolate the model training procedure from hardware resources. We introduce EasyScale, an elastic framework that scales distributed training on heterogeneous GPUs while producing deterministic deep learning models. EasyScale follows the data-parallel training flow strictly, traces the accuracy-relevant factors carefully, utilizes the deep learning characteristics for context switching efficiently, thus achieving elastic accuracy-consistent model training. To saturate the computation capability of heterogeneous GPUs, EasyScale dynamically assigns workers based on our intra-job and inter-job scheduling policies, minimizing GPU idle time and maximizing aggregated job throughput accordingly. Deployed in an online serving cluster of CompanyA, EasyScale powers elastic deep learning training jobs to utilize free GPUs opportunistically, improving the overall cluster utilization by 62.1% without violating SLA.


In this paper we present a wearable wireless accelerometer device for people fall detection in ambient assisted living (AAL) applications, communicating with care holders and relatives of the assisted person through an ADSL based gateway. The wearable system is a PCB with a commercial three-axes, digital-output MEMS accelerometer chip, a ZigBee transceiver and a programmable logic (FPGA). The raw acceleration stream from the MEMS sensor is processed by suitable algorithms on the FPGA, whose aim is to detect potential falls and their level of confidence, delivering an alarm information to the gateway by means of the ZigBee transceiver. Several sessions of data collection with real actors have been performed to define and characterize fall detection algorithms. Experimental results show that the accelerometer is a fundamental component of a multi-sensor network system and on this basis a custom device has been realized.


Large-scale Internet applications, such as content distribution networks, are deployed in a geographically distributed manner and emit massive amounts of carbon footprint at the data center. To provide uniform low access latencies, Cisco has introduced Fog computing as a new paradigm which can transform the network edge into a distributed computing infrastructure for applications. Fog nodes are geographically distributed and the deployment size at each location reflects the regional demand for the application. Thus, we need to control the fraction of user traffic to data center to maximize the social welfare. In this paper, we consider the emerging problem of joint resource allocation and minimizing carbon footprint problem for video streaming service in Fog computing. To solve the largescale optimization, we develop a distributed algorithm based on the proximal algorithm and alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). The numerical results show that our algorithm converges to near optimum within fifteen iterations, and is insensitive to step sizes.


Glucocorticoid drugs are commonly used in the treatment of many acute and chronic inflammatory diseases. However, application of these steroids is limited because of their physico-chemical properties, such as very low water solubility. Glucocorticoids also exhibit serious adverse side effects. Therefore, new drug delivery systems are being developed, with the aim of improving the physicochemical properties of glucocorticoids while avoiding undesirable side effects associated with systemic administration. Here we discuss the design and synthesis of conjugates of prednisolone (PD), methylprednisolone (MPD) and similar glucocorticoids. In this review, possibilities for targeting inflammatory sites, and reducing dosages and administration frequency through increasing drug circulation time are discussed. This review summarises synthetic approaches for the preparation of covalent conjugates, which are divided into two groups: low molecular weight conjugates and polymeric conjugates. These two groups are further divided into subgroups based on the chemical structure of the conjugates. Published results from in vitro and in vivo testing of prepared conjugates are also discussed.