Problems and sequential process of Bulgarian families' adaptation to new conditions in South Bessarabia are considered in the research. During the resettlement, Bulgarian migrants brought their traditional relationship, elements of social organization and family's structure to Bessarabia which were distinctive to the migrants' original areas.

The aim of the research is the ascertainment of main trends in evolution of Bulgarian families' forms, structure and elements in daily life in South Bessarabia together with monitoring modifications which were inherent its intergenerational interaction and ancestral relations during the first half of XIX century.

Methodological basis for the research is principles of historicism, systems and interdisciplinarity coupled with historically comparative and micro-historical methods.

Scientific novelty of the research related to broad reconstruction of Bulgarian families' qualitative and quantitative characteristics, and also to identification of specific historically-demographic and developing processes based on analysis of the massive historical sources from the moment the resettlement commenced till the middle of XIX century.

While analyzing the data a 15-year period (1835–1850) in the first half of XIX century was established for family's development and its rising size in South Bessarabia. This fact influenced on population growth in Bulgarian colonies up to 72,1 %. Possible forms of family relations are given together with possibly the most optimal complicated undivided family. Statistic data on quantity of men and women is also given in percentage terms, together with age difference between partners and low divorce rates. Bulgarian family appeared rather resistant social micro-structure under the circumstances of South Bessarabia.

Conclusions: based on definite number of indicators, the author concluded that the Bulgarians brought inherent marriage traditions, demographic behavior and adaptive mechanisms to their family institution. Those exact mechanisms under the influence of legislative, administrative, socio-economic and natural factors led to the formation of a new model of demographic behavior.


Analogue of classical Hurwitz numbers is defined in the work for regular coverings of surfaces with marked points by seamed surfaces. Class of surfaces includes surfaces of any genus and orientability, with or without boundaries; coverings may have certain singularities over the boundary and marked points. Seamed surfaces introduced earlier are not actually surfaces. A simple example of seamed surface is book-like seamed surface: several rectangles glued by edges like sheets in a book. We prove that Hurwitz numbers for a class of regular coverings with action of fixed finite group $G$ on cover space such that stabilizers of generic points are conjugated to a fixed subgroup $K\subset G$ defines a new example of Klein Topological Field Theory (KTFT). It is known that KTFTs are in one-to-one correspondence with certain class of algebras, called in the work Cardy-Frobenius algebras. We constructed a wide class of Cardy-Frobenius algebras, including particularly all Hecke algebras for finite groups. Cardy-Frobenius algebras corresponding to regular coverings of surfaces by seamed surfaces are described in terms of group $G$ and its subgroups. As a result, we give an algebraic formula for introduced Hurwitz numbers.


The main function of Lithuanian pilot, training and testing farms (hereinafter – PTT farms) is to enable the agricultural education and training institutions to carry out precision experiments with plants and animals in natural and artificial environmental conditions, provide a framework for theoretical and applied research, to develop innovation and to promote the latest scientific achievements in agriculture. PTT farms have bases for research and new technologies application and implementation. Their task is to promote scientific knowledge, using a variety of media: to organize conferences, seminars, workshops, field days, to participate in events, presenting the innovations in agriculture. Unfortunately not all of these PTT farms fulfil the expectations, associated with their destination. Due to different circumstances, many of them gives priority to economic activity – the innovative agricultural production, but their results are different. PTT farms scientific and experimental development research areas are too narrow or have lost their relevance. Carried out dissemination of research results is unsystematic, spontaneous and not guaranteed feedback with the beneficiaries of these results. This raises the need to evaluate Lithuania PTT farms activity data, to reveal specifics of their activities, priorities and determine the reasons of these weaknesses. The aim of this article is to provide recommendations for PTT farm business development. During the investigation there have been analyzed Lithuanian's PTT farms documents and conducted expert interviews with their managers. On the basis of carried out analysis and evaluation, there were presented business development recommendations for PTT farms.


We studied the effects of apomorphine (AM) on bladder motility in anesthetized rats in which Tyrode's solution was continuously infused into the bladder at a constant rate, including an almost constant rate of bladder contraction accompanying micturition. AM at a dose of 1 mg/kg, i.v., caused a hyperactive bladder response, during which micturition disappeared. AM (12.5 micrograms for intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) injection or 50 micrograms for intrathecal (i.t.) injection also caused a hyperactive response in about half of the rats. Supersensitization to AM appeared in reserpine-treated rats (2.5 mg/kg, i.p., 48 and 24 hr before the experiment). Haloperidol (1 mg/kg, i.v.) or SCH 23390 (5 mg/kg, i.v.) completely suppressed the hyperactive bladder response induced by AM (5 mg/kg, i.v.), and then the bladder contraction accompanying micturition reappeared after administration of these drugs. Pretreatment with sulpiride (100 mg/kg, i.p.) for 60 min, which hardly affected the bladder contraction induced by infusion of Tyrode's solution, suppressed the hyperactive bladder response induced by AM. These results suggest that the hyperactive bladder response induced by i.v.-injected AM results from synchronous stimulation of the micturition reflex centers in the brain stem and sacral cord and that the hyperactive bladder response is elicited via both D1 and D2 receptors.


As a genre that serves to unnerve its viewers, horror often operates outside of the formal codes and narrative tropes of mainstream cinema, making it conducive to portrayals that transcend societal constructs of race, class, and gender. While numerous scholars argue that horror films offer progressive depictions of masculinity and femininity, some accuse them of perpetuating a patriarchal form by disempowering, objectifying, and punishing female characters. This thesis employed textual analysis to scrutinize depictions of femininity and its association with supernatural victimization in The Exorcist and The Conjuring by examining representational choices in the context of the films' cultural and historical moments and production conditions. Findings revealed that both films subvert the gender binary in their portrayals of professional, independent, and dominant women while simultaneously linking femininity to standards of submissiveness, domesticity, and vulnerability. In this way, possession films perpetuate binary norms that satisfy hegemonic understandings of femininity, as informed by patriarchy. Introduction As a genre, horror primarily aims at one objective: to create a sense of fear, dread, and repulsion its viewers, often by depicting the realization of their deepest, darkest anxieties. As horror writer and director Clive Barker says of the genre, "[it] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion" (qtd. in Luckey). In seeking to unnerve its viewers, horror often operates outside of the formal codes and narrative tropes associated with other genres. In light of this, horror films have a unique opportunity to incorporate themes and characters that interrogate dominant societal constructs of race, class, and gender. Various scholars have regarded the genre as particularly adept at portraying characters that deviate from normative ideas of masculinity and femininity (Rieser 371). Yet, despite such progressive potential, other scholars have claimed that these films more often satisfy dominant gender norms in their portrayals of male and female characters.


Flying as the vocational commitment of a person makes one of the most complex aspects of human activity. The beginning of materialization of such professional orientation refers to the selection of candidates for student-pilots at the Faculty of Traffic Engineering, Department of Aeronautical Engineering (Croatian Air Force Pilots). To become a student of aeronautical engineering at the Faculty of Traffic Engineering means having successfully passed a series of medical, psychiatric, psychological, and admissions examinations for this particular line of university course of studies for a degree. The import of selection of candidates in the process of selective flight training of student-pilots rests in the highly professional approach to the first level of training of student· -pilots resulting in the maximum economy of costs and confident and undoubted assessment of the capacities of a student- pilot in future execution of assignments in units of the Croatian Air Force. The Zagreb University Faculty of Traffic Engineering, Croatian Air Force and Antiaircraft Defense cooperate in the education and training of students for a degree in aeronautical engineering.


Gene silencing mediated through short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) is rapidly emerging as a new class of therapeutics for the treatment of inherited and acquired diseases. However, poor cellular uptake and instability in physiological conditions limits its therapeutic potential, hence there arises a need to develop a delivery system which can protect and efficiently transport siRNA to the target cells. Nanotechnology based non-viral vectors have been proposed as a potential alternate. Various polymeric nanoparticles have been shown as suitable delivery candidates with high cellular uptake efficiencies and advantage of reduced cytotoxicity. These delivery vectors form condensed complexes with siRNA which in turn provides protection to siRNA from enzymatic degradation and further leads to enhanced tissue and cellular targeting. Nanoparticles prepared from various polymers like polyethylenimine, chitosan have been largely exploited, as they bear several advantages such as, easy manipulatibility, high stability, low cost and high payload. Though numerous publications have appeared in the literature, there was still need to get more information under one roof, as book compilation which could provide a systematic account of all the aspects of nanotechnology mediated gene silencing right from the preparation of nanoparticles to in vitro and in vivo characterization followed by various applications in vitro and in vivo models. This book focuses on various aspects of nanotechnology based gene silencing. The initial chapters detail the techniques available for in vitro and in vivo characterization of nanoparticles. In the later chapters, exhaustive details about various polymeric systems employed for gene silencing has been accounted.


Orientation: Research regarding strengths use, deficit correction and thriving of academics in higher education institutions is necessary, given the possible effects thereof on their task and contextual performance.Research purpose: This study aimed to investigate the relationships among strengths use and deficit correction, thriving at work and performance of academics. Furthermore, it sought to investigate whether performance-related pay moderates the effects of thriving on performance.Motivation for the study: No studies were found regarding the relationships among a balanced strengths- and deficit-based approach, thriving at work, and performance in the context of South African higher education.Research approach/design and method: A cross-sectional survey design was used, with a convenience sample of 276 academic employees from three universities of technology in South Africa. The participants completed the Strengths Use and Deficit Correction Scale, the Thriving at Work Scale, a scale that measured perceptions of performance-related pay and measures of task and contextual performance.Main findings: The results showed that perceived organisational support for strengths use, as well as individual strengths use and deficit correction, predicted thriving at work. Thriving predicted task and contextual performance. A significant interaction was found between thriving and perceptions of performance-related pay. The most robust relation between thriving and performance existed when performance-related pay was perceived to be good.Practical/managerial implications: Higher education institutions must invest resources to enable academics to thrive at work via the balanced strength- and deficit-based approach. This approach should be seen as a core development tool for academics to increase employees' thriving at work.Contribution/value-add: This study contributes to scientific knowledge regarding strengths use and deficit correction, thriving and performance of academics in higher education institutions. It also resulted in new knowledge regarding the interaction effects of performance-related pay and thriving on task performance of academics.


We investigate the rupture process of the 12 May 2008 Wenchuan earthquake using the records of 26 strong‐motion stations, located 20–120 km from the seismic fault and with a good azimuthal coverage. The wave velocity model required to conduct this analysis has been validated against aftershocks, for which the point source hypothesis is a very good approximation. The inversion of the main shock rupture process confirms the slip distribution and the average rupture velocity (∼3 km/s) previously determined. However, a very peculiar behavior is clearly resolved by the extensive data set used in this study: the major slip area of the Wenchuan earthquake, located at 20–50 km North‐East of the epicenter, is shown to break almost simultaneously, 25 s after earthquake initiation. This implies that slip in this part of the fault cannot be understood by simple stress release at the rupture front. A more likely interpretation is the presence of a strong asperity, which could break only when it was completely surrounded by stress increase, resulting in a delayed but brutal rupture.


Nineteen babies with infantile spasms were treated with valproic acid over a two-year period. Eleven of the patients were also treated with purified corticotropin, but in no cases were the two drugs used simultaneously. Approximately 40% of the patients had good control of their infantile spasms with valproic acid. Side effects from valproic acid in these babies were not frequent and were, for the most part, minor. Though the percentage of infants with infantile spasms responding to valproic acid may be less than the percentage responding to corticotropin, the incidence and severity of side effects are less with valproic acid.


The development of focusing optics based on wide band Laue lenses operating from ~60 keV up to several hundreds of keV is particularly challenging. This type of hard X-ray or gamma ray optics requires a high performance focal plane detector in order to exploit to the best its intrinsic capabilities. We describe a three dimensional (3D) position sensitive detector prototype suitable for use as the basic module for a high efficiency Laue lens focal plane detector. This detector configuration is currently under study for use in a balloon payload dedicated to performing a high significance measurement of the polarization status of the Crab nebula/pulsar between 100 and 500 keV. The prototype is made by packing 8 linear modules, each composed of one basic sensitive unit bonded onto a thin supporting ceramic layer. Each unit is a drift strip detector based on a CZT crystal, irradiated transversally to the electric field direction. The anode is segmented into 8 detection cells, each comprising one collecting strip and 8 surrounding drift strips. The drift strips are biased by a voltage divider. The cathode is divided into 4 horizontal strips for the reconstruction of the Z interaction position. The detector readout electronics is based on three RENA-3 ASICs and the data handling system uses custom electronics based on an FPGA to provide the ASIC setting, the event handling logic and the data acquisition. We will describe the components and the status of the ongoing activities for the assembling of the proposed 3D CZT prototype and the result of the first performance tests on the CZT linear modules.


Proposes a new way of looking at learning that reflects the complexity and messiness of life. While inefficient learning habits are just that, the long‐standing cycle, circle, wheel or spiral of learning theory is too neat and organized. Criticizes the Honey and Mumford approach to learning styles for adopting an approach to experience that is behavioural at the expense of the meaningful aspects of experience. Theorizing and experiencing are one action, not two. People are practical theorists. They use the learning elements of Kolb, Honey and Mumford, etc., but in a varying sequence. The result is rich and complex patterns. Action learning's theory of learning provides an example of this pattern. People often display this pattern in their knowing‐in‐action. The learning cycle is a convenient simplification that is best used for after‐the‐event reflection. Underlying these contrasting theories are two schools of thought ‐ traditional analytic and interpretive science. Proposes the need to use interpretive science to develop action as thinking.


Cadmium (Cd) is a carcinogenic heavy metal which is implicated in breast cancer by epidemiological studies. In cell culture studies, it is reported to promote breast cancer cell growth through membrane estrogen receptors. Triple-negative breast cancer patients are non-responsive to endocrine and trastuzumab therapy and have the worst prognosis and lowest survival rate. The purpose of this study was to examine whether Cd can promote the growth of non-metastatic, triple-negative human breast cancer cells HCC 1937, which are positive for epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). It was found that Cd treatment (0.1-0.5 μM) promoted cell growth and accelerated cell cycle progression by increasing cyclins A, B, and E, and CDK 1, and 2 expressions. Further study using kinase inhibitors indicated that MAPK and PI3K activation was required for this process. The kinase activation in turn was mediated through EGFR activation. Based on these findings, it is concluded that submicromolar concentration of Cd induces proliferation of HCC 1937 cells through EGFR, MAPK and PI3K regulated cell cycle progression. The involvement of EGFR in Cd-stimulated early stage and triple-negative breast cancer cell growth implicates Cd's role in breast cancer progression.


Background and Objective: Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC), identifying the parameters that yield simulated data resembling the observed data, is a powerful likelihood-free inference framework, and has been widely applied in bioscience including population model, epidemic model and so on. A major difficulty in ABC is how to accurately determine the level of the discrepancy for it has a crucial impact on the inference results of algorithms. In this paper, our aim is to propose a novel and valid discrepancy measure approach. Methods: By analyzing and comparing existing discrepancy measure methods, one finds they have obvious shortcomings including narrow adaptability and high computational cost. To overcome these deficiencies, an improved cosine similarity to assess the discrepancy in ABC is designed. First, both simulated data and observed data are converted into vectors, and then in virtue of the angle of them and the modulus of vectors, the similarity between the two data sets are measure. Results: The proposed discrepancy measure method achieves a comparable or higher posterior quality compared with the existing methods through four examples including Gaussian, Gaussian mixture, predator-prey and epidemic models. Conclusions: The statistical inference of complex biological models is a challenging task, and ABC algorithm can solve this problem well, but it needs to choose appropriate discrepancy measures. The results show that the improved cosine similarity is a extremely efficient discrepancy measurement method. Moreover, our work facilitates researchers to choose an appropriate discrepancy measure in practice.


Oligopeptide "2A" and "2A‐like" sequences ("2As"; 18‐25aa) are found in a range of RNA virus genomes controlling protein biogenesis through "recoding" of the host‐cell translational apparatus. Insertion of multiple 2As within a single open reading frame (ORF) produces multiple proteins; hence, 2As have been used in a very wide range of biotechnological and biomedical applications. During translation, these 2A peptide sequences mediate a eukaryote‐specific, self‐"cleaving" event, termed "ribosome skipping" with very high efficiency. A particular advantage of using 2As is the ability to simultaneously translate a number of proteins at an equal level in all eukaryotic systems although, naturally, final steady‐state levels depend upon other factors—notably protein stability. By contrast, the use of internal ribosome entry site elements for co‐expression results in an unbalanced expression due to the relative inefficiency of internal initiation. For example, a 1:1 ratio is of particular importance for the biosynthesis of the heavy‐chain and light‐chain components of antibodies: highly valuable as therapeutic proteins. Furthermore, each component of these "artificial polyprotein" systems can be independently targeted to different sub‐cellular sites. The potential of this system was vividly demonstrated by concatenating multiple gene sequences, linked via 2A sequences, into a single, long, ORF—a polycistronic construct. Here, ORFs comprising the biosynthetic pathways for violacein (five gene sequences) and β‐carotene (four gene sequences) were concatenated into a single cistron such that all components were co‐expressed in the yeast Pichia pastoris. In this review, we provide useful information on 2As to serve as a guide for future utilities of this co‐expression technology in basic research, biotechnology, and clinical applications.


An approach for designing high performance disk array systems using a dual head disk structure is presented. In general, both I/O bandwidth and reliability can be significantly improved by using disk array systems, i.e., RAID. However, the performance of RAID systems can be significantly degraded where small read/write accesses are frequently requested. Thus, the dual head disk structure is applied to improve the performance of RAID systems. The dual head disk model can reduce not only the maximum seek time but also the average seek time by dividing the disk surface into two separated regions, one for each head. To compare the performance of the dual head RAID (DH-RAID) system with the conventional RAID systems, simulations are performed with two types of RAID configurations and several workloads. Simulation results show higher performance can be obtained by DH-RAID systems as compared with the conventional RAID systems. The DH-RAID model can provide better performance in the application environment that has a relatively high seek time ratio.


In-stream hydrokinetic electricity production, electricity generation from moving currents without the use of dams, has significant potential for increasing electric power production. This project evaluates a control system designed to regulate rotor rate (rpm) to improve power production from in-stream hydrokinetic turbines. The control algorithm is evaluated using both a numerical model of a rigidly mounted tidal turbine and a numerical model of a moored ocean current turbine system. These two system models are each coupled to an induction electric machine model. Based on the turbine torque-speed characteristic, as well as the asynchronous machine features, a Look-Up-Table (LUT) is used to generate the frequency of the sinusoidal voltages of the three phases to be supplied to the machine. However, to compensate for disturbances and perturbations of the power-plant a PI controller is generating a correction term for electrical frequency superimposed to the output of the LUT. A first round of simulations using the numerical models was performed in order to evaluate the developed algorithms.


Health care in the new millennium will be different. We have a wonderful opportunity to live in a new paradigm of leadership and management that opens up myriad possibilities for innovations in health care and leadership. If leaders stand still and don't quickly adapt to the new demands, they will be killed as leaders in this new millennium. The next 20 years are only for those who can act and adapt quickly.


The fabrication of stable fluorescent copper nanoclusters (CuNCs) in aqueous media is still challenging, despite the low price and potential biomedical applications. Herein, we report a facile and efficient strategy for assembling CuNCs using multifunctional thiolated copolymers with pH and thermoresponsive features. The new nanohybrids are formed via a simple one-pot approach through the reduction of a copper salt with hydrazine in the presence of a multithiolated polymer, which provides a template during nanocluster assembly and further efficient protection against oxidation and aggregation. Furthermore, the thermo- and pH-responsive properties of the pristine copolymers endow the nanohybrids with these stimuli-responsive features. The thiol content and the macromolecular size of the polymer ligands exert strong influences on the final photophysical properties of these new hybrid luminescent nanoclusters. The existence of stable bright greenish-yellow emission in water over long periods of time, the high photostability under UV irradiation and the strong oxidation resistance toward hydrogen peroxide of the hybrid CuNCs suggest that they have great promise for nanomedicine, bioassay and nanosensor use. Furthermore, the polymeric CuNCs obtained have been successfully tested as optical switch-off sensors for the sensitive and highly selective detection of Hg2+ in the presence of other metal ions in liquid and solid states. Finally, we demonstrate the practical application of the new hybrid to Hg2+ detection in human urine.


Intracranial ependymoma comprises the second most common malignant brain tumor in childhood. The prognosis of these tumors remains generally poor and its biological behavior is unpredictable based on current stratification approaches. Neither clinical variables nor histopathological grading or molecular markers have so far been successful in defining a well circumscribed group of high-risk patients. Thus, an innovative staging model for ependymoma is desperately needed. We studied 122 samples from patients with intracranial ependymoma with a median follow-up of circa 8 years by genome-wide assessment of DNA copy-number aberrations using array-CGH (10K BAC array). Aberrations with a potential prognostic value were validated in an independent cohort of 170 patients by FISH analysis. Consecutively, we investigated genome-wide mRNA expression profiling (Agilent 44k) in 65 primary ependymomas and performed unsupervised clustering to identify potential transcriptome-based subgroups. We compared these findings with the previously identified DNA copy-number profiles. For validation of single molecular markers, selected candidate genes were investigated by QRT-PCR on transcriptional level, and protein expression was measured by immunohistochemistry on tissue microarrays (n=170). We were able to define a novel molecular staging system comprised of three genetically distinct subgroups of ependymoma based on DNA copy-number aberrations: i) a low risk group (34% of patients) including tumors with gain of chromosomes 9, 15q, 18, or loss of chromosome 6, or a combination thereof with patients showing a 5-year OS of 100%; ii) an intermediate risk group (41% of patients) characterized by a balanced cytogenetic profile especially for aberrations of chromosomes 1q, 9, 15q, 18, 6 and without a homozygous deletion of CDKN2A which was associated with a 5-year OS of 77%; iii) a high risk group (25% of patients) defined by tumors harbouring a gain of 1q and/or a homozygous deletion of CDKN2A, which was concurrent with a 5-year OS of only 33%. Interestingly, these cytogenetic risk-groups showed a significant overlap with transcriptome-based subgroups identified by unsupervised clustering. Thus, we aimed at the identification of interesting candidate genes which show subgroup-specific expression and have the potential to be used as surrogate marker for certain biological subgroups. The most robust subgroup-specific molecular markers for poor and good outcome were SHC1 and WDR16, respectively. In summary, we could decipher a novel stratification model for intracranial ependymoma consisting of three subgroups based on cytogenetic aberrations. By integrative genomics looking at DNA aberrations and mRNA levels in a large subset of samples, we were able to identify novel biomarkers in ependymoma, which have high potential to be useful for stratifying patients in future clinical trials. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 31.


Federated learning (FL) performs the global model updating in a synchronous manner in that the FL server waits for a specific number of local models from distributed devices before computing and sharing a new global model. We propose asynchronous federated learning (AsyncFL), which allows each client to continuously upload its model based on its capabilities and the FL server to determine when to asynchronously update and broadcast the global model. The asynchronous model aggregation at the FL server is performed by the Boyer–Moore majority voting algorithm for the k-bit quantized weight values. The proposed FL can speed up the convergence of the global model learning early in the FL process and reduce data exchange once the model is converged.


Background : This study aimed to retrospectively investigate the efficacy of NIV in preventing endotracheal intubation (ETI) and reducing mortality rates in patients with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) who develop Acute Respiratory Failure (ARF). Patients'clinical and laboratory characteristics that can be considered risk factors for NIV failure were also analyzed.

Methods : Design: A retrospective analysis of short-term outcomes in 18 IPF patients receiving NIV for ARF. Setting: a 4 bed Respiratory Intensive Care Unit (RICU) in a university hospital.Patients and intervention: Eighteen IPF patients who received NIV between January 1, 2005 and April 30, 2013. Outcome measures: The need for ETI despite NIV treatment and the mortality rate during their RICU stay. The length of the patients' stay in the RICU was also evaluated.

Results : NIV was successful in 8 patients and unsuccessful in 10 who required ETI. All the patients in the NIV failure group died within 20.2+/-15.3 days of intubation. The NIV success group patients spent fewer days in the RICU (11.6+/-4.5 vs 24.6+/-13.7; p=0.0146). NIV failure was correlated to the plasma NT-proBNP level at RICU admission (p=0.0326) with an odds ratio (OR) of 12.2 (95% CI, 1.2 to infinity) in patients with abnormally high NT-proBNP levels (>900 pg/ml).

Conclusions : Use of NIV has been found to be associated with clinical benefits in selected IPF patients,preventing the need for intubation and reducing the rate of complications/death. Elevated plasma NT-proBNP levels at the time of admission to an ICU is a simple, clinical marker of poor NIV outcome.


BONAMY DOBREE in English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century 1700-1740 (Oxford, 1959), perpetuated an earlier error in periodical history by referring to the Censor as 'papers contributed to Mist's Weekly Journal , 1717' (p. 688). The error seems to have originated in Notes and Queries , 7th ser., (1886), where C. Golding, C. A. Ward, and G.F.R.B. mistakenly suggested that the papers edited by Lewis Theobald appeared in Nathaniel Mist's Weekly Journal ; or, Saturday's Post (215-16). However, the Censor was not published in Mist's Journal , though Theobald later wrote some essays for it.


French writer Annie Ernaux has long foregrounded physical and emotional sensations as the building blocks of her autobiographical writing. (1) However, it is in L'Usage de la photo (2005) where the connection between the body and subjectivity most powerfully emerges. Co-written by then lover Marc Marie, the text is organized around fourteen photos of different rooms after a night of lovemaking and the authors' reflections on the images to offer a plurinarrative recounting of Ernaux's battle with breast cancer and her love affair with Marie. The text's visual imagery thus has an evident temporal function, since it situates the author's battle with breast cancer and relationship with Marie between March 2003 and January 2004. Yet the photos play out a second and more significant epistemological instance in that they represent the limits of transforming corporeal experience into narrative. (2) Indeed, L'Usage's concerted juxtaposition of the struggle to survive with a sensuous connection to her body brings new insight into an enduring feature of Ernaux's oeuvre: the strained relationship to the body as a source of knowledge formation, gendered identity, and empowerment. While the book works within her traditional framework of sexual discovery, gender, and everyday life and showcases Ernaux's characteristic blend of autobiographical writing, journal in-time narratives, and episodic remembrance, (3) its primary thematic concerns of desire, health, and illness reconfigure the relations between the body and identity that have previously emerged in her work. Whereas dominant cultural markers such as marriage, education, and family relations underscore the body as a driving force that enables her to assess the intersections of the self and society, the role of the body in transformational experiences of self-knowledge takes on a new urgency in light of Ernaux's diagnosis with breast cancer. Distilled to their most insistent forms of pleasure and pain, corporeal sensations in L'Usage de la photo become the testing ground for her experiments in self-representation. Showing that her experiences of pleasure, pain, and illness are more than a solitary confrontation with her own mortality, Ernaux challenges the depersonalized medical narrative of her body's vulnerability by imagining her physical self outside of binary configurations of health and sickness. Even as the autobiographical portrayals of her diagnosis with cancer and sexual desire entail an unsurprising emphasis on the singular body, then, they do so in such a way that prevents familiar categorizations of individual and collective identity. In so doing, she makes a compelling claim for physical sensations as proof of individuality and self-understanding, while testing the limits of autobiographical writing as a resource of communal knowledge about living with pain. As the recent volume Textual and Visual Selves; Photography, Film, and Comic Art in French Autobiography (2011) suggests, Ernaux's inclusion of images in L'Usage coincides with an increasing prevalence of hybrid autobiographical narratives within French literary production. Although some essays revisit well-trodden notions of multiple or fractured selves in women's autobiography, they also effectively highlight a feminist use of visual narratives for navigating the gendered spaces of public and private and prohibitions on self-disclosure the genre invokes. As such, they point to a feminist topography committed to dismantling the sociocultural and political underpinnings of the public and private spheres through acts of testimony. Many critical readings of L'Usage have convincingly argued how photography represents Ernaux's confrontation with death and will to survive a life-threatening disease within such discourses of public and private. (4) Her deployment of image and word certainly displaces boundaries of individual and social life without obscuring what Shirley Jordan identifies as "the connection between women and intimacy and the social proscriptions and taboos that have traditionally regulated women's association with the private sphere" ("Chronicles of Intimacy" 73). …


In this paper, we present several properties on minimum distance(d/sub min/) and girth(G/sub min/) in Tanner graphs for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with small left degrees. We show that the distance growth of (2, 4) LDPC codes is too slow to achieve the desired performance. We further give a tight upper bound on the maximum possible girth. The numerical results show that codes with large G/sub min/ could outperform the average performance of regular ensembles of the LDPC codes over binary symmetric channels. The same codes perform about 1.5 dB away from the sphere-packing bound on additive white Gaussian noise channels.


Abstract : Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are not new. The counter-IED fight really started for the Marine Corps on October 23, 1983, when 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and 3 soldiers were killed during the bombing of the barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. Many other IED attacks have occurred since then, but the counter-IED fight did not really begin in earnest until after the initial invasion of Iraq. IED warfare is highly effective because it is always evolving. Unfortunately, as a result of this rapid evolution, technological solutions are simply always a step behind the enemy tactics, techniques, procedures, and equipment used to build and employ IEDs. Counter-IED is a problem that cannot be solved with technology alone. The current policy of buying technology as a "silver bullet" solution to the IED problem will yield only marginal results unless a major shift in the counter-IED mindset and approach occurs. IEDs are a problem that will continue to plague U.S. forces until IEDs are no longer a viable form of warfare for the terrorist. Technology has a role to play, but it is the successful, coordinated integration of technology along all five functional areas of counter-IED that will provide a comprehensive solution to the challenge posed by IEDs: prevention (capturing or killing emplacers, trigger-men, bomb makers, and other members of IED cells); detection (combining surveillance techniques with technology to determine the location of IEDs); neutralization (render safe or destroy encountered IEDs); protection (use of electronic warfare to prevent detonation rather than just relying on advanced armor like MRAP to mitigate the effects of an IED); and training.


There is an increasing concern for the notion of 'embeddedness' of economic activity; yet the conceptualization of the concept and its operationalization remain underdeveloped. First, embeddedness may concern, on the one hand, the structure of relations that tie economic actors together (structural embeddedness) and, on the other hand, the social strands supplementing economic strands in each relation (substantive embeddedness). In this paper, a network framework is outlined which proposes several layers or 'orders' of embeddedness. Focusing on small firms, the point of departure is individual exchange relationships as personal ties combining economic and social concerns. First-order embeddedness concerns the localized business networks created by combining these dyadic relations. Second-order embeddedness is achieved when considering also the memberships of business persons in economic and social local institutions while third-order embeddedness concerns the special cases where these institutions bridge gaps between firms. The network model is operationalized and applied to a small Swedish industrial (furniture) community, its firms and economic/social institutions. The findings generally support the applicability of the model and demonstrate the supplementarity of different layers/orders of embeddedness. Further research challenges are deduced and implications for practitioners are provided.


Crystallographically engineered Relaxor-PT single crystals, specifically PMN-PT (Generation I) and PIN-PMN-PT/PMN-PZT (Generation II), offer much higher piezoelectric and electromechanical coupling coefficients (d33>1,500 pC/N, k33>0.9), when compared to polycrystalline PZT-5H ceramics (d33>600 pC/N, k33>0.75). Recently Ceracomp Co., Ltd. (www.ceracomp.com) has developed the solid-state single crystal growth (SSCG) technique and successfully fabricated Gen III PMN-PZT single crystals modified with acceptors or donors. The piezoelectric constants (d33) of (001) Gen III PMN-PZT single crystals were measured to be higher than 4,000 pC/N and thus about two times higher than those of PMN-PT/PZN-PT (Gen I) and PIN-PMN-PT/PMN-PZT (Gen II) single crystals. The Gen III PMN-PZT single crystals have been firstly applied to single crystal-epoxy composites, ultrasonic transducers, piezoelectric sensors, and piezoelectric actuators. In this paper we introduce the development of Gen III PMN-PZT single crystals, piezoelectric composites and multilayer single crystal actuators.


Until 1999, Kosovo was a little-known province of Serbia. NATO's intervention, however, changed this. Suddenly, everyone was talking about Kosovo and the plight of the Kosovo Albanians. Today, Kosovo is no longer a major talking point; few authors are now writing about post-independence Kosovo and the many challenges that confront the young state. Particularly striking is the relative absence of scholarly writings that discuss the Gordian knot of northern Kosovo. Seeking to rectify this neglect, this article has three core aims: to provide new empirical insights into the situation on the ground in northern Kosovo, to explore Serb and Albanian viewpoints regarding the status of the north (and in particular to examine Serb fears and concerns) and to discuss possible solutions. It argues that granting the north a special, autonomous status within Kosovo is the ultimate way to resolve the "northern problem," and indeed this now seems the most likely solution following the recent conclusion of the First Agreement on Principles Governing the Normalization of Relations. This research is based on five weeks of fieldwork in Kosovo in July and August 2012. During this time, the author conducted 56 semi-structured interviews, 29 of which took place in northern Kosovo.


The Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) initiative was launched by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1996, to enhance the availability of timely and comprehensive macroeconomic and financial statistics based on best dissemination practices, facilitating the pursuit of sound macroeconomic policies. By joining this initiative, governments signal their commitment to disclose policy-relevant data. Has the SDDS initiative served its purpose? We provide first quantitative evidence on the effects of the SDDS data transparency initiative. We use Hollyer, Rosendorff and Vreeland's (2014) Data Transparency Index which gauges governments' ability to collect and disseminate aggregate economic data using a Bayesian item response algorithm model, which treats transparency as a latent predictor of the reporting (absence) on 240 variables collected from the World Bank's World Development Indicators. Using panel data on 120 countries during the 1996-2011 period, we find that countries complying with the SDDS initiative are associated with an increase in data transparency index after controlling for self-section bias. Our results are robust to controlling for endogeneity using instrumental variables, alternative sample, and estimation methods.


Sulfadiazine and silver sulfadiazine are well-known bactericidal agent routinely used clinical settings. Antimicrobial acid dyes were synthesized by introducing sulfadiazine or silver sulfadiazine and applied on nylon fabric. The Chemical Structure of the Synthesized dyes was identified by HPLC-mass. The dyeability of synthesized acid dyes for nylon fabric was similar to commercial acid dyes. Resistance to washing, rubbing and lightfastness were good. Nylon fabrics dyed with synthesized acid dyes had good antimicrobial properties. Durable antimicrobial properties after 20 times washing have shown good result that reduction ratio of colonies, is 99.9 %. Mixed dyeing were carried out using commercial acid dyes(leveling type) and synthesized dyes. The mixed dyeings have also shown good antimicrobial properties.


It seems to me that the lessons to be learned from the British Labour Party's defeat in 1992 were precisely the opposite of those proferred by Stuart Hall and other commentators of a 'New Times'/postmodernist persuasion. One has to do with the inbuilt limits (or the self-defeating character) of a pragmatist approach that goes all out for electoral appeal by abandoning even the most basic standards of reason, consistency, and truth. In this sense there was justice in the charge against Labour - exploited to maximum effect in the Tory press - that its turnabout on the issue of nuclear disarmament was merely a tactical ploy, having nothing to do with any change of conviction or (still less) any realist assessment of the altered geopolitical state of affairs. By taking the line of least resistance (very much in accordance with 'New Times' wisdom) Labour relinquished not only the moral high ground but also its chance to argue a case much strengthened by this turn in real-world events. For their policy shift was all the more absurd when set against the obvious benefits to be gained by sticking to the unilateralist case on pragmatic as well as principled grounds and thus pointing a sensible way forward from the deadlock of entrenched Cold War attitudes. On fiscal policy, by contrast. Labour came up with a justified (fully workable and right-minded) set of arguments, despite all the sage advice from opinion poll watchers, media pundits, and those - like Stuart Hall - who counselled a more 'pragmatic', 'realist' or consensus-based line of approach. Quite possibly this cost them dear in the election, though the case is by no means proven. What seems more likely is that various things combined to sway people's voting intentions at the last moment, among them the distorted press coverage, the 'aspirational' factor (as Hall defines it), and no doubt a measure of greed and self-interest on the part of those high-bracket earners who wished only to protect their own pockets. But none of this touches the central issue, that is to say, the question whether Labour was right to adopt such a policy, or whether - on a more 'realistic' assessment - it should have switched course and fine-tuned its message to the signals coming back with each new opinion-poll or latest media sounding. For on this account what is right (pragmatically effective) in any given context just is what produces the required results by appealing to the widest possible range of in-place values and beliefs. That the voters might actually be wrong - and that a 'failed' policy might none the less be justified on reasoned and principled grounds - is simply inconceivable, along with all that old-style enlightenment talk of 'ideology', 'false consciousness' and the like.


This research investigated the effect of brainstorming on students' creative thinking skills in learning nutrition. The method that was used in this research is quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design. The sample was taken by purposive sampling technique where one group was assigned to the experimental group (n=25 students) and the other one group was assigned to the control group (n=25 students). The population was 7 th -grade students in Islamic International School in Bandung. The quantitative data in this research was obtained from objective test and verbal TTCT (Torrance Test of Creative Thinking), while the qualitative data was obtained from observation sheet. The findings of the study showed that there are statistically significant differences between experimental and control group in creative thinking skills test with the score of 0.000. The result is in the favor of the experimental group, indicating the effectiveness of brainstorming in developing students' creative thinking skills in learning nutrition.


Abstract: This chapter focuses on the performances of gas sensors based on single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). The chapter first reviews chemiresistor and field-effect transistor sensor architectures. Theoretical models based on doping effect and Schottky barrier modulation are correlated to the percolation of metallic carbon nanotubes. The functionalisation strategies of carbon nanotubes, used to acquire a gas selectivity, are discussed and offer promising application for the monitoring of air quality, or military and medical applications.


Hematoma duodenum is a very rare complication of diagnostic endoscopy of the upper gastrointestinal tract when biopsy of the duodenum is performed (average frequency is estimated as 1:1,250 biopsies). Most often, it affects children and young adults without any risk factors. Symptoms result from obstruction of the duodenum and compression of the adjacent structures. Conservative treatment, which consists of parenteral nutrition and aspiration of gastric contents until the absorption of hematoma and patency of the gastrointestinal tract returns, is preferred. This paper describes a 6-year-old boy diagnosed due to short stature and low weight in whom the diagnostic biopsy of the duodenum caused formation of a hematoma in the descending duodenum and led to total ileus and acute pancreatitis. The boy was treated conservatively with good result and complete resolution of symptoms was achived.


This study was conducted to investigate the effects of instruction types on hemispheric activation and accurate selection of spatial stimuli that had been previously presented at a subliminal level. Right-handed females randomly received either an "analytic" or a "holistic" instruction. Both groups first saw a series of slides for an extremely brief time (1 ms). Subsequently, these slides were paired with similar but novel slides. One group was asked to view the pairs analytically and to select the one they thought they had seen before. The other group was asked to view the pairs holistically and indicate which of the two they preferred. The results supported the hypothesis that analytic subjects would be more likely to engage the parietal region of their left hemisphere and holistic subjects would favor relative activation of the right parietal region (Mann-Whitney test, U = 57, p less than .04). An inverse relation was also detected between parietal laterality and selection accuracy, r(26) = .39, p less than .05. The findings are discussed in terms of a memory model of information processing.


Background Cataracts are one of the major public health problems worldwide. Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) is one of the risk factors for cataract development. We analyzed the relationship between disability-adjusted life year (DALY) rates of cataracts and UVR exposure in China. Methods DALY rates of cataracts and UVR exposure in 31 regions of China were calculated based on data from the Second China National Sample Survey on Disability and the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration database. The relationship between the DALY rates of cataracts and UVR was estimated by Spearman rank correlation analysis and linear regression analysis. Results The elderly (≥65 years) had higher DALY rates of cataracts than the whole population. The DALY rate of cataracts in the agricultural population was higher than that observed in the non-agricultural population. The DALY rates of cataracts were positively associated with UVR The DALY rates of cataracts in regions with higher UVR were higher than those in regions with lower UVR. An increase in the daily ambient erythemal UVR of 1000 J/m2 was associated with an increase in the DALY rates of cataracts by 92 DALYs/100 000 (R2 = 0.676) among the whole population, 34 DALYs/100 000 among the population <65 years old (R2 = 0.423), 607 DALYs/100 000 among the population aged 65–74 years (R2 = 0.617), and by 1342 DALYs/100 000 among the population ≥75 years old (R2 = 0.758). Conclusions DALY rates of cataracts increased with increases in UVR exposure in 31 regions of China. Greater exposure to UVR increases the disease burden of cataracts in the whole population, especially in the elderly and among the agricultural population.


tion. At the age of 18 she jerwent a pregnancy which was unassociated ,4ith Sy recognized disability. At the age of 22 A1941) ve days before the delivery of her second Rife patient had pain in the thorax and required treatment with an oxygen tent. She gave birth to a living child but wxas advised not to become pregnant again. Symptonm of cardiac disability began at the age of 26 (tL945j`t the time of an upper respiratory infection whidf'was associated with much dyspnea, cough and the spitting up of small amounts of blood. At this time digitalis therapy was begun. A year later the patient was told that her heart action was irregular, and this irregularity had persisted to the present time (195l. Ion -In se had an induced abortion with ligation of Thallopian tubes. Since that time she had remained ill with epigastric distress which at first was noted with exercise and relieved with rest. In the last two years it had been present more or less constantly. This distress had been temporarily relieved by the injection of mercurical diuretics. During the past year there had been some orthopnea and two episodes of severe nocturnal dlyspnea. In the same period she had had slight edema of the ankles and had been hospitalized frequently. ossible interest is the fact that in February 1 bllowing dental extraction, there was rather wdweakness and recurrent sweats. No blood cultures were taken, but the doctor told her that he suspected infection of the heart valves, and she was given penicillin every two hours for five days, followed, evidently, by no persistence of fever. en she was admitted to the hospital on June 2, 1952, under the care of the M:layo Clinic, her -lvhZ1~03 pounds (46.7 Kg.) and her blood pressure 120/70. She w ain moderate distress because of dyspnea. The livei was readily palpable and tender and it extendeVTofhe umbilicus. Clinically the heart


digital content services gain importance in the mobile world, this paper proposes Digital Rights Management implementation for android devices. EDRM (Enterprise Digital Rights Management) system provides a novel solution to control access to documents such as Microsoft word, PDF and images from unauthorized copying, modification, and re- distribution. The work protects user"s personal digital content like photos, documents etc. This modeled design aims how security is been provided to mobile devices using password mechanism, hash function and encryption and it is been tested using 100 samples. The individualization, flexibility, efficiency and practicability issues will be assured. The implementation permits the mobile user to conduct a "preview-before-download" activity and the digital content provider will not suffer from unauthorized mobile users accessing digital content. Proposed system uses a two level security using a Universal Unique Identifier, which is hashed using the (Simple Hashing Algorithm) SHA algorithm, then that key is used for the encryption of the content in Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. The parameters used to measure system performance are response-time and throughput and were found out to be 0.022-sec/request and 45.54 respectively. Thus the paper achieves better security and faster processing. General Terms EDRM, Android, DRM, Digital, Security, Encryption


The Chinese Materials and Research Aids Center has rendered a valuable service to students of late Ch'ing Chinese history in publishing this typeset edition of Weng T'ung-ho's diary, based on the facsimile edition printed by the Shanghai Commercial Press in 1925. The Center has made this important source material easier to use in several ways. The text is punctuated and printed in standard type, a boon to scholars not accustomed to unpunctuated, cursive writing; interlinear marks are inserted throughout, rendering proper names readily identifiable; corresponding Western dates (years and months but not days) are given alongside the Chinese; pages are numbered consecutively throughout the five volumes. And further to enhance the usefulness of the typeset edition, an index to essential proper nouns, geographical and personal, is to form volume 6 which, unfortunately, is not available to this reviewer.


The article is intended to show the importance of the police law in order to ascertain the legal identity of the operative activities. Police law regulates public administration of authorities ensuring personal, public, state and national security, as well as establishment and activities of law enforcement authorities. In such way, provisions of police law create legal relations of management nature. On the other hand, the purpose of law is to regulate legally the implementation of policing function of the state. Such function takes form of administrative supervision, possibility to use administrative coercion, to collect information about persons, events, phenomena, and organizations, to carry out prevention of law infringement, to implement national programmes to such end, to carry out operative activities, protection of state and service secrets, intelligence and counter-intelligence. Such wide spectrum of means and functions proves the importance of the aforementioned function of the state and its significance for ensuring national security. It encourages to reveal the legal identity of operative activities and the affiliation with legal branches of provisions that regulate it. The article also focuses on the relationship between operative activities and legislation that regulates it with human rights and freedoms. Certain attention is given to the issues related with the constitutionality of secondary legislation intended to regulate operative activities. The jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court is analysed as well. The relationship between the Law on Operative Activities and the Code of Criminal Proceedings is studied by focusing on the relationship between the coercion measures provided for in the Code of Criminal Proceedings with the means of operative action provided for in the Law on Operative Activities.


Objective: To investigate the occurrence and influencing factors of fatigue and sleep disturbance in Maintenance Hemodialysis (MHD) patients. Methods: A total of 170 patients with end-stage renal disease who underwent MHD treatment in the hemodialysis room of Shaanxi Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine from October 2021 to March 2022 were selected as the research subjects. The basic information and laboratory indicators of the patients were collected by cross-sectional survey. The survey methods were evaluated by the revised Piper Fatigue Scale and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Rating Scale and the incidence and influencing factors of fatigue and sleep disturbance in MHD patients were analyzed. Results: Fatigue occurred in 135 cases, the incidence rate was 79.41%; sleep disturbance occurred in 124 cases and the incidence rate was 72.94%. After one-way analysis of variance, factors such as exercise, Albumin (ALB, serum Creatinine(CRE), Phosphorus(P) and Hemoglobin(HGB) in MHD patients can affect fatigue; while age, gender, exercise, primary disease, dialysis frequency, Phosphorus(P), Hemoglobin(HGB) and high-sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hs-CRP) factors can affect sleep. A multiple linear regression model was constructed for the factors affecting fatigue (F = 81.110, p < 0.001), and it showed that 70.3% of fatigue (adjusted R2 = 0.703) was related to albumin (ALB), serum creatinine(CRE), and hemoglobin(HGB) (all p < 0.05); A multiple linear regression model was constructed based on the factors of 58% (F = 26.933, p < 0.001), which showed that 58% of sleep disorders (adjusted R2 = 0.580) were significantly related to age, gender, exercise or not, phosphorus(P), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein(hs-CRP) (all p < 0.05) related. Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyze sleep disturbance and fatigue in MHD patients and the results showed that there was a positive correlation between the two (r = 0.478, p < 0.001). Conclusion: The proportion of fatigue and sleep disturbance in MHD patients is relatively high, mainly mild to moderate and the two influence each other. Exercise intervention and nutritional support can effectively improve the occurrence of fatigue and sleep disturbance in MHD patients.


Abstract Aim The purpose of this study was to compare and evaluate the flexural strength and modulus of elasticity of three adhesive luting cements as a function of specimen age, effect of storage media, and effect of curing through porcelain. Materials and Methods Twenty samples fabricated for self-cure resin-modified glass ionomer cement (GIC; RelyX Luting 2, 3M ESPE, United States) were classified as group 1, whereas 40 samples fabricated for two dual-cure resin cements (20 samples each), Universal Resin Cement (Ammdent, Italy) and Maxcem Elite (Kerr Australia Pty. Ltd.), were classified as groups 2 and 3, respectively. The dual-cure cements were photo-activated using light cure unit with an intensity of 550 mW/cm2 in nine overlapping sections for 20 seconds per section on both sides. A total of 60 samples (20 samples in each group) were fabricated and tested using universal testing machine to compare flexural strength and modulus of elasticity of resin-modified GIC with two dual-cure adhesive resin cements, to determine the influence of storage of the specimens in artificial saliva at 37°C for 24 hours and to determine the influence of curing through porcelain disk of 2 mm thickness on these properties. Results The overall mean flexural strength and modulus of elasticity of resin-modified GIC was less than the dual-cure resin cements. The values reduced for resin-modified GIC when the samples were tested after 24 hours of storage in saliva, whereas an increase in the strength was seen for dual-cure cements. The curing through porcelain disk reduced the properties of dual-cure cements. Maxcem Elite showed better overall mean flexural strength and modulus of elasticity in all the parameters. Conclusion When comparing all three cements, both dual-cure cements showed better flexural strength and modulus of elasticity compared to resin-modified GIC, which indicates their use in cementation of fixed restorations.


Abstract The removal of solidly fixed implants during revision hip and knee arthroplasty is a technically challenging procedure with the potential for a large amount of bone loss during component removal. This bone loss may compromise the subsequent reconstruction. Careful preoperative planning is essential before undertaking removal of solidly fixed implants. The surgeon should determine the type and size of the implants and be familiar with any specialized removal equipment that may be available. For both the hip and knee, extensive exposure is often necessary. Removal of a well‐fixed femoral component often requires an extended trochanteric osteotomy. The most difficult component to remove from the knee is a well‐fixed cementless patellar component. The primary goal in removing well‐fixed components is to minimize loss of surrounding bone, which requires effective planning and often access to specialized tools and techniques.


In this paper, a novel video transmission architecture is proposed to meet the low-delay and error robust requirement of wireless video communications. This architecture uses FEC coding and ARQ protocol to provide efficient bandwidth access from wireless link. In order to reduce ARQ delay, a video proxy server is implemented at the base station. This video proxy not only reduces the ARQ response time but also provides error tracking functionality. We use H.263 as the experimental platform for our architecture. Experiments show that average luminance PSNR decreases only 0.35db for the "Foreman" sequence under a random error condition of 10/sup -3/ error probability.


The Tang Dynasty scholar Feng Yan 封演 in his Fengshi Wenjianji 封氏闻见记 (Records of Things Heard and Seen by Mr. Feng, volume six, under the heading of "sheep and tiger") states that "since the Qin and Han Dynasties, stone'unicorns'(qilin), 'averters of evil' (bixie), elephants, horses have been lined up in front of royal mausoleums, while stone sheep, tigers, statues of human Figures, and pillars were placed in front of official's tombs. All these sculptures were used to mark the burials, just like the ceremonial regalia in their lifetime."The "Treatise on Rituals"of Songshu (Book of Song, by Shen Yue 沈约) also records that"since the Han Dynasty, people all under the heaven were wasteful in burial – often erected stone chambers, stone animals, steles and so on [in front of the tomb]." Archaeological evidences corroborate above historical records. In recent years, Professor Lin Meicun of Peking University has discussed the artistic sources for the Qin and Han stone sculptures in his Gudao Xifeng 2000.


The high productivity blended acquisition technique greatly improves the acquisition efficiency. However, this technology also introduces serious interference noise from adjacent sources. An efficient data deblending method based on sparse inversion is used to separate the simultaneous sources for offshore 3D DAS VSP data. Due to the difference in coherence between main source and blended noise on the time-space common receiver point gathers, which can be expressed by the sparsity in the FKK domain, we can solve the effective signal by imposing additional constraints on the unknown signal model. The signal model with gradually improved signal-to-noise ratio can be obtained by subtracting interference noise from simultaneous sources. The method has been proved to be efficient and useful in separating the main source from the interference noise by using the Offshore 3d DAS VSP data. It should be pointed out that this method is not applicable to the data acquired in the area with irregular spatial distribution of shot points because this method requires 3D FKK transformation of common receiver point data.


Background: Iodine is a trace element that is essential for the formation of thyroid hormones. It is essential for the human life's growth and development. The thyroid gland size and functions affected by deficient or excessive intake of iodine. Iodine excess intake was found to associating with iodine-induced hyperthyroidism (IIH) and autoimmune thyroiditis. Aims and Objectives: The present study was to find the hyperthyroid goiter patient nutritional status by urinary iodine excretion (UIE) measurement and correlate them with thyroid hormone and thyroid autoantibodies. Materials and Methods: In this study, 100 adult hyperthyroid goiter ssubjects and 100 apparently normal adult subjects were conveniently recruited in this study.Urinary iodine estimation and serum TSH, fT4, fT3, AMA, and ATG were estimated,which were estimated for case and control groups. Results: The hyperthyroid goiter patient mean UIE concentration was 278.98 µ g/L and 68% of excess UIE which was found. There was significant difference in the UIE between the hyperthyroid goiter patient and control (P<0.001). The following types of goiter, based on palpation, were identified among the 100 hyperthyroid patients: Grade I – 4 %, Grade II – 63%, and Grade III – 33%. There were elevated serum AMA levelswith positive correlation of excess iodine for hyperthyroid goiter patient. Conclusion: In this study, there were excess UIEs among patients; hence, these associated complications, namely, benign goiter (14%), thyroiditis (43%), cancer of thyroid (4%), and thyrotoxicosis (39%) were observed.


Phase relations have been determined for Mg3Al2Si3O12 (pyrope composition) in the system MgO-Al2O3-SiO2 at temperatures from 1000°C to 1550°C under atmospheric pressure. As increasing temperature the phase assemblage changes as follows: enstatite+cordierite+spinel; forsterite+cordierite+spinel; forsterite+cordierite+spinel+melt; forsterite+spinel+melt; spinel+melt; melt. The pyrope composition is represented by two subsolidus assemblages, viz., enstatite+cordierite+spinel and forsterite+cordierite+spinel. At temperature between 1000°C and 1025°C, the subsolidus assemblage changes from enstatite+cordierite+spinel to forsterite+cordierite+spinel through the univariant reaction:     5Mg2Si2O6+2MgAl2O4↔5Mg2SiO4+Mg2Al4Si5O18    (1)          En              Spl                 Fo             CrdThis indicates that enstatite and spinel is the low-temperature assemblage, and the forsterite-cordierite join is stable at high temperatures. Combining the present and previously published data, the entropy change of the reaction (1), ΔS1O, is evaluated as 7.59-7.66 cal/K, and we found the reaction boundary between enstatite, spinel, forsterite and cordierite has a slope of 2.0-2.5 bar/K in dP/dT. These results do not agree with the previous data obtained from the hydrothermal experiments.    At temperatures from 1025°C to 1370°C, cordierite is a stable subsolidus phase in equilibrium with forsterite and spinel. At the solidus temperature of 1380°C cordierite is consumed to form the melt by the following reaction:    forsterite+cordierite → spinel+meltAt 1400°C, cordierite disappears, and forsterite and spinel coexist with melt. At 1475°C euhedral spinels crystallize in the melt, and forsterite is not found. The liquidus temperature is to be 1500°C, and spinel disappears.


As the demand for user privacy grows, controlled data removal (machine unlearning) is becoming an important feature of machine learning models for data-sensitive Web applications such as social networks and recommender systems. Nevertheless, at this point it is still largely unknown how to perform efficient machine unlearning of graph neural networks (GNNs); this is especially the case when the number of training samples is small, in which case unlearning can seriously compromise the performance of the model. To address this issue, we initiate the study of unlearning the Graph Scattering Transform (GST), a mathematical framework that is efficient, provably stable under feature or graph topology perturbations, and offers graph classification performance comparable to that of GNNs. Our main contribution is the first known nonlinear approximate graph unlearning method based on GSTs. Our second contribution is a theoretical analysis of the computational complexity of the proposed unlearning mechanism, which is hard to replicate for deep neural networks. Our third contribution are extensive simulation results which show that, compared to complete retraining of GNNs after each removal request, the new GST-based approach offers, on average, a 10.38x speed-up and leads to a 2.6% increase in test accuracy during unlearning of 90 out of 100 training graphs from the IMDB dataset (10% training ratio). Our implementation is available online at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7613150.


Introduction. The innovative activity of teachers is usually described as the creative activity of a sole inventor and the activity of mass teachers, who follow prepared algorithms in the framework of large-scale innovative projects. It is obvious that these types of activity differ considerably. More accurate structuring of innovative activity of the teacher will allow experts to describe more precisely objective essence of innovative processes and to find out more effective means of their stimulation both at the individual level of the teacher and at the level of a national educational system. The aim of the publication was to discuss the questions of what is innovative activity of the teacher; whether innovative activity really exists in mass practice; how innovative activity can be stimulated. Methodology and research methods. The research was based on the systematic approach. In the course of the research, the analysis of scientific and methodological literature and the survey among the teachers aimed at identifying the characteristics of their innovative activity were employed. Results and scientific novelty. The whole cycle of promoting the use of innovations into practice is thoroughly examined: from subjectivity to objectivity; from creativity to reproductive activity; from objectively new result to the product of a sample; from resistance of environment against innovation to stimulation and coercion to its realisation. Characteristics of innovative activity of the teacher are determined and described by the level of distribution of the forthcoming innovation and the attitudes of professional community towards it. It is proposed and proved that the innovation activities of the teachers should be separated into three types: (type I) creative activity of the individual aimed at development of means, methods and technologies to obtain objectively new results; (type II) activities of the teachers focused on the implementation of ready tested innovations, but new for teacher-friendly professional environment, (start-up); (type III) innovative activity of the teachers as a routine operation in the innovation system as its element. The activity of the type I is not widespread; such activity cannot and should not be mass - not everyone can be engaged in it. Design activity corresponds to the type II; type III - activity of performers with the total development of innovation becoming the accepted norm. Mass introduction of a novelty is an innovative process, but not at the level of a certain subject, since a teacher, who acts (often involuntarily) on well-developed samples and algorithms, is not an innovator. Practical significance. The dependence of efficiency of pedagogical innovations on the model of state policy in education is demonstrated. The reasons of the development gap of the Russian educational system in the field of innovations from the systems of other countries are disclosed. The conditions specific to each type of a teacher's innovative activity, which need to be created for successful and more rapid implementation of progressive innovations, are allocated.


The concept of the "comprehensive approach" has become a paradigm for international state engagement in the field of fostering sustainable peace in crisis-ridden countries. This approach stipulates joint actions of different governmental institutions. The ministry of defence, providing interventionist armed forces; the ministry of interior, providing police personal; the ministry of foreign affairs, providing crisis aid and the ministry of economic cooperation and development define the core actors on the highest level, whilst the implementation of this approach is left to the various, highly heterogeneous employees of the ministries and their sub-contractors...


Pokeweed antiviral protein (PAP) is single-chain ribosome-inactivating protein (RIP) of Phytolacca americana L. (Pokeweed) that is characterized by its ability to depurinate ribosomes. In the present study, we cloned and sequenced complete gene of pokeweed antiviral protein type 1 (PAP-I) from the summer leaves of pokeweed collected from Trabzon (Turkey) using a pair of gene specific primers based on the known N-and C-terminal nucleotide sequences of PAP gene. A product of 942 base pair was purified and inserted into pGEM-T Easy vector (Promega), downstream of the T7 promoter, and transformed into E. coli strain, JM 109. The PAP-I cistron of P. americana contained 313 amino acid residues. The DNA sequence of 942 base pairs included an open reading frame (ORF). The nucleotide sequences of PAP-I gene contained no introns and the comparison with the PAP-I sequence with the PAP isoform, showed an identity of 80-99%. Sequence analysis of PAP-I revealed that it contains a single point mutation, changing the Leucine (L) at position 273 to Phenylalanine (F) (L273F) at the putative active site.


In this paper, we propose a design method of wholebody tactile interface for elevating human-robot coordination. The proposed surface cover sensor as the tactile interface enables robots to detect accurate 3D force vector applied on various parts of the body during physical interaction with humans. First, after analysis of a variety of contact situations between humans and robots, tactile and force information needed are specified, and the specifications are decided based on knowledge of human engineering. Next, a design method of a cover sensor that can detect accurate force vector and contact position is described. The cover sensor utilizes a force-torque sensor and is surrounded with several touch sensors. The mechanism was implemented on a humanoid robot, WENDY. Finally, evaluation experiments of locus tracking on the surface and force-following to humans were carried out. The experimental results demonstrate the high capabilities of the proposed cover sensor as human-robot interface, and indicate that the proposed design method of whole-body tactile interface is capable of enhancing human-robot coordination.


Congenital myasthenic syndrome (CMS) with end-plate acetylcholinesterase (AChE) deficiency is a rare autosomal recessive disease, recently classified as CMS type Ic (CMS-Ic). It is characterized by onset in childhood, generalized weakness increased by exertion, refractoriness to anticholinesterase drugs, and morphological abnormalities of the neuromuscular junctions (NMJs). The collagen-tailed form of AChE, which is normally concentrated at NMJs, is composed of catalytic tetramers associated with a specific collagen, COLQ. In CMS-Ic patients, these collagen-tailed forms are often absent. We studied a large family comprising 11 siblings, 6 of whom are affected by a mild form of CMS-Ic. The muscles of the patients contained collagen-tailed AChE. We first excluded the ACHE gene (7q22) as potential culprit, by linkage analysis; then we mapped COLQ to chromosome 3p24.2. By analyzing 3p24.2 markers located close to the gene, we found that the six affected patients were homozygous for an interval of 14 cM between D3S1597 and D3S2338. We determined the COLQ coding sequence and found that the patients present a homozygous missense mutation, Y431S, in the conserved C-terminal domain of COLQ. This mutation is thought to disturb the attachment of collagen-tailed AChE to the NMJ, thus constituting the first genetic defect causing CMS-Ic.


Nutritional management is integral to the care of all patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV infection results in complicated nutritional issues for patients, and there is growing evidence that nutritional interventions influence health outcomes in HIV-infected patients. We define levels of nutritional care, and we discuss when patients should be referred to providers (i.e., registered dietitians) with nutritional and HIV expertise.


The characteristics of CO2 reacting with CaO in a molten eutectic mixture of CaF2 and NaF has been investigated. Calculations of the Gibbs free energy, temperature analysis of the decomposition of the formed carbonates, and XRD analyses of quenched samples taken during CO2 absorption or desorption were employed to identify the phases present in the melt. Efficient CO2 absorption from a simulated flue gas was observed, due to a combined reaction where CaO initially reacts with CO2 and forms CaCO3. Subsequently, Na2CO3 is formed by an ion exchange reaction between CaCO3 and NaF. It was found that the CaO activity is highest in the temperature range 826–834°C. Increasing the CaO concentration from 5 to 20 wt% in the molten salt resulted in reduced CO2 reactivity efficiency, probably because of precipitation and agglomeration of the sorbent. The total carbonation conversion was independent of the CO2 concentration in the inlet gas, and the sorbent carrying capacity was in the range 0.722–0.743 g CO2/g CaO corresponding to 0.037–0.144 g CO2/g total liquid. Decarbonation was conducted by raising the temperature. 40% conversion back to CaO was recorded at 1160°C. The recorded curves for the CO2 concentration in the outlet gas exhibited a rapid desorption step followed by a slow step.


Fast Packet Switching (FPS) is emerging as the preferred technology for future high speed, integrated networks. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is an approach to FPS that is in the process of standardization and is the preferred approach of the carrier community. Concurrently, alternative approaches to FPS based on variable sized packets have been proposed by segments of the data communication industry. These approaches include Frame Relay and an approach developed by IBM called PARIS. The purpose of this paper is to examine the suitability of ATM for data communications relative to some of these alternative approaches.


As it is introduced by Bermond, Perennes, and Kodate and by Fragopoulou and Akl, some Cayley graphs, including most popular models for interconnection networks, admit a special automorphism, called complete rotation. Such an automorphism is often used to derive algorithms or properties of the underlying graph. For example, some optimal gossiping algorithms can be easily designed by using a complete rotation, and the constructions of the best known edge disjoint spanning trees in the toroidal meshes and the hypercubes are based on such an automorphism. Our purpose is to investigate such Cayley graphs. We relate some symmetries of a graph with potential algebraic symmetries appearing in its definition as a Cayley graph on a group.


Many unpaved roads in developing areas carry light traffic volumes of less than 400 vehicles per day. Paving these roads according to normal designs and with traditional materials is not economically justified. Lighter pavement structures that result in lower construction costs are consequently used. Local materials are used in the construction of lighter pavement structures. For example, available natural materials that do not necessarily meet traditional specifications are used in the pavement layers, which may only consist of a sub base, base, and surface seal. This approach has had wide-ranging success in southern Africa. In the drier parts of the country, which are identified by a Weinert N-value of greater than 5, calcretes with relaxed California Bearing Ratio, plasticity index, grading requirements, and aggregate strength requirements have performed well in two-layer pavements. Dolerite natural gravels that comply with traditional specifications have performed well in this area, but they performed unsatisfactorily when they complied with traditional specifications in the wet area, in which the N-value was less than 5. Tillites also perform acceptably when certain requirements are relaxed. It is therefore evident that the interaction of material type and climate plays an important role, and the relaxation of material requirements should only be considered in cases in which sufficient evidence of adequate performance exists. Factors such as construction quality control, control of overloading, and particularly maintenance are beyond the control of the designer, but could have important repercussions on the performance of lighter pavement structures. In developing areas in which road authorities may not be able to handle the maintenance work load generated by lighter pavements, or may not be in a position to handle local reconstruction, lighter pavement structures may nut be a feasible solution. Funding agencies could, however, play an important role in minimizing the total costs incurred by the authority and road users by including funds for periodic and special maintenance in a loan agreement.


We have obtained a Late Permian paleomagnetic pole from dikes in the Tarim craton of China. Directions of magnetization from 21 mafic and ultramafic dikes at three localities pass a fold test at the 95% confidence level. The new paleomagnetic pole lies at lat 66°N, long 181° E; N = 21, K = 61, and α95 = 3.9°. On the basis of a comparison with paleomagnetic data from adjacent tectonic units, we conclude that (1) the Late Permian paleolatitude of the Tarim craton differs from that of the Sino-Korean craton, suggesting that the two cratons were distinct tectonic units in Late Permian time; (2) there was relative motion between the Tarim craton and the Siberian craton after Late Permian time; and (3) negligible relative motions have occured between different thrust sheets in the Keping-Bachu area of the north-western Tarim craton.


Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has become an integral part of medical diagnosis because it produces tomographic images without the use of any ionizing radiation. In recent years, array coils, tightly surrounding the target anatomy, significantly increased the signal yield in any given scan setup. Therefore, they reduced the minutes-long scan times improving patient comfort and reducing costs. The trend to arrays with more and more channels, however, increased the number of screened RF cables in the bore, that are rigid, bulky, and can even pose a safety hazard to the patient if not carefully placed and decoupled. This thesis describes a fully integrated dual-channel CMOS receiver for surface coils within an MRI array coil. The IC minimizes the size of the receiver modules, which enables the deployment of the receiver directly on the coil. The immediate conversion of the signal into the digital domain means that the data can be transmitted without loss over optical fibers completely removing all shielded RF cables. Therefore, light-weight or even wearable, high channel-count array coils are made possible, that may further increase the harvested signal. Signal properties for a broad range of MRI systems are analyzed and translated into specifications for the IC. Using a 130 nm CMOS process, a receiver IC with reflective LNAs, to ensure decoupling between different array elements, has been implemented. It achieves a measured sub-1 dB noise figure and an IIP3 above 0 dBm with a power consumption below a quarter of a Watt per channel, which simplifies the power supply of the receiver modules. A gain range of more than 40 dB is covered. The IC has been verified by acquiring images within a commercial 3 T MRI scanner.


Prediction of residue-level structural attributes and protein-level structural classes helps model protein tertiary structures and understand protein functions. Existing methods are either specialized on only one class of proteins or developed to predict only a specific type of residue-level attribute. In this work, we develop a new deep-learning method, named Membrane Association and Secondary Structure Predictor (MASSP), for accurately predicting both residue-level structural attributes (secondary structure, location, orientation, and topology) and protein-level structural classes (bitopic, α-helical, β-barrel, and soluble). MASSP integrates a multilayer two-dimensional convolutional neural network (2D-CNN) with a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network into a multitasking framework. Our comparison shows that MASSP performs equally well or better than the state-of-the-art methods in predicting residue-level secondary structures, boundaries of transmembrane segments, and topology. Furthermore, it achieves outstanding accuracy in predicting protein-level structural classes. MASSP automatically distinguishes the structural classes of input sequences and identifies transmembrane segments and topologies if present, making it broadly applicable to different classes of proteins. In summary, MASSP's good performance and broad applicability make it well suited for annotating residue-level attributes and protein-level structural classes at the proteome scale.


Healthcare services and research centre reports estimate that by 2050, Americans aged 65 or older will reach the 89 million mark, this is more than double the number of older adults in the United States in 2010. In an aging society, it is important to home care elderly and maintain their daily needs and provide safe evacuation alternatives in the case emergency. Hence, this paper aims to implement and evaluate a smart and location-aware indoor emergency evacuation system for elderly users. The prototype system employs multiple Bluetooth Low Energy and iBeacon sensors and a smartphone. The smartphone utilizes the beacon signals to estimate its location within the building and uses the sensor data transmitted by the iBeacons to identify the level of threat (if any) to the elderly user and guide him/her to a safe zone in the case of fire, earthquake etc. Our prototype was tested in three different locations utilizing two different types of sensors. The results show that our system can detect a threat and guide the elderly user with minimum 85.47 centimeters and maximum 239.8 centimeters distance error.


Global climate change is widely shown to cause ocean acidification (OA) and projected to intensify nutrient limitation. Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient for phytoplankton to grow. While dissolved inorganic phosphate (DIP) is the preferred form of P, phytoplankton have evolved alkaline phosphatase (AP) to utilize dissolved organic phosphorus (DOP) when DIP is deficient. Although AP is known to require pH>7, how OA may affect AP activity and hence the capacity of phytoplankton to utilize DOP is poorly understood. Here, we examine the effects of pH conditions (5.5 to 11) on AP activity from six species of dinoflagellates, an important group of marine phytoplankton. We observed a general pattern that AP activity declined sharply at pH 5.5, peaked between pH 7 and 8, and dropped at pH>8. However, our data revealed remarkable interspecific variations in optimal pH and niche breadth of pH. Among the species examined, Fugacium kawagutii and Prorocentrum cordatum had an optimal pH at 8, Alexandrium pacificum, Amphidinium carterae, Effrenium voratum, and Karenia mikimotoi showed an optimal pH of 7. However, whereas A. pacificum, F. kawagutii and K. mikimotoi had a broad pH range for AP (7-11), A. carterae, E. voratum, and P. cordatum exhibited a narrow pH range. The response of AP activity of A. carterae to pH changes was verified using purified AP heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli. These findings suggest that OA will likely differentially impact the capacity of different phytoplankton species to utilize DOP in the projected acidified and nutrient-limited future ocean.


ABSTRACT As a writer of fiction, D. H. Lawrence spent his career maneuvering between heterosexual and homosexual preferences. In order to make a living, he needed to use mainstream publishers. They encouraged his bold work but only if he censored it. What especially interested Lawrence were the differences between male and female orgasm—not just the mechanics but their meaning. Over his career (1910–1930) his views on orgasm evolved from simple release, to ambivalent forms of lust, to a challenging separation of responses: unfathomable silence for males and articulate expression for females. The sexes are privileged differently, and the categorical separation that Lawrence discovers is a revelation. This essay analyzes five of his most famous novels, from Sons and Lovers to Lady Chatterley's Lover, and, based on revisions in his texts, reaches conclusions that differ from those most readers have held. In revising, Lawrence came to reshape his characters' responses into complex, often-coded narratives.


Background
The number of house calls made by physicians has been declining over the years, while the number of people requiring house calls, especially the elderly, is growing.

Aim
To consolidate the literature regarding the barriers faced by primary care physicians in making house calls.

Design of the study
Literature review.

Method
Studies were sourced from PubMed and Embase.

Results
7 studies were selected to be in the literature review. Barriers to making house calls by primary care physicians include inadequate remuneration, lack of time and training, unconducive home environment, concerns with professional liability and safety, and perceived low value-added in the patient's quality of care.

Conclusion
While primary care physicians do recognize the value of house calls in patient care, the perceived limited standard of care that can be achieved in the home setting, busy clinic practice (large patient loads), coupled with inadequate remuneration make house calls unrealistic for many doctors. These barriers must be addressed to ensure accessibility to primary health care services for the immobile, frail, and sick is not being compromised. One of the solutions may be to expose medical students and residents to house calls early through mentorship.


This study investigated the effects of the nature of urban development on land surface temperature (LST) and the strengths of different biophysical and anthropogenic factors in explaining the spatial variation of LST at the neighbourhood scale in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) images were used to retrieve LST. The study found that the mean LST in Dhaka increased at a rate of 1.26°C per decade between 1991 and 2014. LST is found to be higher in the built-up areas, particularly in informally developed areas (i.e., slum settlements) and unplanned mixed-use areas. The OLS analysis indicates that along with bio-physical factors population density, building density and slum concentrations also have a significant effect on the spatial variation of LST at neighbourhood scales. The study findings suggest a planned development with the provision of vegetation cover and water bodies can significantly reduce the LST in Dhaka.


As the dramatic development in the array signal processing, the phase array radar is widely used. The phase array radar is more flexible in beamforming since we just need to adapt the phase shift to change the direction of beamforming. However, it is always a huge cost of hardware resources since each antenna antenna element needs its own receiving path. Therefore, the phase array radar should be divided into subarrays and each subarray has one receive path. It is very difficult to maintain good performance of the phase array radar after the subarray division. In this paper, we propose a novel subarray division method which is based on the genetic algorithm. The proposed method helps to divide the subarrays and maintain good mainlobe for the expected signal and low sidelobe for the interference suppression. In addition, the simulation results are given to show our proposed method has good performance in the antenna pattern and reduce the hardware cost dramatically.


Human PMN incubated in culture supernatants of the Raji long-term human lymphoblastoid cell line showed increased rosette formation with sheep erythrocytes coated with C3b (EIgM C4b3b) but no change in rosette formation with IgG-coated erythrocytes. This suggested a specific increase in cell surface C3b receptors, which was further investigated using 125I-C3b for direct binding studies. The results confirmed that specific binding of 125I-C3b to PMN incubated in culture supernatants increased up to three- to four-fold over binding to PMN incubated in control media alone. Scatchard analysis revealed that the apparent Ka for supernatant-treated cells, 3.36 +/- 0.89 X 10(7) L/M did not differ from the Ka for cells incubated in control media, 3.76 +/- 0.75 X 10(7) L/M, suggesting an increase in a single class of C3b receptors. Kinetic studies revealed that the active factor was present within 24 hr of culture of the Raji cells, and that neutrophils incubated in culture supernatants increased their C3b receptors continuously for up to 4 hr, the longest interval tested. The effect of the culture supernatant was lost with dilution beyond eight- to 10-fold. The results suggest that culture supernatants of this long-term lymphoblastoid cell line contain soluble factors that induce increased expression of C3b receptors on PMN and may thus serve as a model for study of important physiologic effects of lymphocyte products on PMN in vivo.


An alternative hypothesis to abrasion and erosion for the pathogenesis of noncarious cervical lesions was put forward in 1984; the so-called occlusal theory suggested that tensile stresses from occlusal overload could be involved in the pathogenesis of noncarious cervical lesions and that bending stresses applied to teeth could cause disruption of the surface enamel, resulting in increased susceptibility to dissolution and abrasion at the affected sites and in the development of wedge-shaped lesions. This theory has gained increased acceptance in recent years, although absolute scientific evidence has been scant. These lesions also occur in animals, in particular, the domestic cat, in which they are called feline odontoclastic resorptive lesions. A variety of theories about pathogenesis of these lesions have been put forward, but there is some evidence that occlusal overload may be a contributory factor in the development of an inflammatory response in the periodontal membrane and the presence of enzymes associated with resorption in the gingival crevice. Further investigation may help define a common etiology between the pathogenesis of feline odontoclastic resorptive lesions and noncarious cervical lesions.