An effective way to learn representations from untranscribed speech and unspoken text with linguistic/lexical representations derived from synthesized speech was introduced in tts4pretrain [1]. However, the representations learned from synthesized and real speech are likely to be different, potentially limiting the improvements from incorporating unspoken text. In this paper, we introduce learning from supervised speech earlier on in the training process with consistency-based regularization between real and synthesized speech. This allows for better learning of shared speech and text representations. Thus, we introduce a new objective, with encoder and decoder consistency and contrastive regularization between real and synthesized speech derived from the labeled corpora during the pretraining stage. We show that the new objective leads to more similar representations derived from speech and text that help downstream ASR. The proposed pretraining method yields Word Error Rate (WER) reductions of 7-21% relative on six public corpora, Librispeech, AMI, TEDLIUM, Common Voice, Switchboard, CHiME-6, over a state-of-the-art baseline pretrained with wav2vec2.0 and 2-17% over the previously proposed tts4pretrain. The proposed method outperforms the supervised SpeechStew by up to 17%. Moreover, we show that the proposed method also yields WER reductions on larger data sets by evaluating on a large resource, in-house Voice Search task and streaming ASR.


Error Correction Codes (ECCs) are commonly used to protect memories against soft errors with an impact on memory area and delay. For large memories, the area overhead is mostly due to the additional cells needed to store the parity check bits. In terms of delay, the overhead is mostly needed to detect and correct errors when the data is read from the memory. Most ECCs that can correct more than one error have a complex decoding process and so are limited in high speed memory applications. One exception is One Step Majority Logic Decodable (OS-MLD) codes for which decoding can be done in parallel at high speed. Unfortunately, there are only a few OS-MLD codes that provide a limited choice in terms of block sizes, error correction capabilities and code rate. Therefore, there is considerable interest in a novel construction of OS-MLD codes to provide additional choices for protecting memories. In this paper, a new method to construct Double Error Correction (DEC) OS-MLD codes is presented. This method is based on the use of parity check matrices in which two bits have at most two parity check equations in common; the proposed method provides codes that require a smaller number of parity check bits than existing codes like Orthogonal Latin Square (OLS) codes. The drawback of the proposed Two Bit Overlap (TBO) codes is that they require slightly more complex decoding than OLS codes. Therefore, they provide an intermediate solution between OLS and non OS-MLD codes in terms of decoding delay and number of parity check bits. The proposed TBO codes have been implemented for some block sizes and compared to both OLS and BCH codes to illustrate the trade off in delay and memory overhead. Finally, this paper discusses the generalization of the proposed scheme to codes with larger error correction capabilities.


Construction industry is vital for the nation's growth and will only continue to function with the basis of payment by the employer. However this industry has been plagued by the non-payment scenario, and directly affecting contractor's cashflow. In properly securing payment and remedying non-payment by the employer, contractor nevertheless can choose to suspend works. This right is a selfhelp remedy that can be an effective means of securing payment without the need to instigate other formal procedures and remedies which are time and money consuming. In Malaysia, this right has been introduced in CIDB 2000, and later in PAM 2006 for building works; while the other countries such as UK, New Zealand, Australia, Isle of Man, and Singapore has incorporated this right in their building acts since a very long time. Despite of this convenience, studies have shown many contractors in Malaysia do not favour this right in remedying non-payment, and similiarly there is almost no case law (except one case in New Zealand) that illustrate contractor exercising this right. This research therefore has been done to explore what are the possible problems that the contractor may encounter and to what extent it may arise when exercise this right in relation to PAM 2006 and CIDB 2000. The result shows that the contractor's right in suspension of work can be challenged by the employer for several grounds such as the validity of notice to suspend works, validity of interim certificates and the right to set-off as grounds for non-payment. Secondly, without proper fulfillment such as mitigation of loss, prevention of delay, and submitting notices, contractor can be held to have lost his rights in these claims. Thirdly, contractor may face problems in suspending works downstream as there is lack of back-to back provisions in sub-contracts. This research will shed a light of what are the possible problems that the contractors may encounter under PAM 2006 and CIDB and forms a guideline for the contractors to suspend work optimistically.


The response properties and selectivity of polymer membrane electrodes with fixed quaternary phosphonium ion-sensing groups for nitrate are described. A poly(trioctylvinylbenzylphosphonium nitrate)(PTOVBPNO3) membrane electrode demonstrated a selective response to nitrate in the concentration range 5 × 10–5–0.1 mol dm–3, with a slope of –53.4 ± 0.5 mV decade–1. The selectivity of this electrode for nitrate ions can be favourably compared to conventional nitrate ion-selective electrodes based on quaternary ammonium ion-exchange sites. Notably, a significant improvement of selectivity for nitrate by two orders of magnitude was obtained in the presence of perchlorate. The PTOVBPNO3 membrane electrode was used for the determination of nitrate in samples of commercially available fertilizers.


Congestion control is needed for all data transported across the
Internet, in order to promote fair usage and prevent congestion
collapse. The requirements for interactive, point-to-point real-time
multimedia, which needs low-delay, semi-reliable data delivery, are
different from the requirements for bulk transfer like FTP or bursty
transfers like Web pages. Due to an increasing amount of RTP-based
real-time media traffic on the Internet (e.g. with the introduction of
the Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC)), it is especially important
to ensure that this kind of traffic is congestion controlled. This
document describes a set of requirements that can be used to evaluate
other congestion control mechanisms in order to figure out their
fitness for this purpose, and in particular to provide a set of
possible requirements for real-time media congestion avoidance
technique.


The purpose of this study was to formulate a magnetic resonance imaging-based scoring system for differentiating tuberculous arthritis from advanced osteonecrosis of the femoral head. Magnetic resonance imaging findings in 18 hips with tuberculous arthritis and 36 hips with advanced osteonecrosis of the femoral head were reviewed retrospectively. Confirmation of tuberculous arthritis was based on enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and/or synovial biopsy. Osteonecrosis was confirmed either by histopathology or eventual radiographic evidence on follow-up. The findings were analyzed with an emphasis on the changes in femoral head marrow, joint cavity, synovium, acetabulum, and contrast enhancement patterns. A score of 2 was assigned for the presence of each of the following: T2 hyperintensity of the femoral head, synovial hypertrophy, articular cartilage erosion, unilateral involvement of the femoral head, acetabular edema/sclerosis, and enhancement of the involved head. A score of 1 was assigned for each of the following: joint effusion, edema of adjacent marrow, and enhancement of adjacent soft tissue. A cutoff value of 10 of 15 points was considered to be positive for tuberculous arthritis. Sixteen of 18 cases of tuberculous arthritis were correctly identifiable on the basis of this scoring system. The 2 remaining cases had a score of 9. No case of osteonecrosis of the femoral head scored more than 9. A score of 10 for a positive diagnosis of tuberculous arthritis had a sensitivity of 88.89% and specificity of 100%. Positive and negative predictive values were 1 and 0.94, respectively. Statistical significance for each of the parameters and the entire model was established with logistic regression analysis. This new scoring system is effective in solving the imaging dilemma pertinent to endemic regions.


Aims Our objective is to identify first-trimester plasmatic miRNAs associated with and predictive of GDM. Methods We quantified miRNA using next-generation sequencing in discovery (Gen3G: n = 443/GDM = 56) and replication (3D: n = 139/GDM = 76) cohorts. We have diagnosed GDM using a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test and the IADPSG criteria. We applied stepwise logistic regression analysis among replicated miRNAs to build prediction models. Results We identified 17 miRNAs associated with GDM development in both cohorts. The prediction performance of hsa-miR-517a-3p|hsa-miR-517b-3p, hsa-miR-218-5p, and hsa-let7a-3p was slightly better than GDM classic risk factors (age, BMI, familial history of type 2 diabetes, history of GDM or macrosomia, and HbA1c) (AUC 0.78 vs. 0.75). MiRNAs and GDM classic risk factors together further improved the prediction values [AUC 0.84 (95% CI 0.73–0.94)]. These results were replicated in 3D, although weaker predictive values were obtained. We suggest very low and higher risk GDM thresholds, which could be used to identify women who could do without a diagnostic test for GDM and women most likely to benefit from an early GDM prevention program. Conclusions In summary, three miRNAs combined with classic GDM risk factors provide excellent prediction values, potentially strong enough to improve early detection and prevention of GDM.


In northwestern China, Pisha sandstone area with more than 11,000 km2 is located in an joint triangle region of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, shaanxi and shanxi province. The typical feature of the Pisha Sandstone is extremely hard when it is dry but becomes loose and soft when wet. This cause makes it have extremely severe impacts on local environment such as soil erosion and water loss, and damage the biological diversity. The soil erosion index of this area is nearly 30 000 t km-2 yr-1. In order to control erosion and restore the eco-environment of the gullies in this area, the seabuckthorn flexible dam actually being a new biological measure was proposed by Mrs. Bi, in which many researchers were very interested. Presently, this new measure has been successfully used to diminish the erosion rate of the area. In this paper, firstly, the major factors influencing the trapping sediment capacity of the seabuckthorn flexible dam were identified and determined. Then, the trapping sediment capacity of the single seabuckthorn flexible dam (that is to say there is only one seabuckthorn flexible dam in the modeled gully bed.) was simulated using one-dimensional sediment-flow model in this article. Finally, based on the computational results, two major impact factors, i.e. roughness and dam length of the seabuckthorn flexible dam, were found. Moreover according to the sediment retention effects of different groups assembled by different roughness with dam length, a series of the suitable length ranges of the seabuckthorn flexible dam were provided in corresponding to a series of the seabuckthorn flexible dam's roughness when the gully bed slop was determined as 0.01 (this slop belongs to the smaller one.). The results suggest that the seabuckthorn flexible dam can most effectively reduce sediment loss from the gully channel. To attain at least good eco-environment status, a future emphasis should be placed on widely spreading and planting of the seabuckthorn flexible dam in the Pisha sandstone area in order to powerfully control soil and water loss.


PurposeThis paper aims to examine the influence of perceived overqualification on innovative behaviour in the workplace. By integrating self-efficacy and human capital theories, this study proposes that perceived overqualification improves innovative behaviour directly and indirectly by boosting employee creative self-confidence. It further investigates the boundary conditions imposed by perceived psychological safety in this process.Design/methodology/approachThe research utilises a quantitative research methodology through a two-wave survey of 335 employees and their 135 leaders. Moderated and mediated regression analyses were used to analyse the research data.FindingsThe results revealed that perceived overqualification promotes innovative behaviour at work directly and indirectly through its positive influence on creative self-confidence. The mediating effect of creative self-confidence in the relationship between perceived overqualification and innovative behaviour is moderated by perceived psychological safety at work, such that the relationship is stronger in a higher perceived psychological safety condition compared to when it is low.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has theoretical and practical implications for personnel management. From a theoretical perspective, it integrates human capital and self-efficacy theories to explain a mechanism through which perceived overqualification will lead to innovative behaviour in the workplace. From a managerial perspective, it mitigates the stigma associated with an overqualified workforce by suggesting that perceived overqualification can be a source of innovation at work.Originality/valueThis is the first study that examines the creative self-confidence-based mechanism in the relationship between perceived overqualification and innovative behaviour at work. It also explores the moderating role of psychological safety in this relationship.


The paper features coming alterations in the Russian legislation regulating legal relations in gardening, vegetable gardening and cottage gardening. The paper examines the approaches to determining the subject matter of legal regulation in the bill of the federal law On Gardening, Vegetable Gardening and Cottage Gardening aiming to facilitate legal relations in gardening, vegetable gardening and cottagebeing developed by the Russian Government under the instruction of the President of April 14 2014N Pr-840. The legal comparison of the provisions of the federal legislation and the applicable Federa lLaw of April 15 1998 no 66-FZ On Gardening and Cottage noncommercial Associations of Citizens shows that despite the title of the applicable law, its norms are not limited to regulating legal status of Gardening and Cottage noncommercial Associations of citizens as legal persons. The author notes that the law contains the provisions relevant to all gardeners and cottage owners irrespective of their membership in noncommercial partnerships, consumer cooperatives and noncommercial partnerships. Due to this, conclusions are made on the rationale of the choice of approaches to the subject matter of regulation as to the new federal law, i.e. whether the law answers the question if the new federal law should be a law on legal persons (non commercial corporate organizations established by citizens for gardening or cottage farming) or the law on gardening and cottage gardening as a type of activity and leisure for citizens. The author stresses the necessity to define the concepts gardening, vegetable gardening and cottage gardening due to their fundamental nature for the new federal law, presente down approaches to defining them and justified the unique nature of gardening, vegetable gardening and cottage gardening as types of land-use.


The aim of the paper is to present the economic dimension of the Europe 2020 strategy. The new strategy of European Union, was launched on 3 march 2010, as a response for economic crisis. Considerated as a new agenda for economic problem, continue, as Lisbon strategy did, to offer a new instrument to boost growth and jobs in all EU's country. It contains 3 key priorities: smart growth, sustainable growth and inclusive growth. The economic dimension identify 3 headline targets that EU must achive them until 2020: 75 % of the population aged 20-64 should be employed; 3% of the EU's GDP should be invested in R&D and "20/20/20" climate/energy targets. The two primary research objective are: 1. the explore the economic dimension as a part of Europe 2020 strategy and 2. a short geoeconomic analysis of the economic targets, based on the EU reports.


This paper presents an ultra-low power super-regenerative receiver (SRR) suitable for OOK modulation. The receiver is fabricated in 40 nm CMOS technology and operates in the ISM band of 902-928 MHz. It exploits a SAR architecture to calibrate the internally generated quench signal. Employing an on-chip inductor and a single to differential architecture for the input amplifier has made the receiver fully integrable, eliminating the need for external components. A power consumption of 320 μW from a 0.65 V supply results in an excellent energy efficiency of 80 pJ/b at 4 Mb/s data rate, while the best sensitivity is -87 dBm at 1 Mb/s data rate.


Congenital myopathy associated with pathogenic variants in the STAC3 gene has long been considered native American myopathy (NAM). In 2017, the first case of a non-Amerindian patient with this myopathy was described. Here, we report the first Russian patient with NAM. The patient is a 17-year-old female with compound-heterozygous single nucleotide variants in the STAC3 gene: c.862A>T, p.(Lys288Ter) and c.93del, p.(Lys32ArgfsTer78). She has a milder phenotype than the earlier described patients. To our knowledge, this is the first case of a patient who had both nonsense and frameshift variants. It is assumed that the frameshift variant with premature stop codon lead to nonsense-mediated RNA decay. However, there are two additional coding isoforms of the STAC3 gene, which are not affected by this frameshift variant. We can speculate that these isoforms may partially carry out the function, and possibly explain the milder phenotype of our patient.


Abstract Electrogastrogram (EGG) is the cutaneous recording of gastric electrical activity. Some patients with nausea, vomiting, early satiety, and patients with long term insulin‐dependent diabetes exhibit gastric electrical rhythm disturbances. We are interested in investigating the EGG to determine if abnormalities of the EGG occur in association with those gastric complaints. The aim of this document is to investigate long term diabetics with a history of such gastric dysrhythmia complaints in an effort to further characterize the frequency of abnormalities of the EGG in real clinical diabetic gastroparesis patients. For feature extraction purposes, we have performed Wavelet‐Packet analysis of EGG signals and have obtained power spectral density of wavelet‐packet details and approximation coefficients in diabetic patients suffering from gastric dysrhythmia (tachygastria, bradygastria) and healthy volunteers. Wavelet‐Packet analysis provides details of changes in frequency components at any time point, and enhanced interpretation of cutaneous EGG recordings. In conclusion, this paper has shown that the Wavelet‐Packet analysis method is very useful in the analysis of cutaneous EGG recordings, especially in detecting dysrhythmic events.


Immigration and multiculturalism are at the heart of modern Western societies. The issue of language acquisition of immigrants is intrinsically linked to immigration. We formally link language acquisition of immigrants to the relative size of the immigrant stock, employing a microeconomic trading framework. Our model allows for spatial interaction going beyond the immigrant's area of residence, and explicitly incorporates spatial segregation. In addition, behavioral differences of immigrants with respect to their level of assimilation into the host country, as well as differences in networking within their own ethnic community, are accounted for. We test our model for four non-Western immigrant groups in the Netherlands at two different spatial scale levels. The empirical results reveal that there is only ambiguous support for the inverse relationship between size of the immigrant community and language acquisition or language proficiency in The Netherlands. We find instead that there is strong support for language acquisition and understanding being positively influenced by assimilation to the host country's culture.


The plate tectonics revolution has changed our outlook on the physical history of the solid Earth more than anything else since the debates of Adam Gottlob Werner and James Hutton, but it has now arrived at a state of consolidation where patiently and inconspicuously (unless you are an insider) the foundations are being laid for a, perhaps large, leap forward at some point in the future. In the meantime another revolution, slower, less audible and therefore less noticed, has been addressing equally grand but quite different aspects of the Earth. Born in the seventies of the last century, it tried its tools and wits in the eighties and began to really keep its promises in the nineties. Taking advantage of the images of the changing geography of continents and oceans furnished by its predecessor and the current explosion of interest in present and future climates of the world, it has already much increased our understanding of the working of the atmosphere, cryosphere and hydrosphere of the recent past. In so doing it has also set the stage for a new and more profound study of the surface history of the Earth and its role as the scene of the origin and evolution of life.

Since its beginning, the main thrust of what Nick Shackleton has called the 'quiet revolution' has been directed towards the climate and the atmosphere/ocean interaction of the Quaternary as the backdrop of the accelerating change from the climate of the recent past to that of the immediate future. It has so led to a strong growth in our understanding of the dynamics of the present climate and the development of important new tools; examples are the quantification of environmental data extracted from geological and palaeontological proxy records and the use of global circulation models to synthesize …


We investigate absolute retracts for hereditarily unicoherent continua, and also the continua that have the arc property of Kelley (i.e., the continua that satisfy both the property of Kelley and the arc approximation property). Among other results we prove that each absolute retract for hereditarily unicoherent continua (for tree-like continua, for -dendroids, for dendroids) has the arc property of Kelley.


Knowledge management is often seen as a problem of capturing, organizing, and retrieving information, evoking notions of data mining, text clustering, databases, and documents. We believe that this view is too simple. Knowledge is inextricably bound up with human cognition, and the management of knowledge occurs within an intricately structured social context. We argue that it is essential for those designing knowledge management systems to consider the human and social factors at play in the production and use of knowledge. We review work—ranging from basic research to applied techniques—that emphasizes cognitive and social factors in knowledge management. We then describe two approaches to designing socially informed knowledge management systems, social computing and knowledge socialization.


Climate and air pollution are closely related. On the one hand, the climate is more and more influenced, locally as well as globally, by the tremendous concentration of pollutants in our atmosphere. Certain elements of the climate are, on the other hand, directly responsible for the process of dilution and dispersion of pollution emission. Of particular importance is the phenomen of ventilation and inversion. The significance of knowing the regional climatic peculiarities is presented by ways of a smallspace-example of the ventilation existing at the valley of river Aare and of the frequency of inversion existing at the Aare-trench situated north of Berne. Such knowledge should increasingly be used to influence regional planning, to assist in the determination of the position of any important source of pollution and should help to determine the selection of suitable living and recreation areas. Unfavorable meteorological-climatological conditions could aggravate a situation whereby harmless concentrations of pollutants could lead locally to critical proportions. For the better understanding of the meteorological and climatological processes within the lowest 500 m-level of our atmosphere, an increased effort of research should be considered in this connection. Through the use of improved data processing in connection with more closely meshed measuring networks, and of automatic recording facilities, as well as through the increased use of physical models, the problem of immission in our heavily valleyed country could be investigated more thoroughly.


Antisera to two herpes simplex virus-type 1 (HSV-1) immediate-early gene products ( IE12 and IE175 ) have been produced using oligopeptides, constructed on the basis of proposed DNA coding sequences, as immunogens. In both cases the synthetic peptides were linked to bovine serum albumin via an N-terminal tyrosine prior to immunization. Both the IE12 and the IE175 antisera reacted with their respective HSV-1 antigens and with antigens produced by the HSV-1 immediate-early mutant tsK but not with functionally equivalent antigens induced by HSV-2. IE12 induced by tsK was found to have an altered mobility with respect to the wild-type IE12 and its precipitation was accompanied by a second, minor, component of lower mobility. Revertants of tsK gave similar results. Labelling IE12 with a variety of amino acids indicated that the first of three possible initiation codons was used in its translation from mRNA. The results imply that the other initiation codons were not used. Wildtype IE12 is produced for at least 3 h after release of cycloheximide block and appears to be turned over rapidly.


Differently nucleated polypropylene (PP) pipes were studied by polarized light and infrared (IR) microscopy and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Although Fourier transform IR microscopy (µFTIR) excels by high spatial resolution and ease of measurement over the classical approach with manually prepared sections and individual analysis, a disadvantage is that the vibrational bands used to calculate the degree of crystallinity may be influenced by the polymorphism of PP. While this does not play a role for the α-polymorph, in the case of β-nucleated PP the calculated profile of crystallinity derived from the so called crystallinity bands depends on the direction of inspection. We could show that in the case of β-nucleation the results from µFTIR and DSC of cross-sections can be correlated, and thus the crystallinity profile obtained from µFTIR becomes independent from the direction of consideration. Consequently the advantages of µFTIR with regard to spatial resolution and reproducibility can now be exploited for β-nucleated PP as well. Using the differently nucleated specimen we give the first practical validation of a previously on a theoretical basis derived model to determine the molecular orientation in all three dimensions (machine, transverse, and normal). It could be shown that the profiles of molecular orientation are a function of both, the extrusion process with its post extrusion cooling conditions, and the type of nucleating agent. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 130: 4182–4190, 2013


Banking organizations have peculiar characteristics that make it difficult for them to adopt and apply traditional corporate governance models. However, little attention has been given to understanding and theorizing banking corporate governance. Deploying a grounded theory methodology this paper develops a substantive theory of banking corporate governance within Egypt. Subsequently, through sociological institutionalism the substantive theory is further analyzed and assessed; findings indicate that banking corporate governance is an evolving context or contingency based phenomenon. Corporate governance for banks in Egypt involves an institutionalization process based on regulative and normative pressures that looks to ensure legitimacy from shareholders, regulators and depositors. This said, to maintain legitimacy banks either comply or disguise their non-compliance. Overall, this paper contributes to non-traditional corporate governance theorizing and offers policy-makers a distinct in-depth understanding of the phenomenon.


Energy is one of the key drivers of economic, social and political development of the world hence its increase in demand. Countries are faced with problems of sustainable energy sources for home use, which will accelerate countries economic growth. During the 2000s several programmes aiming at testing and disseminating energy saving technologies were implemented in Kenya (Smith et al., 2000).One of these technologies was improved cook stoves, which was intended to increase the efficiency of using energy from Biomass and other sources. The purpose of this study is to examine factors influencing choice of sources for domestic energy used in Thuti sub-location in Othaya sub-county, which included among others socio-cultural and economic factors, stakeholders influence, and the switching factors from traditional to more efficient and cleaner fuels and technologies.Descriptive survey   research was design was used to collect required data.The target population of 275 households where systematic random sampling was used to select 27 households. For qualitative data collection, 12 key informants were selected using purposive sampling from Thuti Sub-location were used. The result showed that the source of fuel wood used in Thuti Sub-location from their own farms and Karima forest, representing 73.1% and 26.9% of the total population respectively. This concurs with the objectives of the Green Belt Movement (GBM), which is to encourage sustainable fuel wood usage for the household through planting of trees in their farms while at the same time rehabilitating Karima Forest.On the adoption of alternative sources of energy, the result showed that the households learned of these sources from friends represented at 40.7% followed by Neighbours, 25.9 % and parents at 14.8%. Indicating that there is a close association among the households in their day-to-day activities and choice and sources of domestic energy used. The overall findings underlined the importance in social groups, stakeholders and government advocacy in the choice and sources of domestic energy to be adopted for efficient cooking and sustainability in Thuti Sub-location. This study therefore will be of significant to; policy makers, researchers, residents of rural households to build a case for intervention on the most efficient and clean choice for domestic energy among the rural households in Thuti Sub-location and the environs. Key w ords: Domestic energy, choice, households, adoption, sustainability


BACKGROUND: The role of deep brain stimulation (DBS) of bilateral subthalamic nuclei (STN) in motor improvement of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) is well proven. But, the effect DBS has, on non-motor symptoms (NMSs), is still debatable. There are few studies, which have attempted to address this issue, though it also has significant effect on the quality of life of patients. PURPOSE: To study the impact of bilateral STN-DBS on NMSs in patients with PD. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: A prospective study was constructed from a center in South India. Thirty-five patients with PD who underwent bilateral STN-DBS were assessed preoperatively and 6 months postoperatively for NMSs with two well-established questionnaires: Non-motor Symptoms Questionnaire (NMS Q) and Non-motor Symptoms Scale (NMSS). The significance of improvement in scores was assessed with McNemar's test, chi-square test, and paired two sample t-test for correlated samples. P value significance was set at <0.05. RESULTS: NMSs were seen in all patients. The most frequent symptoms preoperatively were insomnia (66%), nocturia (63%), urgency, and constipation (49% each). Statistically significant reduction after STN-DBS in overall NMSs was noted in both NMS Q (by 2.83, P = 0.008) and NMSS (by 17.40, P = 0.0013). Among the various domains, a significant reduction was observed in cardiovascular and sleep domains with improvement in individual questions on mood, insomnia, and light-headedness. Weight gain was more common after STN-DBS. CONCLUSION: Subthalamic nucleus stimulation causes significant improvement in NMSs with significant improvement in cardiovascular and sleep domains.


This essay discusses the idea of covenant in Habennas' social philosophy. It does so by attempting to shed light on the kind of universality which Habennas claims for communicative reason and by examining the limitations of this universality. The metaphor of "atoning remembrance," as used by Habennas in the "Historians' debate," is also considered. The essay concludes with some observations regarding the relevance of the covenant idea for "public philosophy."


We have purified and further characterized a histamine releasing factor (HRF) derived from human mononuclear cells using gel-filtration HPLC, reverse-phase HPLC, anion exchange chromatography, and elution from SDS gels after electrophoresis. Considerable heterogeneity is seen, far exceeding that published in prior reports. Gel filtration HPLC yielded a major peak at molecular weight 30,000 and minor peaks at 50,000 and 12,000. Reverse-phase HPLC gave one major fraction in the void volume and an eluted peak at 50-60% acetonitrile. Accell QMA anion exchange HPLC revealed three peaks of activity; one in the void volume similar to that published previously using QAE-Sephadex, and peaks that eluted at 0.5 and 0.8 M ammonium acetate, respectively. Electroelution following SDS-PAGE yielded peaks at MW 12,000 and 15-17,000 plus variable peaks at 25-27,000, 31-34,000, and 80-90,000 D. Using a combination of the aforementioned procedures, we have purified molecular species of HRF at 41,000 and 17,000 D to apparent homogeneity, as judged by SDS PAGE and autoradiography. Since human interleukin 3 and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor possess histamine-releasing capability, it is clear that multiple cytokines can share this activity. However, the major HRF we isolate from human mononuclear cells appears, thus far, to be unique.


Unrelenting and radical change in universities over the past two decades has increased pressure on all groups of staff to clarify and adapt their roles to accommodate transformation within the sector. The challenge for professional developers is to understand and develop roles that effectively meet the diverse needs of key employee groups who are negotiating this massive change and, as a consequence, experiencing role conflict and ambiguity. Studies over the past 10 to 15 years have attempted to define models of effective professional development practice, but there is limited research on effectiveness indicators of professional developer roles in large-scale change. The research reported here addresses this gap. The paper presents a case study in which ten academic and general staff members developed a profile of indicators of an effective professional developer role in transformative change, and raises questions about the theoretical foundation and practice of professional development in higher education.


Video fluoroscopy provides a cost effective way for the diagnosis of low back pain. Backbones or vertebrae are usually segmented manually from fluoroscopic images of low quality during such a diagnosis. In this paper, we try to reduce human workload by performing automatic vertebrae detection and segmentation. Operators need to provide the rough location of landmarks only. The proposed algorithm would perform edge detection, which is based on pattern recognition of texture, along the snake formed from the landmarks. The snake would then attach to the edge detected. Experimental results show that the proposed system can segment vertebrae from video fluoroscopic image automatically and accurately.


Abstract : The U. S. Army Engineer Committee on Channel Stabilization participated with the U.S. Army Engineer San Francisco District to provide guidance, insights, and/or recommendations regarding the District's rehabilitation work on the Corps of Engineer Pajaro River Flood Control Project. This project, located in both Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties, California, consists of levees on both sides of the river's main channel. The project protects valuable agricultural lands and the cities of Watsonville and Pajaro. The project levees were overtopped during floods in both March 1995 and February 1998 causing extensive property damage as well as damage to the flood control project itself. Both floods exceeded the project's design discharge. Vegetation that had become established in the flood control channel prior to March 1995 had been removed before February 1998. It was the consensus of the Committee that the original design concept was a good one in that it had operated successfully for almost 50 years. Project overtopping occurred when the discharge exceeded design values and extensive erosion occurred when protective vegetation was removed from the benches and the banks of the main channel. The Committee recommended that rehabilitation efforts focus on restoring the original set-back levee configuration, using reliable bank protection measures where appropriate and vegetative protection as much as possible. Allowing vegetative growth in the flood conveyance channel introduces the requirement for a detailed maintenance plan that is both technically and economically feasible. This will require that sponsors and resource agencies work together to develop a feasible monitoring and maintenance plan. It should be recognized that the vegetative features associated with this project may increase the design uncertainty.


This article unpacks the relationship between risk perceptions and responses in cities of the global south. It first challenges the assumption that people are irrational and/or lack the ability to comprehend risk when they do not prioritize risk reduction. Second, it argues that the nature of risk perceptions has less direct influence on responses than previous research suggests. A social constructivist approach is applied to explore how individuals process risk and to what extent these perceptions shape preparedness activities. Results are based on ethnographic research in Cochabamba city in Bolivia, where everyday climatic hazards are linked to slow-onset and small-scale impacts. Findings first suggest that people comprehend risk in sophisticated ways. Then through exploration of self-build housing and the adoption of an anthropocentric conceptualization of the house, the article shows that people with high- and low-risk perceptions equally prepare for the impacts of climatic hazards. This is because people prioritize the transformation and consolidation of social, cultural and economic processes which are not directly related to risk reduction when designing and constructing self-built houses. However, disaster risk reduction is automatically mainstreamed into housing because the design and construction features which people associate with risk reduction represent local architectural norms that are associated with 'good practice'.


The state-of-art of adaptive logic systems consisting of memory elements is surveyed with particular reference to three recent developments. The first introduces the concept of special-purpose structures of mixtures of memory elements and fixed circuitry for the implementation of several logic functions. The second discusses techniques developed for the automatic classification of patterns by means of randomly connected combinational networks and the optimization of performance through reconnexion of the network after training. The third topic describes the use of sequential systems for the computation of global properties of binary patterns.


The concept of self-regulated learning has been a prominent topic in education and has been researched and applied to various educational fields. Andrade and Evans (2013, 2015), applied this concept to the TESOL field and added principles and possible application tools to help ESL/EFL students develop better understanding and skills in the dimensions of self-regulated learning. Subsequent researchers, such as Gonzalez (2013), then took these concepts and integrated them into intensive English programs. Although these applications have seen some success, the administration at Brigham Young University's English Language Center felt that the center's self-regulated learning program was ineffective for teachers or students. Therefore, the center's program was evaluated, data was compiled, and design specifications for an improved program were formed. These specifications led to the development of an interactive, online course for students to complete outside of the classroom. Teachers and administrators were asked to build upon the course and encourage students to apply what they learned in their various areas.


ABSTRACT The transcription factors E2A (E12/E47) and Pip are both required for normal B-cell development. Each protein binds to regulatory sequences within various immunoglobulin enhancer elements. Activity of E2A proteins can be regulated by interactions with other proteins which influence their DNA binding or activation potential. Similarly, Pip function can be influenced by interaction with the protein PU.1, which can recruit Pip to bind to DNA. We show here that a previously unidentified Pip binding site resides adjacent to the E2A binding site within the immunoglobulin κ 3′ enhancer. Both of these binding sites are crucial for high-level enhancer activity. We found that E47 and Pip can functionally interact to generate a very potent 100-fold transcriptional synergy. Through a series of mutagenesis experiments, we identified the Pip sequences necessary for transcriptional activation and for synergy with E47. Two synergy domains (residues 140 to 207 and 300 to 420) in addition to the Pip DNA binding domain (residues 1 to 134) are required for maximal synergy with E47. We also identified a Pip domain (residues 207 to 300) that appears to mask Pip transactivation potential. Part of the synergy mechanism between E47 and Pip appears to involve the ability of Pip to increase DNA binding by E47, perhaps by inducing a conformational change in the E47 protein. E47 may also induce a conformational change in Pip which unmasks sequences important for transcriptional activity. Based upon our results, we propose a model for E47-Pip transcriptional synergy.


With the rapid evolution and diversification of Internet applications, their communication-quality criteria are continuously evolving. To globally optimize communication quality, the Internet's control plane thus needs to optimize inter-domain paths on diverse criteria, and should provide flexibility for adding new criteria or modifying existing ones. However, existing inter-domain routing protocols and proposals satisfy these requirements at best to a limited degree. We propose IREC, an inter-domain routing architecture that enables multi-criteria path optimization with extensible criteria through parallel execution and real-time addition of independent routing algorithms, together with the possibility for end domains to express their desired criteria to the control plane. We show IREC's viability by implementing it on a global testbed, and use simulations on a realistic Internet topology to demonstrate IREC's potential for path optimization in real-world deployments.


Analyzing the evolution of the iconography of such a phenomenon as mesmerism in the second half of the 18th — mid-19th centuries, the author shows that the scenario of modern hypnotic representation and its gestures were established by mesmerists in the second half of the 18th century, followers of the parascientific theory that caused discussions and intrigued doctors and artists for centuries. Analyzing the development of the iconography of mesmeric seance, the author identifies two waves of popularity of this subject: the first wave in the 70–80s of the 18th century and the second wave during the first decade of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. Such a duration is due to the fascination with the supernatural and inexplicable, reflected in various styles and trends. In this article, the author tries to show how the development of the iconography of the mesmeric seance provoked the appearance of the hypnotist or magician trickster, who became integrated into popular culture that later began to mark the majority of hypnotic actions, spiritualistic sessions or miracle shows. The author also illustrates how the image of a "controller" in the face of a man formed and confirmed the paradigm of a powerless, mysterious and controlled woman. As a result, it is concluded that hypnosis and mesmerism became common theatrical spectacles in the 20th century, cultivating the power of men (patriarchal society) over an exhausted woman, which is reflected in the works of Georges Melies, Alfred Hitchcock, and even in the comic book Wonder woman.


Dr René Lefeber stayed at the helm of the Leiden Journal of International Law as its Editor-in-Chief for more than four important years (1996–2000), marked by innovation and change in practically every aspect of the Journal. Barely two years after a profound re-organization, the Journal's volume was doubled with three issues per year in 1997, and four issues in 1998. Meanwhile, the number of pages, the quality, and the diversity of published material saw dramatic growth. The section on Hague International Tribunals became a standard feature; a sub-section on the International Criminal Court was set up in 1998 to regularly cover ongoing developments in this important institution; an annual specialized bibliography on dispute settlement was introduced; and regular Editorial notes by members of the Board figured in each issue. All in all, a very different Journal than the one handed down four years earlier.


Abstract To improve the economic competitiveness of hipping relative to traditional forming processes, the major contributors to manufacturing costs must first be identified. Several technical cost models (TCMs) have been developed to identify cost drivers and track manufacturing costs. A comparative study has been made of hot isostatic pressing (hipping) and closed die forging for two large IN625 near net shape (NNS) valve bodies of differing complexity.


The single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) were randomly deposited on pre-treated silicon substrate by a self-assembling method. By this method, the SWNTs film with uniform distribution and random structure were formed and the density of SWNTs could be controlled by the concentration of the SWNTs suspension and the assembling time. Also, Cr interdigitated electrodes were patterned on the assembled SWNTs by traditional lift-off process. The results show that SWNTs films made by self-assembly can adhere firmly to the substrate.


Background: Thymidylate synthase is one of the target enzymes of 5-fluorouracil. However, the clinical and prognostic significance of TS expression in gastric cancer has remained controversial. In this study, the expression of thymidylate synthase was evaluated in gastric cancer patients treated with combinational chemotherapy; moreover, the association between TS expression and clinicopathologic characteristics and overall survival of the patients were also assessed. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive study, 89 pathological samples were gathered from patients at Kermanshah hospitals during 2008-2017. The survival status of patients was recorded and their overall survival was evaluated individually. Results: The average survival period for low and high thymidylate synthase groups was 54 and 50 months, respectively, meaning higher survival time in the lower thymidylate group. But this difference was not statistically significant (log Rank=0.88). In addition, sex, stage, recurrence, and survival had no significant difference between the low and high expression of thymidylate synthase groups (p=0.89). Conclusion: The results clearly indicated that the level of thymidylate synthase is not a significant modulator of 5- fluorouracil in gastric cancer patients. Nevertheless, evaluation of the level of the enzymes and markers as well as their effects are highly recommended for accurate selection of chemotherapeutical strategies.


Several landfill mining (LFM) studies have been carried out in recent years all around the world. From these studies qualitative and quantitative information regarding the composition and characteristics of the different fractions excavated from landfills has been obtained. This information comprises data from various landfill sites around the globe from which useful correlations for future LFM projects can be identified. Of particular interest to this paper is the information regarding the fine fractions, which represent to this day a crucial obstacle in the implementation of LFM and enhanced landfill mining (ELFM). The fine fractions make up a considerable portion of the total amount of waste disposed of in landfills. Depending on the particle size chosen as upper limit to define the fines fraction, the portion of this fraction can be as high as 40-80 wt.% of the total excavated waste. These fractions consist of decomposed organic substances, e.g. humic substances, partly weathered mineral waste, e.g. sand, brick fragments, concrete, but also of fine metal particles, especially non-ferrous metals, and still a significant amount of plastics, paper and other calorific fractions. However, although calorific fractions might be used for energy recovery and inorganic fractions for material (especially metal) recovery, current LFM studies are discarding the fine fraction due to lacking or too expensive processing routes. Therefore, it is of critical interest to LFM and ELFM projects to reduce the particle size down to which the excavated material can be processed. This paper, which was elaborated within the framework of the EU Training Network for Resource Recovery through Enhanced Landfill Mining – NEW-MINE, aims to review the obtained data from different LFM studies from municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills, concerning the fines fraction, in order to identify key aspects to be taken into consideration while designing the processing approach in future LFM and ELFM investigations. Article Info: Received: 7 February 2018 Revised: 4 April 2018 Accepted: 11 June 2018 Available online: 30 June 2018


These twenty-eight essays by international scholars of religion, sociology, and anthropology are from the Fourth Interdisciplinary Workshop on Peasant Studies, hosted by the University of British Columbia in 1982. Religion and Rural Reaolt is divided into five sections, each with a preface. The subject areas include Western and Southern Europe between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; Central and Eastern Europe during the same period; the Middle East and Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; modern China and Latin America from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. The book is well indexed with a brief biography on each contributor. Its strength is its comprehension of worid history in tracing rural revolt from the peasant revolt in the fifteenth century to the French Revolution, and the contemporary freedom struggles in Zimbabwe leading to independence. Its weakness is its total neglect of liberation theology and the resulting failure to see the influence of historical materialism on liberation theology, particularly in the writings of Fernando Bello, Georges Casalis, Norman Gottwald, and Dorothee Solle. Because of its comprehensive scope, I classify Religion and Rural Revolt as mandatory reading for students of history and religion.


Background Osteoporosis (OP) is a generalized skeletal disorder characterized by compromised bone strength and deterioration of bone quality, often leading to fragility. Elderly osteoporosis is being public health problem that highly affects people especially above 65 years. Physiotheraphy and rehabilitation programs are important in the prevention and management of osteoporosis. Exercises improve mobility in elder inpatient by increasing activity, muscular strength, flexibility, and reducing the risk of falls and length of stay in hospital. Objectives The aim of our study was to investigate the effects of physiotherapy and rehabilitation program on mobility, physical activity and quality of life in elderly inpatient. Methods A hundred and twenty four patient with OP (mean age: 73,03±5,9) participated in this study. A total of patients who were randomized as study and control group followed by Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Geriatric Medicine Department of Physiotheraphy and Rehabiltation, Geriatric Rehabilitation Unit were, were included to the study. Assessment for cognitive function (Mini Mental State Test), functional mobility (De Morton Mobility Index), activities of daily living (Katz Index of Independence in Activities of Daily Living), quality of life (EuroQol-5D) were used at admission and discharge in hospital. Thirty minutes physiotherapy and rehabilitation program including breathing, balance and coordination and strengthening exercises was performed by the intervention group under supervision of physiotherapist during the stay in hospital. Control group did not special exercise, they continued their activities of daily living. exercise. Length of stay in hospital of all participant was recorded. Results Sixty two patients were randomly assigned to the each group.The groups were similar in sociodemographical feature (p>0.05). Improvements in mobility, quality of life and daily physical activity levels were found in the study group (p<0.05). There were no significant differences between control and intervention group in length of stay in hospital (p>0.05). Conclusions These results revealed the necessity of physiotherapy and rehabilitation program to prevent negative effects of the hospitalization process of the geriatric patients with osteoporosis. References Muche, J., McCarty, S., & Kishner, S. (2015). Geriatric Rehabilitation. Curran, E., Clifford, S., Forman, S., & Power, D. (2014, September). Screening of Osteoporosis Treatment in Patients Presenting with Fragility Fractures in a Geriatric Active Rehab Unit. In Irish Journal Of Medical Science (Vol. 183, Pp. S334-S335). 236 Grays Inn Rd, 6th Floor, London Wc1x 8hl, England: Springer London Ltd. Disclosure of Interest None declared


Asymptotically safe gravity is based on the idea that the main contribution to the Schwarzschild-like black hole spacetime is due to the value of the gravitational coupling which depends on the distance from the origin and approaches its classical value in the far zone. However, at some stage this approach has an arbitrariness of choice of some identification parameter. The two cases of identification are considered here: first, by the modified proper length (the Bonanno-Reuter metric), and second, by the Kretschmann scalar (the metric for this case coincides, up to the redefinition of constants, with the Hayward metric). Even though the quasinormal modes of these metrics have been extensively studied, a number of interesting points were missed. We have found that quasinormal modes are qualitatively similar for both types of identification. The deviation of the fundamental mode from its Schwarzschild limit may be a few times larger than it was claimed in the previous studies. The striking deviation from the Schwarzschild limit occurs for overtones, being as large as hundreds of percent even when the fundamental mode is almost coinciding with the Schwarzschild one. This happens because the above metrics are very close to the Schwarzschild one everywhere, except a small region near the event horizon, which is crucial for overtones. The spectrum of both metrics contains purely imaginary (non-oscillatory) modes, which, for some values of parameters, can appear already at the second overtone.


The radial artery (RA) graft was revived in late 1980 s when it was found that the graft was patent 13-18 years after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) after improvement of the technique in harvesting and the use of calcium-channel blockers. Recently, the RA became a reasonable alternative to the saphenous vein (SV) graft with the trend toward complete arterial revascularization and more frequent off-pump CABG to avoid aortic manipulation. To improve the quality of the RA conduit, harvesting technique and topical and systemic antispasmodic medication are important. The RA should be grafted to severe proximal stenosis (>90%) in the native coronary arteries to avoid flow competition, especially in the right coronary territory. The RA graft could be used as an aortocoronary or composite configuration with similar graft patency. Early graft patency of the RA conduit was as good as other arterial grafts, and better than SV graft in the circumflex and right coronary territories, in many studies, especially in diabetic patients. Long-term results of graft patency and cardiac-event-free survival compared with SV graft are still controversial in randomized controlled trials, probably because the incidence of flow competition and the definition of graft patency varied.


The results of examining patients with parasagittal meningiomas were first compared by angiography and intraoperative ultrasound diagnosis. The significance of each method was defined. A correlation was found between the data obtained by the two techniques and the functional status of the upper sagittal sinus by taking into account each angiographic phase. It is concluded that intraoperative ultrasound diagnosis is of highly informative significance and it should be obligatorily used while removing parasagittal meningiomas in order to maintain the anatomic integrity of the upper sagittal sinus.


Community-run, formal evaluations and manually annotated text corpora are critically important for advancing biomedical text-mining research. Recently in BioCreative V, a new challenge was organized for the tasks of disease named entity recognition (DNER) and chemical-induced disease (CID) relation extraction. Given the nature of both tasks, a test collection is required to contain both disease/chemical annotations and relation annotations in the same set of articles. Despite previous efforts in biomedical corpus construction, none was found to be sufficient for the task. Thus, we developed our own corpus called BC5CDR during the challenge by inviting a team of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) indexers for disease/chemical entity annotation and Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD) curators for CID relation annotation. To ensure high annotation quality and productivity, detailed annotation guidelines and automatic annotation tools were provided. The resulting BC5CDR corpus consists of 1500 PubMed articles with 4409 annotated chemicals, 5818 diseases and 3116 chemical-disease interactions. Each entity annotation includes both the mention text spans and normalized concept identifiers, using MeSH as the controlled vocabulary. To ensure accuracy, the entities were first captured independently by two annotators followed by a consensus annotation: The average inter-annotator agreement (IAA) scores were 87.49% and 96.05% for the disease and chemicals, respectively, in the test set according to the Jaccard similarity coefficient. Our corpus was successfully used for the BioCreative V challenge tasks and should serve as a valuable resource for the text-mining research community. Database URL: http://www.biocreative.org/tasks/biocreative-v/track-3-cdr/


This study assesses the risks in ecological restoration arising from transplanting into soil containing glyphosate residues. Four Australian restoration species were grown for 60 days in nonadsorbing media treated continuously with glyphosate to establish threshold concentrations for damage. Visual signs of injury were observed in three species, and severe effects on root growth in all species, at solution concentrations as low as 18 mg/L. Only the perennial grass Themeda sp. died at this concentration, with other species surviving at concentrations in the range 36–360 mg/L, beyond which all plants died. Fourteen days exposure followed by removal of glyphosate from root media produced similar effects. Field and glasshouse experiments with the relatively tolerant tree species Angophora costata showed that application rates in the range 10–50 L/ha of herbicide product (360 g/L) would be needed to sustain damage to young plants transplanted into soil typical of local restoration sites. The volume of spray delivered using a hand‐operated sprayer varied between operators by 5‐ and 10‐fold to complete the same tasks, at the high end presenting a potential risk to the most tolerant species under field conditions, even when spray concentrations follow label instructions. For all but the most sensitive species, the risk of glyphosate residues in ecological restoration should be minimized by training operators of unregulated applicators to deliver controlled volumes of herbicide when spot spraying prior to transplanting.


We investigated the simultaneous changes in serum levels of HMGB1 and IFN-α as well as in LAIR-1 expression on plasmatoid dendritic cells (pDCs) of juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus (jSLE) patients in order to explore their involvement in the disease pathogenesis and their correlation with disease activity and other characteristics. In total, 62 blood samples were studied from 26 jSLE patients (18 girls), aged 8–16 years. Twenty healthy subjects (16 girls) of comparable age were included as healthy controls (HCs). Concentrations of serum HMGB1 and IFN-α were assessed by ELISA and LAIR-1 expression on pDCs by five-color flow cytometry. The disease activity index was assessed by SLEDAI and ECLAM scores. It was found that mean serum levels both of HMGB1 and IFN-α were significantly increased in jSLE patients compared to HCs and in jSLE patients with active disease with or without active nephritis compared to those with inactive disease. Mean serum levels of HMGB1 were positively correlated with levels of IFN-α and both were positively correlated with the SLEDAI and ECLAM scores. The expression of LAIR -1 on pDCs of jSLE patients was significantly lower than that of HCs. In conclusion, our findings indicate that serum HMGB1 not only represents a potential marker of disease activity but together with the lack of LAIR-1 inhibitory function may contribute to the sustained inflammatory action of IFN-α in jSLE. In this regard, blocking the action of HMGB1 and its receptors or enhancing the expression/inhibitory function of LAIR-1 on pDCs should be included in future immune interventions for controlling jSLE.


We study the joint distribution of descents and sign for elements of the symmetric group and the hyperoctahedral group (Coxeter groups of types $A$ and $B$). For both groups, this has an application to riffle shuffling: for large decks of cards the sign is close to random after a single shuffle. In both groups, we derive generating functions for the Eulerian distribution refined according to sign, and use them to give two proofs of central limit theorems for positive and negative Eulerian numbers.


The risk management of a centralized pharmacy network identifies the research object. The paper proposes a strategy of complex diversification for the pharmacy network. By constructing portfolio models for complex diversification and solving relevant multicriteria problems, multiple pareto-optimal portfolios have been found for successive risk management. Based on the fundamentals of Markowitz portfolio theory and multicriteria optimization, this paper builds four models of the optimal portfolios for centralized pharmacy network. In contrast to the classic two-criteria model (risk minimization while maximizing income), our models have been introduced to maximize entropy, which enhances the diversification effect. Matlab software has been developed for solving multicriteria problems. Model verification was performed on real data provided by one of the pharmacy networks. The modeling results will be useful for automating the business processes of any trading network, managing risk, analysing loyalty programs to improve the effectiveness of their operations.


In an interactive classification application, a user may find it more valuable to develop a diagnostic decision support method which can reveal significant classification behavior of exemplar records. Such an approach has the additional advantage of being able to optimize the decision process for the individual record in order to design more effective classification methods. In this paper, we propose the Subspace Decision Path method which provides the user with the ability to interactively explore a small number of nodes of a hierarchical decision process so that the most significant classification characteristics for a given test instance are revealed. In addition, the SD-Path method can provide enormous interpretability by constructing views of the data in which the different classes are clearly separated out. Even in cases where the classification behavior of the test instance is ambiguous, the SD-Path method provides a diagnostic understanding of the characteristics which result in this ambiguity. Therefore, this method combines the abilities of the human and the computer in creating an effective diagnostic tool for instance-centered high dimensional classification.


The preparation of a child who is about to undergo surgery or anesthesia involves the child's family, primary care physician, anesthesiologist, surgeon, and, many times, other specialists. Communication among the individuals caring for the patient is paramount for the smoothest perioperative course. Established lines of communication permit the efficient and meaningful transfer of patient information and provide the most efficient means of informing the patient about necessary procedures. Familiarity with operating room and day surgery unit policies (eg, NPO guidelines, arrival times, and preoperative educational programs) helps alleviate patient and parent anxiety.


Recently, Au-based clusters have been provoking great interest due to their potential applications in nanotechnology. Herein, the structural, relative stable, electronic, and gas sensing properties of PbnAun (n 1⁄4 2–12) clusters were systematically investigated using density functional theory together with scalar relativistic pseudopotential. The ground state structures, average binding energies, dissociation energies, second order energy differences, HOMO–LUMO gaps, and average Mulliken charges of PbnAun (n 1⁄4 2–12) clusters were calculated. The results revealing that the PbnAun (n 1⁄4 4, 6, and 8) clusters are more relatively stable than their neighboring clusters. Furthermore, charges are always transferred from the Pb atoms to Au atoms based on Mulliken charge analysis. Furthermore, through the investigations of CO or NO molecule adsorption onto PbnAun (n 1⁄4 4, 6, and 8) clusters, it is found that CO or NO molecule can chemisorb on those clusters with high sensitivity, and the charges are transferred from PbnAun (n 1⁄4 4, 6, and 8) clusters to the gas molecules. According to the analysis of the electric conductivity, PbnAun (n 1⁄4 4, 6, and 8) clusters can be served as potential gas sensors in CO and NO molecules detection.


The Envisat mission, to be launched next year, is the largest European remote-sensing mission ever flown. It will deliver a very large number of data products from its 10 instruments. The Envisat products will use a specific data format, where each product is orbit based, binary encoded and contains several geophysical quantities in the same product. With the aim of improving and widening the access to the Envisat products, the European Space Agency is developing a product tool (called EnviView) which is characterised by the following main properties: it is platform independent (developed in Java); it can access any Envisat product; it can display the content of any field in the product (image or graphs); it can be run in manual or batch mode; it can display the value of any field in any product along with its format definition and with its scientific definition; it includes the product handbook of all Envisat products. EnviView will be free to all users of Envisat data. In addition, EnviView can convert part or all of an Ehvisat product into a number of different formats, including HDF. Users who are already familiar with HDF or that have already developed application software with the NCSA HDF library can use EnviView to bring the Envisat products directly into their working environment. This feature can also be used to allow immediate access to the Envisat products by all those commercial software packages which are able to read and manipulate HDF files.


Memory hierarchy-consciousness is an important requirement for the design of high-performance programs. We describe a tool that supports the programmer in restructuring performance-critical code sections. The tool works with small program instances, which are obtained by fixing program parameters such as loop bounds, and rewriting the program as an operation sequence. The tool automatically reorders the operations for better locality, and respects data dependencies. It outputs the optimized program instance in a structured form. The user finally recognizes the localityrelevant structure and generalizes it to the program. The paper focuses on recent advances in the development of our method. In particular, we introduce a hierarchical clustering scheme that highlights operation subsequences with much data reuse. The scheme is applied to the generation of structured optimized program instances in which the locality-relevant structure is easy to recognize. Experimental results are included.


This paper uses neo-institutional theory to examine the rise and fall of performance indicators adopted as an element of public accountability by Australian universities. We argue that performance indicators were adopted as a symbolic gesture to satisfy the need for externally conferred legitimacy and to demonstrate accountability to various stakeholders through publication in the university's annual report. Also, because adoption was symbolic and universities were coerced by the Australian Federal Government, the reporting was curtailed when the coercive pressures were relaxed or removed. This journal article is available in Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal: http://ro.uow.edu.au/aabfj/vol4/iss1/2 6 From Inception to Inertia – An Institutional Perspective of a Public Accountability Measure Ted Wattsa C.J. McNairb


As human tragedies—such as armed conflicts, humanitarian crises, crimes against humanity, and genocide—continue to occur, early warning and conflict prevention are essential comprehensive subjects in any crisis and conflict prevention architecture. Early warning refers to the collection and analysis of information about potential crisis and conflict situations for the purpose of preventing the onset and escalation of such situations, preferably through appropriate preventive response options. Indeed, qualitative approaches to early warning and prevention have produced an impressive list of preventive mechanisms and tools, ranging from non-military—such as political and economic inducements, fact-finding, dialogue, and negotiations—to military ones, such as preventive missions. Meanwhile, a more theoretical and empirically guided approach has made extensive use of quantitative methods to create data-based predictive models for assessing risks of complex humanitarian crises, political instability and state failure, intrastate and ethnopolitical conflicts, and genocide and politicide, as well as other massive human rights violations. There are three types of analysis of risk assessment: the first makes use of structural indicators, the second of sequential models, and the third of inductive methods. However, there are challenges in early warning and conflict prevention posed by the warning-response gap and the issue of "missed opportunities" to prevent. At present, there is no U.N.-wide coordinated early warning system. Nevertheless, several efforts in establishing operational early warning systems on the level of regional and subregional organizations can be identified.


During automotive painting, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) associated with the paint solvents are emitted to the atmosphere. Most VOC emissions come from spraying operations via the use of solvent-based paints, as the spraybooth air picks up gaseous solvent compounds and overspray paint materials. The VOCs consist of aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons, ketones, esters, alcohols, and glycolethers. Most VOCs (some hydrophilic VOCs are captured and retained in the water.) are captured by an adsorption system and thermally oxidized. In this paper, the processes involved in automotive painting and in VOC control are reviewed. The topics include: painting operations (briefly), the nature of VOCs, VOC-control processes (adsorption, absorption, biological removal, and thermal oxidation) and energy recovery from VOCs using a fuel reformer and a fuel cell, and the beneficial use of paint sludge.


Annotation. The problem of overweight and obesity in school children is considered. It is shown that the problem of child obesity underlie the development of many serious medical illness. It is introduced the analysis of publications on the problem of overweight and obesity in schoolchildren. It is defined methods for detection and possible nonpharmacological correction of the condition. The necessity of creating and putting into practice of long-term training programs to promote healthy lifestyle among schoolchildren are overweight or obese, to prevent the development of cardiovascular disease and other metabolic complications. Conceptually, it is determined the main directions of teaching and physical education students who are overweight and obese. It is shown that it is advisable to inform children and parents about the need to combine a balanced diet with exercise stress.


Orthogonality regularization has proven effective in improving the precision, convergence speed and the training stability of CNNs. Here, we propose a novel Orthogonal Dictionary Convolution Strategy (ODCS) on CNNs to improve orthogonality effect by optimizing the network architecture and changing the regularized object. Specifically, we remove the nonlinear layer in typical convolution block "Conv(BN) + Nonlinear + Pointwise Conv(BN)", and only impose orthogonal regularization on the front Conv. The structure, "Conv(BN) + Pointwise Conv(BN)", is then equivalent to a pair of dictionary and encoding, defined in sparse dictionary learning. Thanks to the exact and efficient representation of signal with dictionaries in low-dimensional projections, our strategy could reduce the superfluous information in dictionary Conv kernels. Meanwhile, the proposed strategy relieves the too strict orthogonality regularization in training, which makes hyper-parameters tuning of model to be more flexible. In addition, our ODCS can modify the state-of-the-art models easily without any extra consumption in inference phase. We evaluate it on a variety of CNNs in small-scale (CIFAR), large-scale (ImageNet) and fine-grained (CUB-200-2011) image classification tasks, respectively. The experimental results show that our method achieve a stable and superior improvement.


US Department of Justice, Report, Competition and Monopoly : Single-Firm Conduct Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, Washington, sept. 2008 La publication le 8 septembre 2008, en pleine campagne…


Effective ant control is critical for controlling honeydew-secreting homopteran agricultural pests such as whitefly and mealybug. Low-toxicity ant baits may more effectively control ants than the broad-spectrum insecticides currently used in California vineyards and citrus orchards. This study focused on developing effective ant baits for use in bait stations to control field ant and Argentine ant, which aggressively tend homopteran pests. In the Coachella Valley, field ant is associated with the vine mealybug, a destructive nonnative pest. We conducted preference experiments for various commercially available ant baits and a bait formulated with anchovy plus imidacloprid. Field ant preferred the anchovy baits above all others tested, and in field trials the anchovy bait with 0.005% imidacloprid significantly reduced foraging activity. Argentine ant is the primary ant pest in vineyards and citrus orchards of California's nondesert growing regions. We tested the efficacy of several chemical bait treatments, all of which significantly lowered Argentine ant populations.


Statistical methods have been used for a long time as a way to detect viral code. Such a detection method has been called spectral analysis, because it works with statistical distributions, such as bytes, instructions or system calls frequencies spectra. Most statistical classification algorithms can be described as graphical models, namely Bayesian networks. We will first present in this paper an approach of viral detection by means of spectral analysis based on Bayesian networks, through two basic examples of such learning models: naive Bayes and hidden Markov models. Designing a statistical information retrieval model requires careful and thorough evaluation in order to demonstrate the superior performance of new techniques on representative program collections. Nowadays, it has developed into a highly empirical discipline. We will next present information theory based criteria to characterize the effectiveness of spectral analysis models and then discuss the limits of such models.


AIMS
The aim of this study was to explain the process through which Australian nurses and midwives provide abortion care to people affected by gender-based violence (GBV).

DESIGN
A constructivist grounded theory study.

METHODS
This study took place between 2019 and 2021. The lead author conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 Australian nurses and midwives who provided abortion care. Participants were recruited through pro-abortion, nursing and midwifery networks using a snowballing technique. Data collection and analysis proceeded using purposive and theoretical sampling until we reached data saturation.

FINDINGS
Participants revealed they underwent a process of working with or against the system contingent on the degree to which the system (the interconnected networks through which a pregnant person, victimized by trauma, travels) was woman centred. When participants encountered barriers to person-centred abortion care, they bent or broke the law, local policy and cultural norms to facilitate timely holistic care. Though many participants felt professionally compromised, their resolve to continue working against the system continued.

CONCLUSION
Conservative abortion law, policies and clinical mores did not prevent participants from providing abortion care. The professional obligation to provide person-centred care was a higher priority than following the official or unofficial rules of the organizations.

IMPACT
This study addresses the clinical care of people accessing abortions in the context of GBV. Nurses and midwives may act out against the law, organizational policies and norms if prevented from providing person-centred care. This research is relevant for any location that restricts abortion through stigma, pro-life influences or politics.


A rectangular microstrip antenna fed by a coplanar waveguide with an inductive or a capacitive coupling end slot is analyzed by using the moment method. Numerical calculations for the input impedances are shown to agree well with those of the measurements. For the purpose of design, a parameter study for the variations of input impedance with length and width of the coupling slot is presented. Differences in the input impedance characteristics between the inductive and capacitive coupling cases are also discussed. >


The application of intraoperative neural monitoring (IONM) has been widely accepted to improve surgical outcomes after thyroid surgery. The malfunction of an IONM system might interfere with surgical procedures. Thus, the development of anesthesia modalities aimed at ensuring functional neuromonitoring is essential. Two key issues should be taken into consideration for anesthetic management. Firstly, most patients undergo recurrent laryngeal nerve monitoring via surface electrodes embedded in an endotracheal tube. Thus, advanced video-assisted devices might optimize surface electrode positioning for improved neuromonitoring signaling accuracy. Secondly, neuromuscular blocking agents are routinely used during thyroid surgery. The ideal neuromuscular block should be deep enough for surgical relaxation at excision and recovered enough for an adequate signal f nerve stimulation. Proper neuromuscular block management could be achieved by titration doses of muscle relaxants and reversal agents.


Down syndrome (DS) is a genetic disorder caused by a trisomy of the human chromosome 21 (Hsa21). Overexpression of Hsa21 genes that encode proteins and non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) can disrupt several cellular functions and biological processes, especially in the heart. Congenital heart defects (CHDs) are present in 45–50% of individuals with DS. Here, we describe the genetic background of this condition (Hsa21 and non-Hsa21 genes), including the role of ncRNAs, and the relevance of these new players in the study of the pathophysiology of DS heart diseases. Additionally, we discuss several distinct pathways in cardiomyocytes which help maintain a functional heart, but that might trigger hypertrophy and oxidative stress when altered. Moreover, we highlight the importance of investigating how mitochondrial and lysosomal dysfunction could eventually contribute to understanding impaired heart function and development in subjects with the Hsa21 trisomy. Altogether, this review focuses on the newest insights about the gene expression, molecular pathways, and organelle alterations involved in the cardiac phenotype of DS.


Investigations of the more routine expressions of pre-Reformation spirituality inevitably tend to dwell on the conventions employed by individuals to ease the progress of the soul. The pious attestations and exhortations that some men and women recorded may merit the closest attention for the insight they afford into beliefs and aspiration; but hardly less instructive, and much more common, are the services and good works that individuals commissioned both to express repentance and expedite deliverance. Focusing in this way on individuals poses problems, however. While a few had the means to establish a 'freestanding' institution – such as an almshouse the great majority channeled penitential activity into the arena, and to the benefit, of their parish. Individuals ordinarily acted as parishioners, contributing towards and depending upon the services of a well-defined, broader community, within which they did their best to enhance collective memory and experience to their own advantage by securing the benefit of others. If anything, ensuring the benefit of others was reckoned the essential, practical prerequisite for personal advantage. As a result, if we accept that the desire to be saved – and as expeditiously as possible – spurred on most contemporary Christians, the doctrinal emphases in the centuries before the Reformation predicated a series of distinctive consequences, two of which are of particular significance here. First, many parishioners assured themselves of long remembrance, amounting to an afterlife in the world and in the consciousness of those that came after.


Re-use of existing oil and gas infrastructure (pipelines, installations, wells) is often mentioned as an option to reduce the costs associated to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) deployment. The re-use of infrastructure entails, however, some challenges (e.g. infrastructure availability, capacity limitation, state). Total E&P Norge, together with Carbon Limits and NORCE, have looked more in detail at this topic in the 2nd Life CO2 project presented here. The aim of the 2nd Life CO2 project was to study, at a high level and not on a specific case-basis, the potential for re-use of offshore oil and gas pipelines, platforms and wells for CO2 transport throughout the North Sea in general, and the specific storage potential on the Norwegian Continental Shelf based on The Norwegian CO2 Storage Atlas developed by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. Alongside, an assessment of the economic and environmental benefits of such re-use was performed, and knowledge and data gaps were identified. In some cases, these gaps will require further de-risking to set up successful CCS projects involving re-use of infrastructure.

For pipelines, open data sources from various countries (Norway, United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands) were used in the project. Several tasks of the project had to be done in an automated way considering the high number of data points. This approach entails some limitations. Examples include specific aspects of the infrastructure, such as flow direction and to what extent pipelines are linked, which have an important impact on availability.

The core idea of the approach was to estimate the year in which hydrocarbon fields are depleted (referred to its 'end of life') to determine the time at which the connected infrastructure is available. The end of life of each field was estimated based on resource depletion rather than economic cash-flow evaluations. The collected data set of remaining producible hydrocarbon volume was divided by data of current yearly production rate to estimates how long the fields could operate under current conditions. The assumption is that after this time the connected infrastructure (platform, wells and pipelines) becomes available. The corresponding infrastructure was classified and mapped, and only those available in the upcoming 20 years were studied further.

Based on the availability mapping exercise, focus was put on the pipelines that link existing CO2 sources / potential hubs and CO2 storages. Both deep saline aquifers and depleted hydrocarbon fields were considered for CO2 storage. The storage potential for relevant storage sites in the vicinity of the reusable infrastructure was evaluated based on results from The Norwegian CO2 Storage Atlas and specific logs in the considered area.

The results from this project displayed that overall, the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) showed less infrastructure re-use potential in the coming 20 years compared to the UK continental shelf and offshore Netherlands. This finding was mainly related to the larger and less mature oil and gas fields on NCS. Thus, overall, the Netherlands and the UK seem more suited for smaller-scale re-use projects in a nearer future such as the Acorn project, whilst the Norwegian Continental Shelf seems more suited for larger-scale infrastructure re-use projects in more distant time-horizons.

Some interesting cases on the Norwegian Continental Shelf were, however, singled out to be timely available of pipelines linking potential CO2 storage areas to shore. Given the limited number of large emitters in Norway in the vicinity of those pipelines, the best way to re-use those facilities would likely be to build an onshore hub that could import CO2 from large European emitters with an easy access to waterways or seaports.

A few relevant cases were selected for economic and environmental assessment to compare the cost and environmental impact of re-use of oil and gas infrastructure for CCS with new built. The results of these assessments are presented in this article.

Before launching CCS projects that make use of existing oil and gas infrastructure in the North Sea, there are, however, still significant data and technological uncertainties which need to be resolved. To ensure a satisfactory state of the re-used infrastructure as well as its availability, future re-use projects are recommended to align with decommissioning plans for oil and gas fields and related infrastructure.


Nitric-oxide synthase, the enzyme responsible for mammalian nitric oxide generation, and cytochrome P450, the major enzymes involved in drug metabolism, share striking similarities. Therefore, it makes sense that cytochrome P450 drug mediated biotransformations might play an important role in the pharmacological modulation of nitric oxide synthase. In this work, we have undertaken an integrated in vitro assessment of the hepatic metabolism and nitric oxide modulation of previously described dual inhibitors (imidazoles and macrolides) of these enzymes in order assess the implication of CYP450 activities over production of nitric oxide. In vitro systems based in human liver microsomes and activated mouse macrophages were developed for these purposes. Additionally in vitro production the hepatic metabolites of dual inhibitor, roxithromycin, was investigated achieving the identification and isolation of main hepatic biotransformation products. Our results suggested that for some macrolide compounds, the cytochrome P450 3A4 derived drug metabolites have an important effect on nitric oxide production and might critically contribute to the pharmacological immunomodulatory activity observed.


Introduction This study aimed to investigate the genetic factors promoting widespread Q6 dissemination of tet(X4) between Escherichia coli and to characterize the genetic contexts of tet(X4). Methods We isolated E. coli from feces, water, soil and flies collected across a large-scale chicken farm in China in 2020. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing and PFGE typing were used to identify tigecycline resistance and assess clonal relationships among isolates. Plasmids present and genome sequences were analyzed by conjugation, S1 pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), plasmid stability testing and whole-genome sequencing. Results A total of 204 tigecycline-resistant E. coli were isolated from 662 samples. Of these, we identified 165 tet(X4)-carrying E. coli and these strains exhibited a high degree of multidrug resistance. Based on the geographical location distribution of the sampled areas, number of samples in each area and isolation rate of tigecycline-resistant strains and tet(X4)-carrying isolates, 72 tet(X4)-positive isolates were selected for further investigation. Tigecycline resistance was shown to be mobile in 72 isolates and three types of tet(X4)-carrying plasmids were identified, they were IncHI1 (n = 67), IncX1 (n = 3) and pO111-like/IncFIA(HI1) (n = 2). The pO111-like/IncFIA(HI1) is a novel plasmid capable of transferring tet(X4). The transfer efficiency of IncHI1 plasmids was extremely high in most cases and IncHI1 plasmids were stable when transferred into common recipient strains. The genetic structures flanked by IS1, IS26 and ISCR2 containing tet(X4) were complex and varied in different plasmids. Discussion The widespread dissemination of tigecycline-resistant E. coli is a major threat to public health. This data suggests careful use of tetracycline on farms is important to limit spread of resistance to tigecycline. Multiple mobile elements carrying tet(X4) are in circulation with IncHI1 plasmids the dominant vector in this setting.


Using SDSS-DR7, we construct a sample of 42382 galaxies with redshifts in the region of 20 galaxy clusters. Using two successive iterative methods, the adaptive kernel method and the spherical infall model, we obtained 3396 galaxies as members belonging to the studied sample. The 2D projected map for the distribution of the clusters members is introduced using the 2D adaptive kernel method to determine the cluster centres. The cumulative surface number density profile for each cluster is fitted well with the generalized King model. The core radii of the cluster samples are found to vary from 0.18Mpch-1 (A1459) to 0.47Mpch-1 (A2670) with a mean value of 0.295Mpch-1. The infall velocity profile is determined using two different models: Yahil approximation and Praton model. Yahil approximation is matched with the distribution of galaxies only on the outskirts (infall regions) of many clusters of the sample, while it is not matched with the distribution within the inner core of the clusters. Both Yahil approximation and Praton model are matched together in the infall region for about nine clusters in the sample but they are completely unmatched for the clusters characterized by a high central density. For these clusters, Yahil approximation is not matched with the distribution of galaxies, while Praton model can describe well the infall pattern of such clusters. The integrated velocity dispersion profile shows that there are different behaviours within the cluster's virialized region, while it exhibits a flattened-out behaviour outside the virialized region up to the turnaround radius. Under the assumption that the mass follows galaxy distribution, we determine the mass and mass profile by two independent mass estimators; projected mass and virial mass methods. The virial mass profile is corrected by applying the surface pressure term which reduces the virial mass by about 14 per cent. The projected mass profile is larger than the corrected virial mass profile for nearly all clusters by about 28 per cent. The virial mass agrees with the NFW mass and Praton mass at rv. The virial mass profile within 1.5Mpch-1 is fitted with the NFW mass profile. The concentration parameter ranges from 1.3 to 39.17, and has a mean value of 12.98.


With the increasing need for real-time applications, online learning is a vibrant research field and has received much attention from the research community. A major advantage of incremental systems is that they update the hypothesis online. This online update allows for adaptation to the real data seen in the testing phase, during execution. In this work, I aim to advance the theories of non-linear online subspace learning through the development of efficient and robust strategies which facilitate learning from noisy input data, e.g. caused by occlusions, casted shadows and pose variations, that are challenging problems in general state-of-the-art tracking frameworks. First, a fast and robust alternative to standard L2-norm PCA is introduced. In the second part, the problem of matching vectors of 3D rotations is explicitly targeted. A domain-specific kernel function designed for visual data is then presented. The generalized eigenvalue problem is studied in the final part of this book.


ABSTRACT: This paper presents some backgrounds research on association scheme using a class of (123)-avoiding pattern of Aunu numbers as an application area. It also attempts to highlight some further applications in other set structures. The finding in this research has shown that there is some interrelationship between the succession scheme used in generating Aunu numbers and the concept of association scheme. This research also shows us that the Aunu patterns can be used in design theory.


Neural network flight controllers are able to accommodate a variety of aircraft control surface faults without detectable degradation of aircraft handling qualities. Under some faults, however, the effective flight envelope is reduced; this can lead to unexpected behavior if a pilot performs an action that exceeds the remaining control authority of the damaged aircraft. The goal of our work is to increase the pilot s situational awareness by informing him of the type of damage and resulting reduction in flight envelope. Our methodology integrates two inductive learning systems with novel visualization techniques. One learning system, the Inductive Monitoring System (IMS), learns to detect when a simulation includes faulty controls, while two others, Inductive Classification System (INCLASS) and multiple binary decision tree system (utilizing C4.5), determine the type of fault. In off-line training using only non-failure data, IMS constructs a characterization of nominal flight control performance based on control signals issued by the neural net flight controller. This characterization can be used to determine the degree of control augmentation required in the pitch, roll, and yaw command channels to counteract control surface failures. This derived information is typically sufficient to distinguish between the various control surface failures and is used to train both INCLASS and C4.5. Using data from failed control surface flight simulations, INCLASS and C4.5 independently discover and amplify features in IMS results that can be used to differentiate each distinct control surface failure situation. In real-time flight simulations, distinguishing features learned during training are used to classify control surface failures. Knowledge about the type of failure can be used by an additional automated system to alter its approach for planning tactical and strategic maneuvers. The knowledge can also be used directly to increase the pilot s situational awareness and inform manual maneuver decisions. Our multi-modal display of this information provides speech output to issue control surface failure warnings to a lesser-used communication channel and provides graphical displays with pilot-selectable !eve!s of details to issues additional information about the failure. We also describe a potential presentation for flight envelope reduction that can be viewed separately or integrated with an existing attitude indicator instrument. Preliminary results suggest that the inductive approach is capable of detecting that a control surface has failed and determining the type of fault. Furthermore, preliminary evaluations suggest that the interface discloses a concise summary of this information to the pilot.