To evaluate a standard salmonella isolation method a reference material consisting of 0.2 g spray-dried milk inoculated with Salmonella typhimurium and contained in gelatin capsules was prepared. The organisms were distributed homogeneously between capsules, and their numbers were stable for 120 d when the capsules were stored in dry conditions at 4 degrees C. Addition of these capsules with or without food samples to pre-enrichment broth gave low and reproducible levels of Salm. typhimurium contamination without altering the pre-enrichment and without influencing the other bacterial flora present. As a result of an interlaboratory trial, the reference material indicated that the food and/or its competitive flora may have a negative influence on the detection of salmonellas.


Analysis on a developed dynamic model of the dishStirling (DS) system shows that maximum solar energy harness can be realized through controlling the Stirling engine speed. Toward this end, a control scheme is proposed for the doubly fed induction generator coupled to the DS system, as a means to achieve maximum power point tracking as the solar insolation level varies. Furthermore, the adopted fuzzy supervisory control technique is shown to be effective in controlling the temperature of the receiver in the DS system as the speed changes. Simulation results and experimental measurements validate the maximum energy harness ability of the proposed variable-speed DS solar–thermal system.


The simultaneous capability of high-strain deformation and high shape recovery ratio constitutes a great challenge in design of the shape-memory polymers. Here we report on poly(carbonateurea-urethane)s (PCUUs) synthesized by a precursor route, based on oligo(alkylene carbonate) diols, L-lysine diisocyanate (LDI), and water vapor. When programed with a strain of ε _prog = 800%, the PCUU networks exhibited a one-way shape-memory effect (1W-SME) with excellent shape fixity (> 97%) and shape recovery (> 99%) ratios. The switching temperatures ( T _sw) varied between 50 and 56 °C and correlated to the melting transitions of the switching domains. The obtained PCUUs capable of high-strain are interesting candidate materials for degradable biomaterials as required in smart medical devices.


Infective endocarditis is a microbial infection of the endocardium and can easily affect heart valve.Its characteristic lesion is vegetation formation,and the shedding of vegetation results in arterial embolism and ischemic necrosis of corresponding tissues and organs.A case of infective endocarditis with multiple extracardiac complications was described in this article.The characteristic ultrasound finding was the vegetation formation in anterior mitral valve.CT and MRI scans revealed involvements in multiple organs and blood vessels,which were manifested as splenic infarction,renal infarction,cerebral infarction,splenic aneurysm,superior mesenteric artery aneurysms,renal artery aneurysms,and distal segment stenosis and occlusion of right middle cerebral artery.


We construct two sets of representations of the Dirac equation. They transform themselves from one to another in multiplying by the tensor commutation matrix (TCM) $2\otimes 2$. The Gauss matrix can lead us to the Cholesky decomposition. The TCMs can be used in order to obtain different transforms of some matrix equations to linear matrix equations of the form $AX=B$. A TCM $n\otimes n$ is expressed in terms of the $n\otimes n$-Gell-Mann matrices. In order to generalize this expression to which of TCMs $n\otimes p$, we introduced what we call rectangle Gell-Mann matrices. The electric charge operator (ECO) for eight leptons and quarks of the Standard Model (SM) of a same generation proposed by Zenczykowski is expressed in terms of the TCM $2\otimes 2$. An ECO including all the fermions of the SM is constructed in terms of TCM $4\otimes 4$. Then the eigenvalues of a TCM take sense.


The thermomechanical response of a uniaxial bar with thermoviscoplastic constitution is predicted herein using the finite element method. After a brief review of the governing field equations, variational principles are constructed for the one-dimensional conservation of momentum and energy equations. These equations are coupled in that the temperature field affects the displacements and vice versa. Due to the differing physical nature of the temperature and displacements, first-order and second-order elements are utilized for these variables, respectively. The resulting semi-discretized equations are then discretized in time using finite differencing. This is accomplished by Euler's method, which is utilized due to the stiff nature of the constitutive equations. The model is utilized in conjunction with stress-strain relations developed by Bodner and Partom to predict the axial temperature field in a bar subjected to cyclic mechanical end displacements and temperature boundary conditions. It is found that spacial and time variation of the temperature field is significantly affected by the boundary conditions. The nomenclature used is given in an Appendix.


This paper outlines a method by which pharmacists may invoke external assistance to help minimize patient risk not readily controlled at the treatment level when prescription therapy is authorized. This complex mechanism, the alarm model, identifies potential change agents and suggests intervention options that may be employed to activate an appropriate support system. Possible limitations of the innovative concept are also treated.


In this analysis of the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, Professor Pushaw compares that opinion to the Court's precedent established in Baker v. Carr. Baker set the stage for Bush, and while Professor Pushaw believes that both cases were wrongly decided, he argues that the Bush decision is more defensible because it departed less radically from the Court's existing practice. Baker turned the political question doctrine into a prudential case-by-case judgment call. Ever since, the Court has almost always exercised this unbridled discretion in favor of intervening in heavily politicized disputes. Moreover, Baker provides a "precedent" for the Court's Equal Protection Clause analysis in Bush.


A turnkey observatory with 6.5-m telescope has been developed for a broad range of science applications. The observatory includes the telescope, mount and enclosure, installed on site and ready for operation. The telescope's primary mirror is an f/1.25 honeycomb sandwich of borosilicate glass, similar to that of the MMT and Magellan telescopes. The baseline optical design is for a Gregorian Nasmyth focus at f/11. A Gregorian adaptive optics secondary that provides a wide-field focus corrected for ground layer turbulence (0.25 arcsecond images over a 4 arcminute field) as well as a narrow-field diffraction-limited focus is optional. Another option is a corrected f/5 focus with a 1° field. The observatory, built by partners from academia and industry with extensive experience, can be delivered within five years at a fixed price.


Single-Side-Band transform (SSB) is an important real-valued time-frequency representation, often preferred in applications involving speech signals. In this paper, the problems of system identification and dereverberation are addressed using the SSB transform. First, an analytical relation between the input and the output signals is derived in the SSB domain. Then, a system identification routine is formulated for a band-to-band approximation of that relation. Second, the dereverberation problem is addressed, using a statistical model for the acoustic impulse response (AIR) function. Exact and approximate representations of the AIR and the reverberant signal are derived directly in the SSB domain. The performance of the dereverberation algorithm is evaluated as a function of the representation complexity. Finally, the SSB and the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) representations are compared for the application of dereverberation.


This study examines how different employment relationships in academic settings, ie tenured versus non-tenured appointments, are associated with different types of job performance efforts. The social embeddedness model contends that employees' efforts to perform well depend on embeddedness in the social environment. Adopting this perspective, we ask what types of embeddedness are likely to improve job performance efforts, namely compliance and contextual performance, under the condition of different employment relationships. Regression analyses on the responses of both tenured and non-tenured faculty members show that employees' efforts to perform well can be explained by social embeddedness. Temporal embeddedness appears to be important in explaining the job performance efforts of tenured faculty members, while, in contrast, network embeddedness seems important in explaining the efforts of nontenured faculty members; and institutional embeddedness explained the efforts of both groups of faculty members.


A Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID) is a type of engineering diagram that uses symbols, text, and lines to represent the components and flow of an industrial process. Although used universally across industries such as manufacturing and oil & gas, P&IDs are usually trapped in image files with limited metadata, making their contents unsearchable and siloed from operational or enterprise systems. In order to extract the information contained in these diagrams, we propose a pipeline for automatically digitizing P&IDs. Our pipeline combines a series of computer vision techniques to detect symbols in a diagram, match symbols with associated text, and detect connections between symbols through lines. For the symbol detection task, we train a Convolutional Neural Network to classify certain common symbols with over 90% precision and recall. To detect connections between symbols, we use a graph search approach to traverse a diagram through its lines and discover interconnected symbols. By transforming unstructured diagrams into structured information, our pipeline enables applications such as diagram search, equipment-to-sensor mapping, and asset hierarchy creation. When integrated with operational and enterprise data, the extracted asset hierarchy serves as the foundation for a facility-wide digital twin, enabling advanced applications such as machine learning-based predictive maintenance.


This study investigated the types, frequency, and effectiveness of responses to unwanted pursuit (UP) and stalking after relationship termination. Participants included female and male college students who were either pursued by a former partner or who pursued an ex-partner. Factor analyses of targets' responses to pursuit yielded four factors, similar to Cupach and Spitzberg's (2004) proposed response types. Targets reported engaging in Avoidance/ Minimization and Support-Seeking responses more often than Approach or Assertion/Aggression, and Approach more often than Assertion/Aggression; pursuers reported that targets engaged in Common Responses more often than Assertion/Aggression responses. Generally, targets rated more assertive but less frequently used responses such as "took legal action" or "made geographic change" as most effective, whereas pursuers rated threats and assertive or aggressive verbal confrontations as most effective. Analysis of qualitative data indicate that a combination of target avoidance and the passage of time provides an opportunity for the pursuer to move on from the relationship, which results in the cessation of UP. Implications for stalking prevention and intervention are discussed.


Abstract Objectives The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a resource-intensive global pandemic. It is important for healthcare systems to identify high-risk COVID-19-positive patients who need timely health care. This study was conducted to predict the hospitalization of older adults who have tested positive for COVID-19. Methods We screened all patients with COVID test records from 11 Mass General Brigham hospitals to identify the study population. A total of 1495 patients with age 65 and above from the outpatient setting were included in the final cohort, among which 459 patients were hospitalized. We conducted a clinician-guided, 3-stage feature selection, and phenotyping process using iterative combinations of literature review, clinician expert opinion, and electronic healthcare record data exploration. A list of 44 features, including temporal features, was generated from this process and used for model training. Four machine learning prediction models were developed, including regularized logistic regression, support vector machine, random forest, and neural network. Results All 4 models achieved area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) greater than 0.80. Random forest achieved the best predictive performance (AUC = 0.83). Albumin, an index for nutritional status, was found to have the strongest association with hospitalization among COVID positive older adults. Conclusions In this study, we developed 4 machine learning models for predicting general hospitalization among COVID positive older adults. We identified important clinical factors associated with hospitalization and observed temporal patterns in our study cohort. Our modeling pipeline and algorithm could potentially be used to facilitate more accurate and efficient decision support for triaging COVID positive patients.


Abstract 4385 Introduction: Successful autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (aPBSCT) is critical for long-term survival and quality of life in patients with multiple myeloma (MM). Standard mobilization of PBSCs is in 15 to 20% of MM patients inefficient. Better mobilization response is achieved by adding plerixafor to current mobilization regimens. Based on studies it is possible to reduce these numbers to 2%. Methodology: During the period from 06/2009 to 08/2011 our department mobilized five patients with MM using plerixafor, of whom three were remobilized using standard G-CSF + plerixafor scheme (G+P) after a previous unsuccessful mobilization with cyclophosphamide + G-CSF (C+G). Two patients received plerixafor on demand in a failed first-line mobilization attempt (C+G+P). Comprehensive statistical analysis of products mobilized with plerixafor (8 products) versus products obtained using C+G regime alone (40 products) was performed comparing smears, colony forming-units (CFUs) and immunophenotype profile. Time to mobilization, pretreatment, used mobilization regime and adverse effects of plerixafor regimes were also analyzed. The ultimate goal of every mobilization - successful transplantation - was also described and analyzed comparing composition of transplanted products with engraftment of white blood cells (WBC), neutrophil granulocytes and platelets. Results: Analysis of the plerixafor group only: 1. Both mobilization strategies (second-line G+P and first-line C+G+P) allowed to collect enough CD34+ cells for one (3 patients) or two (2 patients) transplants. Failure to mobilize using plerixafor has not been recorded. 3 patients successfully received transplants. 2. Based on an analysis of risk factors for determining poor mobilizer 3 patients could be mobilized preemptively using G+P scheme preventing use of controversial cyclophosphamide. 3. Adverse effects were mild and mainly related to G-CSF. In one patient mobilization was stopped after collecting 2.45 ×10 6 /kg because of anxiety. However, we were unable to definitely connect anxiety symptoms to plerixafor. 4. There was a statistically significant increase of leukocytes in peripheral blood observed after adding plerixafor. In 3 patients it allowed the CD34+ cells to rise above 20/μl. Comparative analysis of plerixafor group vs. group of patients mobilized with C+G: 1. Duration of cytopenia after transplantation was comparable and statistically not different. 2. Significantly higher numbers of CD19+ cells after plerixafor administration suggest a possible value of this drug in the treatment of diseases with this marker. 3. Significant reduction of toxic granulation after plerixafor administration may be a proof of lesser number of infectious complications. 4. Significantly lower numbers of younger cell forms and non-significantly higher numbers of mature cells in products mobilized with plerixafor prove a) no cytotoxic effect of plerixafor b) decreased regenerative potential of bone marrow in poor mobilizers even if chemotherapy is used. 5. Significantly lower numbers of CD34+ cells and CFUs in plerixafor mobilized products suggest a worse overall mobilization response in this group. However CFUs have shown to predict stem cells yield better than CD34+ cells alone. 6. The importance of a non-significant decrease in CD56+ cells in plerixafor mobilized products is unclear as co-expression of CD 38/56 does not show any differences. Conclusions: 1. Preemptive first line mobilization with G+P seems to be an important strategy in predicted poor mobilizers which would otherwise be mobilized with C+G(+P). This prevents possible neutropenia and its complications. On demand first line G+P seems to be a good choice in patients that are mobilized with growth factors only as there is no risk of neutropenia. 2. We highly recommend the investigation of CFUs which usually predict stem cells yield better than CD34+ cells alone and may allow transplantation even if CD34+ cells are low. 3. Because aPBSCT is a therapeutic modality with clear benefit for patients with MM, we highly recommend the use of plerixafor in all MM patients where it is impossible to collect sufficient stem cells. According to our investigation, we believe that plerixafor is only starting its career as a mobilization drug. Its most valuable potential may be in curative regimens of diseases which have affinity to bone marrow. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


[1] Seismic attenuation in the Wakayama swarm area of southwest Japan is estimated by optimally fitting the theoretical S coda model to an average S coda envelope in the frequency range of 1–48 Hz. The average S coda envelope is confirmed to have a common decay curve independent of the source-station distance. Intrinsic attenuation is found to peak at around 4 Hz, suggesting thermal diffusion in grain size or crack length domains with dimensions of the order of 0.7–1 mm, which is reasonable for crustal rock. Scattering attenuation is well approximated by the relation 0.054f−1 in this frequency range, with an inferred peak at 0.5 Hz, suggesting that the statistical model is characterized by an exponential autocorrelation function with a correlation length of about 1 km and a fractional velocity fluctuation of 21%. Scattering is the dominant cause of attenuation at frequencies below 2 Hz, while intrinsic attenuation becomes predominant above 4 Hz. Although values of coda attenuation (Qc−1) generally lie between the total and intrinsic attenuation, the differences between these three values becomes very small above 4 Hz, indicating that the coda attenuation measurements provide a reasonably good estimate of the total attenuation. The total attenuation was found to coincide well with the total apparent attenuation estimated by a linear inversion using direct S waves from swarm earthquakes, confirming the validity of the present results.


For many years the question of the etiology of nasal polypi has received the attention of rhinologists. In a recent publication Kern and Schenck 1 gave an excellent survey of the literature and enumerated the theories that have been advanced on the etiology of the so-called mucous polyp. Until recently, chronic nasal infection and sinus suppuration were thought to be the most common etiologic factors, although theories were advanced that polypi were of vascular origin, were due to lymph-vascular disease or were hereditary. More recently, the importance of nasal allergy in the etiology of nasal polypi has been emphasized, and Kern and Schenck found that "mucous polyps are extremely common in allergic conditions of the upper respiratory tract, and that in patients presenting symptoms of non-allergic disease of the upper respiratory tract mucous polyps are comparatively rare, even in the presence of extensive sinus suppuration." Hansel, 2 in a comprehensive


The primary objective of software testing is to locate bugs as many as possible in software by using an optimum set of test cases. Optimum set of test cases are obtained by selection procedure which can be viewed as an optimization problem. So metaheuristic optimizing searching techniques have been immensely used to automate software testing task. The application of metaheuristic searching techniques in software testing is termed as Search Based Testing. Non-redundant, reliable and optimized test cases can be generated by the search based testing with less effort and time. This article presents a systematic review on several meta heuristic techniques like Genetic Algorithms, Particle Swarm optimization, Ant Colony Optimization, Bee Colony optimization, Cuckoo Searches, Tabu Searches and some modified version of these algorithms used for test case generation. The authors also provide one framework, showing the advantages, limitations and future scope or gap of these research works which will help in further research on these works.


The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of high salinity on some stress parameters of common carp (Cyprinus carpio), which gradually exposed to salt concentrations of 5, 10 and 15g/liter, as well as tap water (water without chlorine) (control 0.1g/liter) for 90 days. Eighty fish were randomly distributed on eight glass tanks with 2 replicates, 10 fish / replicate at average weight of 15 ± 3 g, to study the effect of salinity on the time appearance of feces and, the chemical analysis of the body composition .The results showed that the appearance time of feces was decreased with the rise of salt concentrations of common carp. As the passage of food through digestive tract took less time in high salinities. and the appearance of feces was after 4.16 hours of feed intake in a salt concentration of 15 g/liter, whereas it started after 5.22 hours in a saline concentration of 10 g/l and after 6.11 in a salt concentration of 5g/l in comparison with the control treatment (6.17 hours). Regarding the chemical analysis of the body composition, it was found that the moisture dropped with the rise of salinity, as it mounted to 77.09, 74.94 and 73.80% in the salt concentrations 5,10 and 15 g/l respectively, in comparison with the control treatment (78.45%).The percentage of protein decreased to 14.19, 13.89 and 13.74% in the salt concentrations 5, 10 and 15 g/l respectively, in comparison with the control treatment (14.28%).The percentage of fat amounted to 5.71, 5.68, and 5.66% in the salt concentrations 5,10 and 15 g/l respectively, in comparison with the control treatment (5.73%). whereas the percentage of ash was increased to 3.01, 5.40 and 6.80% with the increase in salinity to 5,10 and 15 g/l respectively ,compared with the control treatment (1.80%).


Increasing the range of conventional bullets has become very important today. Previous technologies increased the range of bullets by a certain amount. These former technologies in artillery shells include the technology of creating a bullet at the base of the bullet and the use of rocket bullet technology. Today, large research companies are using new technology to increase cannonballs. According to these companies, new technologies can increase the range of 155 mm bullets to 155 km. The new technology is the use of solid fuel ramjet technology, which is now very popular. Ramjet motors have no moving parts and at first glance look like a hollow tube, which is mostly used at supersonic speeds. In such engines, in order for the engine to start, the air speed must first reach the required value. In such a case, the ramjet engine will start automatically. In this research, the technology of ram jet bullets and the progress made in it have been investigated. According to the investigations, one of the most important future technologies in artillery shells is the use of ramjet technology.


Deterioration of lamp output quality over time and degradation of detector signal-to-noise ratio are issues associated with ageing of a spectrophotometer. To document the effect of instrument ageing on short wavelength near infrared spectroscopy-based assessment of internal attributes of fruit quality prediction (total soluble solids, TSS, of juice), an assessment was conducted of several handheld photodiode array-based spectrophotometers over several years, with repeated spectra of a reference Teflon (PTFE) tile and spectra of 20 apple fruit acquired at yearly intervals. The repeatability of each instrument was assessed as the standard deviation of absorbance of repeated measures of a reference, typically around 0.2 mAbs. Instrument changes were identified in performance and in principal components analysis plots, but performance (apple TSS model) was not related to instrument repeatability. A piecewise direct standardisation method is recommended to maintain a multivariate calibration model across spectrometers.


The observations reported in the present study indicate that a nitrogen-containing polysaccharide can be isolated from bovine erythrocytes which is capable of reacting specifically with several of the typing sera for bovine cellular antigens. The antigens extracted are non-antigenic in rabbits and are best demonstrated by means of inhibition tests.


The knowledge of (anti-)neutrino fluxes is one of the largest limitation in accelerator-based precision neutrino
experiments. The main limitation arise from the poorly known production cross section of neutrino parents in hadron-nucleus interactions.
Strategies used by neutrino experiment to constrain their fluxes using external hadroproduction data will be described and illustrated with an example of a tight collaboration between T2K and NA61/SHINE experiments. This enabled a reduction of the T2K neutrino flux uncertainty from ∼25% (without external constraints) down to ∼10%.
On-going developments to further constrain the T2K (anti-)neutrino flux will be discussed and recent results from
NA61/SHINE will be reviewed.
As the next-generation long baseline experiments aim for a neutrino flux uncertainty at a level of a few percent, the
future data-taking plans of NA61/SHINE will be discussed.


This paper concentrates on the role of research network infrastructure in fostering the dissemination of innovation-related knowledge. It examines the structure of collaborative networks and of knowledge transfer between research, innovation and deployment activities in the field of information and communication technology for the European Union as a whole and for several European regions. Research networks complement diffusion networks by providing additional links and by increasing the number of the organisations involved in sharing and exchanging knowledge. Two types of actors are key players in these networks: hubs and gatekeepers. Hubs maintain the bulk of ties in the networks also helping the smaller and more isolated members remain connected. Gatekeepers bridge research and diffusion networks. Such organisations naturally offer greater policy leverage in establishing a European knowledge infrastructure. Moreover, strengthened inter-network connectivity among research and diffusion activities (deployment) would raise the effectiveness of European research in terms of accelerating innovation.


In this article, biochemistry and methods of determination of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and their utilization for monitoring long-term glycemic control of diabetes mellitus are reviewed. Monitoring the glycaemic state of patients is cornerstone of diabetic care. The tests used most widely in monitoring the glycemic status of people with diabetes are blood glucose and glycated hemoglobin. As blood glucose level determination is an indicator of acute glycemic state, HbA1c value reflects mean glucose level during the previous 2-3 months' period and is a useful indicator for risk assessment of diabetic complications. HbA1c levels of the all diabetic patients should be determined at the commencement of treatment as well as for monitoring purposes with the interval of twice a year and once in each three months period, for stable diabetic cases and for unstable cases like insulin dependent diabetics, respectively. Despite existence of more than 30 various methods for determination of HbA1c level in blood samples, each technique has its unique property concerning the analyte determined and the sorts of interferences. Nevertheless, the effort for the internationally accepted standardization for determination of HbA1c levels is yet on the way. Thus, physicians should take the method characteristics and the possible interferent analytes (e.g. hemoglobinopathies) of the technique employed for HbA1c determinations into consideration, while evaluating the results of the tests.


[1] A suite of numerical weather prediction (NWP) verification diagnostics applicable to both scalar and vector variables is developed, highlighting the normalization and successive decomposition of model errors. The normalized root-mean square error (NRMSE) is broken down into contributions from the normalized bias (NBias) and the normalized pattern error (NPE). The square of NPE, or the normalized error varianceα, is further analyzed into phase and amplitude errors, measured respectively by the correlation and the variance similarity. The variance similarity diagnostic is introduced to verify variability e.g. under different climates. While centered RMSE can be reduced by under-prediction of variability in the model,αpenalizes over- and under-prediction of variability equally. The error decomposition diagram, the correlation-similarity diagram and the anisotropy diagram are introduced. The correlation-similarity diagram was compared with the Taylor diagram: it has the advantage of analyzing the normalized error variance geometrically into contributions from the correlation and variance similarity. Normalization of the error metrics removes the dependence on the inherent variability of a variable and allows comparison among quantities of different physical units and from different regions and seasons. This method was used to assess the Coupled Ocean/Atmospheric Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS). The NWP performance degrades progressively from the midlatitudes through the sub-tropics to the tropics. But similar cold and moist biases are noted and position and timing errors are the main cause of pattern errors. Although the suite of metrics is applied to NWP verification here, it is generally applicable as diagnostics for differences between two data sets.


Considering parental mediation as a dual process that starts with the child and varies according to their age and online activities, this article examines digital socialization in the broader context of family communication. Based on the EU Kids Online questionnaire (2017-2019) which surveyed children (9-16 years old) in 19 countries, and on previous pan-European studies, the article explores results from Spain, Italy and Portugal in a comparative perspective among them and with then 19 countries average. In the three Latin countries, in line with the average, safety, support and family communication are more highlighted by children than digital socialization, which is marked by a protectionist and risk prevention approach. However, the three countries present variations in children's perceptions about their online well-being, the support they use to deal with risks and their own role in digital socialization. Acknowledging these national differences favors appropriate interventions by decision makers of public safety and well-being policies, as well as from education, health, and family counseling professionals.


The purpose of this research was to determine the factors, which affect the motivation of individuals living in villages to frequent a Village Coffee Stall (VCS). Six villages in Antalya and 100 male participants were selected randomly. The questionnaire addressed demographics and motivational reasons for going to VCS. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data. The results revealed the recreational and social importance of the VCS. The majority of the participants were married, 31 years old or older, $640 monthly income or below, graduated from school, and run their own business. They go to VCS regularly weekdays and weekends, have a passive recreational life and prefer either going to VCS or staying at home. They go to VCS to meet with friends, to socialise, to relax, to eat/drink/play something, to watch sport events on TV, to avoid loneliness, to belong to a group, to be away from family for a while, and to talk about daily life and its problems. They do not go to VCS to find a new partner, to be recognised by others, to be away from the people around them or to gossip. These villagers go to VCS only for recreational reasons.


Despite recent advances in vision-based gesture recognition, its applications remain largely limited to artificially defined and well-articulated gesture signs used for human-computer interaction. A key reason for this is the low recognition rates for "natural" gesticulation. Previous attempts of using speech cues to reduce error-proneness of visual classification have been mostly limited to keyword-gesture coanalysis. Such scheme inherits complexity and delays associated with natural language processing. This paper offers a novel "signal-level" perspective, where prosodic manifestations in speech and hand kinematics are considered as a basis for coanalyzing loosely coupled modalities. We present a computational framework for improving continuous gesture recognition based on two phenomena that capture voluntary (coarticulation) and involuntary (physiological) contributions of prosodic synchronization. Physiological constraints, manifested as signal interruptions during multimodal production, are exploited in an audiovisual feature integration framework using hidden Markov models. Coarticulation is analyzed using a Bayesian network of naive classifiers to explore alignment of intonationally prominent speech segments and hand kinematics. The efficacy of the proposed approach was demonstrated on a multimodal corpus created from the Weather Channel broadcast. Both schemas were found to contribute uniquely by reducing different error types, which subsequently improves the performance of continuous gesture recognition.


Autism is primarily a social disorder and deficits in social?orienting may be responsible for the failure of children with autism to initiate critical social behaviors. The purpose of this research was to improve the quality of social interactions of children with autism by implementing naturalistic behavior strategies intervention utilizing a multiple baseline design across four participants. Naturalistic behavior strategies comprised a comprehensive package of integrated components including: (a) intervention in the child's natural environment; (b) child-initiated play activities ; (c) prompts to emit language; (d) shaping for all vocal approximations and (e) delivery of natural reinforcement with embedded social interactions to maintain learned behavior. In addition to intervention, generalization of child behaviors was assessed across untrained parents and/or caregivers in the same environment. Results indicated the effectiveness of naturalistic teaching strategies package in increasing (a) the frequency of vocal mands for all children, (b) the number of times that children initiated social engagement during manding, and (c) intervals of nonverbal dyadic orienting. These skills generalized across two untrained caregivers in the same clinical setting without any training from the interventionist. Two parents required training during the generalization phase in order for their child's behaviors to maintain at levels demonstrated during the intervention phase. Implications for future research and clinical practice are discussed.


We developed an Impulse-Based Asynchronous Serial Address-Event Representation (IB-AS-AER) protocol. It allows for full-duplex communication and explicit flow control, does not require any clock data recovery or accurate clock relationship between the transmitter and receiver. Moreover, the optical fiber communication link, that galvanically isolates the communicating devices, highly improves the robustness to electromagnetic disturbances, reduces the power consumption and allows for high data rate transmissions. In addition, the proposed implementation does not require any specific hardware and can be developed on low-cost FPGAs as well as on full-custom ASICs. Preliminary tests performed at 100 Mbps raw bit transfer rate confirm a 32 bit maximum event rate of 2.9 Meps.


The antineoplastic agents /V,/V',A'"-triethylenethiophosphorainide (thioTEPA) and jV,/V',jY"-triethylenephosphoramide (TEPA) were stud ied for their interaction with the DNA of LI 210 cells in the presence and absence of rat hepatic microsomes and NADPH. Alkaline elution was used to study 3 types of DNA lesions. When L1210 cells were incubated with thioTEPA alone, or with thioTEPA in the presence of microsomes and NADPH, no single-strand breaks were detected. However, incubation of L1210 cells for 2 h with thioTEPA, at concentrations i-10(1«¿M,caused a dose-dependent increase in interstrand cross-linking that reached a maximum by 2 h after drug exposure. In the presence of rat hepatic microsomes and NADPH, this cross-linking was eliminated, but a differ ent DNA lesion, alkali-labile sites, was produced. These alkali-labile sites were partially reparable with maximum repair achieved by 2 h after removal of drug. ThioTEPA was >85% consumed by the microsomal incubation conditions employed, and TEPA was the only product of the microsomal metabolism of thioTEPA. Alkaline elution studies of L1210 cells that had been incubated with TEPA, alone or in the presence of microsomes and NADPH, demonstrated an elution pattern identical to that produced by thioTEPA in the presence of microsomes and NADPH. Lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from patients with Eanconi's anemia were far more sensitive to thioTEPA and mechlorethamine hydrochloride than were lymphoblasts derived from normal humans, but this hypersensitivity was not noted with TEPA or bleomycin. This is consistent with the known hypersensitivity of cells from patients with Fanconi's anemia to agents that produce interstrand cross-links and with the alkaline elution studies described above. In contrast, lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from patients with ataxia telangiectasia were no more sensitive to thioTEPA than were lymphoblasts derived from normal humans but were far more sensitive to bleomycin. One of these cell lines proved hypersensitive to TEPA, whereas the other was no more sensitive to TEPA than were lymphoblasts from normal humans. Our data imply that thioTEPA produces interstrand cross-links but that TEPA, the primary metabolite of thioTEPA, produces DNA lesions that are alkali labile.


INTRODUCTION
The objective of this work was to review current data about the pathophysiology, clinical features, and treatment of thrombotic microangiopathies.

CURRENT KNOWLEDGE
Thrombotic microangiopathies are microvascular occlusive disorders characterized by systemic or intrarenal aggregation of platelets, thrombocytopenia, and mechanical injury to erythrocytes. In thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, systemic microvascular aggregation of platelets causes ischemia in the brain and other organs. In the hemolytic-uremic syndrome, platelet-fibrin thrombi occlude predominantly the renal circulation. Thrombotic microangiopathy is a rare disorder whose varied clinical manifestations result from the formation of platelet-rich thrombi within the microvasculature and consequent tissue ischemia. The clinical features are acute renal failure, microangiopathic hemolytic anemia and thrombocytopenia. This diagnosis is of considerable importance because of the possible fulminant clinical course. Some atypical forms may be unrecognized. Plasma exchange is the current reference treatment of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. However, in the light of recent publications, either infusions of concentrates of purified enzyme or more intensive immunosuppressive therapy would be more specific.


Programming distributed memory parallel computers with explicit message passing refrains the use of this type of architecture. The objective is to provide a programmed environment which will hide the message passing aspects of DMPCs, and will allow the use of traditional languages as input. The paper describes two different approaches which satisfy this goal: a compiler which translates sequential code into distributed parallel processes and a shared virtual memory which offers to the user a global address space. Examples and results for both mechanisms are given. The hope and the interest of each approach is outlined.<<ETX>>


Numerically, the most significant difference between children and adults is body weight. Hu-mans are not born with complete physiological functions, and our body functions mature with growth. Assuming adult renal function to be 100%, glomerular filtration rate only reaches approximately 25%-40% of adult function at birth. Renal function reaches approximately 90% of adult function in the first year after birth and is comparable to adult function in the second year after birth. This review will discuss energy metabolism of living organisms, maturation from children to adults, pharmacokinetics in children, and describes antimicrobial chemotherapy in children.


Weak field magnetoresistance was explored in GaAs/AlGaAs superlattices with different strengths of disorder produced either by the random variation of the well thicknesses or by the interface roughness. Depending on the disorder strength, three different regimes of the quantum transport were distinguished: the regimes of weak localization identified as the regimes of propagative and diffusive Fermi surfaces and the strongly localized insulating regime. Our results imply different dephasing mechanisms in the weak and strong localization limits. The vertical coupling energies in the superlattices determined with the random variation of the well thicknesses revealed a significant decrease with increasing disorder strength.


In two-dimensional (2D) ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data, the reflections from detection targets in depth can be severely obscured by strong scattering generated from near-surface non-target structures. By using GPR as a geotechnical non-destructive testing device, it is still a challenge to eliminate the strong scattering caused by near-surface rebars in a tunnel lining and to image and asses the grouting condition behind the tunnel lining. This study proposes a method for the reconstruction of GPR images, termed Maxwell curl equation datuming. To eliminate the deleterious effect caused by near-surface diffractive scattering, we have redefined the reference surface to an actual geologic/engineered interface by using Maxwell curl equation datuming methodology based on the Kirchhoff integral solution. The datuming procedure can redefine the reference surface to a deeper horizon on which GPR transmitters and receivers appear to be located. We conducted a comparison between the datuming and migration to synthetic examples and case studies are presented for a physical model and real GPR data for assessments of shield tunnel grouting in the Shanghai Metro line No.9. The results show that the datuming technique is able to eliminate the strong scattering related to near-surface rebars in a tunnel lining and improves the quality of deeper images beneath the tunnel lining. The datuming images make it easy to identify the distribution of tunnel grouting.


Using abundant seawater can reduce reliance on freshwater resources for hydrogen production from electrocatalytic water splitting. However, seawater has detrimental effects on the stability and activity of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalysts under different pH conditions. In this work, we report the synthesis of binary metallic core-sheath nitride@oxynitride electrocatalysts [Ni(ETM)]δ+-[O-N]δ-, where ETM is an early transition metal V or Cr. Using NiVN on a nickel foam (NF) substrate, we demonstrate an HER overpotential as low as 32 mV at -10 mA cm-2 in saline water (0.6 M NaCl). The results represent an advancement in saline water HER performance of earth-abundant electrocatalysts, especially under near-neutral pH range (i.e., pH 6-8). Doping ETMs in nickel oxynitrides accelerates the typically rate-determining H2O dissociation step for HER and suppresses chloride deactivation of the catalyst in neutral-pH saline water. Heterointerface synergism occurs through H2O adsorption and dissociation at interfacial oxide character, while adsorbed H* proceeds via Heyrovsky or Tafel step on the nitride character. This electrocatalyst showed stable performance under a constant current density of -50 mA cm-2 for 50 h followed by additional 50 h at -100 mA cm-2 in a neutral saline electrolyte (1 M PB + 0.6 M NaCl). Contrarily, under the same conditions, Pt/C@NF exhibited significantly low performance after a mere 4 h at -50 mA cm-2. The low Tafel slope of 25 mV dec-1 indicated that the reaction is Tafel limited, unlike commercial Pt/C, which is Heyrovsky limited. We close by discussing general principles concerning surface charge delocalization for the design of HER electrocatalysts in pH saline environments.


I read with interest the article by Ageberg et al (1), published in a recent issue of Arthritis Care & Research, which presented cross-sectional observations from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in which patients, after an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury, were randomized to either training and surgical reconstruction, or to training only. The objective was to study muscle strength and functional performance 2 to 5 years after injury. The outcome was assessed by 3 muscle power tests (as measures of lower extremity muscle strength) and 3 hop tests (as measures of functional performance). The authors concluded that the lack of differences between the patients treated with training and surgical reconstruction and those treated with training only indicates that reconstructive surgery is not a prerequisite for restoring muscle function. A crucial question to consider is why cruciate ligaments are reconstructed. Most, if not all, knee surgeons performing ACL reconstruction would say that the operation is performed to restore functional knee stability, not to increase muscle strength or to improve hop tests. Very few, if any, would use a reconstruction to prevent the development of knee osteoarthritis (OA). Accordingly, the main indication for ACL reconstruction is symptomatic instability. Although the study subjects were drawn from a RCT, and the authors highlight this fact as their main strength (i.e., random allocation of the treatment), it is concerning that the authors do not comment on the discrepancy with respect to meniscal tears at baseline (20 of 36 for the surgical group versus 5 of 18 for the training-only group; no information is provided on how these tears were diagnosed or if meniscectomies were performed), and contralateral ACL injuries (9 out of 36 for the surgical group versus 2 out of 18 for the training-only group), the higher share being in those treated with surgical reconstruction as shown in Table 1 of the article by Ageberg et al. The reason(s) for this discrepancy is unclear, but must be interpreted by the reader as due to either selection bias (41% drop out), unsuccessful randomization in the RCT, crossover (i.e., some patients who were randomly allocated to the training arm of the RCT had ACL reconstruction at a later stage due to treatment failure), or any combination of these. Data suggest that the surgically reconstructed group has had more substantial knee trauma and, if crossover patients are included, most likely have had the most instability and lack of confidence with their knee. In addition, the discrepancy of meniscal tears between groups and the higher number of contralateral ACL injuries in the subjects with reconstruction suggests that using the Limb Symmetry Index (calculated by dividing the result for the injured leg by that of the uninjured leg and multiplying by 100) to compare the surgical treatment with the nonsurgical treatment group may be less adequate. The lack of consideration of these facts leaves me puzzled about the validity and clinical relevance of the author's conclusion. The authors also speculate that the impaired muscle function in the study subjects is the cause of OA development after ACL injury. However, the number of meniscal tears, mainly in the reconstructed knees, makes this hypothesis for OA development questionable. Meniscal tears and meniscectomy are strong risk factors for knee OA (2,3). Recently, we have shown that in ACL-injured subjects, only those who were meniscectomized developed knee OA (4). Indeed, we agree that that there is no evidence showing that reconstruction of the ACL prevents or reduces the risk of OA. However, how different factors contribute to OA in the ACL-injured knee is not well studied. It is most likely that too many ACL reconstructions are made, although references to support the statement, " 50% of patients in Sweden and 90% of patients in the US with ACL deficiency have surgical reconstruction," would be appropriate. In deciding treatment in ACL deficiency, patients with symptomatic unstable knees should be individually assessed regarding type and frequency of current physical activity as well as expected future activity. To study the outcome of ACL reconstruction, we urge tests that examine the exclusive properties of a reconstructed cruciate ligament with respect to functional knee stability.


The goal of this study is to examine the supply side hypothesis of tourism demand, that is, to answer the question: Does economic growth in Barbados spur tourism growth. Results suggest that there is a long-run relationship between real GDP in Barbados and tourist arrivals. Specifically, we find that a 1% expansion in real GDP is associated with a 1.2% increase in tourist arrivals. Further, our Granger causality test suggests that the supply-side hypothesis is valid for Barbados.


An innovative web-based system was developed to allow patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) to be easily administered. Stakeholders guided the design and implementation. The software gives patients access to their current and previous scores. This pilot study focused on patients undergoing arthroscopic subacromial decompression, evaluated using the Oxford shoulder score (OSS). Patients showing good improvement in their OSS were offered the choice to return for routine follow-up clinic appointments, or continue rehabilitation, reassured by their improved score. Thirty-six of 117 patients were eligible. Thirty of these (83%) were opted to avoid further clinics. PROMs 2.0 can be used for any medical intervention with a validated PROM. Evolution and refinement is ongoing. Funding has been granted for 12 primary and secondary healthcare trusts to implement PROMs 2.0. Further work is needed to assess economic impact, patient views and satisfaction with the process.


The importance of estimating accurately the pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid at lumbar puncture by means of a mercurial instrument has received increasing attention during the past decade. It is now recognized as the only safe method of controlling the pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid during therapeutic drainage. Not more cerebrospinal fluid should be removed than will lower the pressure by one half; in this manner, there is no danger of lowering the spinal pressure to a degree that might precipitate medullary complications in the presence of high intracranial pressure. Many general practitioners are desirous frequently of making special tests, but they are often handicapped for the lack of the special instruments used ordinarily by the specialists; the spinal mercurial manometer is such an instrument, but I find that in its place an ordinary mercurial sphygmomanometer used for blood pressure readings can very easily be substituted and most


In this paper, we introduce a new Eclipse-based IDE for teaching Java following the object-later approach. In particular, this IDE allows the programmer to write code in Java-, a smaller version of the Java language that does not include object-oriented features. For the implementation of this language we used Xtext, an Eclipse framework for implementing Domain Specific Languages; besides the compiler mechanisms, Xtext also allows to easily implement all the IDE tooling mechanisms in Eclipse. By using Xtext we were able to provide an implementation of Java - with all the powerful features available when using an IDE like Eclipse (including debugging, automatic building, and project wizards). With our implementation, it is also straightforward to create self-assessment exercises for students, which are integrated in Eclipse and JUnit.


For some time, teaching Standard English has been a problem of major proportion at Versia L. Williams Elementary School, Fort Worth, Texas. Even casual observation shows that pupils do not grasp much of the classroom English teaching, nor do they transfer that which they do learn to other school work or daily use. The instructional program in English at the Williams Elementary School, therefore, must be supplemented to the extent that the pupils may be given the kinds of experiences in the classroom that will ultimately result in their learning Standard English in a manner that will enable them to relate the "book talk" to their own idiolects, which according to Giddings (2) everyone has. They bring to school a well-established set of habits which they will continue to use in spite of the classroom instruction, because they hold on to the teaching of their first teachers--their mothers.


OBJECTIVES To analyse the origin, diagnoses and types of medicine used in computerised long-term prescription at our centre, which are classified by age distribution; and to extract, if possible, use parameters for monitoring internal activities. DESIGN Descriptive study. SETTING Zumaia Health Centre (Guipuzcoa). PATIENTS 976 patients divided into those over and those under 65, included in the programme of long-term treatment cards. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS 54% of patients were over 65 and 46% under. Average medicines per patient were 3.24 and 2.23, respectively. 34% of long-term prescription originated in primary care, although primary care was only the main indicator to a significant degree in group K (CIAP) diagnoses for under-65's. The commonest diagnoses belonged to group K, independently of the origin of the prescription. The most prescribed medicines were those in groups M and C (IMC), significantly higher in the over-65's. CONCLUSIONS Only one third of the prescriptions originated in PC. A significant reversal of this tendency was observed in young people with chronic group K pathologies. The indication of long-term treatment for psychological problems often escapes the public health system; when the PC doctor indicates this treatment, he/she usually does so on the basis of symptomatic conditions. Monitoring new cases could help us find the efficacy of the corrective measures introduced, both at the level of structural innovations and changes in care procedure.


The performance of the Deep Space Station (DSS) 14 64-meter antenna X-band gain determined using the X- and K-band Radar feedcone is discussed. Tests prior to, and following the installation of an improved subreflector, proved the unit largely (if not totally) restored initial performance levels at that station. The X-band peak gain with the subreflector is +17.8dBi(area efficiency of 47.3 percent); an increase of +0.47 dB due to the unit installation. The test further showed a significant shift in the axial focus required (function of elevation angle) which, if not implemented operationally, will cause a serious degradation. An historical summary of all documented X-band gain measurements at DSS 14 is included and reviewed. The initial performance is traced through various major configuration changes such as the installation of the X-band dual hybrid mode horn within the operational XRO feedcone. Finally, based on the summary and recent data, a peak X-band antenna gain of +72.1 dBi (area efficiency of 50.8 percent) is projected for the operational feedcone.


The literature pertaining to the relationship between intraocular pressure and edema of the cornea was reviewed in an earlier communication (Ytteborg and Dohlman).1Results of animal experiments were reported in the same paper. The immediate effect of varying the intraocular pressure on epithelial and stromal hydration, as well as on transparency, was observed. Raising or lowering of the intraocular pressure for a few hours had little effect onstromalhydration.Epithelialedema seemed to appear sooner and progress more rapidly as (a) the level of intraocular pressure was increased, and/or (b) stromal swelling increased after endothelial damage. The experiments were short so that the cornea, in most cases, did not have time to reach a new steady state of hydration. In the present paper, the long term effects were studied in human subjects having low, normal, or raised intraocular pressure, assumed to have remained steady for some time. Observations


A series of African chigger mites from the collection donated by Alex Fain (1912-2009) to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences is revised. One new genus and species, Makwacarus petrodromi n. gen., n. sp. from an elephant shrew Petrodromus tetradactylus tordayi Thomas and two new species, Herpetacarus junkeri n. sp. from a snake Boaedon fuliginosus (Boie) and Microtrombicula livingstonei n. sp. from a lizard Holaspis guentheri Gray, are described from DR Congo. One new subjective synonym is proposed: Schoutedenichia musaranei Taufflieb, 1966 (= Schoutedenichia tanzaniaensis Goff, 1983, n. syn). Nineteen species have been recorded in new countries and/or on new hosts for the first time. Nine of them have been found outside their type localities for the first time. In total, the examined collection now includes 27 species belonging to 14 genera and collected from rodents, bats, tenrecs, elephant shrews, primates, birds, lizards and snakes of DR Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal and South Africa


PURPOSE
New antimetabolic drugs, purine-analogous, have been introduced in the treatment of advanced or refractory cases of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), fludarabine (FLU) being one of such drugs. The results attained with FLU in 6 cases of refractory CLL are reported.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
The efficacy and toxicity of FLU was evaluated in 6 patients (median age 63 years) between March 1993 and March 1994. Five patients were in stage III-IV and one in stage II of the Rai's system, and they were refractory to the usual treatment. The dosis used here was 30 mg/sq m/day, for 5 days every 4 weeks, up to a total of 6 therapeutic courses. The response was assessed after 3 and 6 courses. Anti-infectious prophylaxis was made with co-trimoxazole, monthly benzathine penicillin G and isoniazid in Mantoux-positive patients. The response criteria were those given by the NIC Working Group for CLL.

RESULTS
The patients received 2 to 6 courses. None of them attained complete remission: 1 had nodular remission, 2 had partial remission, 2 responded partially although not reaching criteria for partial remission (1 died of pancytopenia), and 1 had disease progression and died after the second course. Fast and important reduction of the lymphocyte count as well as the CD4 lymphocytes was present in all cases. Bone-marrow infiltration decreased strikingly in 2 cases and the platelet count improved in 3 cases and worsened in 2 others. The following toxicity was recorded: 2 patients had nausea, 5 had neutropenia (below 500 x 10(9)/L in 3 instances) and 4 had thrombocytopenia (lower than 40 x 10(9)/L in one case). In 26 therapeutic courses there were 10 febrile episodes (1 for pneumonia, 1 for gastroenteritis and 8 without any septic foci); 1 patient developed pulmonary tuberculosis after completing the treatment and one patient died of posttransfusion graft versus host disease after splenectomy once she had completes six courses.

CONCLUSION
This experience confirms the efficacy of FLU in the treatment of refractory B-CLL patients and is in agreement with previous reports as no response is initiated after the 3rd course. The lymphocyte count decreases quickly and strikingly. Depletion of CD4 lymphocytes along with neutropenia and hypogammaglobulinaemia make these patients highly sensitive to all types of infection, chiefly by opportunistic germs, so adequate anti-infectious prophylaxis is of great importance. The two patients with pre-treatment haemoglobin and platelet values lower than 10 g/dL and 40 x 10(9)/L, respectively, were the only ones in need of transfusion. No cumulative myelosuppression was appreciated.


A mobile robot designed for in-pipe inspection is considered. The robot consists of a cylindrical body with six links, each ended by a driven wheel. For each link, a spring connected to a jack (prismatic joint) is used to push the wheel against the wall of the pipe. The robot is actuated by DC motors applied on the wheels. The aim of the study is to define the trajectory of the robot in a curved pipe. Several experiments have shown that in this case, the robot may be stopped in some parts of the elbows. The path planning is performed assuming that the robot motion is very slow. An energetic method is used in order to detect the locking zones, and to define the best trajectories avoiding these locking phenomena.Copyright © 2003 by ASME


This paper deals with the automated creation of geometric and photometric correct 3-D models of the world. Those models can be used for virtual reality, tele-presence, digital cinematography and urban planning applications. The combination of range (dense depth estimates) and image sensing (color information) provides data-sets which allow us to create geometrically correct, photorealistic models of high quality. The 3-D models are first built from range data using a volumetric set intersection method previously developed by us. Photometry can be napped onto these models by registering features from both the 3-D and 2-D data sets. Range data segmentation algorithms have been developed to identify planar regions, determine linear features from planar intersections that can serve as features for registration with 2-D imagery lines, and reduce the overall complexity of the models. Results are shown for building models of large buildings on our campus using real data acquired from multiple sensors.


In 1973, the philosopher George Dickie proposed an ingenious new answer to the old question: what is art? Arthood, he suggested, is not an intrinsic property of objects, but a status conferred upon them by the institutions of the art world. He accordingly attached an exemplary significance to works like Duchamp's urinal, whose very lack of intrinsic distinction focuses our attention upon their institutional context. But his theory was about art in general, and not just readymades. 'I am not claiming that Duchamp and his friends invented the conferring of the status of art; they simply used an existing institutional device in an unusual way.'


While the infamous Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Paris closed its doors in 1962, the particular form of horror theatre it spawned lives on and has, moreover, witnessed something of a resurgence over the past twenty years. During its heyday it inspired many imitators, though none quite as successful as the Montmartre-based original. In more recent times, new Grand-Guignol companies the world over have emerged to reimagine the form for a new generation of audiences. This book, the fourth volume in University of Exeter Press's series on the Grand-Guignol by Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson, examines the ongoing influence and legacy of the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol through an appraisal of its contemporary imitators and modern reincarnations. As with the previous volumes, Grand-Guignolesque consists of a lengthy critical introduction followed by a series of previously unpublished scripts, each with its own contextualizing preface. The effect thereof is to map the evolution of horror theatre over the past 120 years, asking where the influence of the Grand-Guignol is most visible today, and what might account for its recent resurgence. This book will be of interest not only to the drama student, theatre historian and scholar of popular theatre, but also to the theatre practitioner, theatregoer and horror fan.


Aim

To identify climatic trends associated with the frequency of sand enteritis.

Methods

Horses were included if they: (1) had radio-dense intestinal contents or sand impaction confirmed at exploratory laparotomy; (2) originated from East Anglia; (3) presented between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2012. Historical weather data for East Anglia were obtained from the Met Office website. Associations between prevalence and climatic variables were examined separately for March–April and October–November.

Results

Ninety-two horses were included. Peaks in admissions of sand enteritis cases were seen in March–April (n = 21, 23%) and October–November (n = 25, 27%). The frequency of March–April cases was positively correlated with mean temperature in those months (r2 = 0.37); negatively correlated with frost (r2 = 0.58) and rainfall (r2 = 0.54) in the 2 previous months; and negatively correlated with sunshine in the preceding 3 months (r2 = 0.44). The frequency of October–November cases was positively correlated with higher average temperatures (r2 = 0.14) and fewer frost days (r2 = 0.16) in the preceding 3 months. Twenty-nine (32%) horses presented in a temporal cluster from September 2010 to April 2011 (P<0.001), coinciding with peak rainfall (121.6 mm; August 2010); peak frost (23.2 days); lowest mean temperature (0.0°C; both December 2010); and least sunshine (39.3 h/month; January 2011) recorded over the 8-year period.

Conclusions

In our population, spring cases of sand enteritis are more likely following dark, dry winters, and autumn cases more likely following hot summers. A wet summer followed by a cold dark winter may have contributed to the cluster of cases in 2010/2011. These weather combinations may adversely affect grass growth.

Practical significance

Weather patterns may have a role in the epidemiology of sand enteritis. Horses at pasture are likely to graze closer to the ground and ingest sand particles when grass growth is poor.

Ethical animal research

Not required by this Congress: retrospective analysis of clinical cases. Sources of funding: Polly Compston is supported by the Margaret Giffen Trust. Competing interests: None.


The paper's objective is to analyze the concept of sovereignty in political philosophy with special reference to Thomas Hobbes for the purpose of understanding the changes facing Thai sovereignty from the origin of the modern state to the present time. Especially relevant is Hobbes' distinction between internal and external sovereignty. Internal sovereignty can be used to understand the factionalism in Thai society resulting to the escalation of tensions since 2005. For the security of state, the Thai military staged a coup and has taken absolute power since 2014. External sovereignty can be used to understand the relation of the Thai state and the power of the ASEAN Community. This can itself be understood as a social contract for the maintenance of security the in the same manner that Hobbes describes in state formation. This phenomenon results from the changing international system under globalization.


Abstract Women play a significant and crucial role in agricultural development and allied fields including in the main crop production, livestock production, horticulture, post harvest activities, agro/social forestry, fisheries, etc. This fact has always been taken for granted and also long ignored. However, lack of data hampers the policy makers in clearly understanding the extent of participation of women in farm operations. Women's perspectives can only be included in designing and implementing macro-economic and social policies if their role is adequately understood .In order to understand the present status of rural women vis-a-vis their agro-climatic zone wise participation in farm activities an attempt was made under the Extension component of All India Coordinated Research Project on Home Science. The study in rural Punjab represented by 2980 households from five agro-climatic zones representing five distinct landholding categories clearly indicate an active participation of women in most of the selected activities . Highest participation in farm activities was found in sub-mountainous undulating zone. Women maximum participation was observed in harvesting and weeding.


Convective inhibition (CIN) is one of the parameters used by forecasters to determine the inflow layer of a convective storm, but little work has examined the best way to compute CIN. One decision that must be made is whether to lift parcels following a pseudoadiabat (removing hydrometeors as the parcel ascends) or reversible moist adiabat (retaining hydrometeors). To determine which option is best, idealized simulations of ordinary convection are examined using a variety of base states with different reversible CIN values for parcels originating in the lowest 500 m. Parcel trajectories suggest that ascent over the lowest few kilometers, where CIN is typically accumulated, is best conceptualized as a reversible moist adiabatic process instead of a pseudoadiabatic process. Most inflow layers do not contain parcels with substantial reversible CIN, despite these parcels possessing ample convective available potential energy and minimal pseudoadiabatic CIN. If a stronger initiation method is used, or hydrometeor loading is ignored, simulations can ingest more parcels with large amounts of reversible CIN. These results suggest that reversible CIN, not pseudoadiabatic CIN, is the physically relevant way to compute CIN and that forecasters may benefit from examining reversible CIN instead of pseudoadiabatic CIN when determining the inflow layer.


OBJECTIVES
We investigate how Mexican-heritage mothers' socialization beliefs and strategies contribute to their preschool children's school readiness. While Latinx children typically start kindergarten with strong social competencies, they also start with less strong early literacy and math skills, in comparison with their non-Latinx peers. We propose that-paralleling Lareau's (2003) theory of "concerted cultivation," whereby White, middle-class parents purportedly display great intentionality in nurturing the academic and extracurricular skills of their children-Mexican-heritage mothers purposefully cultivate their children's social-emotional skills.

METHODS
Using structured interviews and home observations over a 14-month period, we follow 23 Mexican-heritage mothers and their 24 preschool children.

RESULTS
Drawing on ecocultural theory, Mexican-heritage mothers engage their preschool children in a concerted fashion to develop their social-emotional competence. Specifically, they: (a) articulate the role of children's social-emotional skills vis-à-vis academic skills related to school readiness; (b) delineate the character of their children's social-emotional skills; and (c) promote social-emotional skills through intention-filled parenting practices relevant to their cultural contexts.

CONCLUSIONS
Understanding parents' "concerted cultivation" in differing cultural contexts may facilitate teachers' use of practices that better align with families' home practices and more effectively support the learning of Latinx children across academic domains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).


This research is aimed to analyze the influence of ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) on the financial performance of SMEs in Sidoarjo. The financial performance of SMEs in this study was measured by the level of sales comparation between the period before and after ACFTA. This research applied mix method technique with squids mixed method strategy, especially sequential explanatory strategy. It is a strategy for the researchers to combine the data that was found from one method with the other method. The steps were begun with the researcher collecting the quantitative data by performing different test or Paired samples T-test then continued with collecting the qualitative data by doing library research. The results show that  there are significant differences in financial performance; first, it is seen from the sales between before and after ACFTA, and second,  it is proven that  that the existence of ACFTA significantly affects the sales rate of SMEs.


With great progress in the development of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), in recent years, the quest for insights in understanding and manipulating the latent space of GAN has gained more and more attention due to its wide range of applications. While most of the researches on this task have focused on unsupervised learning method, which induces difficulties in training and limitation in results, our work approaches another direction, encoding human's prior knowledge to discover more about the hidden space of GAN. With this supervised manner, we produce promising results, demonstrated by accurate manipulation of generated images. Even though our model is more suitable for task-specific problems, we hope that its ease in implementation, preciseness, robustness, and the allowance of richer set of properties (compared to other approaches) for image manipulation can enhance the result of many current applications.


Does an increasing emphasis on individual freedom in mass values erode or revitalize democratic societies? This paper offers a new approach to this debate by examining it through the lens of Isaiah Berlin, and his distinction between positive and negative freedom. I show that, contrary to the common assumption among scholars who study mass values regarding freedom, these do not consist of one dimension but two: negative and positive freedom. I also show that, while valuing negative liberty clearly leads a person to become more morally permissive and more condoning of non-compliance with legal norms, valuing positive liberty does not seem to have the same effects at all; in fact, it shows the very opposite relationship with respect to some of these attitudes. Thus, it matters what kind of freedom people value. The results rely on confirmatory factor and regression analyses on World Values Survey data from ten affluent Western countries in 2005–2006.


To use the full potential of immersive data analysis when wearing a head-mounted display, users have to be able to navigate through the spatial data. We collected, developed and evaluated 5 different hands-free navigation methods that are usable while seated in the analyst's usual workplace. All methods meet the requirements of being easy to learn and inexpensive to integrate into existing workplaces. We conducted a user study with 23 participants which showed that a body leaning metaphor and an accelerometer pedal metaphor performed best. In the given task the participants had to determine the shortest path between various pairs of vertices in a large 3D graph.


In the course of developing the Concise International Chemical Assessment Document (CICAD) on triphenyltin compounds for the IPCS, the author assessed health and environmental risks paused by major organotin species, i.e., triphenyltin compounds and tributyltin compounds. Organotin has been used widely as biocide in such applications as antifouling paints of boats and for other purposes, until its use was restricted in 1980's after discovery of severe damages on aquatic ecosystem caused by this agent. Among many other deleterious effects of organotin to aquatic species, imposex is one of the most conspicuous effects which is the development of male reproductive organs by female gastropods at concentrations as low as a few ng/l. Although environmental concentrations of organotin have declined as a result of tight regulations, periodical monitoring in these years shows their levels in the water still range several ng/l in Tokyo bay area which are hazardous to certain aquatic lives. Human intake of organotin in foods has been estimated through market basket surveys in Japan which showed intake of triphenyltin or tributyltin compound in 1997 as 2.29 micrograms/day (as tributyltin chloride) and 2.69 micrograms/day (as triphenyltin chloride), respectively. The intake value for tributyltin chloride corresponds to 5.2% of the provisional acceptable daily intake (ADI) estimated for bis(tributyltin) oxide (TBTO) in Japan, and 28.0% of the guidance value suggested in the CICAD draft for TBTO, respectively. The intake value for triphenyltin chloride corresponds to 10.8% of the ADI estimated by the FAO/WHO Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues. Potential critical effects on human health observed in animal tests are the effects on immune systems and reproduction. Based on this investigation, needs for future research on mechanism of toxicity and further control of risks are discussed.


The adsorption curves of divalent metal ions (M^2+) to an iminodiacetate(IDA)-type chelating resin (-L^2–) under the condition of metal ions in excess against IDA groups clearly indicated the difference in contribution between two species. Copper and nickel are adsorbed only as [(-L)M^II], while cadmium and calcium are adsorbed as [(-L)M^II] and [(-LH)_2M^II]. Addition of salts may enhance the deprotonation of IDA groups, interfere with the adsorption as [(-LH)_2M^II], and yield remarkable changes in adsorption curves, depending on the metal ions.


SUMMARY Objective: This study aimed to investigate the impact of the internalized stigmatization on bipolar disorder (BD) patients. Materials and Methods: The study included 100 BD patients that provided written informed consent to participate. Diagnosis of the BD patients that were in remission and receiving outpatient treatment was performed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I) and patient data were recorded using SKIP-TURK. In addition, the patients were administered the Internalized Stigma of Mental Illness Scale (ISMI), Mood Stabilizer Compliance Questionnaire (MSQC), and World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment, abbreviated form (WHOQOL-BREF). Results: Internalized stigmatization was observed in 46% of the BD patients; these patients had higher functionality scores, shorter regression periods, and more depressive episodes than those without internalized stigmatization. Although internalized stigmatization occurred more frequently in seasonal and rapid cycling patients, both attributes were prodrome of internalized stigmatization. Internalized stigmatization was observed more frequently in patients with low socioeconomic status, low level of education, rural residence, lack of work, and more children. There was a strong correlation between ISMI score, and WHOQOL-BREF and MSQC scores. Conclusion: The clinical features of the BD and internalized stigmatization were observed to affect each other. Furthermore, stigmatization affected treatment compliance and quality of life.


BACKGROUND
Sensitized patients (pts) may develop acute antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) due to preformed donor-specific antibodies, undetected by pre-transplant complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) crossmatch (XM). We hypothesized that C4d staining in 1-h post-reperfusion biopsies (1-h Bx) could detect early complement activation in the renal allograft due to preformed donor-specific antibodies.

METHODS
To test this hypothesis, renal transplants (n = 229) performed between June 2005 and December 2007 were entered into a prospective study of 1-h Bx and stained for C4d by immunofluorescence. Transplants were performed against a negative T-cell CDC-XM with the exception of three cases with a positive B-cell XM.

RESULTS
All 229 1-h Bx stained negative for C4d. Fourteen pts (6%) developed AMR. None of the 14 protocol 1-h Bx stained positive for C4d in peritubular capillaries (PTC). However, all indication biopsies-that diagnosed AMR-performed at a median of 8 days after transplantation stained for C4d in PTC.

CONCLUSIONS
These data show that C4d staining in 1-h Bx is, in general, not useful for the early detection of AMR when CDC-XM is negative.


According to solid waste facility regulations codified in 40 CFR §258.61(b), the 30-year PCC period specified by Subtitle D can be extended or shortened by the governing regulatory agency on a site-specific basis. Post closure care (PCC) activities under Subtitle D include leachate collection and treatment, groundwater monitoring, inspection and maintenance of the final cover, and monitoring to insure that landfill gas does not migrate off site or into on-site buildings. However, quantification of post closure performance of a landfill is difficult since it involves considerations of parameters that include technical factors, environmental considerations, and economic assessment. This paper presents a simple approach for assessing and projecting the performance of landfill components to predict their performance after the landfill is closed. The component performance analysis for landfills (CPALF) is a flexible, knowledge-based approach which can be used to develop strategies to minimize future risks due to component failures and for developing maintenance strategies during the PCC period of landfills.


The article focuses on the "mythical" epistemology of Roger Caillois (1913-1987). For the French sociologist, writer and literary critic myth can no longer be confined to the specialist area of a cultural analysis of mythology, but is part of a « diagonal science ». In his work Le mythe et l'homme (1938), he aims to develop a "biological" basis for the theory of myths. He argues that human imagination is dominated by instincts and that natural processes control cultural production. Thus, Le mythe et l'homme combines anthropology with biology. But this heretical combination of different fields of research is not strictly speaking "scientific", but rather creates, even against the intention of its author, a quasi-mythological text itself. Still, my reading of Caillois' biologist mythology proposes to consider this text not as simply pseudo-scientific, but as a hybrid between fiction and science and in this sense as epistemologically productive: It aims to revitalise the realm of aesthetics by drawing on seemingly more objective biological paradigms. But by doing so, Caillois at the same time turns concepts of evolutionary biology upside down and reorganizes them according to aesthetic criteria. I.e., Caillois' approach to a biology of myth is still an inspiring incentive to further pursue analyses of the links between evolutionary and aesthetic theory. Ce texte montre la fécondité d'une épistémologie « mythique » telle que celle de Roger Caillois (1913-1978). Pour le sociologue et écrivain, le mythe n'est pas l'objet d'une science spécialisée (la mythologie), mais contribue au projet d'une « science diagonale » qui excède et transgresse les différentes disciplines scientifiques. Dans son ouvrage fondateur Le mythe et l'homme (1938), Caillois rapporte les mythes à une base biologique : en posant que l'imagination de l'homme est dominée par son instinct et, donc, la production culturelle par des phénomènes naturels, il « diagonalise » l'anthropologie et la biologie. Mais cette combinaison hérétique des sciences Roger Caillois' Biology of Myth and the Myth of Biology Anthropology & Materialism, 2 | 2014 17


Typical tasks of future service robots involve grasping and manipulating a large variety of objects differing in size and shape. Generating stable grasps on 3D objects is considered to be a hard problem, since many parameters such as hand kinematics, object geometry, material properties and forces have to be taken into account. This results in a high-dimensional space of possible grasps that cannot be searched exhaustively. We believe that the key to find stable grasps in an efficient manner is to use a special representation of the object geometry that can be easily analyzed. In this paper, we present a novel grasp planning method that evaluates local symmetry properties of objects to generate only candidate grasps that are likely to be of good quality. We achieve this by computing the medial axis which represents a 3D object as a union of balls. We analyze the symmetry information contained in the medial axis and use a set of heuristics to generate geometrically and kinematically reasonable candidate grasps. These candidate grasps are tested for force-closure. We present the algorithm and show experimental results on various object models using an anthropomorphic hand of a humanoid robot in simulation.


A soft-switching dc/dc converter with high voltage gain is proposed in this paper. It provides a continuous input current and high voltage gain. Moreover, soft-switching characteristic of the proposed converter reduces switching loss of active power switches and raises the conversion efficiency. The reverse-recovery problem of output rectifiers is also alleviated by controlling the current changing rates of diodes with the use of the leakage inductance of a coupled inductor. Hybrid power system consists of a combination of renewable energy sources such as: photovoltaic (PV), wind generators, hydro, etc., to charge batteries and provide power to meet the energy demand. Finally, a simplified design procedure is proposed in hybrid system by using inverter with grid connected unit.


Abstract Following the recent economic crisis, concerns over the revival of trade protectionism have surfaced, with some countries imposing or threatening to impose highly trade-distorting legislation to help their domestic industries compete in world markets, raising the spectre of a potential trade war. This paper looks at the attempts by some of the developed countries to introduce trade measures using the issue of climate change as a Trojan horse, to ensure that they do not lose out to the emerging economies. It also looks at the proposed legislations, and whether they are in conflict with international trade laws.


The search for new particles is an important topic in modern particle physics. New stable massive particles are predicted by various models, including R-parity conserving variants of supersymmetry. The ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker can be used to look for charged stable massive particles by using the momentum and velocity of particles passing through the detector to calculate its mass. A program named TRTCHAMP has been written to perform this analysis. Recently, ATLAS changed their data retention policies to phase out the use of a particular format of output file created during reconstruction. TRTCHAMP relies on this file type, and therefore this change prevents the algorithm from working in its original state. However, this problem can be resolved by integrating TRTCHAMP into the official reconstruction, which has now been done. This paper documents the changes involved in integrating TRTCHAMP with the existing InDetLowBetaFinder reconstruction package. Topics discussed include the structure of reconstruction algorithms in ATLAS, the retrieval of calibration constants from the detector conditions database, and the parsing of necessary parameters from multiple reconstruction data containers. To conclude, the output of TRTCHAMP is shown to accurately estimate the velocity of protons in minimum bias tracks. Additionally, mass plots generated with the TRTCHAMP results are shown to agree with the known mass for both monte carlo and real protons in minimum bias tracks, and agreement is shown between the input and output masses for a monte carlo sample of 300 GeV R-Hadrons.


I am happy to introduce the Journal "Clinical Practice," which is keen on publishing the latest innovations and developments in a peer-reviewed scientific Journal. It is well known for the rapid processing of high-quality research. This clinical Journal provides open access platform to its readers and authors. This Journal holds good standings with a good impact factor. The international scientific community is benefitted from the publication of standard clinical researches. It focuses on the most authentic and reliable information of the most advanced areas of medical sciences. The Journal covers a vast pool of various clinical branches; medicine, pathology, clinical skills, surgery, obstetric and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Neonatology, Geriatrics, Community Medicine, Ophthalmology, Emergency Medicine, etc. This Journal's idea is progressive and has a proactive team to work together for improved quality and faster processing of the articles.


: Three stages in the determination of the sampling population volume are described. The significance of a correct definition of the confidence interval is stressed, as well as the adjustment of the calculated values of the sampling population volume during the investigation.


Emotional stimuli often capture attention and disrupt effortful cognitive processing. However, cognitive processes vary in the degree to which they require effort. We investigated the impact of emotional pictures on visual search and on automatic priming of search. Observers performed visual search after task-irrelevant neutral or emotionally evocative photographs. Search performance was generally impaired after emotional pictures, but improvement (measured both with inverse efficiency and sensitivity to briefly presented targets) as a function of incremental between-trial target-color repetition was strongest after emotional pictures. For observers showing the largest general effect of emotional pictures, there was a reversal, with performance becoming better after neutral pictures than after four or more trials containing the same search target. This suggests that although emotional pictures disrupt effortful attention, this detriment can be overcome--to the point where performance is enhanced by emotional stimuli--when the task involves prepotent task priorities.


Abstract. Distribution, occurrence, diet and growth of juvenile blacktip sharks, Carcharhinus limbatus, were examined based on specimens caught between 1995 and 2002 by the artisanal shark fishery from Los Roques Archipelago. Fishery monitoring revealed that C. limbatus was the species most frequently caught, accounting for 48.5% of the shark catch. Capture of neonate and juvenile sharks was concentrated in the central lagoon of the archipelago, indicating that this area corresponds to a nursery area for the species. Birth season was approximately from mid June to the end of August. Average length at birth was 63.5 cm TL, based on neonates with an open umbilical scar. The smallest mature male and female sharks measured 152 and 161 cm TL, respectively. Diet was composed of teleost fishes, with the most important prey being Eucinostomus argenteus (13.3 %IRI), Opisthonema oglinum (6.9 %IRI) and Gerres cinereus (5.5 %IRI). Monthly length frequencies revealed that juveniles remain within the nursery area for 14–16 months after birth, reaching a length of about 130 cm TL during this period. The growth of the juvenile population is characterized by a linear function, with sharks almost doubling their birth length during the first year of life. This growth was more rapid than the estimated rates reported from the Gulf of Mexico, western Florida and South Africa. The results suggest that growth rate is negatively correlated with latitude or positively correlated with temperature. The rapid growth shown by these juveniles will have positive implications for the recovery of the adult populations of this species.


The mutual-exclusion property of locks stands in the way to scalability of parallel programs on many-core architectures. Locks do not allow progress guarantees, because a task may fail inside a critical section and keep holding a lock that blocks other tasks from accessing shared data. With non-blocking synchronization, the drawbacks of locks are avoided by synchronizing access to shared data by atomic read-modify-write operations. To incorporate non-blocking synchronization in Ada~202x, programmers must be able to reason about the behavior and performance of tasks in the absence of protected objects and rendezvous. We therefore extend Ada's memory model by synchronized types, which support the expression of memory ordering operations at a sufficient level of detail. To mitigate the complexity associated with non-blocking synchronization, we propose concurrent objects as a novel high-level language construct. Entities of a concurrent object execute in parallel, due to a fine-grained, optimistic synchronization mechanism. Synchronization is framed by the semantics of concurrent entry execution. The programmer is only required to label shared data accesses in the code of concurrent entries. Labels constitute memory-ordering operations expressed through attributes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach to provide a non-blocking synchronization construct as a first-class citizen of a high-level programming language. We illustrate the use of concurrent objects by several examples.


This thesis analyzes the relationship between political ideology, power, and non-violent struggleas portrayed by the American thinker Gene Sharp. The means of this analysis is a comparisonand contrast between libertarian and socialist critiques of his work for the purpose of discoveringreoccurring themes. More specifically, it compares an anarcho-libertarian dialogue from theearly 1980s to socialist literature in the late 2000s. It s concludes that the fault line in bothconversations is the tension between Leninist strategic theory and the ProgressiveSubstitutionary theory of non-violence


Two cantilever prestressed bridges (Grondal and Alvik Bridges in Stockholm) were
closed to traffic a few months after their opening when an inspection revealed cracks
in the webs. The present work is a study by means of Fracture Mechanics (FM) and
Finite Element Methods (FEM) of the causes and loads that generated crack initiation
as well as further widening and propagation. Some critical stages were considered:
cantilever construction phase, closure, transfer of prestress and addition of finishing
loads. Non-linear and time dependent characteristics of the materials were also
included.
The results obtained from the computer simulations were studied and compared to the
expected crack openings and spacing calculated by EC2 and to the crack pattern in the
Grondal Bridge, showing satisfactory agreement. Comments are given upon the
feasibility to perform non-linear finite element analyses with the aid of fracture
mechanics, as well as the combined utilization of CAD and FEM software for a better
design.
The analysis showed that the largest contribution to the crack development of the
Grondal Bridge, was provided by the temperature gradient intended to simulate the
sun radiation on the southwest web of the box girder. It also showed that the cracks
appeared right after construction and they widen due to time-dependent effects.
In this thesis it was shown that the crack widths can be calculated with good accuracy
from the linear FE-analysis, where the cross-section is built up by shell elements.
Consequently, this has shown to be a possible tool that can be used to design the web
reinforcement with respect to the requirement in SLS.


Optical transitions at the single substitutional nitrogen centre (P1) in synthetic diamond are discussed. It is shown that the 4.6 eV absorption band is not due to P1, but due to some other centre, tentatively suggested as a nitrogen-boron complex. The 4.5 eV photocurrent threshold is assigned to the transition from the valence band to the ground state of the P1 centre.


In a dissonance case, a person sincerely and with conviction asserts that P, while his/her overall automatic behavior suggests that he/she believes that not-P. According to Schwitzgebel (2001, 2010), this is a case of in-between believing. This article raises several concerns about Schwitzgebel's account and proposes an alternative view. I argue that the in-between approach yields incorrect results in belief self-ascriptions and does not capture the psychological conflict underlying the individual's dissonance. I advance the view that in relevant cases the dissonant individual has two mutually contradictory beliefs.


The demographic characteristics of the Arab region that present opportunities for population research are described and existing obstacles to research are discussed. Additionally the prospects for improving the situation are explored. The combination of high fertility moderately low mortality and in some instances massive new immigration have produced extremely rapid rates of population growth. During the early 1970s the population of the United Arab Emirates increased by an annual rate of at least 15% Qatars population by 8.5% annually and Kuwaits population by 6% annually. Even the labor exporting countries had high rates of population growth. Thus the slowest growth between 1970 and 1975 occurred in Yemen where the annual rate of population growth was 1.8%. Because of the large growth gap between birth and death rates in the Arab countries the age composition is very young. Such young age composition reduces measures of fertility and mortality that do not control for age. It also means that rapid population growth will not cease in the near future. These are the major demographic characteristics of the region and some of the major opportunities for demographic research they present. Obstacles to research in the region include the absence of a tradition of census taking or survey research for demographic purposes and the absence of a registration system for vital statistics in many of the countries. According to informed sources the governments involved are not always supportive of research per se. Political instability often works against conducting demographic research. Another obstacle to demographic research in the Arab Middle East is language. There is a shortage of qualified instructors to teach demography in universities working in Arabic. A promising development for population research is the increase of demographic data collection by the various governments. Also non-Arab researchers and funding organizations have expressed growing interest in the region.