Offshore excavators are large hydraulically driven machines which are difficult to control due to slow dynamics, inherent nonlinearities, a varying environment and complex kinematics. As digging is performed under water, only limited visual feedback of the task can be provided by means of a visualization interface. Operators require an extensive amount of practice before being capable of achieving sufficient and consistent performance. Often, automation is implemented as a means of reducing costs related to expensive operators and attaining consistent performance. However, automation struggles with adapting to unforeseen situations and a large task variety, which are areas human operators excel in. Instead of attempting to fully automate excavators, this thesis takes a more human-centered approach, and focuses on the design and evaluation of a human-like controller to partially automate excavator operations, while assuming a human operator is still present to trade or share control with. In order to simultaneously deal with the various nonlinearities in the system while providing human-like control this work proposes the use of an Adaptive Model Predictive Controller, whose underlying principles are similar to those of humans.To determine whether the controller is indeed human-like a complex excavator model including a realistic soil model was developed and used to implement and tune the controller. Finally, a simulator experiment was conducted to compare the subjects and the controller in terms of performance for various tasks and the control behavior similarity for a well-trained task. Eight subjects controlled the excavator model and performed four stages, starting with a familiarization stage in which the subject got accustomed to the system. The other three stages (easy, difficult, boulder) featured a 9 m long target path, with conditions of varying difficulty between stages. The controller showed 2 to 3 times lower tracking errors for both the easy and difficult stage while providing 1.5 to 5 times smoother inputs, but could not overcome the unforeseen boulder whereas all subjects could, showcasing the importance of having humans and automation complement each other. Furthermore, a high quality fit (VAF g 70%) was found between the boom inputs of the subjects and the controller in the well-trained easy stage, indicating human-like control.


This paper discusses a hierarchical scheduling framework to reduce the complexity of scheduling synchronous dataflow (SDF) graphs onto multiple processors. The core of this framework is a clustering algorithm that reduces the number of nodes before expanding the SDF graph into a precedence DAG (directed acyclic graph). The internals of the clusters are then scheduled with uniprocessor SDF schedulers which can optimize for memory usage. The clustering is done in such a manner as to leave ample parallelism exposed for the multiprocessor scheduler. The advantages of this framework are demonstrated with several practical, real-time examples.


ABSTRACT SAGA, a recently described protein complex in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is important for transcription in vivo and possesses histone acetylation function. Here we report both biochemical and genetic analyses of members of three classes of transcription regulatory factors contained within the SAGA complex. We demonstrate a correlation between the phenotypic severity of SAGA mutants and SAGA structural integrity. Specifically, null mutations in the Gcn5/Ada2/Ada3 or Spt3/Spt8 classes cause moderate phenotypes and subtle structural alterations, while mutations in a third subgroup, Spt7/Spt20, as well as Ada1, disrupt the complex and cause severe phenotypes. Interestingly, double mutants (gcn5Δ spt3Δand gcn5Δ spt8Δ) causing loss of a member of each of the moderate classes have severe phenotypes, similar tospt7Δ, spt20Δ, or ada1Δmutants. In addition, we have investigated biochemical functions suggested by the moderate phenotypic classes and find that first, normal nucleosomal acetylation by SAGA requires a specific domain of Gcn5, termed the bromodomain. Deletion of this domain also causes specific transcriptional defects at the HIS3 promoter in vivo. Second, SAGA interacts with TBP, the TATA-binding protein, and this interaction requires Spt8 in vitro. Overall, our data demonstrate that SAGA harbors multiple, distinct transcription-related functions, including direct TBP interaction and nucleosomal histone acetylation. Loss of either of these causes slight impairment in vivo, but loss of both is highly detrimental to growth and transcription.


Recently accumulated data provide insight into some generally accepted models of mitochondrial genome. Here brief review of the new data is presented.


Background The optimal histological confirmation rate (HCR) for lung cancer is unknown. However, in the UK, an arbitrary figure of 75% has been recommended by the National Lung Cancer Audit (NLCA) as a benchmark. The aim of this study was to quantify the effect of patient features on the likelihood of having a histological diagnosis of lung cancer. Methods Individuals with a diagnosis of lung cancer were selected from the NLCA database from between 01/01/2004 and 31/12/2010. Percentage and odd ratios with 95% confidence interval were calculated to assess the proportion of patients having histology. Results Our study included a total of 127,099 individuals with NSCLC. HCR for NSCLC in the NLCA was found to be 66.8%. This however was increasing from 62.2% in 2007 to 72.3% in 2010. The histology in patients aged 75 years and CI of 0 and PS of 4. Increasing age and worsening PS were also associated with a reduced odds ratio, whilst stage and CI had little effect on the likelihood of having proven histology. Individuals from least affluent areas were 23% less likely (adj OR 0.77, 95% CI 0.74 to 0.81, p Conclusion HCR is crucial in determining the appropriate treatment plan for every patient, especially with the advent of targeted therapies. Our results also show that there is a difference in the histological rate in the sub groups of patients. Therefore achieving 75% HCR in the total population is unreasonable and it should focus on different attainable HCR in sub group of patients.


Loss of WRN causes the genomic instability progeroid syndrome, Werner syndrome. WRN encodes a multifunctional nuclear protein with 3'-->5' exonuclease and 3'-->5' helicase activities. Linear plasmids with noncompatible ends introduced to Werner syndrome cells underwent extensive deletions at nonhomologous joining ends, particularly at the 3' protruding single-stranded end. This extensive deletion phenotype was complemented by wild-type WRN. These results suggest that WRN can out-compete other exonucleases that participate in double-strand break repair or stabilize the broken DNA end.


Single-atom catalysts (SACs), in which the metal active sites are isolated on the support and stabilized by coordinated atoms such as oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, etc., represent the maximum usage efficiency of the metal atoms. Benefiting from the recent progress in synthetic strategies, characterization methods, and computational models, many SACs that deliver an impressive catalytic performance for a variety of reactions have been developed. The catalytic selectivity and activity are critical issues that need to be optimized and augmented in the areas of nanotechnology and biomedicine. This review summarizes some recent experimental and theoretical progress aimed at clarifying the structure of SACs and how they influence the catalytic performance. The examples described here elaborate on the utility of SACs and highlight the strengths of these catalysts in the applications of biomedicine, environmental protection, and energy conversion. Finally, some current challenges and future perspectives for SACs are also discussed.


Marine polyether toxins, mainly produced by marine dinoflagellates, are novel, complex, and diverse natural products with extensive toxicological and pharmacological effects. Owing to their harmful effects during outbreaks of marine red tides, as well as their potential value for the development of new drugs, marine polyether toxins have been extensively studied, in terms of toxicology, pharmacology, detection, and analysis, structural identification, as well as their biosynthetic mechanisms. Although the biosynthetic mechanisms of marine polyether toxins are still unclear, certain progress has been made. In this review, research progress and current knowledge on the biosynthetic mechanisms of polyether toxins are summarized, including the mechanisms of carbon skeleton deletion, pendant alkylation, and polyether ring formation, along with providing a summary of mined biosynthesis-related genes. Finally, future research directions and applications of marine polyether toxins are discussed.


In an attempt to determine whether or not the blindspot of Mariotte as represented on the standard campimeter chart is appropriate for studies with minute test objects, such as those used in angioscotometry, it was decided to analyze a series of 100 blindspots of "normal" subjects. This seemed particularly necessary because of the great variation in the technics employed by previous workers 1 whose figures have been used as standards for the location and dimension of the blindspot on standard instruments, such as the tangent screen, the campimeter and the stereocampimeter. The material studied was obtained by permission of Dr. John N. Evans 2 and was selected from the records of his private patients. Only those subjects were accepted who had undergone a careful general physical and ophthalmic review and who showed no evidence of nephritis, arteriosclerosis, sinal disease, myopia, tumor of the brain, optic neuritis, medullated nerve fibers, etc.


Short-chain esters play a significant role in the food industry as flavor and aroma constituents. Candida antarctica lipase B (CALB) is one of the most effective catalysts for organic synthesis. We constructed a CALB-displaying yeast whole-cell biocatalyst and applied it to esterification from caproic acid and ethanol. CALB was fused with the alpha-agglutinin C-terminal and the signal peptide of Glucoamylase in pICAS, a yeast surface display vector, to construct plasmid pICAS-CALB. An extremely Asn-rich linker, named celAL was inserted in the Xho I of pICAS-CALB to construct plasmid pICAS-celAL-CALB. The fused gene was under the control of GAPDH promoter. After incubated at 30 degrees C for 96 h the lipase hydrolytic activity of the yeast whole cells reached a plateau, 26.26 u/(g x dry cell). In nonaqeous media, the yield of 98.0% ethyl hexanoate was obtained after 24 h esterification from caproic acid and ethanol (the molar ratio of caproic acid : ethanol = 1 : 1.25) using lyophilized CALB displaying yeast whole cells.


Abstract GNSS systems are currently the basic tools for determination of the highest precision station coordinates (e.g. basic control network stations or stations used in the networks for geodynamic studies) as well as for land, maritime and air navigation. All of these tasks are carried out using active, large scale, satellite geodetic networks which are complex, intelligent teleinformatic systems offering post processing services along with corrections delivered in real-time for kinematic measurements. Many countries in the world, also in Europe, have built their own multifunctional networks and enhance them with their own GNSS augmentation systems. Nowadays however, in the era of international integration, there is a necessity to consider collective actions in order to build a unified system, covering e.g. the whole Europe or at least some of its regions. Such actions have already been undertaken in many regions of the world. In Europe such an example is the development for EUPOS which consists of active national networks built in central eastern European countries. So far experience and research show, that the critical areas for connecting these networks are border areas, in which the positioning accuracy decreases (Krzeszowski and Bosy, 2011). This study attempts to evaluate the border area compatibility of Polish ASG-EUPOS (European Position Determination System) reference stations and Ukrainian GeoTerrace system reference stations in the context of their future incorporation into the EUPOS. The two networks analyzed in work feature similar hardware parameters. In the ASG-EUPOS reference stations network, during the analyzed period, 2 stations (WLDW and CHEL) used only one system (GPS), while, in the GeoTerrace network, all the stations were equipped with both GPS and GLONASS receivers. The ASG EUPOS reference station network (95.6%) has its average completeness greater by about 6% when compared to the GeoTerrace network (89.8%).


Ukrainian-born Yankev Leshchinsky (1876–1966) was the leading scholarly and journalistic analyst of Eastern European Jewish socioeconomic and political life from the 1920s to the 1950s. Known as "the dean of Jewish sociologists" and "the father of Jewish demography," Leshchinsky published a series of insightful and moving essays in Yiddish on Polish Jewry between 1927 and 1937. Despite heightened interest in interwar Jewish communities in Poland in recent years, these essays (like most of Leshchinsky's works) have never been translated into English.
 The Last Years of Polish Jewry helps to rectify this situation by translating some of Leshchinsky's key essays. A thoughtful Introduction by Robert Brym provides the context of the author's life and work.
 The essays in this volume, based on years of research and first-hand observation, focus on the period 1927–33. The rise of militant Polish nationalism and the ensuing anti-Jewish boycotts and pogroms; the increasing exclusion of Jews from government employment and the universities; the destitution, hunger, suicide, and efforts to emigrate that characterized Jewish life; the psychological toll taken by mass uncertainty and hopelessness—all this falls within the author's ambit. There is no work in English that comes close to the range and depth of Leshchinsky's essays on the last years of the three million Polish Jews who were to perish at the hand of the Nazi regime.
 This book will be of interest to researchers and students of Eastern European history and society, especially those with an interest in Eastern Europe's Jewish communities on the brink of the Holocaust.


This paper presents the first evidence of how students make career technical education (CTE) course-taking decisions. Among the universe of Michigan high-schoolers we find large disparities in CTE access and participation by gender, race, and income. We decompose participation gaps between supply (access) and demand (preferences) with a simple discrete choice model. We find that student preferences for CTE content drive participation gaps by gender, inequities in access drive gaps by income, and school-level supply and demand factors combine to create the gaps by race. Policy simulations highlight the importance of accessible CTE delivery models within comprehensive high schools. JEL Codes: I21, J24, I24 *We thank Katia Garcia Cordoba, Jeremy Guardiola and Nathan Sotherland for excellent research assistance. We thank Jill Kroll, Brian Pyles and others at the Michigan Department of Education Office of Career and Technical Education for their invaluable advice and support. The project received approval from the University of Michigan's Institutional Review Board: HUM00104615. This research used data structured and maintained by the MERI-Michigan Education Data Center (MEDC). MEDC data are modified for analysis purposes using rules governed by MEDC and are not identical to those data collected and maintained by the Michigan Department of Education and/or Michigan's Center for Educational Performance and Information. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of any other entity. †University of Michigan & NBER (firstname.lastname@example.com) ‡National Bureau of Economic Research (firstname.lastname@example.com)


One major problem in performing randomised trials is difficulty in recruiting participants owing to their preference for a particular treatment. One solution is to undertake a partially randomised patient preference trial, where participants may receive the treatment they wish, their results still being analysed but separately from those who agree to random allocation of their treatment. Peter Brocklehurst (pages 1332-1335) reminds us that the advantage of involvement of women in decisions concerning their treatment is greater motivation which will result in a better outcome, especially if this is a measure of satisfaction, while women who have treatments forced upon them by randomisation may be less motivated; the overall result of a patient preference trial may therefore be more general to routine clinical practice. There are however significant disadvantages: because of systematic differences in the women when enrolled to the trial the results are difficult to interpret, especially if there is a much greater preference for one treatment; and more women may be included in the preference arms to the trial than actually receive their treatment by random allocation, which will require greater resources in order to lengthen the trial. Kevin Cooper and his colleagues (pages 1367-1373) address some of these problems, by performing the first randomised trial of a partially randomised patient preference trial compared with a conventional randomised trial, in the context of the treatment of excessive menstruation. The results are partly reassuring, for being allowed a preference did not diminish the number of women who accepted their treatment by random allocation; a similar number of women who expressed a preference chose either treatment; and the duration of the trial was not increased. However the results were more difficult to interpret owing to systematic differences in the women who chose their treatment, and more women were required for the trial which involved significant extra cost. The authors conclude that, in the context of treating excessive menstruation, the information from their partially randomised patient preference trial did not justify the extra effort. Peter Brocklehurst concludes that further research is required of the effects of patient preference on the outcome of randomised trials.


This brief describes methods based on time-delay feedback (TDF) for bifurcation control of nonlinear models of chaotic cardiac activity. We describe a nonlinear bifurcation controller that makes use of a feedback reference signal and a linear autoregressive formulation for the gain. This controller is effective at stabilizing two diverse cardiac maps to a variety of periodic orbits. We contrast our approach with the OGY method which has been used to control some chaotic biological processes and recently, some nonchaotic, stochastic ones.


Objective. To analyze complications developing during multistage correction of early severe spinal deformities of various etiologies using VEPTR instrumentation. Materials and Methods. The study included prospective group of 76 patients treated for early-onset scoliosis (EOS) with the VEPTR and VEPTR II instrumentation. Patients were classified using a randomized Classification of Early-Onset Scoliosis (C-EOS) system. In accordance with scoliosis etiology the cases were distributed as follows: 28 idiopathic, 26  congenital, 20 syndromic, and 2 neuromuscular scoliosis cases; and ratio of boys to girls was 32 : 44. The average age at the beginning of treatment was 5.4 ± 2.1 (1.6 to 9.8) years. The average follow-up period since the first stage was 2.2 (2 to 2.5) years. Results. Twenty three complications were revealed in 15 (19.7 %) patients. According to the C-EOS system, the patients with complications were referred to normo- and hyperkyphotic groups. The most common complication was migration of the cranial point of implant fixation. Most complications were eliminated during the planned stage of deformity correction. In two cases, the complication resulted in cessation of the VEPTR technique using. Conclusions. The use of VEPTR instrumentation for the treatment of EOS is associated with a rather high risk of complications. This is most likely in patients with normokyphotic and hyperkyphotic deformities. Most complications are eliminated during stage correction. The need to abandon the further use of the VEPTR instrumentation is rare.


Of the several causes of nondiarrheal hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae is infrequent, but important, because of its unique pathogenesis. A comprehensive literature review found 37 well-documented cases of S pneumoniae-associated HUS (SP-HUS), only 2 of which progressed to end-stage renal disease (ESRD). We report the third such child, and the first to receive a renal transplant following SP-HUS. Her course illustrates several unique characteristics of SP-HUS common to previous patients reported in the literature, including a greater duration of oligoanuria compared with cases not progressing to ESRD, the significant adverse effect of unwashed blood products, and a possible influence of female gender on outcome. Clinicians caring for children with SP-HUS should be aware of these differences and modify therapy appropriately to avoid known risk factors for poor outcome, specifically the use of unwashed blood products.


Weyl conformal geometry may play a role in early cosmology where effective theory at short distances becomes conformal. Weyl conformal geometry also has a built-in geometric Stueckelberg mechanism: it is broken spontaneously to Riemannian geometry after a Weyl gauge transformation (of "gauge fixing") while Stueckelberg mechanism re-arranges the degrees of freedom, conserving their number ($n_{df}$). The Weyl gauge field ($\omega_\mu$) of local scale transformations acquires a mass after absorbing a compensator (dilaton), decouples, and Weyl connection becomes Riemannian. Mass generation has thus a dynamic origin, as a transition from Weyl to Riemannian geometry. We show that a "gauge fixing" symmetry transformation of the original Weyl quadratic gravity action in its Weyl geometry formulation immediately gives the Einstein-Proca action for the Weyl gauge field and a positive cosmological constant, plus matter action (if present). As a result, the Planck scale is an {\it emergent} scale, where Weyl gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken and Einstein action is the broken phase of Weyl action. This is in contrast to local scale invariant models (no gauging) where a negative kinetic term (ghost dilaton) remains present and $n_{df}$ is not conserved when this symmetry is broken. The mass of $\omega_\mu$, setting the non-metricity scale, can be much smaller than $M_\text{Planck}$, for ultraweak values of the coupling ($q$). If matter is present, a positive contribution to the Planck scale from a scalar field ($\phi_1$) vev induces a negative (mass)$^2$ term for $\phi_1$ and spontaneous breaking of the symmetry under which it is charged. These results are immediate when using a Weyl geometry formulation of an action instead of its Riemannian picture. Briefly, Weyl gauge symmetry is physically relevant and its role in high scale physics should be reconsidered.


Aim: To assess the importance of continuity of care among diabetic patients attending a primary care clinic and to correlate degree of continuity of care with diabetic control.

Methods: A cross sectional survey was carried out among diabetic patients (n = 166) attending follow-up consultations in a family practice clinic of a teaching hospital. Face-to-face interviews were carried out on patients' perception of continuity of care and various aspects related to diabetes. Diabetic control was assessed by glycosylated hemoglobin. Retrospective chart audits of each patient over the previous 28 months were done to assess the degree of continuity of care, measured with the Usual Provider Continuity Index (UPCI).

Results: The UPCI ranged from 0.18 to 1.00 with a mean value of 0.60. The average number of visits per patient over the 28-month period was 11.7 visits. The majority of patients saw five different doctors for all their visits. There were no statistically significant associations between the degree of provider continuity with diabetic control (r = 0.054) and diabetic self-care behavior (r = 0.065). The majority of patients (89%) felt that it was important to have a regular doctor. The main reason given was that a regular doctor would know the patient's problems.

Conclusions: Continuity of care was highly valued by diabetic patients attending a hospital-based family practice clinic. Even though the degree of continuity was not associated with the degree of diabetic control, patients felt that it was important to have doctors who are aware of their problems.

2003 Blackwell Publishing Asia and Wonca


In temperate rainforests on Chiloe Island in southern Chile (42°S), most canopy trees bear fleshy, avian-dispersed propagules, whereas emergent tree species have dry, wind-borne propagules. In the present study, the following hypothesis was tested: regardless of species, fleshy propagules are deposited in greater numbers in canopy gaps and in forest margins and hence have a more heterogeneous seed shadow than wind-dispersed propa- gules. To test this hypothesis, the seed rains of these two types of propagules were compared in the following forest habitats: (i) tree-fall gaps (edges and centre); (ii) forest margins with adjacent pastures; and (iii) under closed canopy (forest interior). Seed collectors (30-cm diameter) were placed in two (15 and 100 ha) remnant forest patches (n � 60-100 seed collectors per patch) distributed in the four habitats. Seeds were retrieved monthly from each collector during two reproductive seasons (1996, 1997). In both years, the seed rain was numerically dom- inated by two species with dry propagules (Laureliopsis philippiana and Nothofagus nitida) and three species with fleshy fruits (Drimys winteri, Amomyrtus luma, and Amomyrtus meli). The seed shadows of the two species with dry, wind-dispersed seeds differed markedly. Seeds of L. philippiana were deposited predominantly in canopy openings, whereas N. nitida seeds fell almost entirely in the forest interior. The fleshy-fruited species, Drimys and Amomyrtus spp., had similar seed deposition patterns in the various habitats studied, but the between-year differences in seed rain were greater in Drimys winteri than in Amomyrtus spp. Although no more than 10% of fleshy-fruited propag- ules reached the margins of the patch, approximately 7% of these were carried there by birds. Every year, canopy gaps (pooling data from edges and centres) concentrated approximately 60% of the total seed rain of both propag- ule types in both forest patches. Forest margins received less than 20% of the total seed rain, which was largely dominated by fleshy-fruited species. Seed shadows were a species-specific attribute rather than a trait associated with propagule type and dispersal mode.


Social and cultural conditions (including U.S. border and inland influence, role models within the family, and educational background) which affect locus of control and achievement motivation among Mexican entrepreneurs were explored among 64 selected entrepreneurs in two Mexican towns, one on the Mexico-U.S. border, the other located inland. Analyses showed that the border subsample scored higher on External locus of control; however, in both subsamples the father was an important element in the locus of control variable and the entrepreneur status. No statistically significant mean difference was noted for achievement motivation. Practical applications and limitations are discussed.


As Sal makes her journey throughout the United States in Walk Two Moons, many interesting images and topics are discovered. Here are a few...


Computerized moving-image analysis was used to determine movement behavior of individual German cockroach, Blattella germanica (L.), nymphs (second and fifth instars) between food, water, and harborage resource sites. Both second and fifth instars (n = 10) were examined for the entire nymphal stadium, during which a 12:12 (L:D) photoperiod was maintained. In addition, corresponding resource consumption rates for these nymphal stages also were determined. Both nymphal stages exhibited a pattern of high activity for the first half of the nymphal stadium, especially during each scotophase. For the last third of the stadium, the nymphs remained continuously in the harborage, moved very little, and consumed little or no resources. We discuss implications of these findings regarding control, future research, and possible hormonal behavior regulation.


This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the Parallel Iterative Matching (PIM)'s dynamics with multiple iterations used in an input-buffered packet switch. In the past, the formulation on the switching performance was derived by using the Stirling number of the Second Kind, which is a summary the number of different matches under traffic with uniform distribution. However, when traffic has a different ditributions, the frequency of the different matching patterns in PIM can be used to determine the maximum achievable throughput. Therefore, it is of interest to analyze PIM's behavior with multiple iterations by identifying the contribution of the different matching states so a variety of traffic conditions can be considered. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the matching patterns and how they are used to formulate the throughput of PIM with multiple iterations. In our approach, by carefully categorizing all unmatched patterns into several representative patterns after each iteration, probabilities of accumulated matched pairs in a recursive manner are successfully obtained. Numerical evaluation of the analytical formulas are performed.


Purpose: To examine ocular findings in Japanese patients with varicella, herpes zoster ophthalmicus, and acute retinal necrosis. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted. Information on the ocular, cutaneous, systemic, and virologic findings on pediatric and adult patients was obtained from medical records. Results: A total of 77 (45 male and 32 female) patients were enrolled in the study: 4 children had varicella, 68 adults had herpes zoster ophthalmicus, and 5 adults had acute retinal necrosis. Children with varicella had eruptions on the eyelid. Patients with herpes zoster ophthalmicus had eruptions, conjunctivitis, keratitis, iridocyclitis, and other findings. Patients with acute retinal necrosis had intracameral cells and retinal lesions. Some patients with herpes zoster ophthalmicus had malignancy, type 2 diabetes mellitus, or other disease. One pregnant woman developed acute retinal necrosis shortly after varicella infection. A total of 48% of patients with negative Hutchinson sign had ocular lesions, while all patients with positive sign showed ocular lesions. Patients with varicella and herpes zoster ophthalmicus had good visual acuity at the last visit. Some patients with acute retinal necrosis had poor visual acuity at the last visit. Conclusions: Patients with varicella, herpes zoster ophthalmicus, and acute retinal necrosis had several ocular complications. Some patients with acute retinal necrosis had poor visual outcomes. Ophthalmologists should be aware that acute retinal necrosis may develop shortly after varicella infection.


Mahr,which is derived from Islamic Law, is a legal instrument for the benefit of the female spouses in Islamic family law. Therefore the subject, the upper and lower limits of the Mahr, kinds of Mahr (such as mehr-i müeccel and mehr-i muaccel, mehr-i misil and mehr-i müsamma) have a specific significance in its original system. According to the doctrine of Turkish positive law, the legal nature of the Mahr has been determined as "a promise to make a gift (donation)" or "a compensation derived from divorce". The General Assembly on the Unification on the Judgements of the Court of Cassation used a simple contract approach to resolve a dispute over Mahr and accepted the claims to mahr in 1959. As a result of this approach, the number of post-divorce disputes has increased and the fair balance based on equality between the spouses in Turkish civil law has disturbed. Also, the solutions achieved by this approach do not correspond with Mahr's original meaning in Islamic law. Some disputes which the court of Cassation identifed as a Mahr, can not be described as a Mahr in accordance with Islamic law. It is thought that in every legal system, family law constitutes an entity with its own legal instruments which ensure justice between the spouses. Therefore, Mahr should not be a matter of dispute in Turkish positive legal system. In our opinion, the ideal solution for this is to regulate Mahr as a natural obligation in Turkish Civil Law. This kind of provision will neither give harm to the fair balance betweeen the spouses nor increase the number of post divorce disputes. On the other hand it will lead spouses to mehr-i muaccel which is not contrary to Islamic law.


The infrared (IR) gas sensing technique is excellent for CO2 gas detection systems that require high accuracy and safety standard; however, there is a significant barrier to its application due to its high cost and difficulty in miniaturization. CO2 sensors that are functional within near- or short-wavelength IR have the potential to reduce this barrier. In this work, a highly sensitive plasmonic material based on nanostructured covellite copper sulfide (CuS), which exhibits desired localized surface plasmon resonance for surface-enhanced IR absorption (SEIRA) throughout near- and mid-IR ranges, was investigated. We prepared CuS thin films facilely in an additive manner based on a spatial successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction process at room temperature. The resulting CuS thin film possesses a structure consisting of hexagonal nanoflakes, and demonstrates significant SEIRA for 100 ppm CO2 with an enhancement factor of 104.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the displacement of Biodentine™ following cementation of stainless steel crowns (SSC) with glass-ionomer cement (GIC) on plastic deciduous teeth prepared for pulpotomy.

METHODS
Twenty plastic teeth with prepared occlusal cavities were divided into four groups and had Biodentine™ placed as a mock pulpotomy agent. The pulp chamber was filled with freshly mixed Biodentine™ then a GIC-loaded SSC was seated on the tooth using a standardized seating force for periods of: 1 min (Group 1); 2 min (Group 2), 3 min (Group 3) and 6 min (Group 4) after mixing. After 24 h at 37°C and 90% humidity, the crowns were sectioned mesio-distally and standardized digital photographs taken. Image analysis software was used to determine the ratio of the surface area of displaced Biodentine™ relative to the surface area of the pulp chamber. The thinnest section of the remaining Biodentine™ was measured.

RESULTS
The lowest values of Biodentine™ displacement and the highest values of remaining Biodentine™ thickness were associated with Group 4. There were no significant differences between the results in Group 3 and Group 4.

CONCLUSION
Within the limitations of this in vitro study, a GIC-loaded SSC can be seated on Biodentine™ placed into a pulp chamber 3 min after mixing.


This paper presents the results of the first Spanish field trial carried out to analyze a DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) system in the medium-wave band. A 4-kW average power omni directional ground-wave experimental DRM transmission at a frequency of 1359 kHz was surveyed by means of a measurement vehicle for fixed and mobile reception. Several radial routes starting from the transmitter site provided rural and suburban behavior features of the system. Urban reception trials were performed in several dense and open streets of Madrid, within the expected coverage area. Field strength threshold values were determined for the tested transmission configurations and compared with the AM ground-wave ITU model predictions. Reliability versus distance from the transmitter is stated in this paper for different transmission configurations and the causes of dropouts for different reception conditions are explained. This analysis took into account subjective quality features of each configuration, providing practical planning parameter values.


The synthesis and physicochemical characterization of a novel family of 'crowned-porphyrins' is presented. The compounds uniquely possess a 5,15-di(2-alkylamidophenyl)etioporphyrin bis-linked to the nitrogens on opposite sides of a 1,4,10,13-tetraoxa-7,16-diazacyclooctadecane moiety. The size of the cavity in between the porphyrin and the diaza-18-crown-6 ring has been regulated by varying the length of the alkylamido linking units. The structures of 5 and 7 bear diacetamido linkers whereas 6 is linked via dipropionamido groups. The synthetic pathway presented is generalized such that a wide variety of useful porphyrin-based bis-macrocycles can be prepared. Products have been fully characterized by elemental analysis, mass spectrometry, spectrophotometry, 1H NMR, 13C NMR and 1H–13C heteronuclear correlation NMR spectroscopies. X-Ray structural data are presented for the free-base porphyrin 6 and the ZnII porphyrin 7. The structural data confirm that the porphyrins and their diaza-18-crown-6 substituents adopt cofacial orientations. The size of the cavity between the macrocycles, while demonstrated to accommodate small molecules as shown by the binding of H2O as an axial ligand to the central ZnII ion in the crystal structure of 7, will probably not accommodate large ligands or substrates. Moreover, these compounds should allow sequential metallations to yield heterobimetallic species. Therefore, they are ideally suited for study as model systems for biologically important heme-dependent phenomena such as xenon-129 binding to myoglobin or the mimicking of processes related to the structure and function of cytochrome c oxidase.


A labeling of a
 graph is a map that carries graph elements to the numbers (usually
 positive or non-negative integers). The most common choices of
 domain are the set of all vertices (vertex labelings), the edge set
 alone (edge labelings), or the set of all vertices and edges (total
 labelings).
 In many cases, it is interesting to consider the sum of all labels
 associated with a graph element. It is called the weight of the
 element: the weight of a vertex or the weight of an edge.
 In this thesis, we consider a total k-labeling as a labeling of the
 vertices and edges of graph G with labels from the set f1; 2; : : :
 ; kg. A total k-labeling is de ned to be an edge irregular total
 k-labeling of the graph G if edge-weights are di erent for all pairs
 of distinct edges and to be a vertex irregular total k-labeling of G
 if vertex-weights are di erent for all pairs of distinct vertices.
 The minimum value of k for which the graph G has an edge irregular
 total k- labeling is called the total edge irregularity strength of
 the graph G, tes(G). Analogously, the total vertex irregularity
 strength of G, tvs(G), is de ned as the minimum k for which there
 exists a vertex irregular total k-labeling of G. In this thesis, we
 present new results on the total edge irregularity strength and the
 total vertex irregularity strength.


The organism Geotrichum candidum tolerated 1 to 10 ppm of BHC in culture media. The culture filtrate degraded pesticide starting from 4h (23.9%) and reaching maximum of 37.2 and 37.3% after 8h and 12h respectively. Precipitation of culture filtrate with 60–70% ammonium sulphate yielded the active crude enzyme, which degraded the pesticide, Maximum degradation of BHC i.e. 66.86% was achieved with the precipitated enzyme after 4h at 25°C, however no activity was observed at 37°C. The protein content of the precipitated enzyme was 8.5 mg/10 ml.


This paper examines why international students opt for their chosen study destination. It also investigates their behaviour as tourists while studying, whether they hosted visits from friends or relatives and their overall economic contribution. The sample consisted of 600 international students studying in higher education institutions in Melbourne, Australia of which 219 responded. A stratified random sampling method was used with the key variables identified as country of origin, gender and university attended. Key questions included: What were the factors that prompted students to study in Australia? How did they become familiar with destinations and tourist attractions during the course of their studies? What tourist attractions and activities were most popular? It was discovered that word-of-mouth was the most significant medium of communication in the selection of educational destination. Most travel undertaken during the period of enrolment was for private purposes. The most popular Melbourne attraction was the Queen Victoria Market and The Great Ocean Road was the most popular attraction statewide. The study also found that tourism related activities undertaken by overseas students contributed approximately A$8.2m to the economy of the state of Victoria. The figure more than doubles to approximately A$17.2m if the expenditures of visiting friends and relatives (VFRs) are included.


This dissertation presents an equilibrium framework for analyzing the impact of cap-and-trade regulation on transmission-constrained electricity market. The cap-and-trade regulation of greenhouse gas emissions has gained momentum in the past decade. The impact of the regulation and its efficacy in the electric power industry depend on interactions of demand elasticity, transmission network, market structure, and strategic behavior of firms. I develop an equilibrium model of an oligopoly electricity market in conjunction with a market for tradable emissions permits to study the implications of such interactions. My goal is to identify inefficiencies that may arise from policy design elements and to avoid any unintended adverse consequences on the electric power sector.I demonstrate this modeling framework with three case studies examining the impact of carbon cap-and-trade regulation. In the first case study, I study equilibrium results under various scenarios of resource ownership and emission targets using a 24-bus IEEE electric transmission system. The second and third case studies apply the equilibrium model to a realistic electricity market, Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) 225-bus system with a detailed representation of the California market. In the first and second case studies, I examine oligopoly in electricity with perfect competition in the permit market. I find that under a stringent emission cap and a high degree of concentration of non-polluting firms, the electricity market is subject to potential abuses of market power. Also, market power can occur in the procurement of non-polluting energy through the permit market when non-polluting resources are geographically concentrated in a transmission-constrained market.In the third case study, I relax the competitive market structure assumption of the permit market by allowing oligopolistic competition in the market through a conjectural variation approach. A short-term equilibrium analysis of the joint markets in the presence of market power reveals that strategic permit trading can play a vital role in determining economic outcomes in the electricity market. In particular, I find that a firm with more efficient technologies can employ strategic withholding of permits, which allows for its increase in output share in the electricity market at the expense of other less efficient firms. In addition, strategic permit trading can influence patterns of transmission congestion. These results illustrate that market structure and transmission congestion can have a significant impact on the market performance and environmental outcome of the regulation while the interactions of such factors can lead to unintended consequences. The proposed approach is proven useful as a tool for market monitoring purposes in the short run from the perspective of a system operator, whose responsibility has become indirectly intertwined with emission trading regulation.


Urbanization often entails a surge in urban temperature compared to the rural surroundings: the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Such a temperature increase triggers the formation of pollutants worsening the urban air quality. Jointly, bad air quality and UHI affect ecosystems and human health. To alleviate the impacts on the population and the environment, it is crucial to design effective UHI‐mitigation measures. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an assessment tool able to capture the complexity of urban settlements and quantify their impact. Yet, as currently implemented, LCA neglects the interactions between the built environment and the local climate, omitting the resulting impacts. This study reviews the existing literature, showing the lack of studies that organically include interactions between the built environment and local climate in LCA. This forms the basis to identify the unsuitability of the current LCA framework for comprehensively capturing the impact of urban settlements. To overcome this limitation, this research offers a pathway to expand the LCA methodology, indicating the necessity to (a) couple the LCA methodology with climate models or physical relations that quantify the interactions between the local climate and the built environment; (b) include novel impact categories in LCA to address such interactions; and (c) use existing or ad hoc developed characterization factors to assess the impacts related to the UHI effect. The LCA community can build on the frame of reference offered by this research to overcome the current limitations of LCA and enable its use for a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of UHI and its mitigation measures.


Background: At the University College Hospital Ibadan we have no facility for total surgical correction of transportation of the great arteries (TGA). This prospective study reviews the palliative procedures we have used in the management of TGA.
Method: Patients with the diagnosis of TGA were evaluated for morphological type. The choice of palliative procedure was made in some of the patients with morphological type in mind. No fixed criteria were used for allocating patients to Blalock-Hanlon (B-H), atrial septectomy while pulmonary banding (PB) and Blalock-Taussig (B-T) shunt have definite indications.
Results: Fourteen consecutive patients with TGA were palliated. The ages of these patients ranged between 3 to 11 months (6.8 ± 2.4 months), there were 8 males to 6 females (1.3:1). Six patients had B-H atrial septectomy and 2(33.3%) died within 48 hours, 4 patients had B-T shunt and there were no mortality, 4 patients had PB and 2 (50.0%) died within 72 hours. The overall operative mortality was 28.6%. All the 10 survivors had improvement of their clinical features and fall in packed cell volume during the period of follow-up, which lasted 5 to 13 months (mean 9.3 ± 1.2 months). All patients had delayed wound healing.
Conclusion: Appropriate and timely palliative surgery has a place in patients with TGA as an interim care. Key Words: Palliative surgery, transposition, great arteries Nigerian Journal of Surgical Research Vol.5(1&2) 2003: 129-133


A new image-based control strategy for visual servoing of a class of under-actuated rigid body systems is presented. The proposed control design applies to "eye-in-hand" systems where the camera is fixed to a rigid body with actuated dynamics. The control design is motivated by a theoretical analysis of the dynamic equations of motion of a rigid body and exploits passivity-like properties of these dynamics to derive a Lyapunov control algorithm using robust backstepping techniques. The proposed control is novel in considering the full dynamic system incorporating all degrees of freedom (albeit for a restricted class of dynamics) and in not requiring measurement of the relative depths of the observed image points. A motivating application is the stabilization of a scale model autonomous helicopter over a marked landing pad.


Well-written and eminently accessible, this book explores and celebrates the Upper Palaeolithic art of the Dordogne, admirably conveying the author's enthusiasm for her subject. Desdemaines-Hugon's text reads as a personalised guided tour to five famous sites, all of which are still open to the public: Font de Gaume, Combralles, Cap Blanc, Rouffignac and Bernifal. The descriptions are beautifully done, marrying the art with its setting, and portable and decorative arts are also covered, giving the reader a real feel for the sophistication of Cro-magnon culture, as well as insights as to its development.


Calibration of sensors is critical for the precise functioning of lidar–IMU systems. However, the accuracy of the system can be compromised if motion distortion is not considered. This study proposes a novel uncontrolled two-step iterative calibration algorithm that eliminates motion distortion and improves the accuracy of lidar–IMU systems. Initially, the algorithm corrects the distortion of rotational motion by matching the original inter-frame point cloud. Then, the point cloud is further matched with IMU after the prediction of attitude. The algorithm performs iterative motion distortion correction and rotation matrix calculation to obtain high-precision calibration results. In comparison with existing algorithms, the proposed algorithm boasts high accuracy, robustness, and efficiency. This high-precision calibration result can benefit a wide range of acquisition platforms, including handheld, unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), and backpack lidar–IMU systems.


Background and objectives: Data about pulmonologist adherence to the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) guidelines showed a great variability and cannot be extrapolated. The present study investigates the current pharmacological prescribing practices in the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) according to the 2017 GOLD guidelines, to determine the level of pulmonologist adherence and to identify possible factors that influence physician adherence. Materials and methods: This retrospective study took place between 1 February and 30 April 2018 in Pneumophtysiology Clinical Hospital Cluj-Napoca. We included 348 stable COPD outpatients classified according to the 2017 GOLD strategy in the ABCD risk groups. Pulmonologist adherence was defined as appropriate if the recommended pharmacological therapy was the first- or alternative-choice drug according to the guidelines, and inappropriate (overtreatment, undertreatment) if it was not in line with these recommendations. Results: The most prescribed treatment was the combination long-acting beta agonist (LABA) + long-acting antimuscarinic agent (LAMA) (34.77%), followed by LAMA + LABA + inhaled corticosteroid (ICS). Overall, pneumologist adherence was 79.02%. The most inappropriate therapies were in Group B (33.57%), followed by 33.33% in Group A. Compared to Groups C and D (analyzed together), Groups A and B had a 4.65 times higher chance (p = 0.0000001) of receiving an inappropriate therapy. Patients with cardiovascular comorbidities had a 1.89 times higher risk of receiving an inappropriate therapy (p = 0.021). ICS overprescription was the most common type of inappropriateness (17.81%). Groups C and D had a 3.12 times higher chance of being prescribed ICS compared to Groups A and B (p = 0.0000004). Conclusions: Pulmonologist adherence to the GOLD guidelines is not optimal and needs to be improved. Among the factors that influence the inappropriateness of COPD treatments, cardiovascular comorbidities and low-risk Groups A and B are important. ICS represent the most prescribed overtreatment. Further multicentric studies are needed to evaluate all factors that might influence the adherence rate.


Abstract In the wake of the interruption of the negotiations in mid-2017, this study aims to investigate and underline the reasons that led to the new failure in the Cyprus talks. Why did the negotiations collapse after a remarkable two-year effort? Who were the main protagonists in this fiasco? What were the main points of disagreement at the negotiations' table? What were the disputes in the fields of security and equality? What was the role of local society in the failure? This analysis attempts to answer the questions mentioned above by putting the official positions of the two sides and the related opinion articles and publications which have had an impact on the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot press, under its microscope.


In recent years, Taiwan has firmly committed itself to pursue the green energy transition and a nuclear-free homeland by 2025, with an increase in renewable energy from 5% in 2016 to 20% in 2025. Offshore wind power (OWP) has become a sustainable and scalable renewable energy source in Taiwan. Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) is a fundamental tool to organize the use of the ocean space by different and often conflicting multi-users within ecologically sustainable boundaries in the marine environment. MSP is capable of definitively driving the use of offshore renewable energy. Lessons from Germany and the UK revealed that MSP was crucial to the development of OWP. This paper aims to evaluate how MSP is able to accommodate the exploitation of OWP in Taiwan and contribute to the achievement of marine policy by proposing a set of recommendations. It concludes that MSP is emerging as a solution to be considered by government institutions to optimize the multiple use of the ocean space, reduce conflicts and make use of the environmental and economic synergies generated by the joint deployment of OWP facilities and fishing or aquaculture activities for the conservation and protection of marine environments.


Background Systemic lupus eyrthematosus can bge associated with antiphospholipid syndrome. Years ago our study team investigated the thrombotic risk factors and complications in 272 lupus patients with and without antiphospholipid antibodies. At baseline, three groups were created, an aPL- group with 107 aPL negative patients, an aPL+ group with 81 aPL positive patients without clinical manifestations and a secondary antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) group with 84 aPL+ patients who met the Sapporo criteria. Objectives The objective of this study was to investigate of new thrombotic events, SLE activity,.co-morbidities, and mortality in total of 272 lupus patients for ten years of follow up. Methods The above mentioned 272 patients with SLE registerered in the Division of Clinical Immunology, University of Debrecen have been followed up prospectively for ten years. Results A total of 28 out of the 272 patients were lost to follow up. A total of 22 new thrombotic complicatons occurred, two in the aPL negative group, three in the aPL+ group. New antiphospholipid antibodies appeared in these patients. 77.3% of the new thrombotic complicatins reoccurred in the APS group despite the adequat anticoagulant and/or anti-platlet therapy. SLE activity was the most common in the APL+ group but the difference was not significant. A total of 27 out of 84 APS (32%), 14 out of 81 aPL positive and 10 out of 107 aPL negative patients died during the follow up. The causes of death were thrombotic events or complications in 40.7% in patients with APS. Conclusions Our data confirm recurring thrombotic events in lupus patients with antiphospholipid syndrome. Antiphospholipid syndrome seems to negatively influence the survival of the patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. Disclosure of Interest None declared


Currently, 17 antidepressant drugs are available in Japan. They are certainly evaluated as effective drugs based on abundant clinical evidence. However, treatment outcome of mood disorders does not seem to tremendously advance despite the growing number of antidepressant drugs available in clinical practice. The current antidepressant drugs, including SSRIs and SNRI, have common shortcomings from several clinical standpoints, such as 1) efficacy rate remains at 60-70%, 2) lack of immediate onset of efficacy, 3) side effects, 4) no pleasant effect, and 5) difficult prediction of efficacy for each drug. These problems are largely due to a fact that their prototypes are common. New strategy for development of antidepressants is expected.


Rats were treated with triton, dextran, silver and iron. The lysosomal fractions from their livers were isolated and the lipids analysed. (MAG)2P could be detected in every phospholipid fraction, accounting for 6-28 per cent of the total lipid phosphorus. The composition of the fatty acids from this acidic glycerophospholipid shows an extraordinarily high amount of polyenoic fatty acids (58-82 per cent of the total), of which docosahexaenoic acid is a main compound.


Searching on bipartite graphs is basal and versatile to many real-world Web applications, e.g., online recommendation, database retrieval, and query-document searching. Given a query node, the conventional approaches rely on the similarity matching with the vectorized node embeddings in the continuous Euclidean space. To efficiently manage intensive similarity computation, developing hashing techniques for graph-structured data has recently become an emerging research direction. Despite the retrieval efficiency in Hamming space, prior work is however confronted with catastrophic performance decay. In this work, we investigate the problem of hashing with Graph Convolutional Network on bipartite graphs for effective Top-N search. We propose an end-to-end Bipartite Graph Convolutional Hashing approach, namely BGCH, which consists of three novel and effective modules: (1) adaptive graph convolutional hashing, (2) latent feature dispersion, and (3) Fourier serialized gradient estimation. Specifically, the former two modules achieve the substantial retention of the structural information against the inevitable information loss in hash encoding; the last module develops Fourier Series decomposition to the hashing function in the frequency domain mainly for more accurate gradient estimation. The extensive experiments on six real-world datasets not only show the performance superiority over the competing hashing-based counterparts, but also demonstrate the effectiveness of all proposed model components contained therein.


ABSTRACT Introduction: The gastrointestinal system is frequently affected in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM). Some of these alterations are due to oxidative stress and the production of free radicals. The present study was designed to evaluate whether treatment with superoxide dismutase (SOD) exerts protection on established bowel alterations in experimental diabetes mellitus induced by streptozotocin. We measured the lipid peroxidation, the superoxide dismutase activity and the DNA damage. Materials and Methods: We used the anorectal pressure to evaluate the nitrosative stress and used an inflammatory score to measure the macroscopic and microscopic bowel alterations. Results: The oxidative stress and the DNA damage was elevated in DM group and reduced with the SOD administration. The use of SOD also ameliorates the inflammatory bowel alterations and the anorectal pressure. Conclusion: SOD administration showed beneficial effects in all parameters of large bowel alterations in DM rats.


[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the lumbar stability exercise on the range of motion (ROM) and height difference of the shoulder and to provide basic data to prevent musculoskeletal disorders for improvement of the quality of life of older adults. [Participants and Methods] Twenty older adults without musculoskeletal problems were divided into the lumbar stability exercise group and the passive upper arm exercise group and performed exercise for 30 minutes, 3 times a week for 5 weeks. The shoulder flexion, abduction, extension, and height difference between shoulders were measured. A paired t-test was applied for comparative analysis of data before and after exercise in both groups. [Results] In the lumbar stability exercise group, the shoulder flexion, abduction and height difference were significantly different. In the passive upper arm exercise group, the abduction was significantly different. [Conclusion] Since it was proved that the height difference and range of motion of shoulder are improved when the lumbar stability exercise is indirectly carried out without directly doing shoulder exercise, it is suggested that the lumbar stability exercise is strongly recommended for clinical uses to improve functions in older adults.


The spin dependent charge transport in zigzag graphene nanoribbons (ZGNRs) has been investigated by the nonequilibrium Green's function method combined with the density functional theory at the local spin density approximation. The current versus voltage curve shows distinguished behaviors for symmetric and asymmetric ZGNRs, and the doping on the ZGNR edges can manipulate the spin transport. In special cases that a Be atom is substitutionally doped on one edge of the symmetric ZGNRs, one spin current shows negative differential resistance, whereas the other increases monotonically with the bias. This property might be used to design spin oscillators or other devices for spintronics.


Simple Summary Animal production in the tropics has relied heavily on agro-industrial waste products as an alternative to expensive protein and energy sources and as a means of lowering production costs. After extraction, low-fat oil palm meal is created as a byproduct of biodiesel and may be utilized as an alternate feed source for animals. The inclusion of extracted oil palm meal in the diet of goats with up to 20% DM was shown to be beneficial. Abstract This study aimed to evaluate the inclusion levels of extracted oil palm meal (EOPM) from biodiesel byproducts in the total mixed ration (TMR) for goats on feed intake, nutrient digestibility, nitrogen balance, blood parameters, and rumen fermentation characteristics. The EOPM was included at 0%, 10%, 20%, and 30% dry matter (DM) to formulate into four dietary treatments and assigned to goats with an average age of 12 months and an initial body weight of 23 ± 0.5 kg in a 4 × 4 Latin square design. The PROC MIXED procedure was used to analyze all data, and the orthogonal polynomial was tested for EOPM levels using the SAS program. The DM intake, nitrogen, and metabolizable energy linearly (p < 0.05) increased when there was increased EOPM inclusion. Increasing EOPM inclusions resulted in (p < 0.05) a linear increase in fiber digestibility but did not affect DM, crude protein, or ether extract. Total volatile fatty acids increased (p < 0.05) linearly with increasing EOPM inclusions. The EOPM inclusions did not alter the bacteria, fungi, and protozoal populations. Blood parameters were not affected by the inclusions of EOPM except globulin, triglyceride, and MCV concentration. This study revealed that EOPM could be included in up to 20% DM in TMR for goats with no negative impact.


A correlation between proteolytic activity and the ability to assimilate higher n-alkanes was found while studying proteolysis of gelatin by 284 paraffin-negative mutants of Pseudomonas denitrificans. The mutants were produced by a paraffin-positive strain capable of gelatin proteolytis, but not growing on glucose. If assimilation of the oxidized derivatives of higher n-alkanes, viz. alcohols and aldehydes, is interfered with at a genetical level, the percentage of mutants possessing extracellular proteolytic activity decreases (44 per cent of the mutants have lost the activity) whereas the percentage of mutants capable of glucose assimilation increases. Proteolytis of gelatin can be used as a test for a preliminary selection of strains to be employed in industrial synthesis of the oxidized derivatives of higher n-alkanes, as well as in the control of stability and homogeneity of a population under industrial conditions.


During the final decade of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th century, there were moves to harmonize pharmaceutical therapy in a number of areas of the Mediterranean and Central Europe. The most evident consequence was the appearance of books of compilations of simple and compound remedies specially selected from a wide range of earlier pharmacological literature. These compilations were set up as 'standards' by the authorities concerned with public health in many states. In theory, apothecaries were obliged to follow these 'official' instructions for preparing and dispensing drugs in order to ensure that the medicines prescribed by physicians were correctly made up and safe. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the persistence of Arabic drugs and recipes through the content of three of these handbooks between 1499 and 1618.


Iris recognition is a secure biometric technology known for its stability and privacy. With no two irises being identical and little change throughout a person's lifetime, iris recognition is considered more reliable and less susceptible to external factors than other biometric recognition methods. Unlike traditional machine learning-based iris recognition methods, deep learning technology does not rely on feature engineering and boasts excellent performance. This paper collects 120 relevant papers to summarize the development of iris recognition based on deep learning. We first introduce the background of iris recognition and the motivation and contribution of this survey. Then, we present the common datasets widely used in iris recognition. After that, we summarize the key tasks involved in the process of iris recognition based on deep learning technology, including identification, segmentation, presentation attack detection, and localization. Finally, we discuss the challenges and potential development of iris recognition. This review provides a comprehensive sight of the research of iris recognition based on deep learning.


Mackay Memorial Hospital (MMH) is a medical centre with 2149 beds and more than 9000 outpatient visits per day. In order to enhance its competition, MMH is the first hospital in Taiwan to implement the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) fully for the entire organisation, not just for a specific department. This paper will assess both direct and indirect outcomes since its inception in 2001. From 2003 to 2005, the revenue from services not covered by the National Health Insurance (NHI) increased from NT$1407 million (US$1=NT$32.9; €1=NT$39.0) to NT$1789.4 million. Inpatient satisfaction rose from 89.07% to 91.9%. The number of visits by disadvantaged patients (those with economic, social or physical disabilities) increased from 82,350 to 97,658 visits. The number of research projects also increased from 46 to 61 projects. The percentage of patients admitted to an intensive care unit in less than 3 hours from arrival in the emergency department increased from 47.8% in 2004 to 82.5% in 2005. BSC has thus been successfully developed and implemented at MMH, most likely for two main reasons. First, right from the beginning, the BSC executive team included the Board of Directors along with senior management personnel. Secondly, departmental BSCs were successfully launched and linked to budget planning after two years of full implementation. It is hoped that the experience of MMH in implementing BSC can be applicable to other healthcare organisations.


Energy is a fundamental ingredient in the process of economic development, as it provides essential services that maintain economic activity and the quality of human life. Modern agriculture has become very energy-intensive. Energy in agriculture is important in terms of crop production and agroprocessing for value adding. Mustard is one of important rapeseed that it is tilled in dry farming systems in north and northeast of Iran. The aims of this study were to determine energy consumption and energy indexes in dry farming Mustard production, to investigate the efficiency of energy consumption and to make an economic analysis of Mustard farming in Sari County of Mazandaran Province in Iran. Data were collected from 75 Mustard farms by using a face to face questionnaire method. The results revealed that Mustard production consumed a total of 23505.5 MJ ha -1 of which chemical fertilizer and diesel fuel energy consumption was 53.7% and 39.8%, respectively. Also Output Energy was 43460 MJha 1 . Output-input energy ratio, specific energy and energy productivity in this study were about 1.84, 11.7 MJ kg -1 and 0.085 respectively. Non-renewable energy was 98.9% total input energy that concluded that Mustard production needs to improve the efficiency of energy consumption in production and to employ renewable energy. Total cost ware was 513.3 $ ha -1 and Benefitcost ratio and net income ware 0.87 and 447.2 $ ha -1 respectively.


Recently, a growing number of studies focus on partial tumor irradiation to induce the stronger non-target effects. However, the value of partial volume carbon ion radiotherapy (CIRT) targeting hypoxic region of a tumor under imaging guidance as well as its effect of inducing radiation induced abscopal effects (RIAEs) have not been well investigated. Herein, we developed a technique of carbon ion microporous radiation (CI-MPR), guided by 18F-FMISO PET/computerized tomography (CT), for partial volume radiation targeting the hypoxia area of a tumor and investigated its capability of inducing abscopal effects. Tumor-bearing mice were inoculated subcutaneously with breast cancer 4T1 cells into the flanks of both hind legs of mouse. Mice were assigned to three groups: group I: control group with no treatment; group II: carbon ion open field radiation (CI-OFR group) targeting the entire tumor; group III: partial volume carbon ion microporous radiation (CI-MPR group) targeting the hypoxia region. The tumors on the left hind legs of mice were irradiated with single fraction of 20 Gy of CIRT. Mice treated with CI-MPR or CI-OFR showed that significant growth delay on both the irradiated and unirradiated of tumor as compared to the control groups. Tumor regression of left tumor irradiated with CI-OFR was more prominent as compared to the tumor treated with CI-MPR, while the regression of the unirradiated tumor in both CI-MPR and CI-OFR group was similar. Biological-guided CIRT using the newly developed microporous technique targeting tumor hypoxia region could induce robust abscopal effects similar to CIRT covering the entire tumor.


The handiness of low-cost modest and tiny imaging sensors fostered the emergence of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSN) applications i.e. traffic congestion avoidance, video surveillance, localization, telemedicine, and industrial process control systems. The above applications require not only guaranteed-support of QoS but also the energy efficient multimedia processing in the WMSN, which necessitates appropriate sensor MAC protocol. Since the need to minimize the energy consumption has driven most of the research in sensor networks so far, mechanisms to efficiently deliver application-level QoS, and to map these requirements to network-layer metrics such as latency and jitter, have not been primary concerns in mainstream research on sensor networks. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient MAC protocol (QEMAC) that caters the Quality of Services for the multimedia heterogeneous environment with fairness feature. QEMAC is based on the latest IEEE 802.11e standard and enhances it for energy-conservation and fairness without violating QoS constraints to the wireless multimedia sensor networks. Simulation results reveal that QEMAC provide fairness and suffer low delay and jitter with efficient energy consumption as compare to the other QoS-aware sensory MAC protocols.


Conjugate Generalized Linear Mixed Models with Applications by Jarod Yan Liang Lee This thesis focuses on the development of conjugate generalized linear mixed models (CGLMMs), which is a computationally efficient modelling framework for longitudinal and multilevel data where the likelihood can be expressed in closedform. We focus on the scenario where the random effects are mapped uniquely onto the grouping structure and are independent between groups. Compared with conventional inference methods for generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs), CGLMMs allow the parameters to be estimated directly without the need for computational intensive numerical approximation methods. The proposed framework has important implications in terms of distributed computing, privacy preservation in large-scale administrative databases and discrete choice models, which we illustrate using several real data. Altogether, CGLMMs prove to be a credible inference framework and a good alternative to GLMMs, especially when dealing with a large amount of data and/or privacy is of concern.


In 1980, Cousins and Bridenbaugh edited a 749-page book on local anesthetics, nerve blockade, and pain control. It has become the standard textbook on the subject primarily because of its superior quality. It is also the only book that encompasses all three subjects. This second edition has 1171 pages; two new chapters have been added, and three chapters have been subdivided into two or three subchapters. This review attempts to answer several questions: Does the new edition contain current information, and does it discuss significant topics overlooked in the first edition? Do the added chapters continue the excellence of the first edition? Finally, for those who have the first edition, is it worth buying the second edition? The authors have succeeded in their difficult task of improving an exceptional book. The new chapters are well written, comprehensive, and uniformly upto-date. Recent developments such as the carbonation and alkalinization of local


A fast algorithm for left-to-right HMM decoding is proposed in this paper. The algorithm is developed based on a sequential detection scheme which is asymptotically optimal in the sense of detecting a possible change in distribution as reliably and quickly as possible. The scheme is extended to HMM decoding in determining the state segmentations for likelihood or other score computations. As a sequential scheme, it can determine a state boundary in a few time steps after it occurs. The examples in this paper show that the proposed algorithm is 5 to 9 times faster than the Viterbi algorithm while it still can provide the same or similar decoding results. The proposed algorithm can be applied to speaker recognition, audio segmentation, voice/silence detection, and many other applications, where an assumption of the algorithm is usually satisfied.


Software reuse is regarded is as a key software development objective leading to reduction of costs associated with software development and maintenance. However, there is mounting evidence that software reuse is difficult to achieve in practice, and that software development approaches such as component-based development, and more recently service-oriented computing have failed to achieve anticipated levels of reuse. In this paper we identify the determinants of service reusability and argue that the design of services plays an important role in achieving high levels of reuse. We examine the relationship between service granularity and reuse and note that extensive use of coarse grained, document-centric services by SOA practitioners makes achieving reuse particularly challenging.


Awesome Game Creation: No Programming Required, Second Edition teaches aspiring game developers how to create their own computer games without programming skills, and provides an in-depth understanding of how the game design process works. Using hands-on tutorials and drag-and-drop game engines, readers learn to make and modify their own interactive 2D and 3D computer games, create models, and modify existing games. The book uses development tools like The Games Factory, The PIE 3D Game Creation System, gmax, 3D GameMaker, Milkshape 3D, GameMaker, and other cutting-edge software. Limited-use versions or demos of these development tools are located on the accompanying CD-ROM, or may be easily downloaded from Web sites. This is a great way to learn the fundamentals of game design and game creation: no programming skills required!


Earthquake is one of the most destructive natural disasters. Lushan Ya'an earthquake occurred in April 20, 2013 caused a wide range of road damage. The earthquake made Baoxing country become an island and rescue was difficult to carry out. The secondary disaster caused by earthquakes is one of the main causes of road damage. According to the present situation of damaged road extraction, a new method of remote sensing image extraction based on object-oriented and GIS spatial analysis is proposed in this paper. The method can extract damaged road caused by secondary disasters in a short period of time, then identify the location and extent of damage to roads as quickly as possible. Through a series of experiments, This method can quickly extract the location and range of the damage caused by the secondary disasters, and get good result. The overall extraction accuracy is 95%. The method can greatly reduce the time of post-earthquake imagery interpretation, improve the efficiency of earthquake emergency and provide decision support for earthquake emergency response eventually.


The challenge of every industry today, including the culinary industry, is understanding the mindset and consumption patterns of Generation Z. They were born and raised side by side with the internet, social media, and technology. Their mindset and consumption patterns are different from the previous generation, especially in terms of mastery of technology and information. The aim of this study was to examine how Generation Z perceives new media of Webtoon as a medium of culinary promotion in East Java. This was mixed-methods research with an explanatory sequential approach. Data collection techniques included online questionnaires, interviews, and pre- and post-tests with 39 respondents. The results showed that there was a difference in the knowledge of Generation Z about East Java culinary practices after reading Webtoon, but the average difference between the pre- and post-test was low. This finding contradicts the perception that Generation Z favors Webtoon as a medium. The in-depth findings showed that this inconsistency is related to personal preferences in media selection. For Generation Z, although Webtoon is not a priority as a medium for the promotion of East Java culinary practices, Webtoon has three functions: a transmitter of information, disseminator of cultural values, and source of entertainment.
Keywords: Generation Z, traditional food, East Java culinary, Webtoon, comic


Road accidents and traffic jams are common problems being the target of a lot of research works to be resolved in current traffic system. Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) is commonly part of Intelligent Transport System (ITS) which is directly involved in handling these problems and aims to make journey on road comfortable. In this paper, vehicular SMS system (VSS) is proposed based on cellular network to provide VANET services to users through SMS system. It has the potential of being more cost effective solution as compared to VANET but needs further research to resolve its trust and privacy issues.


This paper considers a service-oriented architecture for enterprise integration and collaboration using semantic Web service technologies. A hierarchically-structured software system has been designed and developed in order to address the challenge of dynamic service composition. In comparison with existing service composers, the description of each Web service in our system is enhanced with domain-specific semantics and the essential business logic behind the service interface is further described and processed via the business rules technology. A PC manufacturing prototyping system is explored in this paper to demonstrate the practicality of our service composition system.


Enzyme inhibition plays an important role in drug development, metabolic pathway regulation, and biocatalysis with product inhibition. When an inhibitor has high structural similarities to the substrate of an enzyme, controlling inhibitor binding without affecting enzyme substrate binding is often challenging and requires fine‐tuning of the active site. We hypothesize that an extended set of genetically encoded amino acids can be used to design an enzyme active site that reduces enzyme inhibitor binding without compromising substrate binding. As a model case, we chose murine dihydrofolate reductase (mDHFR), substrate dihydrofolate, and inhibitor methotrexate. Structural models of mDHFR variants containing non‐natural amino acids complexed with each ligand were constructed to identify a key residue for inhibitor binding and non‐natural amino acids to replace the key residue. Then, we discovered that replacing the key phenylalanine residue with two phenylalanine analogs (p‐bromophenylalanine (pBrF) and L‐2‐naphthylalanine (2Nal)) enhances binding affinity toward the substrate dihydrofolate over the inhibitor by 4.0 and 5.8‐fold, respectively. Such an enhanced selectivity is mainly due to a reduced inhibitor binding affinity by 2.1 and 4.3‐fold, respectively. The catalytic efficiency of the mDHFR variant containing pBrF is comparable to that of wild‐type mDHFR, whereas the mDHFR variant containing 2Nal exhibits a moderate decrease in the catalytic efficiency. The work described here clearly demonstrates the feasibility of selectively controlling enzyme inhibition using an expanded set of genetically encoded amino acids. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2013; 110:2361–2370. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


In this paper, the influence of geometrical parameters on failure load of bolted single-lap composite joint was investigated. The composite laminate was manufactured from HTA/6376, a high-strength carbon fiber–epoxy material currently used in primary structures in the European aircraft industry. Two geometrical parameters which were plate width-to-hole diameter ratio (W/D), and the edge-to-hole diameter ratio (E/D) were analyzed. To avoid modeling each ply of the laminates discretely, the laminates were modeled using equivalent linear elastic properties. the failure analysis was modeled by Extend Finite Element Method (XFEM) in ABAQUS. Maximum principal stress criterion (Maxps) was used to determine the failure load.


On October 29, 2005, the category 1 hurricane Beta passed 15 Km north of the island of Old Providence in the Colombian Caribbean. To determine any changes in the Thalassia testudinum Banks ex Konig beds, we monitored four beds around the island, one and two years after the hurricane. We selected two sites affected by the hurricane and two not affected by the storm. We observed that the seagrass beds look healthy and show no sign of significant alteration due to the hurricane. The only visible change was that the ecosystems returned to an earlier succession stage in the affected beds.


Variation of musculocutanous nerve at the level of brachial plexus is common. The musculocutaneous nerve is a branch from lateral cord of brachial plexus. It supplies flexor muscles of the elbow and skin on the lateral aspect of forearm. During routine dissection of the upper limb of a seventy year old adult male cadaver, a communication between medial and lateral cord of brachial plexus in the left axilla was noted. On the same side in the arm, musculocutaneous nerve was absent. The muscles supplied by musculocutaneous nerve were innervated by branches of median nerve and a muscular branch to the brachialis muscle continued as lateral cutaneous nerve of forearm. There was no variation in the musculocutaneous nerve on the right side but there were two communicating branches between musculocutaneous and median nerve. Knowledge of such variation has clinical significance in median nerve injury and also helpful in diagnostic clinical neurophysiology, surgical procedures and management of shoulder and arm trauma. Though such variations are common, it is of clinical significance for radiologists, anaesthetists and surgeons besides of being academic interest for the anatomists.


The brain exhibits a complex temporal structure which translates into a hierarchy of distinct neural timescales. An open question is how these intrinsic timescales are related to sensory or motor information processing and whether these dynamics have common patterns in different behavioural states. We address these questions by investigating the brain's intrinsic timescales in healthy controls, motor (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, locked-in syndrome), sensory (anaesthesia, unresponsive wakefulness syndrome), and progressive reduction of sensory processing (from awake states over N1, N2, N3). We employed a combination of measures from EEG resting-state data: auto-correlation window (ACW), power spectral density (PSD), and power-law exponent (PLE). Prolonged neural timescales accompanied by a shift towards slower frequencies were observed in the conditions with sensory deficits, but not in conditions with motor deficits. Our results establish that the spontaneous activity's intrinsic neural timescale is related to specifically sensory rather than motor information processing in the healthy brain. Highlights EEG resting-state shows a hierarchy of intrinsic neural timescales. Sensory deficits as in disorders of consciousness lead to prolonged intrinsic neuraltimescales. Clinical conditions with motor deficits do not show changes in intrinsic neural timescales.20 Graphical Abstract


Injection or co-injection of solvents has been proposed as an in-situ recovery mechanism for bitumen (Gupta et al., 2002). Solvent-based recovery schemes have several potential advantages over steam-based schemes such as SAGD. These benefits include lower GHG emissions and water requirements, lower capital intensity, and lower operating costs. Additionally, solvent-based recovery schemes have been proposed to improve the quality of produced bitumen (Jossy et al., 2008).
 The primary mechanism for in-situ upgrading during a solvent injection process is solvent de-asphalting. Solvent de-asphalting is a proven commercial process for processing and upgrading oil in surface facilities such as refineries and upgraders. Several laboratory studies have shown that solvent de-asphalting can also occur in situ, resulting in API improvement in the produced bitumen (AITF report, 2017 and 2018, Brons and Yu, 1995).
 In this work the economic benefits of upgrading bitumen in-situ will be studied. It will be shown that, at a given price environment, there exists an optimum level of upgrading (as measured by °API). Generally, too little upgrading reduces the value of bitumen due to blending and transportation costs, while too much upgrading reduces bitumen yield and ultimate recovery.


As most future automotive innovations will be realized with software, the automotive industry is facing a transition from mechanical to software engineering. This evolution is pressing the automotive industry to elaborate appropriate processes for the development of
software based systems.

The involvement of manufacturing engineering in development processes has consequently become imperative since the increase in software based systems implies a
greater number of product variants and a higher degree of complexity to be managed in the manufacturing processes.

This thesis presents a study whose overall purpose was to gain a better understanding of the interaction between the organizations for product development and manufacturing,
specifically focusing on the development of software based systems in the automotive industry. The content of this work is based on empirical research, a review of pertinent
literature and an analysis of the empirical results and related literature. To obtain a better understanding of the area of interest from the point of view of practitioners, empirical field studies were undertaken at two Swedish automotive companies using a case study strategy with an explorative purpose. The objective of the literature review was to enhance the understanding of the phenomena investigated by using complementary perspectives found in related literature. Finally, links between the results of the empirical research and appropriate concepts and theories were established and analyzed, which have resulted in recommendations.

The empirical field studies resulted in a number of challenging findings that set the outline
for future in-depth research in the area of interest and may serve as input for improvements of associated activities in the studied organizations. Furthermore, a
majority of the findings were supported by data sources from both of the studied cases, which indicates a possibility to generalize the results to the automotive domain. Finally, the methodology used can be useful to other organizations that are interested in founding
their development of work practice on empirically observed findings.

The literature review pointed out that a common view among researchers is that the automotive industry aims to simultaneously achieve product differentiation in a broad
market and cost leadership by adopting a lean approach to production and product development. The analyses indicated that it was possible to establish linkages between
problems that were identified and lean principles and practices, thus leading to a framework composed of feasible recommendations for the deployment of improvements. Consequently, an overall conclusion in this thesis is that it is useful to adopt a lean approach in the area of interest since it seems to constitute an appropriate foundation for remedial measure


ABSTRACT To the Editor: —After observing for many years the characters of the tongue in B. coli infection, I think these notes may have some practical interest. The tongue exhibits a strawberry punctate appearance. The more confluent and close the points or dots, the more serious the infection. On the contrary, they become more scattered and discrete as the infection subsides. They remain, however, while the infection continues. Case reports are not needed to prove this observation: it is enough to test it in a patient. If a bacteriologic examination of the centrifugalized urine is made, B. coli will be usually found. This phenomenon suggests per se the diagnosis, and if present in other conditions, one may be sure that there is also an associated colibacillary infection. In a Spanish textbook they speak of this tongue as typical of influenza. It is not so. When this kind of tongue is seen


Rapidly changing social media content calls for robust and generalisable abuse detection models. However, the state-of-the-art supervised models display degraded performance when they are evaluated on abusive comments that differ from the training corpus. We investigate if the performance of supervised models for cross-corpora abuse detection can be improved by incorporating additional information from topic models, as the latter can infer the latent topic mixtures from unseen samples. In particular, we combine topical information with representations from a model tuned for classifying abusive comments. Our performance analysis reveals that topic models are able to capture abuse-related topics that can transfer across corpora, and result in improved generalisability.


In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for the registration of two overlapping range images. This algorithm is based on the relative registration error histogram. A comparative study based on both synthetic data and real images has shown that the novel algorithm is accurate and robust.


Adequate salivary secretion is crucial to both oral and general health, since it provides a complex milieu for support of the microbial populations of the mouth, while at the same time containing antimicrobial products that help control these microbial populations. This paper summarizes several aspects of salivary component function, gland secretion mechanisms, and immuno-pathogenesis as related to oral health and disease. Salivary components mediate microbial attachment to oral surfaces, and also interact with planktonic microbial surfaces to facilitate agglutination and elimination of pathogens from the oral cavity. Adhesive interactions are often mediated by lectin-like bacterial proteins that bind to glycan motifs on salivary glycoproteins. An important salivary antimicrobial protein is histatin 5 (Hst 5), which shows potent and selective antifungal activity and also susceptibility to proteolytic degradation. Coupling of Hst 5 with the carrier molecule spermidine significantly enhanced killing of C. albicans and resistance to proteolytic degradation, compared with the parent peptide. Loss of salivary secretion may be caused by disorders such as Sjögren's syndrome (SS) or ectodermal dysplasia, or may be a side-effect of radiation therapy. Two new approaches to the treatment of salivary gland dysfunction include the use of resolvins and the creation of differentiated acinar structures to construct an artificial salivary gland. B-cells contribute to the pathogenesis of SS by releasing cytokines and autoantibodies and by influencing T-cell differentiation. CXCL13, a potent B-cell chemokine associated with autoimmune diseases, is elevated locally and systemically in SS and may represent a novel biomarker or therapeutic target in the management and treatment of SS.


This paper discusses MLS (multi-security system) and its cooperation problem. Then, this paper brings forward VM- MLS - a solution based on VMM technology to resolve the MLS cooperation problem. The modules design and the theory of the VM-MLS were introduced, and the security feature of the solution was analyzed. Finally, the realistic effect of the solution was shown.


In order to study the seismic behavior of steel portal frame structures, Cyclic loading test on a 1:3-scaled model of single-story single-bay steel portal frame with tapered members has been carried out. Based on test results, hysteretic curve, skeleton curve, stiffness degradation and transverse displacement of the structure are obtained. Meanwhile, the seismic performances of the structure are analyzed from aspects of ductility, energy consumption, stiffness degradation, bearing capacity, etc. It is concluded that ductility and energy consumption capacity of this structure are poor; because of its light weight, the structure attracts little seismic load; when portal frame structure designed according to current Chinese design codes suffers from small seismic action, it has enough seismic bearing capacity.


Business analytics has become vital for businesses to achieve their near-term and strategic goals. Historically, large enterprises have used a decentralized information technology delivery model to meet reporting and analytics needs within each business unit. Rising demand for analytics, combined with the cost of decentralized delivery, has driven businesses to look at alternative delivery patterns. Chief information officers (CIOs) have a renewed interest in considering centralized, virtualized services--given their desire to reduce expenses without reduced business flexibility. The Chief Information Office of IBM has pioneered a private cloud delivery model for delivering analytics tooling to internal users (IBM employees), providing centralization and standardization of service. Through evaluation of analytics usage patterns, IBM developed a common analytics services strategy to reduce expenses and solution deployment time while improving business agility and insights. IBM deployed a share-all private cloud model (in which users deploy reports on the same instance of the hardware and software) on an extensible Linux® on the IBM System z® infrastructure to deliver ubiquitous analytics service to every business process area. The IBM software-as-a-service analytics delivery model allowed its more than 190,000 business users to maintain user or user-group solution autonomy while providing access to cost-effective ($25 million savings over five years), timely commodity services.


Mangla reservoir is the second biggest reservoir in Pakistan. It was constructed in 1967 as multipurpose dam project with priority for irrigation. It has a live storage of 5.34 MA which is used to transfer water from high flow season to low flow season. It has a power house with installed capacity of 1000 MW. Since its operation in 1967 it has lost about 20% of live storage. The pivot point of sediment delta has moved to about 4 miles away from the dam. The river intakes are in close proximity of the dam on left side of the main embankment. Sedimentation studies of Mangla Dam Raising Project revealed that after about 25 years pivot point of delta would reach the power intakes. To stop the rate of advancement of delta towarqs the dam operational rules of reservoir have been studied. Increasing the Dead Storage Level (DSL) from the existing value of 1040 ft asl to 1100 ft asl delayed the time of reaching the delta by 10 years, however the intakes remain under threat. To address the said challenge of sediment ingress into the power intakes certain measuresl strategies are required to be studied and implemented. This paper studies the like threat of sediment ingress into the power intakes by studying vertical concentration of sediment in the water column in front of the power intakes at the point of quasi equilibrium state of the reservoir. On the basis of the computed vertical concentrations, placement as well as type of the intakes would be suggested.