Today the globalisation of the world market leads to the necessity of constructive interaction in the international market and forming common standards of accounting. Transnational corporations as a phenomenon of worldwide integration are businesses with units in different countries of the world. Special issues of information support of management in agricultural organisations have become very important in the conditions of the market economy. Clear and transparent accounting in such enterprises requires the existence of common international standards. Such standards could become International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). They are designed to provide an understanding of financial processes in different countries for the interaction between investors and potential investment projects located in different national accounting systems. The standard "Agriculture" has great importance for the Russian Federation. Agriculture is one of the leading sectors of our country, supplying products for both domestic and foreign market. Accordingly, the adoption of this standard and the implementation of its provisions is an important and urgent issue of today's economic reality. Introduction of this standard leads to the formation of fundamentally new methodological bases of the accounting of agricultural activities based on the market value of assets because paragraphs 12–13 of this Standard states that during the initial and subsequent valuation of biological assets will be measured at their fair value fewer costs to selling. Thus, the need to allocate biological assets in the separate account-economic category, their reflection in the accounting at fair value by the provisions of IAS 41 has determined the relevance of the topic, goal, objectives and logic of the article.


In this letter, we face one of the main issues in ground-based radar applications, i.e., the evaluation and removal of the atmospheric phase screen (APS). The time-varying delay statistics are assessed by means of both radars and meteo simulated data sets and are critically interpreted with particular reference to the entailed compensation issues. A compensation approach based on the available on-site meteo parameters (pressure, temperature, and humidity) is then investigated. The technique proposes an initial calibration step on humidity which leads to significant improvements in the APS removal. The results of the technique are discussed in the case of a real campaign data set (Bolzano, Italy) that covers a temporal baseline of about one week.


We consider two substitutable products and compare two alternative measures of product substitutability for linear demand functions that are commonly used in the literature. While one leads to unrealistically high prices and profits as products become more substitutable, the results obtained using the other measure are in line with intuition. Using the more appropriate measure of product substitutability, we study the optimal investment mix in flexible and dedicated capacities in both monopoly and oligopoly settings. We find that the optimal investment in manufacturing flexibility tends to decrease as the products become closer substitutes; this is because (1) pricing can be used more effectively to balance supply and demand, and (2) the gains obtained by shifting production to the more profitable product are reduced due to increased correlation between the price potentials of the substitutable products. The value of flexibility always increases with demand variability. We also show that, as long as the optimal investments in dedicated capacity for both products are positive, the optimal expected prices and production quantities do not depend on the cost of the flexible capacity. Manufacturing flexibility simply allows the firm to achieve those expected values with lower capacity, while leading to higher expected profits.


Abstract The voices of heroes and villains in cartoons contribute to their uniqueness and helps shape how we perceive them. However, not much research has looked at the acoustic properties of character voices and the possible contributions these have to cartoon character archetypes. We present a quantitative examination of how voice quality distinguishes between characters based on their alignment as either protagonists or antagonists, performing Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on the Long-term Average Spectra (LTAS) of concatenated passages of the speech of various characters obtained from four different animated cartoons. We then assessed if the categories of "protagonists" and "antagonists" (determined via an a priori classification) could be distinguished using a classification algorithm, and if so, what acoustic characteristics could help distinguish the two categories. The overall results support the idea that protagonists and antagonists can be distinguished by their voice qualities. Support Vector Machine (SVM) analysis yielded an average classification accuracy of 96% across the cartoons. Visualisation of the spectral traits constituting the difference did not yield consistent results but reveals a low-versus-high frequency energy dominance pattern segregating antagonists and protagonists. Future studies can look into how other variables might be confounded with voice quality in distinguishing between these categories.


Traffic is one of the important factors that cause environmental pollution.Traffic density is increasing with each passing day. With this intensity pollution of water sources close to motorways, the dirtiness of rate / risk is increasing with each passing day. Therefore, the protection of the available resources is of vital importance. For this purpose, the protection of drinking water supplies , studies in environmental protection work is rapidly increasing in recent years. These studies made in the field of measurement, monitoring and implementation efforts / legislation and the relevant studies are discussed. The drinking water of 90% needs are met from Sapanca Lake in the city of Sakarya. The southern part of the highways and railways, which both sides of the lake from the drainage waters of the lake has a negative effect. In this study, the pollution detection and eliminate in Rain water, wetlands method was used.


The temporal sequence of neural processes supporting figure–ground perception was investigated by recording ERPs associated with subjects' perceptions of the face–vase figure. In Experiment 1, subjects continuously reported whether they perceived the face or the vase as the foreground figure by pressing one of two buttons. Each button press triggered a probe flash to the face region, the vase region, or the borders between the two. The N170/vertex positive potential (VPP) component of the ERP elicited by probes to the face region was larger when subjects perceived the faces as figure. Preceding the N170/VPP, two additional components were identified. First, when the borders were probed, ERPs differed in amplitude as early as 110 msec after probe onset depending on subjects' figure–ground perceptions. Second, when the face or vase regions were probed, ERPs were more positive (at ∼150–200 msec) when that region was perceived as figure versus background. These components likely reflect an early "border ownership" stage, and a subsequent "figure–ground segregation" stage of processing. To explore the influence of attention on these stages of processing, two additional experiments were conducted. In Experiment 2, subjects selectively attended to the face or vase region, and the same early ERP components were again produced. In Experiment 3, subjects performed an identical selective attention task, but on a display lacking distinctive figure–ground borders, and neither of the early components were produced. Results from these experiments suggest sequential stages of processing underlying figure–ground perception, each which are subject to modifications by selective attention.


This study was conducted to investigate characteristics of panicle traits which are important factors affecting yield and grain quality of rice. Twelve panicle traits in 178 Korean rice varieties composed of 160 Japonica type varieties and 18 Tongil type varieties were investigated. Tongil type varieties had longer panicle and thicker neck node than Japonica type varieties. Other traits such as number of total spikelets, total rachis-branches, secondary rachis-branches (SRBs) per panicle, total spikelets on SRBs per panicle, mean number of spikelets on a SRB, and mean number of SRBs per primary rachis branch (PRB) in Tongil type varieties were also higher than in Japonica type varieties. On the other hand, Japonica type varieties were shown to have well exserted panicle and little more mean number of spikelets on a PRB than Tongil type varieties. According to cluster analysis based on 12 panicle traits, 178 varieties were divided into four main groups. Group I had 133 Japonica type varieties and was characterized by relatively well exserted short panicle, small thickness of neck node, few rachis-branches and little sink size than other group. Group II was composed of 24 Japonica type varieties and 6 Tongil type varieties showing medium value and range between Group I and III. Group III included 11 Tongil type varieties and 1 Japonica type variety 'Baegjinju1' characterized by relatively poor exserted long panicle, big thickness of neck node, many rachis-branches and large sink size. Group IV was solely composed of 'Nongan', which had well exserted long panicle, big thickness of neck node, many rachis-branches and large-sink size. In correlation analysis, number of total spikelets per panicle showed very high correlation with the number of total rachis-branches per panicle (r=0.975), number of spikelets on SRBs per panicle (0.962), number of SRBs per panicle (0.959), mean number of SRBs per PRB (0.746) and mean number of spikelets on SRBs (0.738).


We introduce a discrete-time microscopic single-particle model for kinetic transport. The kinetics are modeled by a two-state Markov chain, and the transport is modeled by deterministic advection plus a random space step. The position of the particle after n time steps is given by a random sum of space steps, where the size of the sum is given by a Markov binomial distribution (MBD). We prove that by letting the length of the time steps and the intensity of the switching between states tend to 0 linearly, we obtain a random variable S(t), which is closely connected to a well-known (deterministic) partial differential equation (PDE), reactive transport model from the civil engineering literature. Our model explains (via bimodality of the MBD) the double peaking behavior of the concentration of the free part of solutes in the PDE model. Moreover, we show for instantaneous injection of the solute that the partial densities of the free and adsorbed parts of the solute at time t do exist, and satisfy the PDEs.


This study examines processes of class construction within a transnational community of professionals and managers who are emigrants, returnees, and non-migrants. Building on Bourdieu's class analysis and literature on transnational migration, the article examines how class statuses are supported by moral claims based on varying transnational mobility strategies. The authors draw their results from qualitative interviews with 45 Hong Kong respondents in Hong Kong and Canada. They find that despite Hong Kong emigrants' loss of economic capital due to de-professionalization, their cultural and symbolic claims frame an alternative set of norms about their life successes. Returnees claim to have the best of both worlds having amassed economic capital, while making social distinctions from stayers in terms of their globalized cosmopolitan imaginaries. Stayers appear envious of emigrants' and returnees' flexibility and seek to accumulate economic capital for future retirement migration or to send their children abroad. Respondents' moralizing discourses reveal a social field defining within-class distinctions apart from hyper-concerns of upward mobility through material gains. Nuanced class distinctions articulate values around freedom of space, time, and expression not readily accessible to residents remaining in Hong Kong.


In this paper we provide a new inequality useful for the proofs of strong converse theorems in the network information theory. We apply this inequality to the recent work by Tyagi and Watanabe on the strong converse theorem for the Wyner-Ziv source coding problem to obtain a new strong converse outer bound. This outer bound deviates from the Wyner-Ziv rate distortion region with the order of $O\left( {\frac{1}{{\sqrt n }}} \right)$ on the length n of source outputs.


Some issues of recoil effects in AdS/CFT are studied from the point of view of OPE expansions for generalized free fields. We show that the conformal group structure encodes the relative energies and momenta at a collision center. This is done by being careful with the analysis of Clebsch-Gordan coefficients for an SL(2) subalgebra of the conformal group. The collision fraction of kinetic energy carried by the particles is derived from a probability distribution that arises from these coefficients. We specifically identify a precise statement of when recoil of a heavy particle in AdS can be ignored: the maximum probability is for the heavy particle to be in its ground state. We also argue how a notion of reduced mass appears in these collisions, in the limit where the particles are moving slowly with respect to each other. This controls the notion of the impact parameter of the collision.


Anti-circumvention is one of the most controversial areas in the Anti-Dumping Agreement Negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It seems that it is very difficult for members to reach an agreement on what constitutes circumvention and establishing rules and procedures for anticircumvention investigations. Although there are no internationally agreed rules and procedures regarding anti-circumvention investigations today, members are free to put into effect their own rules and procedures. Based on that fact, the number of anti-circumvention investigations have been increasing significantly in recent years in all over the world. Turkey is one of the most active countries in the use of anti-circumvention measures. This article aims to shed light onto Turkish anti-circumvention legislation and practices. The author hopes that this article will assist a better understanding of Turkish practice in this area and contribute to the efforts to reach an agreement on this matter within the multilateral rules based trading system.


THE EFFECTS OF CHINESE ECONOMIC AND IMMIGRATION PATTERNS IN NIGERIA FROM 2000 TO 2013, by MAJ John D. Lamkin, 83 pages. Nigeria is the dominant regional power in West Africa. China became a formidable presence in Africa during the 21 century. The two countries significantly expanded their economic relationship between 2000 and 2013. During this period, China invested heavily in Nigerian infrastructure while Chinese expatriates immigrated to Nigeria and established businesses in that country. Accordingly, Nigeria imported tens of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods and services. This study examines how China's expansion into West Africa is affecting Nigeria. The research focuses on three main areas. First, it discusses the ways in which China is influencing Nigeria through economic investment and the immigration of Chinese nationals. Second, it analyzes how Chinese involvement is affecting Nigeria's economy and social stability. Third, the study compares Chinese investment and immigration in Nigeria with other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on analysis of the available data, this study develops conclusions regarding Nigeria's relationship with China and how it compares to those of other nations in subSaharan Africa. The study then offers observations that describe a model for Chinese economic patterns in developing nations and considers the implcations of that model for the United States and the world.


Investigations of learning in case-based reasoning (CBR) have traditionally focused on learning two types of knowledge: new cases and new indexing criteria for case retrieval. However, there is increasing recognition that other types of knowledge also play crucial roles in the case-based reasoning process. The effectiveness of a CBR system depends not only on having and retrieving relevant cases, but also on selecting which retrieved cases to apply and determining how to adapt them to fit new situations. Consequently, case-based reasoning can benefit from using multiple learning strategies to acquire, in addition to new cases and indices, new case adaptation strategies and similarity c~iteda. This paper describes ongoing research that studies how multiple types of learning can improve the case-based reasoning process and exAmlues their interrelationship in contributing to the overall performance of a CBR system.


PURPOSE
To explore the clinical application value of color Doppler ultrasound combined with computed tomography (CT) in the diagnosis of axillary lymph node metastasis (ALNM) in breast cancer.

METHODS
From January 2016 to June 2018, 189 breast cancer patients who underwent radical mastectomy in our hospital were included and retrospectively analyzed. All patients had preoperative color Doppler ultrasound and CT examination of mammary gland and axillary lymph nodes, with pathological diagnosis as the gold standard. Eighty-eight cases were divided into axillary lymph node metastasis group (metastatic group) and 101 cases formed the non-axillary lymph node metastasis group (non-metastatic group). The ultrasound and CT imaging of axillary lymph nodes were analyzed to evaluate the value of color Doppler ultrasound combined with CT in the assessment of axillary lymph node metastasis in breast cancer.

RESULTS
Ultrasonographic metastatic lymph nodes showed unclear borders and eccentric thickening of the cortex. The enhancement scan showed obvious heterogeneous enhancement and disappearance of lymphatic structure. The sensitivity, accuracy, and negative predictive value of ultrasonography combined with CT were 92.05%, 90.48% and 92.78%, retrospectively, which were significantly improved compared with those in the individual tests (x2=13.41, 6.126, 8.933, p=0.001, 0.047, 0.011), with significant statistical difference.

CONCLUSIONS
Color Doppler ultrasound combined with CT examination can significantly improve the detected rate of axillary lymph node metastasis in breast cancer before surgery, and provide a reliable basis for the treatment options on breast cancer patients before surgery.


Context: Despite so many efforts to control dengue, the disease has a huge impact on the health, well-being, and economy of the population. The key success to control dengue depends not only on services provided by health authorities but also on the awareness of the community about preventing practices and their health-seeking behavior. Hence, the present study was conducted to assess the awareness regarding dengue and its determinants among urban adult population of Rohtak. Aims: To assess the awareness regarding dengue and its determinants among urban adult population of Rohtak. Settings and Design: A cross-sectional study. Methods and Materials: Data were collected using a pretested, semi-structured interview schedule from 210 participants which included information on the demographic profile of the subject, awareness about the symptoms, transmission, vector behavior in terms of biting time and breeding places, preventive measures and treatment of dengue fever, and responsibility of vector control. Cumulative awareness was calculated on the basis of correct answers provided. Statistical Analysis Used: Categorical data were presented as a percentage. Pearson's Chi-square test was used to evaluate differences between groups for categorical variables. Results: The level of awareness was better among males (statistically significant). The difference in the level of awareness with respect to education, occupation, and the socioeconomic class was found highly statistically significant. Conclusions: Awareness regarding dengue and its preventive measures were specifically low in women; mostly housewives, in participants of the lower socioeconomic group, and those who were illiterate.


Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) are an approach for directed gene disruption and have been proved to be effective in various animal models. Here, we report that TALENs can induce somatic mutations in Xenopus embryos with reliably high efficiency and that such mutations are heritable through germ-line transmission. We modified the Golden Gate method for TALEN assembly to make the product suitable for RNA transcription and microinjection into Xenopus embryos. Eight pairs of TALENs were constructed to target eight Xenopus genes, and all resulted in indel mutations with high efficiencies of up to 95.7% at the targeted loci. Furthermore, mutations induced by TALENs were highly efficiently passed through the germ line to F1 frogs. Together with simple and reliable PCR-based approaches for detecting TALEN-induced mutations, our results indicate that TALENs are an effective tool for targeted gene editing/knockout in Xenopus.


Cardiac segmentation is an essential step for the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. However, pixel-wise dense labeling is both costly and time-consuming. Scribble, as a form of sparse annotation, is more accessible than full annotations. However, it's particularly challenging to train a segmentation network with weak supervision from scribbles. To tackle this problem, we propose a new scribble-guided method for cardiac segmentation, based on the Positive-Unlabeled (PU) learning framework and global consistency regularization, and termed as ShapePU. To leverage unlabeled pixels via PU learning, we first present an Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm to estimate the proportion of each class in the unlabeled pixels. Given the estimated ratios, we then introduce the marginal probability maximization to identify the classes of unlabeled pixels. To exploit shape knowledge, we apply cutout operations to training images, and penalize the inconsistent segmentation results. Evaluated on two open datasets, i.e, ACDC and MSCMRseg, our scribble-supervised ShapePU surpassed the fully supervised approach respectively by 1.4% and 9.8% in average Dice, and outperformed the state-of-the-art weakly supervised and PU learning methods by large margins. Our code is available at https://github.com/BWGZK/ShapePU.


A rough set based fuzzy neural network algorithm is proposed to solve the problem of pattern recognition. The least square algorithm (LSA) is used in the learning process of fuzzy neural network to obtain the performance of global convergence. In addition, the numbers of rules and the initial weights and structure of fuzzy neural networks are difficult to determine. Here rough sets are introduced to decide the numbers of rules and original weights. Finally, experiment results show the algorithm may get better effect than the BP algorithm.


Energy efficiency plays an important role in all water sectors. Energy is one of the largest operating costs for water system. For water utility systems, energy is needed for transports of raw water, water treatment process, water storage and distribution. Energy usage can vary based on water source, treatment type, facility age, storage capacity, topography, and system size, which encompasses volume produced and service area. Water Companies are well known with importance of reducing energy consumption and costs as a means to optimize overall system performance and to provide a safe water supply. But managing staff of the water system and operators may not be fully aware of the options available to them to manage their energy budget or to identify, prioritize and fund energy improvement projects. By applying energy efficiency, water utility sectors can build a successful energy management program and achieve energy savings. This paper discusses energy issues facing public water utility sector, steps that responsibility personnel can take to understand and reduce their energy use and costs, and funding resources for energy efficiency. Main focus in this paper is to perform possibilities for increasing energy efficiency of the Pumping Station in Milloshevë which supply with raw water Treatment Plant in Shkabaj, Kosovo.


The ideal lumbar and cervical discs should provide six degrees of freedom and tri-planar (three-dimensional) motion. Although all artificial discs are intended to achieve the same goals, there is considerable heterogeneity in the design of lumbar and cervical implants. The "second generation total disc replacements" are non-articulating viscoelastic implants aiming at the reconstruction of physiologic levels of shock absorption and flexural stiffness. This review aims to give an overview of the available implants detailing the concepts and the functional results experimentally and clinically. These monobloc prostheses raise new challenges concerning the choice of materials for the constitution of the viscoelastic cushion, the connection between the components of the internal structure and the metal endplates and even the bone anchoring mode. New objectives concerning the quality of movement and mobility control must be defined.


In this era lots of people around the world doing movement that is called as Diaspora. Diaspora is the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland. In living abroad, people are usually away from their nativity just like in the native country. In maintaining the nativeness, the diasporian people showing their diaspora space as the key to have life like native. Diaspora space is a site where the native is as much a diasporian as the diasporian is the native. The anthology book entitled Growing up Asian in Australia gives lot of stories that related into the diasporian life through the struggling of being immigrant. This research emphasizes into two problems (1) how is diaspora space depicted in the story and (2) how does diaspora space shape the characters' cultural identity. The research used social identity theory by Samovar in analysing the data to answer the statement of the problems. The data is the quotation from the story that related into the problem, and the source of the data is Growing up Asian in Australia book by Alice Pung. This research is qualitative research since using library research as the technique of analysis. The result shows that diaspora space does exists among the characters through their activities and later it is found that diaspora space holds significant contribution towards identity development.


Semantic segmentation is an important computer vision task for the analysis of aerial imagery in many remote sensing applications. Due to the large availability of data it is possible to design efficient convolutional neural network based deep learning models for this purpose. But these methods usually show a weak performance when they are applied without any modifications to data from another domain with different characteristics relating to aspects concerning the sensor or environmental influences. To improve the performance of these methods domain adaptation approaches can be employed. In the following work, we want to present a method for unsupervised domain adaptation for semantic segmentation. We trained an encoder-decoder model on the source domain dataset as task application and adjusted the network to the target domain. The adaptation process is based on a style transfer component, which is realized using a cycle-consistent adversarial network. Through a continuous adaptation of the task model we achieved a higher generalization of the network and increased the task method performance on the target domain.


The taxonomic and faunistic status of the spider family Oecobiidae in Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan is revised. A new species, namely Uroctea gambronica sp. nov. (♂) is described from southern Iran, and the male of U. grossa Roewer, 1960 is described and illustrated for the first time. Additionally, new faunistic data are provided, including the first records of Oecobius putus O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1876 and U. grossa in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, respectively, and the re-evaluation of previously misidentified and questionable records of this family in the region. The known distribution ranges of all species are mapped for these three countries.


Abstract. Hyperspectral image classification has drawn significant attention in the recent years driven by the increasing abundance of sensor-generated hyper- and multi-spectral data, combined with the rapid advancements in the field of machine learning. A vast range of techniques, especially involving deep learning models, have been proposed attaining high levels of classification accuracy. However, many of these approaches significantly deteriorate in performance in the presence of noise in the hyperspectral data. In this paper, we propose a new model that effectively addresses the challenge of noise residing in hyperspectral images. The proposed model, which will be called DCT-CNN, combines the representational power of Convolutional Neural Networks with the noise elimination capabilities introduced by frequency-domain filtering enabled through the Discrete Cosine Transform. In particular, the proposed method entails the transformation of pixel macroblocks to the frequency domain and the discarding of information that corresponds to the higher frequencies in every patch, in which pixel information of abrupt changes and noise often resides. Experiment results in Indian Pines, Salinas and Pavia University datasets indicate that the proposed DCT-CNN constitutes a promising new model for accurate hyperspectral image classification offering robustness to different types of noise, such as Gaussian and salt and pepper noise.


An artificial bilayer lipid membrane system is presented, featuring the oriented encapsulation of membrane proteins in a functionally active form. Nickel nitrilo-triacetic acid-functionalized silica nanoparticles, of a diameter of around 25 nm, are used to attach the proteins via a genetically engineered histidine tag in a uniform orientation. Subsequently, the proteins are reconstituted within a phospholipid bilayer, formed around the particles by in situ dialysis to form so-called proteo-lipobeads (PLBs). With a final size of about 50 nm, the PLBs can be employed for UV/vis spectroscopy studies, particularly of multiredox center proteins, because the effects of light scattering are negligible. As a proof of concept, we use cytochrome c oxidase (CcO) from P. denitrificans with the his tag genetically engineered to subunit I. In this orientation, the P side of CcO is directed to the outside and hence electron transfer can be initiated by reduced cytochrome c (cc). UV/vis measurements are used in order to determine the occupancy by CcO molecules encapsulated in the lipid bilayer as well as the kinetics of electron transfer between CcO and cc. The kinetic data are analyzed in terms of the Michaelis-Menten kinetics showing that the turnover rate of CcO is significantly decreased compared to that of solubilized protein, whereas the binding characteristics are improved. The data demonstrate the suitability of PLBs for functional cell-free bioassays of membrane proteins.


Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is rarely the cause of pneumonia in immunocompetent patients. We describe a previously healthy child, with no evidence of an immunodeficiency, who presented to the emergency department with severe pneumonia, wheezing, and pleural effusions with a history of orolabial HSV infection. On admission, he was started on antibiotics and systemic corticosteroids but continued to deteriorate. Oral lesions, blood, and pleural fluid tested positive for HSV, and improvement was achieved only after the addition of acyclovir and discontinuation of steroids. We suggest that steroids should be used with caution in patients presenting with lower respiratory tract symptoms and herpetic oral lesions.


Subduction zones are monitored using space geodesy with increasing resolution, with the aim of better capturing the deformation accompanying the seismic cycle. Here, we investigate data characteristics that maximize the performance of a machine learning binary classifier predicting slip‐event imminence. We overcome the scarcity of recorded instances from real subduction zones using data from a seismotectonic analog model monitored with a spatially dense, continuously recording onshore geodetic network. We show that a 70–85 km‐wide coastal swath recording interseismic deformation gives the most important information on slip imminence. Prediction performances are mainly influenced by the alarm duration (amount of time that we consider an event as imminent), with density of stations and record length playing a secondary role. The techniques developed in this study are most likely applicable in regions of slow earthquakes, where stick‐slip‐like failures occur at time intervals of months to years.


This study deals with turbulent oscillatory boundary-layer flows over both smooth and rough beds. The free-stream flow is a purely oscillating flow with sinusoidal velocity variation. Mean and turbulence properties were measured mainly in two directions, namely in the streamwise direction and in the direction perpendicular to the bed. Some measurements were made also in the transverse direction. The measurements were carried out up to Re = 6 × 106 over a mirror-shine smooth bed and over rough beds with various values of the parameter a/ks covering the range from approximately 400 to 3700, a being the amplitude of the oscillatory free-stream flow and ks the Nikuradse's equivalent sand roughness. For smooth-bed boundary-layer flows, the effect of Re is discussed in greater detail. It is demonstrated that the boundary-layer properties change markedly with Re. For rough-bed boundary-layer flows, the effect of the parameter a/ks is examined, at large values (O(103)) in combination with large Re.


Abstract In this note we give an overview of the currently known best lower and upper bounds on the size of a subset of ℤnm avoiding k-term arithmetic progression. We will focus on the case when the length of the forbidden progression is 3. We also formulate some open questions.


Predictors of breast cancer worry in healthy women remain unclear. Healthy women less than 50 years (N = 857) completed measures of family history, anxiety, absolute and comparative risk perceptions, illness perceptions, and breast cancer worry. Regression analyses revealed that having a family history of breast cancer, greater anxiety, higher absolute risk perceptions and negative illness perceptions predicted 45 per cent of the variance in breast cancer worry. Risk perceptions also partially mediated the relationship between illness perceptions and worry. This study provides novel evidence that both illness and risk perceptions are predictors of breast cancer worry in younger women from the community.


This guide provides details about the Law Librarians of New England and Association of Boston Law Librarians Spring 2016 meeting


Metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) with various doses of La-incorporated in Hafnium-based dielectrics were characterized to evaluate the effect of La on dielectric and device properties. It is found that the Poole-Frenkel emission model could explain our experimental leakage current conduction mechanism reasonably and barrier heights of localized Poole-Frenkel trap sites increase gradually with increasing La incorporation. Cryogenic measurement (from 100 K to 300 K) of MOSFETs reveals that, as the content of La incorporation in the dielectric increases, the more increase of maximum effective mobility has been found at low temperature. It is mainly attributed to the more reduction of phonon scattering due to higher content of La atoms at the interface of dielectric and channel. Though it is relatively small, the existence of La in dielectric reduces coulomb scattering rate as well.


We present a novel approach to generate cryptographic keys from biometric face data so that their privacy and biometric template can be protected by using helper data schema (HDS). Our method includes three components: feature extraction, feature discretization and key generation. During feature extraction stage, the global features (PCA-transformed) and local features (Gabor wavelet-transformed) of face images are used to produce newly fused feature sets as input feature vectors of generalized PCA in the unitary space so as to achieve superior performance. Then, in the feature discretization stage, a discretization process is introduced to generate a stable binary string from the fused feature vectors. Finally, the stable binary string is protected by helper data schema (HDS) and used as the input parameter of cryptographic key generating algorithms to produce the renewable biometric crypto key


Experiments on model organisms are used to extend the understanding of complex biological processes. In Caenorhabditis elegans studies, populations of specimens are sampled to measure certain morphological properties and a population is characterized based on statistics extracted from such samples. Automatic detection of C. elegans in such culture images is a difficult problem. The images are affected by clutter, overlap and image degradations. In this paper, we exploit shape and appearance differences between C. elegans and non‐C. elegans segmentations. Shape information is captured by optimizing a parametric open contour model on training data. Features derived from the contour energies are proposed as shape descriptors and integrated in a probabilistic framework. These descriptors are evaluated for C. elegans detection in culture images. Our experiments show that measurements extracted from these samples correlate well with ground truth data. These positive results indicate that the proposed approach can be used for quantitative analysis of complex nematode images.


The increasing usage of non-linear loads in power distribution system has led to several power quality issues. The triplen harmonics due to non-linear loads are trapped in the primary delta winding of conventional delta-star configured distribution transformer. This unrecovered harmonics is usually wasted in the form of heat leading to excessive power loss and reduced life of transformer, and this wasted power is termed as drainage power. The recovery of drainage power is possible with star-star-delta_utilized distribution transformer. In this configuration, the power due to circulating harmonics can be recovered across the zero potential terminal of the delta winding. The extracted power is characterized by variable voltage and frequency. This paper presents the recovery of harmonic power from delta winding of star-star-delta_utilized configuration transformer and its controlled consumption with battery support for feeding the load. The powering of load and battery charging are with reference to State of Charge (SoC) of Lead-acid battery and the harmonic current magnitude in the tertiary.


A typical NASA Applied Sciences Program project will involve transformation of a partner's national, state, or local decision support system (DSS) to accept and use new NASA research products. The baseline DSS is typically called State 1 and the transformed, enhanced DSS is State 2. Benchmarking measures the performance of a DSS before and after enhancement. It measures the differences in a partner's DSS resulting from enhancements to it arising from use of new Earth science results, and as such, it is the end of the process. We use the Defect Detection and Prevention [1,2] (DDP) process and tool for benchmarking. DDP is both a process for information collection and quantification, and a tool for analysis and visualization of changing "risk profiles" and levels of objectives attainment between DSS State 1 and State 2. Examples of Benchmarking are discussed.


Attractive and realistic content has always played a crucialrole in the penetration and popularity of digital games, virtualenvironments, and other multimedia applications. Procedural contentgeneration enables the automatization of production of any type of gamecontent including not only landscapes and narratives but also gamemechanics and generation of whole games. The article offers acomparative analysis of the approaches to automatic generation ofcontent for video games proposed in last five years. It suggests a newtypology of the use of procedurally generated game content comprising ofcategories structured in three groups: content nature, generation process,and game dependence. Together with two other taxonomies – one ofcontent type and the other of methods for content generation – thistypology is used for comparing and discussing some specific approaches toprocedural content generation in three promising research directionsbased on applying personalization and adaptation, descriptive languages,and semantic specifications.


Usually, weak inorganic acids have been used to disperse collagen as green solvents for fabricating kinds of biomaterials all the time. However, it is an open question how much the dissolving process preserves or alters the native structure of collagen till now. Herein, we have examined the effect of three different solvents (HAc, HCl, H3PO4) on the secondary structures of collagen, based on circular dichroism (CD) spectra of collagen from 185 to 260 nm together with CDNN programs. We have found that collagen almost completely preserved its triple helical structure in the three inorganic acids at pH=3.0 or so, which demonstrated that it was the concentration of free H in the above three solutions whose pH was fixed at 3.0 that can maintain an proper amount of surface charge on the collagen colloidal particles and appropriately loose the three-helix structure, which can not only lead to a better dispersion behavior, but also maximize the preservation of the integrity of the collagen structure. Although the fractions of kinds of secondary structures in collagen were different from all the three solvents based on CDNN data, which gave very similar results for each other. These results was tested for the first time in this work to estimate the secondary structures for collagen in the different common inorganic acids, which provides a new avenue for green collagen solvents to prepare collagen-based composite with well triple-helical structure for tissue engineering.


The PERCIVAL ("Pixelated Energy Resolving CMOS Imager, Versatile and Large") is a collaboration of DESY, RAL/STFC, ELETTRA, and DLS to develop a monolithic active pixel sensor (MAPS) to provide a suitable detector for photon science for the photon energy regime between 250 eV and 1 keV. An important performance parameter is the spatial resolution which can be inferred from the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF). The MTF measures in optical systems the relative contrast of a pattern in function of the spatial frequency. With a back-thinned and back-illuminated PERCIVAL prototype chip, dedicated MTF evaluation data were taken at Elettra's TwinMic Beamline in March 2014 at a photon energy of 535 eV. We will present our MTF derivation approaches together with MTF results for 3 pixel types of the irradiated test sensor.


The damage patterns created by the interactions of intense pulsed electron beams with polymeric targets reveals the processes of plasma channel formation and deposition of the beam energy and charge. There is a close structural similarity of the damage pattern with the dielectric breakdown which naturally leads to fractal structure with an exponent D ≈1.7.


In recent times, accommodation and hospitality industry is one of the fastest growing sectors because of significant tourism campaigns, government efforts, and development of economy. This industry requires manpower who are proactive and compassionate to their guests. Filipinos manifested such qualities which made the country as the supplier of manpower to other countries. The purpose of this study was to determine the Filipino brands that represent the hospitality manpower and explore the actions that demonstrate these qualities. Thirty-two (32) participants were purposively sampled, 16 as front desk officers in hotels Zamboanga City and 16 as general customers. Findings indicated that there were major characters that Filipino workers in accommodation industry demonstrated. Some of the character include dedication, Filipino warmth, friendly, tactful, and articulate. The natural disposition of Filipinos to be happy and friendly plays a significant role in customer service interactions, making customers feel welcomed and valued. Filipino brand of customer service in the accommodation industry is built on a foundation of hospitality, positive attitudes, and a genuine desire to ensure customer satisfaction. These characteristics, along with the training and proactive management of human resources, contribute to the growth and success of the accommodation industry in the Philippines, attracting more tourists and foreign business travelers to the country.


Risk factors for chronic diseases in Tibetans may be modified due to hypobaric hypoxia. The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of obesity at varying altitudes of 1,200, 2,900 and 3,700 meters above sea-level in Tibet and Nepal; to estimate the effect of altitude on body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR). Three cross-sectional studies with simple random sampling were performed on 617 men and women. BMI, WC and WHtR decreased with increasing altitude. It is likely that the physical conditions such as low temperatures and low oxygen levels have a direct catabolic effect.


This paper presents a new speaker verification system architecture based on Joint Factor Analysis (JFA) as feature extractor. In this modeling, the JFA is used to define a new low-dimensional space named the total variability factor space, instead of both channel and speaker variability spaces for the classical JFA. The main contribution in this approach, is the use of the cosine kernel in the new total factor space to design two different systems: the first system is Support Vector Machines based, and the second one uses directly this kernel as a decision score. This last scoring method makes the process faster and less computation complex compared to others classical methods. We tested several intersession compensation methods in total factors, and we found that the combination of Linear Discriminate Analysis and Within Class Covariance Normalization achieved the best performance. We achieved a remarkable results using fast scoring method based only on cosine kernel especially for male trials, we yield an EER of 1.12% and MinDCF of 0.0094 on the English trials of the NIST 2008 SRE dataset. Index Terms: Total variability space, cosine kernel, fast scoring, support vector machines.


The recent surge in Central American migration has challenged Mexico to implement policies that uphold human rights for migrants (especially unaccompanied children) who are passing through the country while also deterring unauthorized crossings at the southern border and cracking down on human smuggling and trafficking. However, finding the appropriate balance for these policies — with a humanitarian focus on the one hand and meeting larger "security concerns" on the other hand — has been elusive for the Mexican government. This paper discusses the historical and political context of Mexico's various policy responses to the spike in Central American migration through Mexico toward the United States and analyzes related implications for the country's relationships with the United States and its Central American neighbors.


This study relates differential socioeconomic status between blacks and whites to racial differentiation in infant mortality rates. The basic assumption is that decreases in socioeconomic differentiation and related variables lead to decreases in the black—white infant mortality differential. A comparative approach based on aggregate measures of socioeconomic differentiation is utilized to compare sixty-one United States urban places. Path analysis shows that neonatal mortality differentiation is virtually unaffected by socioeconomic differentials while decreased racial differences in hospital births tend to increase neonatal mortality differentiation. In contrast, postneonatal differentiation is affected by socioeconomic differentiation, especially along the dimensions of income, education, and regional location. It is concluded that despite some suggestions that infant mortality is no longer responsive to socioeconomic factors, postneonatal differentation is affected by socioeconomic differentials when comparison is based on city units.


The Ibero-American Network of Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics (RIBEF) studies Latin American populations to benefit from the implementation of personalized medicine. Since 2006, it has studied ethnicity to apply pharmacogenetics knowledge in autochthonous populations of Latin America, considering ancestral medicine. The meeting 'Pharmacogenetics: ethnicity, Treatment and Health in Latin American Populations' was held in Mexico City, Mexico, and presented the relevance of RIBEF collaboration with Latin American researchers and the governments of Mexico, Spain and the Autonomous Community of Extremadura. The results of 17 years of uninterrupted work by RIBEF, the Declaration of Mérida/T'Hó and the call for the Dr José María Cantú Award for studies focused on the pharmacogenetics of native populations in Latin America were presented.


In order to enhance interoperability and productivity in the develop-ment of situation-aware applications for disaster management, proper mecha-nisms and guidelines are required. They must address the lack of semantics in modelling emergency situations. In addition, the ever changing and unpredicta-ble nature of disaster scenarios present challenges for information processing and collaboration. This paper proposes a framework that combines the follow-ing elements: (i) a foundational ontology for temporal conceptualization; (ii) well-founded specifications of structural and behavioral models; (iii) a CEP en-gine based on a distributed rule-based platform for situation management; (iv) a model-driven approach. We illustrate the operation of the framework with a scenario for monitoring tuberculosis epidemy.


All the producing and assembling processes exert residual stress on the pieces that may lead to structural failure. Therefore, calculating the residual stress in such structures has been common in recent years. In this article, distribution of temperature and residual stress resulting from arc welding in three-pass butt joint in P91 austenitic stainless steel pipes is calculated and estimated using the finite element method and experimental data. Simulating the welding process has been carried out three- dimensionally using Abaqus software. Distribution of the arc thermal flux has been identified based on the Goldak two-elliptical model using DFLUX subprogram in Abaqus software. The numerical method has been employed by doing thermoelastoplastic analysis and the technique of birth and death of the elements to model the welding passes and the melted elements. Then, using central hole drilling method, residual stress gradient of the thickness at distance 3mm from the welding line on the pipe is measured. Finally, the maximum percentage of error, through the results obtained from experimental measurements and finite element method, was reported 27% which is scientifically reasonable .The results show that the residual environmental stress in the internal surface of the pipe from the welding central line to 8.7mm varies with the gradient of 610MPa from 296MPa to -314MPa. Such a drastic stress distribution leads to genesising some cracks on the   welded pipes.


Abstract This study examines the roots of clientelism in Iraqi Kurdistan and the effort to fight it. The clientelism system exists when a kind of deal is struck between those in power and clients in society who agree to exchange benefits. The political issues in Kurdistan particularly, corruption and lack of social justice have historical roots as a result of the accumulation of problems that have not been resolved by the client system that is adopted by the two political parties in power, namely the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP). The two political parties have monopolised the public sector, the Peshmerga and Security forces, as well as the economy, they have succeeded in controlling the larger part of society through clientelism. In hence, they used public funds, jobs and posts to buy people's votes and loyalty. The opposition parties have been unable to exert pressure on the ruling parties who can buy the affiliation of people through the use of public finance. The opposition and independent media began to play a large role in highlighting the corruption and the client system.


Elaborating on the first stage in the User-Centered Design (UCD) process, understanding the user, this study questions whether it is sufficient to look at the use of interactive systems in isolation. Starting from the assumption that consumers often use the Internet in combination with other channels (telephone, high street, mail order), this paper discusses a study on how consumers move between online and offline channels during the preparations for leisure travel. The theoretical framework was informed by literature from the fields of HCI, marketing and social sciences. The results of the first stage of this work-in-progress indicate that multi-channel use is a day-to-day reality for many consumers.


We examined the effects of family history of coronary artery disease (CAD), apolipoprotein E (apo E) phenotype, and lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] on the response of plasma lipids to change in dietary lipid intake after 3 mo of nutrition education in 125 children aged 4-10 y. The subjects were healthy children with elevated low-density-lipoprotein (LDL)-cholesterol concentrations who participated in the Children's Health Project, a nutrition-education program designed to lower plasma cholesterol by means of dietary modifications in accordance with recommendations of the National Cholesterol Education Program. Dietary and plasma lipids were measured by three 24-h recalls and assessments of two fasting plasma samples collected before and 3 mo after the start of intervention. Family history of CAD was determined by questionnaires administered to parents at baseline. Apo E phenotyping was done with isoelectric focusing followed by immunostaining; Lp(a) was measured with two-site immunoradiometric assays of frozen aliquots of plasma samples collected at baseline and 3 mo. After adjustment for intervention group, age, sex, and body mass index, analysis of covariance showed that baseline plasma lipid concentrations were the strongest independent predictors of change in plasma lipids after 3 mo. Plasma total and LDL-cholesterol concentrations in children with less family history of CAD were significantly more responsive to change in dietary cholesterol than concentrations in children with a stronger family history of CAD. Neither apo E phenotype nor Lp(a) significantly influenced change in plasma lipids independently or interactively with change in dietary lipids.


The nature of commercial interaction between academia and industry in India has transformed over time. This transformation is a result of several macro changes in the political-economic sphere. Dividing the postindependent Indian history into three different time periods, this article argues that the nature of interaction between 1947 and 1991 – the period after Independence and before economic liberalization – is of a different kind compared to the nature of interaction after liberalization. It is further argued that the interaction before economic liberalization is more of demand-driven in nature, while the one after liberalization is neoliberal in character. This neoliberal characterization is because of the implementation of supply-side measures such as oversupply of patents with a disproportionately lower demand, focus on entrepreneurship, and replacement of the academic value system with corporate value system. The neoliberal period is in turn characterized as conquest of innovation period and coercive innovation period. While the changes during the conquest of innovation period reflect the implementation of supply-side measures, the coercive innovation period depicts the normalization of this process through coercive measures.


The wild legume Canavalia maritima (Aubl.) Thou. (Fabaceae) is a mat-forming creeper widely distributed in coastal sand dunes of pantropical region and prevents coastal erosion. Their seeds are rich in proteins (29-34%), carbohydrates (53-63%), dietary fibre (1-7.3%), energy (1490-1680 kJ/100 g), minerals and essential amino acids required in human diet. Seeds without seed coat, sprouted seeds (without seed coat) ripened beans (with intact seed coat and testa) and tender pods are nutraceutically valuable. Drastic reduction of globulin especially in cooked sprouted seeds (4.9-18.7 vs. 0-0.5%) indicate decreased antinutritional component and the in vitro protein digestibility raised significantly in cooked sprouted seeds (46 vs. 73%). The antinutritional principles of C. maritima especially lectin (ConM) and non-protein amino acid canavanine possess anticancer and antiviral properties. The ConM is useful as autophagic, antihepatomic (immunomodulation), stimulation of mitosis, inhibition of lymphocyte cap and patch formation (due to anti-immunoglobulin properties). Proteins of  C. maritima seeds possess desired functional properties like oil-absorption, water-absorption, gelation, emulsion and foam formation, which is helpful in formulating fabricated foods. There is ample scope to use various landraces, germplasm and varieties of  C. maritima for nutritional and health benefits of humans as well as livestock. In view of indigenous alternative potential natural resource of future, the current review provides an overview on the nutritional, antinutritional and bioactive potential of  C. maritima .


From a computational perspective, there is a close connection between various probabilistic reasoning tasks and the problem of counting or sampling satisfying assignments of a propositional theory. We consider the question of whether state-of-the-art satisfiability procedures, based on random walk strategies, can be used to sample uniformly or nearuniformly from the space of satisfying assignments. We first show that random walk SAT procedures often do reach the full set of solutions of complex logical theories. Moreover, by interleaving random walk steps with Metropolis transitions, we also show how the sampling becomes near-uniform.


Recent research has shown that the early lexical representations children establish in their second year of life already seem to be phonologically detailed enough to allow differentiation from very similar forms. In contrast to these findings children with specific language impairment show problems in discriminating phonologically similar word forms up to school age. In our study we investigated the question whether there would be differences in the processing of phonological details in normally developing and in children with low language performance in the second year of life. This was done by a retrospective study in which in the processing of phonological details was tested by a preferential looking experiment when the children were 19 months old. At the age of 30 months children were tested with a standardized German test of language comprehension and production (SETK2). The preferential looking data at 19 months revealed an opposite reaction pattern for the two groups: while the children scoring normally in the SETK2 increase their fixations of a pictured object only when it was named with the correct word, children with later low language performance did so only when presented with a phonologically slightly deviant mispronunciation. We suggest that this pattern does not point to a specific deficit in processing phonological information in these children but might be related to an instability of early phonological representations, and/or a generalized problem of information processing as compared to typically developing children.


Compressed sensing (CS) is a sampling paradigm that allows us to simultaneously measure and compress signals that are sparse or compressible in some domain. The choice of a sensing matrix that carries out the measurement has a defining impact on the system performance and it is often advocated to draw its elements randomly. It has been noted that in the presence of input (signal) noise, the application of the sensing matrix causes signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation due to the noise folding effect. In fact, it might also result in the variations of the output SNR in compressive measurements over the support of the input signal, potentially resulting in unexpected nonuniform system performance. In this letter, we study the impact of a distribution from which the elements of a sensing matrix are drawn on the spread of the output SNR. We derive analytic expressions for several common types of sensing matrices and show that the SNR spread grows with the decrease of the number of measurements. This makes its negative effect especially pronounced for high compression rates that are often of interest in CS.


The increased ability to engineer two-dimensional (2D) systems, either using materials, photonic lattices, or cold atoms, has led to the search for 2D structures with interesting properties. One such property is the presence of flat bands. Typically, the presence of these requires long-ranged hoppings, fine-tuning of nearest neighbor hoppings, or breaking time-reversal symmetry by using a staggered flux distribution in the unit cell. We provide a prescription based on carrying out projections from a parent system to generate different flat band systems. We identify the conditions for maintaining the flatness and identify a path-exchange symmetry in such systems that cause the flat band to be degenerate with the other dispersive ones. Breaking this symmetry leads to lifting the degeneracy while still preserving the flatness of the band. This technique does not require changing the topology nor breaking time-reversal symmetry as was suggested earlier in the literature. The prescription also eliminates the need for any fine-tuning. Moreover, it is shown that the subsequent projected systems inherit the precise fine-tuning conditions that were discussed in the literature for similar systems, in order to have and isolate a flat band. As examples, we demonstrate the use of our prescription to arrive at the flat band conditions for popular systems like the Kagomé, the Lieb, and the Dice lattices. Finally, we are also able to show that a flat band exists in a recently proposed chiral spin-liquid state of the Kagomé lattice only if it is associated with a gauge field that produces a flux modulation of the Chern-Simons type.


We report fast synthesis of bamboo-type TiO2 nanotube arrays via anodization of Ti in nonhazardous electrolyte under alternating voltage condition for applications as photoanodes in high-efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Formation mechanism of bamboo-type nanotubes is also explored. The low-voltage step reduces pH and ion-diffusion gradient inside TiO2 nanotubes and induces formation of bamboo ridges on outer tube walls when a second high-voltage step is conducted. Ridge spacing and length of bamboo-type nanotubes can be facilely tuned by adjusting time of high-voltage step and electrolyte composition. All DSSCs based on bamboo-type TiO2 nanotube arrays show higher efficiencies than those based on smooth-walled nanotubes with the same tube length due to enhanced surface area of bamboo-type nanotubes for dye loading. It is also noted that DSSC efficiency increases with the ridge density of bamboo-type nanotubes of the same length. For example, DSSC based on bamboo-type nanotubes (8 μm long) with the highest ridge density exhibits an efficiency of 5.64%, higher than the efficiency of 3.90% exhibited by DSSC based on smooth-walled nanotubes of the same length. Moreover, the DSSC efficiency can be further increased to 6.8% by growing significantly longer bamboo-type TiO2 nanotubes (16.5 μm long) via decreasing water content in electrolyte.


This paper describes the mechanical properties of the lead foil laminated with semi-conductive plastic on both sides. This lead composite tape is quite useful to medium voltage water impervious cable because the tape can follow the thermal expansion and contraction of the cable core. Some important properties of 15KV URD cable which has water impervious layers over the conductor and over the core are also shown in this paper. The test result proved that the lead composite tape worked well as the water impervious barrier for the medium voltage URD cable.


The relation between the processing of space and time in the brain has been an enduring cross-disciplinary question. Grid cells have been recognized as a hallmark of the mammalian navigation system, with recent studies attesting to their involvement in organization of conceptual knowledge in humans. To determine whether grid-cell-like representations support temporal processing, we asked subjects to mentally simulate changes in age and time-of-day, each constituting "trajectory" in an age-day space, while undergoing fMRI. We found that grid-cell-like representations supported trajecting across this age-day space. Furthermore, brain regions concurrently coding past-to-future orientation positively modulated the magnitude of grid-cell-like representation in the left entorhinal cortex. Our findings suggest that temporal processing may be supported by spatially modulated systems, and that innate regularities of abstract domains may interface and alter grid-cell-like representations, similarly to spatial geometry.


This paper presents LUVS-Net, which is a lightweight convolutional network for retinal vessel segmentation in fundus images that is designed for resource-constrained devices that are typically unable to meet the computational requirements of large neural networks. The computational challenges arise due to low-quality retinal images, wide variance in image acquisition conditions and disparities in intensity. Consequently, the training of existing segmentation methods requires a multitude of trainable parameters for the training of networks, resulting in computational complexity. The proposed Lightweight U-Net for Vessel Segmentation Network (LUVS-Net) can achieve high segmentation performance with only a few trainable parameters. This network uses an encoder–decoder framework in which edge data are transposed from the first layers of the encoder to the last layer of the decoder, massively improving the convergence latency. Additionally, LUVS-Net's design allows for a dual-stream information flow both inside as well as outside of the encoder–decoder pair. The network width is enhanced using group convolutions, which allow the network to learn a larger number of low- and intermediate-level features. Spatial information loss is minimized using skip connections, and class imbalances are mitigated using dice loss for pixel-wise classification. The performance of the proposed network is evaluated on the publicly available retinal blood vessel datasets DRIVE, CHASE_DB1 and STARE. LUVS-Net proves to be quite competitive, outperforming alternative state-of-the-art segmentation methods and achieving comparable accuracy using trainable parameters that are reduced by two to three orders of magnitude compared with those of comparative state-of-the-art methods.


The growth of embedded generation (EG) capacity in many power supply systems has brought a number of advantages. A potential disadvantage for isolated systems is that generation loss incidents can trigger nuisance tripping of the EG. This undermines the emergency reserve provided to mitigate such a loss. The paper presents an EG loss of mains protection technique, which avoids nuisance tripping during an under-frequency transient. It is also shown that EG can supplement emergency reserve from utility generation. Experimental results and simulations demonstrate how this may be achieved by exploiting the short-term overload capability of diesel generator sets.


The selectivity and coordination of overcurrent relays is most commonly studied distribution systems protection. This paper proposes a method for detailed analysis of the overcurrent protection of distribution systems, in which the phase unbalances, neutral conductor and groundings are to be taken into account. All calculations are performed in a full three-phase methodology. The mathematical models of the main protective equipment and protective functions found in distribution systems were also developed. Two distribution systems were analyzed to verify the efficiency of the proposed methodology.


ABSTRACT In Escherichia coli or Salmonella enterica, the stress-associated mammalian hormones epinephrine (E) and norepinephrine (NE) trigger a signaling cascade by interacting with the QseC sensor protein. Here we show that Vibrio cholerae, the causative agent of cholera, exhibits a specific response to E and NE. These catecholates (0.1 mM) enhanced the growth and swimming motility of V. cholerae strain O395 on soft agar in a medium containing calf serum, which simulated the environment within the host. During growth, the hormones were converted to degradation products, including adrenochrome formed by autooxidation with O2 or superoxide. In E. coli, the QseC sensor kinase, which detects the autoinducer AI-3, also senses E or NE. The genome of V. cholerae O395 comprises an open reading frame coding for a putative protein with 29% identity to E. coli QseC. Quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (qRT-PCR) experiments revealed increased transcript levels of the qseC-like gene and of pomB, a gene encoding a structural component of the flagellar motor complex, under the influence of E or NE. Phentolamine blocks the response of E. coli QseC to E or NE. A V. cholerae mutant devoid of the qseC-like gene retained the phentolamine-sensitive motility in the presence of E, whereas NE-stimulated motility was no longer inhibited by phentolamine. Our study demonstrates that V. cholerae senses the stress hormones E and NE. A sensor related to the histidine kinase QseC from E. coli is identified and is proposed to participate in the sensing of NE. IMPORTANCE Vibrio cholerae is a Gram-negative bacterium that may cause cholera, a severe illness with high mortality due to acute dehydration caused by diarrhea and vomiting. Pathogenic V. cholerae strains possess virulence factors like the cholera toxin (CTX) and the toxin-coregulated pilus (TCP) produced in response to signals provided by the host. In pathogenic enterobacteria, the stress-associated hormones epinephrine (E) and norepinephrine (NE) of the human host act as signal molecules for the production of virulence factors and promote bacterial growth by the sequestration of iron from the host. Here we show that V. cholerae, like some enterobacteria, benefits from these stress hormones and possesses a sensor to recognize them.


Since the end of the 1980s, primary anti-Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) prophylaxis has become a fundamental part of the global AIDS control strategy in industrialized countries. The widespread adoption of anti-PCP chemoprophylaxis has been a key element in prolonging the survival of patients with AIDS. There is general agreement on the need to begin chemoprophylaxis when individual CD4+ cell counts drop below the value of 200/microL. However, PCP still develops in up to 27% of susceptible HIV-infected patients despite regular prophylaxis intake. Failure of chemoprophylaxis may depend on different factors. The choice of the regimen and the patient's compliance to it have been the first variables to be identified, whereas the importance of the residual cellular immune function as complementary protective mechanism against PCP has emerged in subsequent clinical studies. Albeit of limited general concern, issues such as P. carinii drug resistance and defective drug absorption may play some role in prophylaxis failure in selected patients. Regarding the epidemiology of primary and recurrent episodes of PCP, recent studies based on genetic fingerprinting techniques revealed that interhuman transmission of the organism could be more relevant than so far expected, thus raising some concern of the possibility of nosocomial spread among susceptible individuals. The downgrading tendency of immune competence in HIV infection and the related increasing risk of developing PCP make it possible to envisage a two-step chemoprophylactic strategy, with the most effective compound, cotrimoxazole, to be reserved for the last and most risky disease stage, when immune response no longer provides any support for preventing the development of PCP.


With the growing population and climate change, increasing demands for water are intensifying competition between agricultural stakeholders. Since the mid-20th century, numerous crop models and modeling techniques have emerged for the quantitative assessment of cropping systems. This article introduces a collection of articles that explore current research in model applications for sustainable agricultural water use. The collection includes articles from model development to regional and field-scale applications addressing management effects, model uncertainty, irrigation decision support systems, and new methods for simulating salt balances. Further work is needed to integrate data science, modern sensor systems, and remote sensing technologies with the models in order to investigate the sustainability of agricultural systems in regions affected by land-use change and climate change.


This paper examines whether the dollar value of health benefits that consumers derive from organic food could account for the price premiums they pay. Price and sales data from realized transactions are inadequate to reveal consumer preferences for health benefits. Our exploratory alternative method estimates the value of health benefits to a hypothetical consumer who assesses risks as risk assessors do and values a unit reduction in all fatal risks equally, regardless of the source of any risk. Under these assumptions, our estimates of the value of health benefits derived from substituting an organic diet for a conventionally produced diet approach zero. For a common organic product, apple juice, we estimated the cost of reducing risks by buying the organic characteristic. The cost of averting each adverse health outcome is 27 to 461 times as large as the value of benefits. If the characteristics of our hypothetical consumer match those of the typical consumer, two inferences follow from our estimates of benefits and costs. First, the typical consumer is unlikely to purchase organic food for health reasons. Second, consumers who choose organic food could differ from typical consumers in several dimensions: perceptions of the level of risk from dietary intake of pesticides, perceptions of the nature of adverse health outcomes from pesticides, or in the importance attached to other attributes of organic food. Our analysis is exploratory partially because there are several behavioral assumptions implicit in the values we calculate. Also, we focus on risks that can be quantitatively estimated, measuring the probability of an adverse health outcome with readily accessible data. Currently, only cancer risks can be measured in terms of probabilities from readily accessible data.


This paper is concerned with the propagation of Rayleigh waves in a compressible pre-stressed elastic half-space coated with a thin compressible pre-stressed elastic layer. The main purpose of the paper is to establish an approximate formula for the H/V ratio (the ratio between the amplitudes of the horizontal and vertical displacements of Rayleigh waves at the traction-free surface of the layer). First, the relations between the traction amplitude vector and the displacement amplitude one of Rayleigh waves at two sides of the interface between the layer and the half-space are created. From the continuity condition at the interface and these relations, the displacement amplitude vector of Rayleigh waves at the interface is determined. Then,  a third-order approximate formula for the H/V ratio has been derived by expanding the layer displacement amplitude vector at its traction-free surface into Taylor series at the interface. It is shown numerically that the obtained formula is a good approximate one.


The basic question this article seeks to explore is how to reconcile HCO interests and physician interests in a time when interdependence is as high as or higher than ever before, yet once convergent interests appear to be diverging sharply? To do this, the major trends and forces affecting both HCOs and MDs will be outlined; then the issues facing each will be discussed, together with their responses; and finally the key interface problems will be laid out, together with possible strategic approaches.


This paper describes applications of a coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Computational Structural Dynamics (CSD) methodology to the simulation of blast waves generated by bare explosive charges in a test facility with rigid and deformable walls. The coupled algorithm combines FEFLO98 (CFD) and MARS3D (CSD) via an embedded approach, where the CSD objects float through the CFD domain. This combination enables an easier and more accurate prediction of structural deformation, cracking and failure under blast loading. Several experiments were conducted to characterize blast load and structural response as a function of charge size, weapon ignition point (nose or tail) and orientation (horizontal or vertical). The numerical simulations helped in understanding the experimental results, some of which were not intuitively understood. Good agreement between the experimental results and the numerical predictions were demonstrated for pressure data, blast loading and the corresponding structural response.


Background and Purpose Approved use of intravenous alteplase for ischemic stroke offers net benefit. Pooled randomized controlled trial analysis suggests additional patients could benefit but others be harmed with treatment initiated beyond 4·5 h after stroke onset. We proposed prognostic scoring methods to identify a strategy for patient selection. Methods We selected 500 patients treated by intravenous alteplase and 500 controls from Virtual International Stroke Trials Archive, matching modified Rankin score outcomes to those from pooled randomized controlled trial 4·5–6 h data. We ranked patients by prognostic score. We chose limits to optimize our sample for a net treatment benefit significant at P = 0·01 by Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel test and by ordinal regression. For validation, we had these applied to the pooled randomized controlled trial data for 4·5–6 h, testing for net benefit by Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel test, ordinal regression, and also by dichotomized outcomes: modified Rankin score 0–1, mortality and parenchymal hemorrhage type 2 bleeds. All analyses were adjusted for age and National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale. Results In the training dataset, limits of 56–95 on a prognostic score retained 714 patients in whom there was net benefit significant at P = 0·01. When applied to the 1120 patients in the pooled randomized controlled trial 4·5–6 h dataset, score limits of 56–95 retained 711 patients and gave odds ratio for improved modified Rankin score distribution of 1·13, 95% confidence interval 0·87–1·47, Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel P = 0·89. More patients achieved modified Rankin score 0–1 (odds ratio 1·44, 1·02–2·05, P = 0·04) but mortality and parenchymal hemorrhage type 2 bleeds were increased: odds ratio 1·56, 1·01–2·40, P = 0·04; odds ratio 15·6, 3·7–65·8, P = 0·0002, respectively. Conclusion Selection of patients between 4·5 and 6 h based on simple clinical measures failed to deliver a population in whom the alteplase effect would be safe and effective.


Many bacteria utilize contact-dependent killing machineries to eliminate rivals in their environmental niches. Here, we show that Pseudomonas putida IsoF is able to outcompete a wide range of bacteria with the aid of a novel type IVB secretion system (T4BSS) that can deliver toxic effectors into bacterial competitors. This extends the host range of T4BSSs, which were so far thought to transfer effectors only into eukaryotic cells, to prokaryotes. Bioinformatic and genetic analyses showed that this killing machine is entirely encoded by a rare genomic island, which has been recently acquired by horizontal gene transfer. IsoF utilizes this secretion system not only as a defensive weapon to antagonize bacterial competitors but also as an offensive weapon to invade existing biofilms, allowing the strain to persist in its natural environment. Furthermore, we show that IsoF can protect tomato plants against the plant pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum in a T4BSS-dependent manner, suggesting that IsoF capabilities can be exploited for pest control and sustainable agriculture.


For among most contemporaries, the concept of Eros seems to have nothing to do with Christianity. Sifting through the psychoanalysis of sexual fantasy, theologically it says nothing. Our study gives reasons showing that for theologians since the dawn of the Christian era, Eros-love plays a fundamental role.. The connotations of this concept, however, are different from those of today, when its sensory meaning is more restricted to sexuality. Greek theologians of the first centuries after Christ, taught the concept of Plato enshrined as a unifying enthusiasm, the attraction of inferior to superior states, as "hungry and thirsty" for something continuously higher, developing, and enriching the connotation. The work of Dionysius ((Pseudo) Areopagite, the Idea of Good, leads us step by step up the ascent of the erotically chaste, and is identified with the One-God, who is the very source of love. Consequently, Eros-love originates from God, Eroslove being not only an ascending but firstly a descending love, which calls for a reciprocal


Atmabrittanta, an autobiography of Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala (popularly known as BP Koirala), was originally narrated onto a microphone in 1981-82. Moreover, it was published in Nepali in 1998 and the further translated English version was printed in 2001. It mainly incorporates the Nepali tales of revolutionary activism for democracy and nationhood. In the international context, it largely deals with colonial and postcolonial India and her political relationship with Nepal. Likewise, the political association with China is also the content of the book. In these backgrounds, the study analyses the autobiography for exploring how resistance blends with agency and how such oppositional activism contends with national and international hegemonic power blocs, especially applying Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony, Jocelyn A. Hollander and Rachel L. Einwohner's notion of resistance and Kaspar Maase's idea of agency. Using textual analysis as a research method, this qualitative study uncovers the domination of neighboring countries, the anarchism of Rana dictators, the supremacy of the absolute kings and the regulations of male chauvinism as internal hegemonic tools to organize people's consent. In addition, the analysis finds the autobiography as a manual for resisting such hegemonic forces to empower people and the sovereignty of Nepal primarily in the form of self-agency. The empowerment and development of self-agency in the national and international contexts ultimately contribute to democracy and nationalism.


The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the scheduling of sport in physical education classes during the stage of secondary education. Ten teachers with different profiles were interviewed. The analysis of the interviews was carried out by cross-checking, and in order to objectify the analysis of the interviews the internal reliability between coders (87%) was calculated. A Kappa Index average of .76, with a significance level of p < .001 was also obtained. The results showed that traditional team sports are the most commonly used, and that girls have a lower degree of participation. Among the objectives that the teacher tried to instill in students, we must highlight the promotion of sports practice habits. Finally, there is not any noticeable change in methodology in teaching this content because it still uses a traditional methodology.


Rhamnus & (RC), which belongs to the Rhamnaceae family, is distributed in China, Japan, and Korea. There have been no studies on mechanisms underlying the anti-in�ammatory activity of RC. Here, we aimed to elucidate the potential anti-in�ammatory mechanisms of RC using RAW264.7 cells. We evaluated the anti-in�ammatory effects of a 70% ethanol extract of RC leaves (RC-L) and elucidated the potential signaling pathways in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced RAW264.7 cells. RC-L exhibited anti-in�ammatory effects, such as inhibition of nitric oxide (NO) production; it dose-dependently decreased NO production by suppressing the expression of inducible NO synthase, cyclooxygenase-2, interleukin 1β, and tumor necrosis factor alpha in LPS-induced RAW264.7 cells. Additionally, RC-L inhibited nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) activation and the degradation and phosphorylation of NF-κB inhibitor alpha and suppressed the phosphorylation of p38, extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2, and c-Jun N-terminal kinase. Furthermore, it increased the expression of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) and heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1). These results suggest that RC-L exerts anti-in�ammatory effects by inhibiting the NF-κB and mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathways and inducing Nrf2/HO-1 expression and could act as a natural anti-in�ammatory drug.


The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and risk factors for Chlamydia trachomatis infection in pregnant women. A total of 351 asymptomatic pregnant women (first to second trimesters; age range: 15-30 years) were examined. The background data related to social and marital status, age, anamnestic data were also recorded. Serum samples were tested for IgM antibodies specific to Chlamydia trachomatis by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). In the present study the overall rate of C trachomatis infections in pregnant women was 33% including 41 women (38.7%) under 20 years, 39 women (36.8%) in age of 21-25, and 26 women (24.5%) in age of 25-30. The age group under 20 years exhibited higher risk of infection. There was a significant correlation between the Chlamydia trachomatis infection rate and clinical risk factors such as rare visits to the gynecologist, pelvic inflammatory disease, premature delivery, spontaneous abortions, ectopic pregnancies, C. trachomatis-positivity, chlamydial cervicitis in anamnesis. The prevalence of asymptomatic C. trachomatis infection in pregnant women is 72.6%, therefore, we suggest the screening for chlamydial infection of all pregnant women at least once during their pregnancy.


We study the propagation dynamics of an incoherent light beam circulating in a passive cavity containing noninstantaneous nonlinear media. It is shown that patterns form in this cavity in spite of spatial incoherence of the light. We show that the pattern formation process is always associated with two consecutive thresholds. The first (instability) threshold is unaffected by the cavity boundary conditions, whereas the second threshold is induced by the feedback through the interplay of nonlinear gain and cavity loss.


Robust design is less sensitive to the manufacturing variation and its demand for controlling the manufacturing variation can be reduced. The existing robust design techniques are limited to solve individual synthesis problems, and these methods seldom consider the problem of tolerance sensitivity. This paper presents a method for tolerance sensitivity design and evaluation. First, tolerance sensitivity robustness is analyzed and the tolerance sensitivity robust design models are developed. Then, the matrix analysis method is introduced to evaluate complex assembly relationship among design functions and parameters. The results show that compared with origional mothod, the proposed method is siutble and reliable.


Business-firm parties founded on the initiative of a political entrepreneur are a phenomenon of growing importance in contemporary party politics. In practice, these are either commercial companies, whose structure is used for a political project, or new and separate organisations constructed on business principles. This article examines the case of Czech party ANO ("YES"), established by the owner of the Agrofert holding company Andrej Babiš. The party achieved remarkable success in the 2013 Czech general election. The opportunity for ANO's success was provided by strong voter dissatisfaction, reinforced by the scandalous circumstances of the centre-right government's fall. This context created a fertile ground for the introduction of a new entity espousing anti-party, anti-corruption, and anti-political sentiments. In ANO's organisation and functioning, a strengthening of certain traits characteristic of this type of parties is apparent. A robust system for screening party members and representatives has been gradually put into place, and human resources–style techniques of psychological testing were employed at the party's inception. Furthermore, the power in the party has been wholly centralised around the leader, and the party's territorial structures assigned merely service tasks. ANO has also maximised its electoral-professional orientation. The strengthening of the typical traits of a business-firm party can be explained by reference to the party's origin in the business environment and the notions entertained by its leader. In many respects, Babiš's party has brought the organisational model of a business-firm party to its limits.


Background Congenital Heart Diseases (CHD) involves a wide range of pathological conditions, such as Pulmonary Atresia with Ventricle Septal Defect (PA/VSD). This disorder leads to the systemic circulation of oxygen-poor blood (cyanosis), with associated features and consequences in the oral cavity. Material and Methods Using scoping review methodology for screening and article selection, the primary objectives of this paper were as follows: first, to pose a research question; second, to identify relevant studies in order to answer the research question; third, to select and retrieve the studies; fourth, to chart the critical data, and finally, to collate, summarize, and report the results from the most important articles on the dental management of children affected with PA/VSD. Relevant articles (Randomized Controlled Trials [RCT], reviews, observational studies, and clinical case reports) published over a 10-year period were identified and retrieved from four Internet databases: PubMed; Embase/Ovid; Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar. Results By title and abstract screening and after removing duplicates, 24 articles were finally included in the present scoping review. According to the extracted data, the following are the most important clinical issues to be considered when treating children with PA/VSD in the dental setting: prevalence of dental caries; prevention of dental disease (oral hygiene and diet); bacteremia and infective endocarditis risk, and child behavior control and treatment under general anesthesia. Conclusions Pediatric Dentists should bear in mind that early diagnosis and treatment, together a long-term follow-up of children with PA/VSD, continue to be the best approaches for achieving enhanced patient psychological well-being and, in consequence, their good quality of life. Key words:Pulmonary atresia, congenital heart diseases, ventricle septal defect, scoping review, dental management.


In recent years, the Infectious Diseases Society of America has highlighted a faction of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter spp.) – acronymically dubbed 'the ESKAPE pathogens' – capable of 'escaping' the biocidal action of antibiotics and mutually representing new paradigms in pathogenesis, transmission and resistance. This review aims to consolidate clinically relevant background information on the ESKAPE pathogens and provide a contemporary summary of bacterial resistance, alongside pertinent microbiological considerations necessary to face the mounting threat of antimicrobial resistance.


The feasibility of using small quantities of activated charcoal and a 7.6 cm x 7.6 cm NaI(Tl) well-type detector was investigated for indoor radon measurements. Vials, filled with 10 g of charcoal, were exposed for different indoor radon concentration levels typical of Kuwait dwellings. After exposure, the vials were sealed and kept for 3 h to allow radon to come into radioactive equilibrium with its progenies and were then analysed by gamma-ray spectrometry using the well-type NaI(Tl) detector. The variation of radon absorption by the vials filled with charcoal with exposure time was also studied. A comparative study of the present technique with the standard technique of using 70 g charcoal canisters and flat NaI detector was also performed. After establishing the suitability of the technique, the charcoal vials were then used to investigate the effect of air-ventilation on the concentration levels of the indoor radon. Results show that there is a reduction in the radon concentration level (up to 25%) when the air-ventilation system was switched on. The paper presents the results of the study on the feasibility of combining small amounts of activated charcoal with a well-type NaI(Tl) detector in the measurement of indoor radon concentrations.


Long Period Variable stars are ubiquitous among the bright red giant branch stars in NGC 5128. Mostly they are found to be brighter than the tip of the first ascent giant branch with magnitudes ranging from about K = 19 to K = 21.5. They have periods between 155 and 1000 days and K-band amplitudes between 0.1 and 2 mag, characteristic of semi-regular and Mira variables. We compare the colors, periods and amplitudes of these variables with those found in old stellar populations like Galactic globular clusters and Galactic bulge as well as with intermediate-age Magellanic Cloud long period variables. The population of stars above the tip of the red giant branch (RGB) amounts to 2176 stars in the outer halo field (Field 1) and 6072 stars in the inner halo field (Field 2). The comparison of the luminosity functions of the Galactic bulge, M 31 bulge and NGC 5128 halo fields shows an excess of bright AGB stars extending to M K ≃ -8.65. The large majority of these sources belong to the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) population in NGC 5128. Subtracting the foreground Galactic stars and probable blends, at least 26% and 70% of AGB stars are variable in Fields 1 and 2, respectively. The average period of NGC 5128 LPVs is 395 days and the average amplitude 0.77 mag. Many more short period Miras are present in Field 2 than in Field 1 indicating a difference in the stellar populations between the two fields. Period and amplitude distributions and near-IR colors of the majority of LPVs in NGC 5128 are similar to the Galactic bulge variables. However, some 10% of LPVs have periods longer than 500 days and thus probably more massive, hence younger, progenitor stars. A few carbon star candidates are identified based on their red J - H and H - K colors.


A passive resonance mitigation technique is proposed for multidrop memory interfaces. In this method, coupled transmission lines are used to prevent destructive signal resonance caused by signal reflection from the capacitive loads and mismatches in the channel. The proposed idea is verified in a simple experimental setup that roughly models a multi-Dual In-Line Memory Module system, and measurement results are provided.


Air conditioner is an equipment which is      present in most buildings around the world, either serving to provide greater thermal comfort to its users, or as part of industrial processes. This equipment while in operation produces water from the condensation of the air in contact with its coil, which has the potential to be used for non-potable purposes       within the buildings. This study aims to evaluate the quality of condensate water from air conditioners for non-potable purposes. Water collection was carried out in the water harvesting system of a hospital type building located in the city of Recife-PE, Brazil. The applied methodology analyzed the physicochemical parameters that include: pH, color, odor, turbidity, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, alkalinities, total hardness, carbonate hardness, non-carbonate hardness, chloride, sulfate, carbonate, bicarbonate, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, total iron, manganese and, in the microbiological analysis, the presence of coliforms. In addition, the applied methodology       compared the results of this and other studies found with the same theme, with the maximum limits provided for in Ordinance No. 888/2021 of the Ministry of Health of Brazil. The results showed an excellent quality of the condensate water, approaching in most parameters of      drinking water, and thus, it can be used for non-potable purposes       such as: garden irrigation, floor washing, replacement in cooling towers, among others.