Understanding the functional group modulation of electronic structure and excitation is pivotal to the design of organic small molecules (OSMs) for photoelectric applications. In this study, we employed density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) calculations to explore the unique absorption character of four triphenylamine photosensitizers. The various conformations were investigated given the multiple single bonds in the compounds, and the resemblance in the electronic structure of different conformations is affirmed because the coplanarity and consequent long-range conjugation is maintained regardless of the orientation of the flexible blocks. Six functionals were evaluated, and MN15 was found to successfully reproduce the intense secondary absorption peak for the double 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) modified sensitizer over B3LYP, PBE0, M062X, CAM-B3LYP, and ωB97XD. The introduction of EDOT gives rise to a new excited state S4, which is a local excitation constrained in the EDOT substituent triphenylamine block. This new excited state S4, in combination with inherent S2 and S3 derived from prototype molecule TPA-Pyc, jointly contributes to the hump of the secondary absorption peak of ETE-Pyc and finally affects the light-harvesting ability of the dye-sensitized TiO2 photoanode. The current findings provide guidance toward the rational design of OSMs with good light-harvest ability.


We propose a narrow-linewidth demodulation method which utilizes a short-fiber-delayed self-heterodyne structure and coherent envelope spectral properties to restore the Lorentzian line shape of the laser output. The Lorentzian spectrum obtained using our scheme is consistent with that obtained using a traditional long-delay method, and here, the utilization of a short fiber avoids the broadening caused by 1/f noise. Both simulated and experimental results demonstrate that our scheme is effective and accurate. We demonstrate the recovery of a Lorentzian linewidth of 6.0 kHz, while maintaining higher accuracy than that achieved using traditional schemes (31.7 kHz). Our approach provides a feasible means of improving the accuracy and computational efficiency of narrow linewidth measurements.


The shunt-excited antenna, first described and experimented with by Morrison and Smith,1 was found to have a current distribution similar to that of the classical insulated-base antenna, except near the grounded base. Therefore, the shunt-excited antenna should have nearly the same radiation properties as an insulated-base antenna having the same length and radiating at the same wavelength. The present work is an attempt to investigate theoretically whether and to what extent these predictions are justified. The current distribution is, therefore, calculated according to the ordinary simplified line theory. The radiation pattern is thereafter derived and a formula for the radiation resistance is found. The radiation resistance is calculated numerically as a function of the ratio "antenna-length/wavelength." It seems to be in many cases very different for a shunt-excited antenna than for an insulated-base antenna.


Background The rational prescribing of drugs is an essential skill of medical doctors. Clinical pharmacologists play an important role in the development of these skills by teaching clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CP&T) to undergraduate medical students. Although the approaches to teaching CP&T have undergone many changes over the last decennia, it is essential that the actual teaching of CP&T continues to be a major part of the undergraduate medical curriculum. Objectives The learning objectives of CP&T teaching in terms of developing the therapeutic competencies of undergraduate medical students are described, with an emphasis on therapeutic decision-making. On the basis of current theories of cognitive psychology and medical education, context-learning is presented as an effective approach by which to achieve therapeutic competencies. An example of a CP&T curriculum is presented.


The paper aims to evaluate the state of the literature on public procurement through examination of the works published in the Journal of Public Procurement from 2001 to 2014. 231 research outputs were collected and analyzed (with regard to, e.g., the background theory used, research method, and content of the papers), providing a overview of prior research topics and findings and identifying main gaps in the existing literature. This type of study is unique, as a broad literature review related to public procurement does not currently exist; therefore, the work has been designed with the intention to a) synthetize the prior research on public procurement; b) provide researchers with a structural framework in which future research on public procurement topics may be oriented; c) identify promising and active areas for future research.


Abstract:An important social aspect of sustainable development is that it offers children and youth opportunities for individual development based on influence and participation. Children's possibilities to move around freely, to explore the natural and built environments, to meet others and to observe and try out roles in public places are all conditions for children's participation. Two consequences of the intensified building and increased traffic now taking place in Swedish cities, particularly in inner city areas in the largest cities, are that children's outdoor space has been reduced and children's safe access to the outdoors is at risk. For children, having limited or no access to their nearby environment, important for their development in multiple ways, means they will have no environmental experiences of their own to communicate to others and on which to base their opinions. Our research projects show that traffic is the greatest obstacle to children's independent mobility along with the lack of places for children to use.


The double sex and mab‐3‐related transcription factor 1 (DMRT1) gene has long been linked to sex‐determining pathways across vertebrates and is known to play an essential role in gonadal development and maintenance of spermatogenesis in mice. In humans, the genomic region harboring the DMRT gene cluster has been implicated in disorders of sex development and recently DMRT1 deletions were shown to be associated with non‐obstructive azoospermia (NOA). In this work, we have employed different methods to screen a cohort of Portuguese NOA patients for DMRT1 exonic insertions and deletions [by multiplex ligation probe assay (MLPA); n = 68] and point mutations (by Sanger sequencing; n = 155). We have found three novel patient‐specific non‐coding variants in heterozygosity that were absent from 357 geographically matched controls. One of these is a complex variant with a putative regulatory role (c.‐223_‐219CGAAA>T), located in the promoter region within a conserved sequence involved in Dmrt1 repression. Moreover, while DMRT1 domains are highly conserved across vertebrates and show reduced levels of diversity in human populations, two rare synonymous substitutions (rs376518776 and rs34946058) and two rare non‐coding variants that potentially affect DMRT1 expression and splicing (rs144122237 and rs200423545) were overrepresented in patients when compared with 376 Portuguese controls (301 fertile and 75 normozoospermic). Overall our previous and present results suggest a role of changes in DMRT1 dosage in NOA potentially also through a process of gene misregulation, even though DMRT1 deleterious variants seem to be rare.


The article is devoted to the description of certain methods which identify the dynamic formation of the structure of intelligence and the identity of the IT training profile students. The study uses a technique that includes the colourassociative test of M. Luscher, the definition of the Myers-Briggs typology, and a modified intelligence structure test for R. Amthauer. The verification of the effectiveness of the methodology was carried out by testing students of the Faculty of Information Technologies of the Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, the results of which are demonstrated on the basis of the obtained data. The proposed methodology allowed to reveal the peculiarities of the impact of studying at the university on the professionally important qualities of future IT industry professionals.


Aims The aims of this audit were to assess compliance with the standards set out in the NICE guidelines with respect to assessment, diagnosis and management of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); and to assess compliance with the local 'ADHD clinic review proforma'. Method 20 patients who were coded with an ADHD diagnosis and under the care of the local community paediatric team, were randomly selected in October 2016. Each patient's notes were reviewed in regards to specific aspects of the national guidelines. The use of the local 'ADHD clinic review' proforma was assessed in follow-up patients. Results All patients had diagnostic questionnaires completed by both school and parents; but only 50% had questionnaires completed by the child themselves. Additional written information was rarely provided by school (13%) and only a quarter of children had an educational psychology report. In relation to premedication assessment, the child's weight and height were generally documented (88%), but not consistently plotted on a centile chart. Cardiac family history was documented in 75% of cases. However, cardiac symptoms were only recorded in 25% of cases, and cardiac examination completed in 38% of cases. Blood pressure was often taken (62%), but rarely plotted on a centile chart. All children identified as being at higher risk of cardiac problems did get an ECG prior to commencing medication. The local 'ADHD clinic review' proforma was generally utilised (82%). Further areas for improvement include: plotting height, weight and blood pressure on centile charts. All changes in medication were clear, and informed consent obtained. The 'voice of the child' was only documented in 28% of cases. Conclusion This audit has demonstrated that generally local compliance with the the NICE guidelines regarding diagnosis and pre-medication assessment of children with ADHD was good. However, several areas for improvement have been identified, including improvement around pre-medication assessment, and ensuring the 'voice of the child' is documented. In view of this, a new 'Pre-Medication Assessment' proforma was created, and the results of the audit presented to the local ADHD team, with a plan to re-audit following these interventions.


Narrowband-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is an emerging cellular communication technology designed for low-power wide-area applications. Cell selection determines the channel of user device and hence is an important issue in cellular networks. In this article, we make the first attempt to examine and optimize the cell selection in NB-IoT networks by field measurement. We conduct measurements at 30 different locations which involve five typical application scenarios of NB-IoT. Two kinds of NB-IoT modules and two network operators are also involved in the measurements. We find four potential issues on the cell selection of the User Equipment (UE) through the measurements. We propose an adaptive cell selection approach to optimize the cell selection of UE. The simulation test based on real-world measurement data shows that the cell selected by the adaptive approach can improve the coverage level and reduce the power consumption for UE.


Large-scale, long-term biodiversity monitoring is essential to meeting conservation and land management goals and identifying threats to biodiversity. However, multispecies surveys are prone to various types of observation error, including false positive/negative detection, and misclassification, where a species is encountered but its species identity is not correctly identified. Previous methods assume an imperfect classifier produces species-level classifications, but in practice, particularly with human observers, we may end up with extraspecific classifications including "unknown", morphospecies designations, and taxonomic identifications coarser than species. Disregarding these types of species misclassification in biodiversity monitoring datasets can bias estimates of ecologically important quantities such as demographic rates, occurrence, and species richness. Here we develop an occupancy model that accounts for species non-detection and misclassification. Our framework accommodates extinction and colonization dynamics, allows for additional uncertain 'morphospecies' designations in the imperfect species classifications, and makes use of individual specimen with known species identities in a semi-supervised setting. We compare the performance of our joint classification-occupancy model to a reduced classification model that discards information about occupancy and encounter rate on a withheld test set. We illustrate our model with an empirical case study of the carabid beetle (Carabidae) community at the National Ecological Observatory Network Niwot Ridge Mountain Research Station, west of Boulder, CO, USA, and quantify taxonomist identification error by accounting for classification probabilities. Species occupancy varied through time and across sites and species. The model yielded high probabilities (30 to 92% medians) of classification where the imperfect classifier matched the true species. The classification model informed by occupancy and encounter rates outperformed the classification that was not, and these differences were most pronounced for abundant species. Our probabilistic framework can be applied to datasets with imperfect species detection and classification. This model can identify commonly misclassified species, helping biodiversity monitoring organizations systematically prioritize which samples need validation by an expert. Our Bayesian approach propagates classification uncertainty to offer an alternative to making conservation decisions based on point estimates


Abstract Five undescribed perylenequinone derivatives (PQDs) phialocephalarins H − L (1 − 5), together with two known PQDs phialocephalarins A − B (6, 7) and one known spirobisnaphthalene palmarumycin P3 (8) were isolated from the endolichenic fungus Phialocephala fortinii. Their structures were elucidated on the basis of NMR and HRESIMS data as well as electronic circular dichroism (ECD) calculations. Compounds 1, 2, 4, and 6 − 8 were evaluated for cytotoxic activities against NCI-H460, NCI-H446, PC3, and EC109 cell lines. The results showed that compounds 1, 2, 6, and 8 showed cytotoxic activities against EC109 cells with IC50 values ranging from 24.5 to 33.3 μM. Graphical Abstract


Many strains of mice, when injected at birth with an ordinarily lethal dose of lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), grow to adulthood despite maintaining a persistent virus infection and chronic virus-induced immune complex disease. Because the susceptibility to LCMV infection changed over several years of observation, a number of murine strains with different histocompatibiity gene loci and genetic backgrounds were compared. Neonatal mice with H-2b, H-2d, and H-2q backgrounds were relatively insensitive to the effects of LCMV infection compared to mice with H-2k backgrounds, which had a high mortality rate in this situation. Expression of the H-2k gene locus itself did not affect the rate of mortality. Use of recombinant mice indicated that susceptibility was linked to H-2k backgrounds and not H-2k gene loci. The low survival rate of newborn mice with H-2k backgrounds infected with LCMV was not caused by cytotoxic natural killer cells, cytotoxic T lymhocytes, excessive amounts of virus in the organs, a unique distribution of virus or expression of viral antigens in vivo or unusual pathology in tissues.


This qualitative exploratory case study addresses constructs of educational inequity on a global scale through an iterative analysis of the cultural experiences of 61educators from South Africa and the United States. The project provided an online and in-person network for educators to discuss cross-cultural challenges, educational system assets, and inclusive strategies for supporting culturally and linguistically diverse learners. A shared professional development process, designed from an adapted Changemaking process, increased the knowledge, understanding, and application of innovative, culturally responsive inclusive practices of new teachers while also serving as an opportunity for veteran teachers to receive additional teacher training. Educators exchanged ideas on increasing positive classroom management, motivating learners using empathy, collaborating effectively, linking learning and postsecondary transition experiences, and improving partnership with families. This global and cultural exchange exposed them to unique and diverse educational perspectives, a critical aspect in supporting all learners within the K-12 educational system. Results of this project indicate that using the adapted Changemaking process increased educators' awareness of culturally responsive inclusive practices, allowed participants to make comparisons between global contexts, developed empathy, and inspired collaborative engagement and leadership within their individual educational settings.


ABSTRACT Critical readers of the book "Contested concepts" have pointed out the choice of concepts that are being treated is debatable. It has also been said that the book suffers from "European parochialism". However, it could be argued that a more valid criticism would be that we should have focussed more on the effects of language, linguistically embedded discourses and the difference of perspective of scholars living in "sending" countries of migration flows rather than focus on the point of view of scholars working in "destination countries".


Despite several decades of research into the teaching and learning of Science/Chemistry, at both secondary and tertiary level, it has had relatively little impact on practice. In many countries interest in studying Science at school and university is falling, and there is concern over falling numbers and falling standards. There is a changing student population at tertiary level – in many cases more diverse in ability and background, less well prepared in mathematics and science, and often less motivated. This presents problems in maintaining both adequate numbers of graduates and academic standards. Many academics have not adapted sufficiently to this change in the student population. Today's challenge is how to turn the findings of research on teaching and learning into effective practice; in other words, how to make the teaching and learning of chemistry more evidence-based, as distinct from the sole preoccupation with content. This has implications for the curriculum, for teaching methods and for assessment. One major problem is that much education research is never read by practitioners and even less is applied. This article identifies some of the barriers to implementing the findings of education research and also some of the successes. Ignorance of what is known about teaching and learning chemistry and an unwillingness to change are two main factors. At third-level, teaching needs to be research-led not only in relation to its subject (a contemporary mantra) but also research-led in relation to the process of teaching and learning. There needs to be more effective communication of research findings and exemplars of turning research into practice.


The effect of non-uniformity in the distribution of ventilation and diffusion on the apparent pulmonary diffusing capacity measured by the single breath and steady state techniques has been assessed on the basis of a two-compartmental lung model. Both the methods give reasonable estimates of the true diffusing capacity provided the fast compartment has a greater KCO. The reverse of this results in gross underestimation of the diffusing capacity by both methods. There is a fairly good correlation between the single breath and the steady state results both in theory as well as in practice.


The hemispherical power asymmetry observed by Planck and WMAP can be interpreted as due to a spatially-varying and scale-dependent component of the adiabatic power spectrum. We derive general constraints on the magnitude and scale-dependence of a component with a dipole spatial variation. The spectral index and the running of the spectral index can be significantly shifted from their inflation model values, resulting in a smaller spectral index and a more positive running. A key prediction is a hemispherical asymmetry of the spectral index and of its running. Measurement of these asymmetries can test the structure of the perturbation responsible for the cosmic microwave background power asymmetry.


Inadequate gas supply is partly responsible for the energy shortfall experienced in some energy-poor nations. Favorable market conditions would boost investment in the gas supply sector; hence, we propose a blockchain-based fair, transparent, and secure gas trading scheme that facilitates peer-to-peer trading of gas. The scheme is developed using an Ethereum-based smart contract that receives offers from gas suppliers and bid(s) from the thermal plant operator. Giving priority to the cheapest offers, the smart contract determines the winning suppliers. This paper also proposes an economic dispatch model for gas-deficient plants. Conventional economic dispatch seeks to satisfy electric load demand whilst minimizing the total gas cost of generating units. Implicit in its formulation is the assumption that gas supply to generating units is sufficient to satisfy available demand. In energy poor nations, this is hardly the case as there is often inadequate gas supply and conventional economic dispatch is of little practical value. The proposed economic dispatch model's objective function maximizes the quantity of available gas and determines the optimal power output of each generating unit. The mathematical formulation is verified using data from the Egbin thermal station which is the largest thermal station in Nigeria and is solved using the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS). Obtained results indicate the viability of the novel approach as it results in a net power gain of 35 MW. On the other hand, the smart contract proved effective in accurately selecting winning suppliers and making payment.


This study is intended to investigate the effects of surface dose from air gaps under the bolus in clinically used oblique photon beams by using a Markus parallel-plate chamber and a metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) dosimeter. To evaluate the performances of the two detectors, the percentage surface doses of the MOSFET dosimeters in without an air gap under the bolus material were measured and compared with those of the Markus parallel-plate chamber. MOSFET dosimeters at the surface provided results mostly in good agreement with the parallelplate chamber. The MOSFET dosimeters seemed suitable for surface dose measurements having excellent accuracy for clinical used photon beams. The relative surface doses were measured with air gaps (2, 5, 10 mm) and without an air gap under 3 different bolus setups: (1) unbolused (no bolus), (2) 5-mm bolus, and (3) 10-mm bolus. The reductions in the surface dose substantially increased with small field size, thick bolus, and large air gap. The absolute difference in the reductions of the surface dose between the MOSFET dosimeter and the Markus parallel-plate chamber was less than 1.1%. Results at oblique angles of incidence showed larger reductions in surface dose with increasing angle of incidence. The largest reduction in surface dose was recorded for a 6 × 6 cm2 field at a 60° angle of incidence with an 10-mm air gap under a 10-mm bolus. When a 10-mm bolus was used, a reduction in the surface dose with an air gap of up to 10.5% could be achieved by varying the field size and the incident angle. Therefore, air gaps under the bolus should be avoided in radiotherapy treatment, especially for photon beam with highly oblique angles of incidence.


We derive expressions for the electromagnetic Green's function for a layered system using a transfer matrix technique. The expressions we arrive at make it possible to study symmetry properties of the Green's function, such as reciprocity symmetry, and the long-range properties of the Green's function which involves plasmon waves as well as boundary waves, also known as Norton waves. We apply the method by calculating the light-scattering cross section off a chain of nanoholes in a thin Au film. The results highlight the importance of nanohole interactions mediated by surface plasmon propagating along the chain of holes.


Grading of rice intents to discriminate broken and whole grain from a sample. Standard techniques for image-based rice grading using advanced statistical methods seldom take into account the domain knowledge associated with the data. In the context of a high product value basmati rice with an image based grading process, one ought to consider the physical properties of grain and the associated knowledge. In this present work, a model of quality grade testing and identification is proposed using a novel digital image processing and knowledge-based adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). The rationale behind adopting a grading system based on fuzzy rules relies on capabilities of ANFIS to simulate the behaviour of an expert in the characterization of rice grain using the physical properties of rice grains. The rice kernels are characterized with the help of morphological descriptors and geometric features which are derived from sample images of milled basmati rice. The predictive capability of the proposed technique has been tested on a sufficient number of training and test images of basmati rice grain. The proposed method outperforms with a promising result in an evaluation of rice quality with >98.5% classification accuracy for broken and whole grain as compared to standard machine learning technique viz. support vector machine (SVM) and K-nearest neighbour (KNN). The milling efficiency is also assessed using the ratio between head rice and broken rice percentage and it is 77.27% for the test sample. The overall results of the adopted methodology are promising in terms of classification accuracy and efficiency.


We present models of deeply buried ultraluminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and use them to construct a three-dimensional diagram for diagnosing the nature of observed ULIRGs. Our goal is to construct a suite of SEDs for a very simple model ULIRG structure, and to explore how well this simple model can (by itself) explain the full range of observed ULIRG properties. We use our diagnostic to analyze archival Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Spectrograph data of ULIRGs and find that: (1) in general, our model does provide a comprehensive explanation of the distribution of mid-IR ULIRG properties; (2) >75% (in some cases 100%) of the bolometric luminosities of the most deeply buried ULIRGs must be powered by a dust-enshrouded active galactic nucleus; (3) an unobscured "keyhole" view through ≲10% of the obscuring medium surrounding a deeply buried ULIRG is sufficient to make it appear nearly unobscured in the mid-IR; (4) the observed absence of deeply buried ULIRGs with large polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) equivalent widths is naturally explained by our models, showing that deep absorption features are "filled-in" by small quantities of foreground unobscured PAH emission (e.g., from the host galaxy disk) at the level of ∼1% the bolometric nuclear luminosity. The modeling and analysis we present will also serve as a powerful tool for interpreting the high angular resolution spectra of high-redshift sources to be obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope.


Abstract Early supplier involvement (ESI) is widely applied to improve the product development process and has been proved to be able to shorten product development cycle time. The current study presents a systematic approach to support enterprises in selecting suitable tasks for implementing ESI. In order to estimate the influence of ESI on product development cycle time, the proposed method analyses complex product development processes to determine how to implement collaborative design appropriately via design structure matrix. This approach integrates an analysis of the binary design structure matrix, two-dimensional variables (sensitivity and variability), and the amount of overlapping of the tasks to discuss complex issues associated with product development cycle time. By applying the influence analysis to overlapping, the study identifies suitable tasks and the priority of each task to collaborative design. Finally, a simplified case study is discussed to demonstrate how enterprises can utilize the proposed method.


This dissertation contains three essays that study the implications of online search activity for new-product marketing. Using the U.S. motion picture industry as a test case, the first essay examines the dynamic causal relationship between traditional media, consumers' media generation activity, media consumption activity, and market demand of movies. Consumers' media generation and consumption activities around movies are operationalized by the blog volume and search volume of those movies. I develop three separate models--a pre-launch period model, a post-launch period model, and an opening-week model--and examine the relationship between them separately for each period. As the focal variables are jointly determined, I introduce instruments and explain how to correct for endogeneity bias. I find that consumer searching activity is a key mediator between advertising, consumer blogging activity, and market demand.The second essay examines the pre-launch advertising effectiveness of new products using online search indexes as the response variable. I model the relationship between the advertising schedule and the online search volume process during the pre-launch period of movies. The model incorporates consumers' willingness-to-search and the time-varying effectiveness of advertising as key elements that influence online search volume at specific times. The model is represented in a Bayesian dynamic linear model framework and applied to the U.S. movie industry. The empirical analysis reveals important features of consumers' pre-launch interest development for new products. First, consumers' pre-launch responses to advertising are substantially influenced by the timing of advertising. Second, advertising effectiveness varies over time as a function of past advertising outlay. Third, the time-to-launch effect and time-varying advertising effectiveness vary substantially across movies. The estimation results are used to suggest a more effective pre-launch advertising schedule. The third essay provides an explanation of the varying predictive power of online search volume by examining the effects of consumers' quality perception on the search activity for and actual demand of new products. I hypothesize that both the perceived quality and quality uncertainty of a new product increase consumers' search activity for the new product, while only perceived quality positively influences the conversion of search activity into actual demand. Using the U.S. movie industry as a test case, I find that both perceived quality and quality uncertainty are positively associated with the pre-launch search volume of movies, whereas only perceived quality positively influences the conversion of pre-launch searches into opening-week revenue. Similar findings are maintained in the post-launch period analysis. These findings imply that systematic over-/under-prediction of market success may occur if managers use an online search index without considering the effects of quality and quality uncertainty of new products.


Gastrodin is a biologically active substance extracted from Gastrodia elata Bl. which is a traditional Chinese medicine. The aim of this study was to determine the in vitro anticancer effects in human glioma U118 cells. Two concentrations of gastrodin, (0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 mg/mL) both had the strong growth inhibitory effects in U118 cells determined by MTT assay. Using flow cytometry assay, high concentration of gastrodin (2.0 mg/mL) treated U118 cells contained the most apoptosis cells (43.2%) and the low concentration of gastrodin (1.0 and 0.5 mg/mL) treated U118 cells also had the more apoptosis cells (23.3% and 9.8%) than control cells (2.1%). By qPCR assay, the experiments results showed that gastrodin could raise caspase-3, caspase-8, caspase-9, Bax, p53, p21, IκB-α, Fas, FasL, TIMP-1, TIMP-2 and reduce Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, NF-κB, EGF, EGFR, VEGF, Fit-1, MMP-2, MMP-9 mRNA expressions. From these results, gastrodin could be used as a medicine for cancer treatment.


Catherine Cole is currently Professor of Creative Writing in the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia. In March 2017, she will take up the position of Professor in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, UK. Catherine has published three novels, Dry Dock (1999) and Skin Deep (2002) and The Grave at Thu Le (2006), two non-fiction books, Private Dicks and Feisty Chicks: An Interrogation of Crime Fiction (1996) and The Poet Who Forgot (2008). She is the editor of the anthology, The Perfume River: Writing from Vietnam (2010) and co-editor with McNeil and Karaminas of Fashion in Fiction: Text and Clothing in Literature, Film and Television (2009). Her poetry, short stories, essays and reviews have been published in Australia and internationally and produced by BBC Radio 4. In 2017 Catherine's short story collection, Sea Birds Crying in the Harbour Dark, will be published by UWA Press.


A multichannel autoencoder deep learning approach is developed to address the present intrusion detection systems' detection accuracy and false alarm rate. First, two separate autoencoders are trained with average traffic and assault traffic. The original samples and the two additional feature vectors comprise a multichannel feature vector. Next, a one-dimensional convolution neural network (CNN) learns probable relationships across channels to better discriminate between ordinary and attack traffic. Unaided multichannel characteristic learning and supervised cross-channel characteristic dependency are used to develop an effective intrusion detection model. The scope of this research is that the method described in this study may significantly minimize false positives while also improving the detection accuracy of unknown attacks, which is the focus of this paper. This research was done in order to improve intrusion detection prediction performance. The autoencoder can successfully reduce the number of features while also allowing for easy integration with different neural networks; it can reduce the time it takes to train a model while also improving its detection accuracy. An evolutionary algorithm is utilized to discover the ideal topology set of the CNN model to maximize the hyperparameters and improve the network's capacity to recognize interchannel dependencies. This paper is based on the multichannel autoencoder's effectiveness; the fourth experiment is a comparative analysis, which proves the benefits of the approach in this article by correlating it to the findings of various different intrusion detection methods. This technique outperforms previous intrusion detection algorithms in several datasets and has superior forecast accuracy.


Objectives: To determine the prevalence of abnormal menstrual bleeding and effects of menstrual bleeding on academic and daily life among upper secondary students in Khon Kaen, Thailand. Materials and methods: 339 Secondary school students were randomly selected and asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire. The questionnaire included data on demographics, menstrual patterns, impact of menstruation on academics and daily life and any related menstrual symptoms. Results: We surveyed 339 students between 15 and 19 years of age. Mean age of menarche was 12.3±1.1. Majority of students (75%) had regular menstrual cycles while 25% had irregular menstrual cycles. Four patterns of menstrual irregularity predominated: metrorrhagia, polymenorrhea, menorrhagia or hypermenorrhea and oligomenorrhea (37.6 %, 35.3%, 17.7% and 9.4%, respectively). Menstrual irregularity affected activity such as poor studying concentration (48.2%) and limit sport activities (42.3%). False negative perception of abnormal menstruation was 17.9%. The two most common sources of consultation were mothers (90.5%) and internet and social media (22.7%). Conclusion: Abnormal menstrual bleeding is common in menstrual disorders. Metrorrhagia and polymenorrhea are also high prevalence. Academic and daily life activities are affected by menstrual irregularity. Consequently, health promotion programs in secondary school should be provided for improving their menstrual health.


Micro Waqf Bank (BWM) is a Sharia Microfinance Institution established by the OJK with the hope of reducing poverty levels in Indonesia. Bank Wakaf Mikro is present in the pesantren environment to provide financial access for the middle to lower class society in order to get access to capital without collateral and low yields. This paper is expected to provide new knowledge and insights regarding one of the Islamic economic instruments in the micro sector, namely the Micro Waqf Bank model. This paper was prepared through the method of library research using secondary data. From observations from various literatures, Micro Waqf Bank with access to capital is one alternative for improving the standard of living of micro-entrepreneurs to develop their businesses. The ease of the process, accompanied by training and mentoring, is believed to be able to encourage the independence of the middle and lower classes in running micro-businesses and boost productivity in the real sector. With the role of pesantren which has great potential to develop the surrounding area. Keywords : Micro Waqf Bank (BWM), Micro business, Real sector, Sharia Microfinance Institutions


Instrumental variable (IV) analysis is a powerful tool widely used to elucidate causal relationships. We study the problem of estimating the average partial causal effect (APCE) of a continuous treatment in an IV setting. Specifically, we develop new methods for estimating APCE based on a recent identification condition via an integral equation. We develop two families of methods, nonparametric and parametric - the former uses the Picard iteration to solve the integral equation; the latter parameterizes APCE using a linear basis function model. We analyze the statistical and computational properties of the proposed APCE estimators and illustrate them on synthetic and real-world data.


Emergency department is a showroom of its organization and an entry point to the hospital. The negative impact of sluggish processes and overcrowding in the ED is well acknowledged. Several tools can be used to improve patient flow in the ED. The specialty of emergency medicine is a crucial element which enables the establishment of stable, well-educated staff in the ED.


In this study, low carbon steel substrate was coated with WC-Ni powder by using plasma spray process in order to increase the wear and corrosion resistance of the material. Wear tests were applied to the produced samples under different wear conditions. The coatings were characterized with regard to microstructure and mechanical properties. The microstructure of the coating was determined using an optical microscope, image analyzer and X-ray diffraction methods. It has been observed that WC-Ni coating has a high wear resistance especially in acid condition.


This paper shows how standardization activities are progressing and contributing to the fact that Land Administration (LA) is considered more and more the cornerstone of the spatial information infrastructure. This is equally valid for regional, national, continental, and global levels, as will be illustrated in this paper. The paper describes the involved organizations and the current status of the LA standardization efforts. The crucial role that LA plays within the spatial information infrastructure is analyzed; including the relationship LA does have with other registrations and themes within the information infrastructure, of which some are non-spatial ones, such as persons. Special attention is given to a number of global aspects related to LA: combating slums (UN-HABITAT), stabilizing post-conflict areas, development of LA based on free/libre/open source software (UN-FAO) and climate change. Finally, the concept of 'land administration levels of maturity' is introduced and four stages of maturity are identified: 1. Standards, 2. Connectivity, 3. Integration, and 4. Network. The earlier described LA initiatives are assessed in the context of these levels of maturity.


The modified nominal group technique (NGT) is a useful and practical course evaluation tool that complements existing methods such as evaluation forms, surveys, pretests and posttests, focus groups, and interviews. The NGT's unique contribution to the evaluation process is the semi-quantitative, rank-ordered feedback data obtained on learners' perceptions of a course's strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, we demonstrate through a worked example how to use a modified NGT as a course evaluation tool in medical education.


Bituminous or subbituminous coals are known from nearly all parts of Australia. Those of greatest economic importance today are found in the Permian and Triassic Bowen and Galilee basins of Queensland and the Sydney-Bowen basin of New South Wales, with some coalfields of lesser significance in the Clarence-Moreton basin in Queensland and New South Wales. The lesser known fields also include the Permian Collie coalfield and Perth (Permian-Cretaceous) and Canning (Permian-Triassic) basins of Western Australia; the Bonaparte basin (Permian), mostly offshore in the Darwin area of Northern Territory and Western Australia; the shallow Permian coals of the large Arckaringa basin, and the smaller Triassic-Jurassic Leigh Creek basin in South Australia; the Early Cretaceous of the ippsland basin, Victoria; and the Permian and Triassic coals of the Tasmania basin, particularly the Fingal area. Structural, sedimentary, and paleobiologic features of the coal-bearing strata and regional trends of various coal characteristics of some of the principal economic or geologically interesting basins and coals are reviewed and illustrated. These include the Hail Creek syncline, Goonyella, Peak Downs, German Creek, Blackwater, Baralaba, Tolmeis and Moura Mines of the Bowen basin of Queensland and the unique Blair Athol mine at the far western edge of Bowen basin. In New South Wales these include the Hunter Valley area Singleton Coal Measures represented by the Foyebrook-Liddell Seam and Ravensworth mines; the Newcastle area; the Ulan Seam of the Goulburn Valley area; the weste n shelf area and Sydney-Wollongong region represented by the Illawarra (Permian) Coal Measures which are overlain by the thick Triassic Narrabean Series, Hawksbury Sandstone, and Wianamatta Group. A paleobiologic analysis of the thick brown coal sequences in the Yallourn, Latrobe Valley, and Bacchus Marsh areas of Victoria, and the significance of tectonics in the development of these great coal swamps will be reviewed. End_of_Article - Last_Page 1454------------


A novel insertion reaction of N-tosylacetimidates and N-tosylacetimidamides onto arynes via a benzocyclobutene intermediate followed by ring cleavage is developed to afford o-benzylbenzoic acid derivatives in good yields. Interestingly, the use of cyclic 2-sulfonyliminoindolines provided two distinct products such as azepanimines via [2 + 2] cycloaddition and indolamines via protonation based on solvent medium.


This report describes the development of social responsibility in schools through law-related education (LRE). LRE through which students become better informed and effective citizens provides an understanding of the law and its effects on daily life. The Office of Education (1978) defines LRE as those organized learning experiences that provIde students and educators with opportunities to develop the knowledge and understanding, skills, attitudes, and appreciations necessary to respond effrictively to the law and legal issues in the present complex and changing society. Social responsibility can be viewed as an essential part of citizenship education, an understanding of the basic democratic principles and values on which laws, government, and society are based. LRE was established to revitalize citizenship education. Three major aspects of LRE include: expanding students' substantive knowledge and critical thinking skills; improving teacher preparation; and achieving significant changes in students' attitudes. It is suggested that through the implementation of LRE programs, students' competencies, knowledge, skills, and attitudes can lead to the appropriate learning outcomes necessary for thelr development into socially responsible citizens in a multicultural, global society. (LL) .********** ********* ********** ******** *** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Developing Sc.cial Responsibility Developing Social Responsibility Through Law-Related Education


Contrast induced acute kidney injury (CI-AKI) is defined by KDIGO as an increase in serum creatinine by 1.5 times within 7 days of exposure to contrast, a serum creatinine increase of 0.3 mg/dL or a urine output less than 0.5 mL/kg of body weight for at least 6 h following iodinated contrast exposure (1). Patients with pre-existing renal disease are at greatest risk for developing CI-AKI. Its pathogenesis is thought to be multifactorial. Contrast initially causes nitric oxide mediated vasodilation of renal vasculature. This is followed by intrarenal vasoconstriction that persists for several hours causing ischemia, particularly in the outer medulla where the oxygen tension is lower than that of many tissues (2). As it is water soluble, contrast is freely filtered by the glomerulus with little alteration of podocyte or filtration barrier function. However, it is taken up by proximal tubular cells and results in cellular dysfunction and apoptosis. The contrast also permeates into the tubulointerstitial space leading to the loss of cellular architecture. Tubular epithelial cells slough off into the tubular space, thus reducing the clearance of contrast and promoting its deleterious effects. The cellular damage also results in the formation of reactive oxygen species which perpetuate cellular injury. Since the glomerulus is relatively unaffected, the reduction in glomerular filtration and rise in serum creatinine associated with CI-AKI is mediated by tubuloglomerular feedback and occurs well after the renal parenchyma has been injured (3). However, the exact mechanism of CI-AKI remains unclear and no definitive therapy has been established.


Refractive index profile determines many physical properties of an optical waveguide. The Transmitted Near-Field Intensity Profile Method (TNFLPM) is a simple and convenient way to measure the refractive index distribution of a waveguide. Despite its simplicity, this technique also presents a lot of challenges and limitations one must overcome to obtain a usable result. In this thesis, we have introduced an improved TNFLPM that focuses on providing more useful results. To begin with, the calculation of the refractive index profile is based on the intensity profile. Therefore, it is important to have an accurate measurement of the intensity profile. However, one of the challenges faced is that the intensity profile itself is most often distorted by diffraction. In this thesis, we have introduced a diffraction-reduced algorithm which, with the gaussian beam equation and an iterative algorithm, produces a precise representation of the intensity profile at the end facet of the waveguide. Besides the diffraction effects, the equipment and spatial noise, if not treated properly, present another error source for standard TNFLPM . We have chosen to use a Savitzky-Golay filter to eliminate the noise in the intensity profile, which provides a good trade-off between noise reduction and the need to preserve the shape of the profile. Although traditionally, waveguides with high frequency components in their index profiles cannot provide accurate results, we have introduced a redundancy test and a morphing algorithm, which searches for the best possible index profile to describe the waveguide under study. In this thesis, the proposed improved method is analyzed and demonstrated for a Ti:LiNb03 waveguide.


This study aims at determining the diversity of phytoplankton in Bayem River of Ngestiharjo, Kasihan, Bantul, Yogykarta in relation to environment factors (physical and chemical environment). This study used the observation method. The sampling location was divided to ten observation locations and done three repeating times. The sampling was done by filtering 50 liters of water by using a planktonet. After that, the environment factors were measured including physical factors (temperatures and turbidity) and chemical factors (BOD, DO, free CO2, pH, nitrate, and phosphate). To determine the relationship between physical factors and chemical factors on the diversity of phytoplankton, analyses using the Double Correlation Analysis by SPSS 11.5 were done and continued by the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to determine the environmental factors influencing the diversity of phytoplankton. The research results showed that there were 33 types of phytoplankton consisting of four classes (Chlorophyceae, Cyanophyceae, Bacillariophyceae, and Euglenophyceae). The highest phytoplankton density in Bayem River located in point 4 (the first repetition) amounted to 804300 ind/I dominated by Pondorina morum. The diversity of phytoplankton in Bayem River was low while the absence frequency with the absolute absence value included Pandorina morum, Ulothrix zonata, and Oscillatoria sp. The absence frequency with the medium absence value included Microspora sp, Pediastrum gracillium, Scenedesmus quadricauda, Scenedesmus obliquus, Achanthes lanceolata, Heteronema acus, Phacus pleuronectus, Euglena viridis, Lepocinclis sp, Closterium setaceum, Spirostomum sp, and Surirela tenera. Meanwhile, the absence frequency with the rare value included Spirogyra sp, Skeletonema costatum, Eudorina elegans, Coelastrum microsporum, Micractinium pusillum, Staurastrum formosum, Chaetoceros lorenzianus, Chlamydomonas sp, Cosmarium majae, Spirulina sp, Rhopalodia paralella, Neidium iridis, Hylophacus ocellatus, and Synendra ulna. The research results showed that pH and the turbidity were factors that gave contribution to the diversity of phytoplankton in Bayem River. Keywords : Phytoplankton, diversity, Bayem River


The scientific work of German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) encompassed the fields of human and animal anatomy, optics, geology, mineralogy, chemistry, botany, morphology, and meteorology. Goethe believed that nature and art were governed by the same laws, concepts he designated as the laws of "polarity" and "intensification." His poetic works can only be evaluated and interpreted if approached from his understanding of harmony between man and nature, and his view of the complementary relations between spirit and matter.


ABSTRACT In Australia, language and song are integral to maintaining Aboriginal knowledge systems. British colonisation and ensuing Australian government policies of assimilation have adversely impacted these knowledge systems, at least partially by functioning to dramatically diminish the vitality of many Aboriginal languages and song traditions. As a Noongar researcher motivated by community-oriented goals, I employ a multidisciplinary approach to enhance the revitalisation of the endangered Noongar language and its song traditions in the south coast region of Western Australia. This work draws on established methods from ethnomusicology and linguistics, engaging with community knowledge-holders and archival records to rebuild repertoire while increasing opportunities to gather together, sing and speak. While the processes developed to aid this endeavour may function as useful models for others involved in similar projects across the world, its aims are primarily oriented towards empowering the local community. Given the continued development of approaches to Indigenous research, this article will discuss the potential for language revitalisation, song and performance to expand available ways of knowing.


ABSTRACT To estimate the prevalence of latent tuberculosis (TB) infection (LTBI) in Italian dental students exposed to the same occupational risks as dental health care personnel and to evaluate potential risk factors, a cross-sectional study was conducted on undergraduate and postgraduate students. After clinical evaluation, students were given a tuberculin skin test; in those found positive, an interferon-γ release assay (IGRA) was conducted. Of the 281 students enrolled, 10 were only TST positive; 8 were TST or/and IGRA positive. We found that participants testing positive at TST and/or IGRA, a group in which the risk of false LTBI positives is minimal, were older and had been studying longer. Although the prevalence of LTBI among dental students in our study was low, a risk of acquiring a work-related infection exists even in a country with a low incidence of TB. Thus, dental students should be screened to catch LTBI early on.


A system of three charged bosons confined in a harmonic trap has been investigated by an exact diagonalization. We report a calculation for the energy spectrum of the low-lying states of a system of three charged bosons. The important feature of the low-lying states of three charged bosons in a harmonic trap is obtained via an analysis of the energy spectrum.


Zoological New Build . This replacement facility represents a significant commitment by the Zoo. Delivering each and every project within the Zoo offers individual →


This paper presents an off-body wireless channel measurement campaign at 2.4 GHz and 868 MHz in an indoor laboratory environment. The performance of different 2.4 GHz antennas is evaluated and it is found that chest-mounted directional patch antennas result in an average of 4 dB higher channel gain than horizontally polarised omnidirectional ones. Comparison of propagation at 2.4 GHz and at 868 MHz shows that when omnidirectional on-body antennas are used in both bands, the lower frequency results in an average of 5 dB higher channel gain. However, when directional patches are employed at 2.4 GHz, the advantage of the 868 MHz is only about 1 dB. Finally, a measurement-based channel model suitable for narrowband system-level simulations is presented.


Abstract. Airborne laser scanning (ALS) remote sensing data are now available for entire countries such as Switzerland. Methods for the estimation of forest parameters from ALS have been intensively investigated in the past years. However, the implementation of a forest mapping workflow based on available data at a regional level still remains challenging. A case study was implemented in the Canton of Valais (Switzerland). The national ALS dataset and field data of the Swiss National Forest Inventory were used to calibrate estimation models for mean and maximum height, basal area, stem density, mean diameter and stem volume. When stratification was performed based on ALS acquisition settings and geographical criteria, satisfactory prediction models were obtained for volume (R2 = 0.61 with a root mean square error of 47 %) and basal area (respectively 0.51 and 45 %) while height variables had an error lower than 19%. This case study shows that the use of nationwide ALS and field datasets for forest resources mapping is cost efficient, but additional investigations are required to handle the limitations of the input data and optimize the accuracy.


The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of providing target location information via head-coupled visual and spatial audio displays presented in adaptive and non-adaptive configurations. Twelve USAF pilots performed a simulated flight task in which they were instructed to maintain flight parameters while searching for ground and air targets. The integration of visual displays with spatial audio cueing enhanced performance efficiency, especially when targets were most difficult to detect. Several of the interface conditions were also associated with lower ratings of perceived mental workload. The benefits associated with multi-sensory cueing were equivalent in both adaptive and non-adaptive configurations.


Drosophila embryogenesis is an established model to investigate mechanisms and genes related to cell divisions in an intact multicellular organism. Progression through the cell cycle phases can be monitored in vivo using fluorescently labeled fusion proteins andtime‐lapse microscopy. To measure cellular properties in microscopic images, accurate and fast image segmentation methods are a critical prerequisite. To quantify static and dynamic features of interphase nuclei and mitotic chromosomes, we developed a three‐dimensional (3D) segmentation method based on multiple level sets. We tested our method on 3D time‐series images of live embryos expressing histone‐2Av‐green fluorescence protein. Our method is robust to low signal‐to‐noise ratios inherent to high‐speed imaging, fluorescent signals in the cytoplasm, and dynamic changes of shape and texture. Comparisons with manual ground‐truth segmentations showed that our method achieves more than 90% accuracy on the object as well as voxel levels and performs consistently throughout all cell cycle phases and developmental stages from syncytial blastoderm to postblastoderm mitotic domains. © 2011 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry


In this paper, we discuss the impact of quantum effects on the functionality of classical circuit concepts. To be most general we concentrate on MOS semiconductors, relying on the multiplicity of discussions in the literature. Instead of focussing on device simulations we investigate the impact of parasitic quantum effects in classical circuits built by the nano-scaled devices.


Introduction/Background Germ cell tumours comprise around 5% of all ovarian cancers. They are highly malignant but chemosensitive affecting mostly affecting young women. Accurate diagnosis and treatment can give best outcomes. This study was conducted with the objective to study the clinical profile and treatment outcomes of germ cell tumours with multimodal therapy at Tata Medical Center, Kolkata, India. Methodology Data of histologically confirmed germ cell tumours from August 2011 to May 2018 was collected retrospectively from hospital electronic medical records. Median follow up time was 33 months. Results Total number of patients was 29 with Median age being 20.5 years. All had good performance score. 25 underwent upfront surgery whereas 4 received NACT followed by IDS. In upfront surgery group, 80% had fertility preservation surgery which was 75% in IDS group.Most common chemotherapy regimen in NACT and adjuvant therapy group.was BEP (75% in NACT and 80% in adjuvant therapy) with 19.patients receiving 4 cycles, 12 patients received 3 cycles and 2 received 5 cycles respectively. On follow up, 25 patients were alive without disease, 4 had recurrence,1 was lost to follow up and 2 patients did not survive. The estimated 5 year RFS was 84.9% and OS was 87.8%. Conclusion Most patients of germ cell tumours were at an early stage of the disease and there was good response to treatment. Disclosure Nothing to disclose.


Mice varied in their ability to make detectable antibody responses to cell surface determinants of Candida albicans depending upon the antigen preparation and the immunization schedule used. Immunoglobulin M (IgM) appeared to be the major class of antibody responsible for the C. albicans-agglutinating activity of the immune sera. Various inbred strains of mice injected with a ribosomal fraction from C. albicans produced a low titer (average, 4 to 8) of yeast cell agglutinins and a higher titer (64 to 512) of IgE antibodies detected by passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) in rats. The two kinds of antibodies appeared to be specific for different antigens because the agglutinin, but not IgE, could be removed by absorbing the serum with a polysaccharide from the cell wall of C. albicans, but the polysaccharide did not provoke the PCA reaction. C. albicans-specific IgE antibodies showed cross-reactivity (PCA) with ribosomal antigens from a strain of C. albicans and C. tropicalis, but PCA reactions could not be elicited with similar antigen preparations from other yeast species. IgE responses were also detected in over 20% of the mice infected intravenously or intraperitoneally with live C. albicans.


One of the primary sources for the future space-based gravitational wave detector, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, are the inspirals of small compact objects into massive black holes in the centres of galaxies. The gravitational waveforms from such Extreme Mass Ratio Inspiral (EMRI) systems will provide measurements of their parameters with unprecedented precision, but only if the waveforms are accurately modelled. Here we explore the impact of transient orbital resonances which occur when the ratio of radial and polar frequencies is a rational number. We introduce a new Effective Resonance Model, which is an extension of the numerical kludge EMRI waveform approximation to include the effect of resonances, and use it to explore the impact of resonances on EMRI parameter estimation. For one-year inspirals, we find that the few cycle dephasings induced by 3:2 resonances can lead to systematic errors in parameter estimates, that are up to several times the typical measurement precision of the parameters. The bias is greatest for 3:2 resonances that occur closer to the central black hole. By regarding them as unknown model parameters, we further show that observations will be able to constrain the size of the changes in the orbital parameters across the resonance to a relative precision of 10% for a typical one-year EMRI observation with signal-to-noise ratio of 20. Such measurements can be regarded as tests of fundamental physics, by comparing the measured changes to those predicted in general relativity.


Introduction:
 Women Veterans (WV) have been identified as a high-risk population for developing ischemic heart disease (IHD). Trends for prevalence of IHD risk factors for WV over the past two decades is unknown. The goal of this study was to evaluate these trends.

 Methods:
 Veterans Affairs (VA) electronic health records were used to identify WV aged ≥18 years who visited any VAs nationwide from 1/1/2001-12/31/2017. Risk factors studied included diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, smoking, and obesity. Prevalence of each risk factor was calculated based on the number of patients alive, and of those, the number of patients with the specific risk factor on December 31
 st
 of each year. Diagnosis of each risk factor was based on the International Classification of Disease versions 9 and 10 codes.

 Results:
 Table 1 reveals the prevalence of each risk factor from 2001-2017. During this period the prevalence of these risk factors increased by, 28% for hypertension, 67% for diabetes, 71% for obesity, 140% for hyperlipidemia and 178% for smoking. Alarmingly, in 2017, the prevalence of obesity in WV was >43%.

 Conclusions:
 The prevalence of each of these cardiovascular risk factors significantly increased from 2001-2017 in WV. Research towards prevention of these risk factors is warranted in this high-risk population.


This paper derives new results for certain classes of chemical reaction networks, linking structural to dynamical properties. In particular, it investigates their monotonicity and convergence without making assumptions on the structure (e.g., mass-action kinetics) of the dynamical equations involved, and relying only on stoichiometric constraints. The key idea is to find a suitable set of coordinates under which the resulting system is cooperative. As a simple example, the paper shows that a phosphorylation/dephosphorylation process, which is involved in many signaling cascades, has a global stability property


Despite important progress in understanding the complex caregiving system, developmental research has only recently begun to focus on the mother's internal affective state and its role in sensitive caregiving behavior. This review will summarize recent findings of functional neuroimaging research to elaborate on the neural components associated with maternal sensitive care or disrupted responsiveness to infant communications. First, maternal emotion reactivity and regulation, as well as maternal reward responsiveness to infant cues, will be reviewed among healthy mothers. Then, emotion and reward-related processes among mothers who display sensitive versus disrupted caregiving will be explored. Finally, these patterns of response will be compared to patterns of response among mothers with psychiatric disorders, including depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse. The aim of this review is to examine whether differences in emotion reactivity and regulation, as well as in the encoding of infant stimuli as rewarding, are related either to maternal psychopathology or to maternal difficulties in responding promptly and appropriately to their infants. A summary of the challenges facing developmental neuroscience research in furthering our understanding of maternal responses to infants will close this review.


The study aims to create a macroeconomic market model, through which to analyze nominal and real GDP, to analyze the impact of prices on GDP, create a model of aggregate demand curve, using price deflator, etc. It aims to calculate the Price Deflator and real GDP starting from 1990, as the first year of calculating the macroeconomic indicators of the Albanian economy. More detailed analysis is focused on the years 2000-2017. It has been proven that the deflator calculated by INSTAT is almost equal to the nominal GDP average of the price increase. This data was used to construct the market model with Albanian economy data, with Aggregate Price and real GDP. The new model of the aggregate market differs from the existing one. It expresses the nominal GDP curve as a listing of real GDP at and has a positive slope. This model enables a detailed analysis of nominal and real GDP can be used by anyone, and for any economy. It is recommended for the government and the Albanian institutions to apply this model, as it is effective. Statistical, econometric, analysis, synthesis, comparison, etc. methods were used in the analysis.


Malnutrition and rotavirus infection, prevalent in developing countries, individually and in combination, affect the health of millions of children, compromising their immunity and increasing the rates of death from infectious diseases. However, the interactions between the two and their combined effects on immune and intestinal functions are poorly understood. We have established the first human infant microbiota-transplanted neonatal pig model of childhood malnutrition that reproduced the impaired immune, intestinal, and other physiological functions seen in malnourished children. This model can be used to evaluate relevant dietary and other health-promoting interventions. Our findings provide an explanation of why adequate nutrition alone may lack efficacy in malnourished children. ABSTRACT Malnutrition affects millions of children in developing countries, compromising immunity and contributing to increased rates of death from infectious diseases. Rotavirus is a major etiological agent of childhood diarrhea in developing countries, where malnutrition is prevalent. However, the interactions between the two and their combined effects on immune and intestinal functions are poorly understood. In this study, we used neonatal gnotobiotic (Gn) pigs transplanted with the fecal microbiota of a healthy 2-month-old infant (HIFM) and fed protein-deficient or -sufficient bovine milk diets. Protein deficiency induced hypoproteinemia, hypoalbuminemia, hypoglycemia, stunting, and generalized edema in Gn pigs, as observed in protein-malnourished children. Irrespective of the diet, human rotavirus (HRV) infection early, at HIFM posttransplantation day 3 (PTD3), resulted in adverse health effects and higher mortality rates (45 to 75%) than later HRV infection (PTD10). Protein malnutrition exacerbated HRV infection and affected the morphology and function of the small intestinal epithelial barrier. In pigs infected with HRV at PTD10, there was a uniform decrease in the function and/or frequencies of natural killer cells, plasmacytoid dendritic cells, and CD103+ and apoptotic mononuclear cells and altered gene expression profiles of intestinal epithelial cells (chromogranin A, mucin 2, proliferating cell nuclear antigen, SRY-Box 9, and villin). Thus, we have established the first HIFM-transplanted neonatal pig model that recapitulates major aspects of protein malnutrition in children and can be used to evaluate physiologically relevant interventions. Our findings provide an explanation of why nutrient-rich diets alone may lack efficacy in malnourished children. IMPORTANCE Malnutrition and rotavirus infection, prevalent in developing countries, individually and in combination, affect the health of millions of children, compromising their immunity and increasing the rates of death from infectious diseases. However, the interactions between the two and their combined effects on immune and intestinal functions are poorly understood. We have established the first human infant microbiota-transplanted neonatal pig model of childhood malnutrition that reproduced the impaired immune, intestinal, and other physiological functions seen in malnourished children. This model can be used to evaluate relevant dietary and other health-promoting interventions. Our findings provide an explanation of why adequate nutrition alone may lack efficacy in malnourished children.


The study investigates feminism, still based both on the arguments of socialism and liberalism, but also maintained as an alternative-cultural realm. This working hypothesis is tested from a philosophical perspective, in relation to several authors and theoretical frames, situating specificity and the threat of marginalization in the light of modernism, postmodernism and trans-modernism. If, ideologically, the terrain of feminisms seems mined by the theory of the control of the intervention spaces, recognizing only the victory of passing from episodic to structural importance, the cultural place of the feminisms remains a strongly individualized manifestation. Only in solidarity and within a cultural space can feminism move away from the margin and create a centre effect, freed from any tutelary forum, as a "natural" form. Beyond this exhausting anchoring in sex appeal, cultural appeal (as a practical-cultural reconsideration of the concept of "representation") assumes precisely the status of reply, or counter reply hoping to impress by cultural charisma, renouncing the position of perfect objectivity, freeing feminism of the ideological clichés and schemes, and installing the primacy of the "surrounding post-feminisms" as necessary context. The authors conclude that feminism has a better prospect as a cultural dimension than an ideological one, in its aim of transforming society at a deeper level.


PURPOSE
To report a case of bilateral endogenous Aspergillus endophthalmitis in an immunocompetent patient.

METHODS
We report a young immunocompetent 26-year-old Indian woman who presented with bilateral simultaneous endogenous endophthalmitis and was managed with pars plana vitreous surgery in both the eyes.

RESULTS
Smear examination of the vitrectomy specimen from the left eye identified septate hyphae with acute-angle branching, which on culture showed growth of Aspergillus fumigatus. A detailed systemic evaluation failed to reveal any systemic focus or predisposing factor for fungal infection. The patient had received an intravenous dextrose infusion 2 weeks before this episode while being treated at a rural hospital for malarial infection. During follow-up, she developed bilateral rhegmatogenous retinal detachment requiring revised pars plana vitreous surgery with silicon oil tamponade.

CONCLUSION
An immunocompetent patient can present with bilateral simultaneous endogenous Aspergillus endophthalmitis after receiving an intravenous infusion of presumably contaminated dextrose solution.


Single gold nanoparticles can act as nanoantennas for enhancing the fluorescence of emitters in their near fields. Here we present experimental and theoretical studies of scanning antenna-based fluorescence microscopy as a function of the diameter of the gold nanoparticle. We examine the interplay between fluorescence enhancement and spatial resolution and discuss the requirements for deciphering single molecules in a dense sample. Resolutions better than 20 nm and fluorescence enhancement up to 30 times are demonstrated experimentally. By accounting for the tip shaft and the sample interface in finite-difference time-domain calculations, we explain why the measured fluorescence enhancements are higher in the presence of an interface than the values predicted for a homogeneous environment.


The beam of a ruby laser is split into two equal parts of 1.5 J energy (20 ns FWHM) which produced two adjacent plasma plumes of boron nitride when focused onto a respective target placed in vacuum. The target consists of two slabs fixed at an angle of 90\r{} to each other. The image of the expanding plasma plumes in the case of a single plume and in the case of two colliding plumes is recorded by an XUV gated pinhole camera connected with an MCP-CCD system. Also, spectroscopic measurements for both cases are performed at different distances from the common edge of the two target slabs in the wavelength range 3-16 nm by using a grazing incidence spectrograph fitted with the MCP-CCD combination. The plasma temperature of the two equal boron nitride colliding plumes is calculated at different distances from the common edge of the two target slabs. The plume temperature in the interaction region increased from 45 to 66 eV in the case of the colliding plasmas due to the conversion of directed kinetic energy into thermal energy.


This paper reports on a collaborative project involving organization scholars and clinicians to examine the ways in which individual and organizational health are conceptualized in the literature. We illustrate how the use of systems theories (in this case complexity theory) in relation to organizational health introduces problems such as the risk of promoting organizational health at the expense of individual well-being. The phenomena of organizational health and individual health are often presented as having a symbiotic relationship and we suggest some circumstances where this is not the case. Our central argument is that we need to move beyond current conceptual limitations and move towards a more process-based model of health in organization rather than organizational health.


Seismic structural health monitoring allows for the continuous evaluation of engineering structures by monitoring changes in the structural response that can potentially localize associated damage that has occurred. For the first time in Colombia, a permanent and continuous monitoring network has been deployed in a 14-story ecofriendly steel-frame building combined with a reinforced concrete structure in downtown Bogota. The six three-component ETNA-2 accelerometers recorded continuously for 225 days between July 2019 and February 2020. We use deconvolution-based seismic interferometry to calculate the impulse response function (IRF) using earthquake and ambient-vibration data and a stretching technique to estimate velocity variations before and after the Ml 6.0 Mesetas earthquake and its aftershock sequence. A consistent and probably permanent velocity variation (2% reduction) is detected for the building using ambient-vibration data. In contrast, a 10% velocity reduction is observed just after the mainshock using earthquake-based IRFs showing a quick recovery to about 2%. A combination of both earthquake-based and ambient-vibration-based deconvolution interferometry provides a more complete picture of the state of health of engineering structures.


Wildfires are a dominant disturbance to boreal forests, and in North America, they typically cause widespread tree mortality. Forest fire burn severity is often measured at a plot scale using the Composite Burn Index (CBI), which was originally developed as a means of assigning severity levels to the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) computed from Landsat satellite imagery. Our study investigated the potential to map biophysical indicators of burn severity (residual green vegetation and charred organic surface) at very high (3 cm) resolution, using color orthomosaics and vegetation height models derived from UAV-based photographic surveys and Structure from Motion methods. These indicators were scaled to 30 m resolution Landsat pixel footprints and compared to the post-burn NBR (post-NBR) and differenced NBR (dNBR) ratios computed from pre- and post-fire Landsat imagery. The post-NBR showed the strongest relationship to both the fraction of charred surface (exponential R2 = 0.79) and the fraction of green crown vegetation above 5 m (exponential R2 = 0.81), while the dNBR was more closely related to the total green vegetation fraction (exponential R2 = 0.69). Additionally, the UAV green fraction and Landsat indices could individually explain more than 50% of the variance in the overall CBI measured in 39 plots. These results provide a proof-of-concept for using low-cost UAV photogrammetric mapping to quantify key measures of boreal burn severity at landscape scales, which could be used to calibrate and assign a biophysical meaning to Landsat spectral indices for mapping severity at regional scales.


Current debates on austerity often forget that these policies are almost 100 years old. This paper explores how the combination of austerity and technocracy acted as a powerful tool to secure the compliance of European countries to socio-economic stabilization after WWI. Austerity emerged as an economic, moral and technocratic message as economic experts sought to educate the restless post-war civil society. This paper analyses primary austerity documents from the international economic conferences of Brussels (1920) and Genoa (1922). In addition I use a case study of Italy (1922-1925) to show how austerity succeeded under the first years of Fascism, when the government authorized prominent economics professors to implement the international financial codes devised at Brussels and Genoa. This essay considers the scientific writings of De Stefani, Ricci and Pantaleoni to examine the theoretical roots of the technocratic nature of austerity.


This paper describes the design and successful implementation of a constrained model predictive controller with integral action for the control of a Twin Rotor MIMO System (TRMS). The integral action guarantees zero steady-state error in set-point tracking with robustness toward perturbations of the nominal system parameters. In addition to saturation constraints on the input variables, hard constraints are imposed on the controlled output variables, i.e., on pitch and yaw angular positions, to avoid collisions with obstacles. The model predictive controller was designed using a high-fidelity nonlinear model of the TRMS developed in previous work. As an intermediate step, exact linearized models of the TRMS are obtained and their closed-form expressions are reported. The controller was tested experimentally, also showing its effectiveness in ensuring actual collision avoidance by the TRMS when physical obstacles were present.


Objectives. To study the growth, health status, and respiratory outcomes at 13 to 17 years of infants enrolled in a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial of dexamethasone for the treatment of neonatal chronic lung disease. Participants. A total of 287 infants who were chronically dependent on supplementary oxygen between 2 and 12 weeks of age were recruited from 31 centers in 6 countries to a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial of dexamethasone base (0.5 mg/kg per day for 1 week) or placebo, and survivors were evaluated at 3 years. Children from the 25 British and Irish centers were traced for reassessment at 13 to 17 years of age. Outcome Measures. Respiratory symptoms, lung-function testing, height, weight, head circumference, blood pressure, health resource usage, and school absences. Results. There was no significant difference in respiratory outcomes between the dexamethasone and placebo groups. Lung function was impaired but with no difference between the 2 groups. Growth was also impaired in both groups, with height z score of −0.7, weight z score of −0.4, and head circumference z score of −1.1. Systolic blood pressure was >95th percentile for age and height for 15% of children, but with no difference between the 2 groups. There was no difference in the numbers of hospital admissions for respiratory causes or other causes. Conclusions. Despite a shorter duration of neonatal assisted ventilation, there is no evidence that dexamethasone use is associated with long-term improvement in lung function. Impaired growth and poor health status are long-term consequences of neonatal chronic lung disease, irrespective of exposure to neonatal dexamethasone.


During a survey of the helminth parasites of fresh water fishes in Willamette River, metacercariae of Neascus spp. were found on examination of muscle, spinal cord, fin and skin of Chiselmouth. Acrocheilus alutaceus. One hundred percent of 19 Chiselmouth examined were found to be infected with digenetic trematodes. The prevalence of infection was higher in muscle, varying from 95% and 100%. Higher levels were present in muscle, such that the 100% level being found in upper anterior, lower anterior and posterior. Small numbers of metacercariae were found on the fin and skin. The commonest sites of infection were the musculature and spina] cord. Intensities of Neascus spp. metacercariae tended to be and high levels in muscle and spinal cord. Those were low levels occurred in the tin and skin. There was a high degree of Neascus spp. in the occurrence of digenetic trematode from Chisel mouth.


Cocaine (COC) has been reported to cause effects similar to physiological stressors in the brain neuroendocrinal system, including heat-shock protein (HSP) expression, although these effects have not been elucidated in detail. In the present study, we examined the effects of repeated (4 days) treatments with cocaine hydrochloride (35 mg/kg, i.p.) and 10 min immobilization stress (IM) on the distribution of HSP (HSP27, HSP60, HSP70, HSC70) and stress-activated protein kinase (SAPK) (SAPK&agr;, SAPK&bgr;, SAPK&ggr;) immunoreactive nerve cells (positive cells) in the rat hippocampus. The swimming behaviors of the rats in the forced swimming test were also examined. In both COC and IM groups, an early enhancement (5 h time point) of hippocampal HSP (HSP27, HSP60, HSP70, HSC70) and SAPK (SAPK&bgr;, SAPK&ggr;) positive cells was observed, whereas a recovery (SAPKs) or attenuation (HSP60 and HSC70) was observed at the 24 h time point. In both groups, a depression of the swimming behaviors (attenuation in the activity counts and time until immobility) below the control level was observed at the 5 h point, but a recovery was observed at the 24 h time point. At the 48 h time point, all parameters returned to the control level. These alterations in the levels of HSPs and SAPKs, and the swimming behaviors were similar to those observed in the stress (IM) group, and were characteristic in that all of these alterations were attenuated by the benzodiazepine inverse agonist, Ro 15-4513 (5 mg/kg, i.p.), and the dopamine D1 receptor antagonist, SCH23390 (0.5 mg/kg, i.p.), which was not observed in the groups treated with another stressor-like drug (bicuculline).


Objective To report the endoscopic and hispathology characteristics of the intestinal schistosomiasis, and arose enough attention to avoid missed or misdiagnosis. Methods Clinical and endoscopic and hispathology data of the intestinal schistosomiasis in 72 patients were included in this study with Olympus CF-240 colonoscopy and biopsy.Results Endoscopic appearance showed acute enteritis in 16 cases, chronic enteritis in 27 cases and a mixed type of acute and chronic enteritis in 29 cases. In acute enteritis ova were deposited intactly with lots of eosinocyte infiltration, in chronic enteritis ova were calcified and deposited with lots of lymphocytes,plasma cells infiltration and submucosal fibrosis,while in the mixed type enteritis had both acute and chronic histopathologic appearence. Five of 72 cases were found colorectal cancer simultaneously. And 14 of 72 patients had misdiagnostic history,including ulcerative colitis 7 cases, ileocecum cancer 5 cases, and colonrectal tuberculosis 2 cases.Conclusion Intestinal schistosomiasis is classified into three types of enteritis acute,chronic and the mixed type, the latter was an important and indepent type.Colonscopy findings and repeated biopsy from the suspected lesions were essential for getting correct diagnosis.


The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has affected nearly 3.4 million people worldwide. People with comorbidities like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease are at high risk of suffering from the most severe form of the disease. Various studies around the world have reported Obesity as one of the most common comorbidities associated with a high mortality rate. Noninvasive ventilation like continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and bi-level positive airway pressure (BPAP) help in the perioperative management of these patients under normal circumstances but during COVID -19 pandemic they should be used with caution considering their aerosol generation potential. In this article, we will review the effect of morbid obesity and obstructive sleep apnea on perioperative outcomes and measures need to be taken that will benefit both patients as well as a healthcare provider.


Al-Muqallal " Persons to whom few prophetic traditions are ascribed" among the narrators of the Prophet's hadith are those who narrated very few hadiths to the point where the narrations of some of them included only a single hadith called the singulars and the individuals, and some of them are called strange because there is no other suitable way for them.  Some scholars have included in the name Al-Muqaloon those who only one of the narrators narrated about them.
 special topic was devoted to them, however they were treated like the treatment of other narrators except in terms of tabulating the Musnad (which are books that arrange hadiths on the names of the narrators of the Companions), for the purpose of collecting their hadiths in one place, and this is in all classes of Companions, Taabi'een and followers .

 In this research, we will learn about the mechanism of dealing with them and their narrations by the scholars of the Prophet's hadith, and the impact they left on the narration and the degree of their hadith in terms of health, improvement, weakness and status.


Obtaining reliable estimates of marine survival is essential for understanding anadromous salmon population dynamics. Two common approaches to estimating marine survival are (a) dividing abundance of returning adult salmon abundance by abundance of smolts from the same cohort, or (b) tagging a portion of the migrating smolts and estimating the return rate of tagged adults. This study compared these two approaches to estimating marine survival for coho salmon, Oncorhynchus kisutch (Walbaum), across multiple years in three California streams. Abundance‐based survival estimates were higher than tag‐based estimates; average estimates for the two techniques differed from 1.5‐fold to 7.4‐fold across streams. One likely cause for these divergent estimates is migration of juveniles from natal habitat before smolt trapping begins, resulting in an underestimate of smolt abundance and an overestimate of marine survival rate for the abundance‐based method. Estimates of marine survival obtained from abundance estimates and tag returns are not directly comparable.


This paper introduces an edge detection process based on area morphology. Area open-close and area close-open operators are used to generate scaled image representations for feature extraction. The edges are defined by the boundaries of the scaled objects in the area-filtered images. From the area open-close and close-open operators, thin closed contours suitable for image segmentation are produced. The edge maps allow exact specification of the minimum area for the extracted regions and are Euclidean invariant and causal through scale space. Results are given that demonstrate the effectiveness of the area operator-based edge detection. In contrast to traditional edge detectors, edge detection via area morphology provides well-localized boundaries and does not require thresholding.


Although previous in vitro studies predicted that CCN5/WISP-2 may act as an anti-invasive gene in breast cancer, the distribution pattern of CCN5 in breast cancer samples is conflicting. Thus, we systematically investigated the CCN5 expression profile in noninvasive and invasive breast tumor samples and its functional relevance in breast cancer progression. The studies showed that CCN5 expression is biphasic, such that in normal samples CCN5 expression is undetectable, whereas its expression is markedly increased in noninvasive breast lesions, including atypical ductal hyperplasia and ductal carcinoma in situ. Further, CCN5 mRNA and protein levels are significantly reduced as the cancer progresses from a noninvasive to invasive type. Additionally, we showed that CCN5 mRNA and protein level was almost undetectable in poorly differentiated cancers compared with the moderately or well-differentiated samples and its expression inversely correlated with lymph node positivity. The result was further supported by evaluating the RNA expression profile in microdissected sections using real-time PCR analysis. Therefore, our data suggest a protective function of CCN5 in noninvasive breast tumor cells. This hypothesis was further supported by our in vitro studies illuminating that CCN5 is a negative regulator of migration and invasion of breast cancer cells, and these events could be regulated by CCN5 through the modulation of the expression of genes essential for an invasive front. These include Snail-E-cadherin signaling and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 and MMP-2. Collectively, these studies suggest that the protective effect of CCN5 in breast cancer progression may have important therapeutic implications.


Purpose: To describe the pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) of AZD3514 and how the design of the first-time-in-human study was adapted based on the emerging clinical PK. Patients and methods: Data were collected from 77 patients with castrate-resistant prostate cancer from two dose-escalation studies, in Europe (NCT01162395) and Japan (NCT01351688). PK parameters were derived from plasma and urine data and exploration of PK-PD relationships were performed. Post hoc analysis was conducted to investigate time-dependent changes and interand intra-patient variability in PK. Results: AZD3514 was rapidly absorbed and plasma levels declined in a bi-phasic manner with no ethnic differences. Plasma exposure to AZD3514 was dose proportional. Generally, overall exposures were similar between visits within each patient, but varied between patients within each cohort. A switch to twice-daily dosing, to increase exposure, produced a marked time-dependent reduction in area under the curve of 30% and an increase in apparent clearance (from 17 to 25 L/h) at steady state compared to single doses. Emerging study data showed that low baseline testosterone may influence prostate-specific antigen (PSA) reductions by AZD3514. Combination cohorts with abiraterone acetate, a drug that decreases testosterone in CRPC patients, did not result in meaningful decreases in PSA. Discussion and conclusions: Despite adaptation of the clinical strategy from emerging PK and PD data, the hypothesis around androgen receptor (AR) modulation through AR down-regulation could not be tested due to the time-dependent effect on AZD3514 PK, which prevented coverage above the target concentration. Further testing of this hypothesis is warranted.


Birth defects are the leading cause of infant death in the United States. Research has linked poor maternal micronutrient intake to birth defects including neural tube defects, heart defects, and oral clefts. After investigating spatial patterns of these birth defects in the City of Dallas and the neighborhood characteristics within clusters, geospatial access to supermarkets and convenience stores measured by proximity and concentrations are examined as environmental risk factors for nutrition-related birth defects. Spatial clusters of all three nutrition-related birth defects exist in the City of Dallas. Cluster for NTD occurs in vulnerable places with lower income and high minority population specifically Hispanics with no supermarkets. Cluster for heart defects mostly occurs in high income and predominantly white neighborhoods with many supermarkets. Clusters of oral clefts mostly occurs in middle-class income with relatively high minority populations with many convenience stores. For the entire study area, geographical access to supermarkets that include healthy foods are shown to be spatially reachable from most of mothers of infants with nutrition-related birth defects as well as convenience stores that typically include the majority of unhealthy processed foods with very few nutrients. Thus, not only easy geographical access to healthy food vendors but to convenience stores with low quality produces is observed at the same time.


Highly oriented β-SiC film is prepared on (100) Si substrate at 800°C by reactive hydrogen plasma sputtering of a ceramic SiC target. The highly oriented β-SiC film can be grown on (100) Si substrate without void formation at the SiC film/Si interface. Hydrogen plasma etching of the growing film plays an important role in the growth of the oriented β-SiC films. Voids at the SiC film/Si interface are formed at a temperature of about 800°C due to the reaction of SiC film with Si substrate. Also, a thin amorphous buffer layer of 5 nm thickness is formed at the SiC film/Si interface. The results of this study indicate that the buffer layer can be eliminated by a suitable surface treatment of Si substrate before film growth.


In cloud data centers, an appropriate Virtual Machine (VM) placement has become an effective method to improve the resource utilization and reduce the energy consumption. However, most current solutions regard the VM placement as a bin-packing problem and each VM is seen as a single object. None of them have taken the relationships between VMs into consideration, which supplies us with a kind of new perspective. In this paper, we provide a model which explores the relationships for every two VMs based on the resource requirement provided by ARIMA prediction. This model evaluates the volatility of resource utilization after putting the two VMs on the same host and we call this model as affinity model. Based on the affinity model, VMs will be placed on those hosts that have the highest affinity with them. Therefore, we call it as Predicted Affinity based Virtual Machine Placement Algorithm (PAVMP). The advantages of PAVMP are showed by comparing it with other VM placement algorithms on CloudSim simulation platform with the PlanetLab and Google workload trace.


Due to the extraordinary influx of refugees from Syria and other crisis areas since last year, the integration of migrants is currently being debated more than ever in many member countries of the European Union. In order to draw conclusions for future policy measures to integrate migrants, the situation of today's migrant population will be analysed in greater detail. Most of the literature on this topic discusses the assimilation of migrants into the labour market. This article, however, focuses on education, which has an important impact on one's future level of employment and income. Two central questions will be answered during this elaboration: Firstly, to what extent can individual characteristics – such as the socioeconomic status and language skills – explain international differences in the educational achievement of migrants? And secondly, how large is the effect of institutional factors in this context? To answer these questions, some datasets are described and the results of empirical works are presented.


In our present paper we examine the role of the value system and lifestyle as reflected in our primary research carried out among a representative consumer sample. In our opinion the differentiating effect of the individual value system as secondary segmentation criterion can be reflected in the market of life assurance, the basis of our research. By means of factor analysis we created value system structures and with the help of cluster analysis the main criteria of value system-based segments were outlined. As a result of the research we concluded that the individual value system was one of the most determining factors in taking out life assurance. The consumer segments formed alongside the value system have more differentiated attitudes than those of life assurance. Getting to know these groups more thoroughly and deeply offers opportunity for the "suppliers" of the life assurance market to create an effective marketing mix.