Miklos Zrinyi's epic poem recounts history with a particular slant, presenting the events of the Turkish defeat at Szigetvar in 1566 as a fight between the forces of good and evil. He uses epic conventions to present a tale of a clash between the Turks and the Hungarians. While on the surface the Hungarians seem to be defeated, the real victory lies with them: militarily, the Turks withdraw; the resistance of the fort has stopped their advance to Vienna and the West; politically, the resistance of the Hungarian nobility is a noble goal which ensures the continued existence of the nation; morally, the Christians triumph over the forces of evil represented by the Turks.


We describe the structure of the top tautological group in the cohomology of the moduli space of smooth genus $g$ curves with $n$ marked points.


One of the challenge for successful daylighting design might be to capture sunlighting that varies in both intensity and position and to deliver the luminous flux into the inner space as deep as possible. Conventional glazing apertures allow daylight in the outer 3.5m of a perimeter spaces. More advanced daylighting technologies can extend this daylighting depth by reflecting sunlight further from the windows within a deep floor area. For this purpose, this study developed light shelves based on performance evaluation with a mock-up model that constructed recently and measured under real sky condition. All these daylighting devices have a customized geometry developed from the solar path at a given latitude and utilize unique reflecting finishing to maximize the amount of redirection and diffusion of the daylight. This paper tells that the best daylighting penetration typically can be expected from using light-colored sloped external shelves.


We consider SIR epidemic model in which population growth is subject to logistic growth in absence of disease. We get the condition for Hopf bifurcation of a delayed epidemic model with information variable and limited medical resources. By analyzing the corresponding characteristic equations, the local stability of an endemic equilibrium and a disease-free equilibrium is discussed. If the basic reproduction ratio , we discuss the global asymptotical stability of the disease-free equilibrium by constructing a Lyapunov functional. If , we obtain sufficient conditions under which the endemic equilibrium of system is locally asymptotically stable. And we also have discussed the stability and direction of Hopf bifurcations. Numerical simulations are carried out to explain the mathematical conclusions.


The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) outbreak was declared as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020. The Emergency Committee has recommended that the PHEIC status of the COVID-19 will continue to persist as the disease continues to rise in many pockets of the world. An extensive search of all materials related to the topic was carried out in the PubMed search engine and World Health Organization website. Relevant research articles focusing on COVID-19 and the role of stakeholders published in the year 2020 were included in the review. A set of recommendations has been released for all the stakeholders and it is expected that we all work together to bring the novel infection under control. As the COVID-19 has impacted all the dimensions of health care, it becomes extremely important to explore the opportunities to ensure the delivery of essential care as well as the response required for the novel infection. In conclusion, the COVID-19 infection continues to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and it is the responsibility of all the international welfare organizations, national leaders, public health authorities, and members of the community to act in a coordinated manner to effectively contain the infection.


Students' learning styles have been ignored and have been considered as an insigniÞcant component in the learning process (Rita Dunn, 1993). Dunn said that lecturers cannot identify student's styles without using a multidimensional instrument. Lecturers are not aware of their own learning styles and their learning style preferences may differ from that of their students. As such, they are unable to assess students' learning styles without administering proper learning styles inventory. Since little attention has been paid to how learners learn and how teachers teach in many institutions, this research attempts to determine the learning styles of the students, and the differences in their learning styles according to gender and ethnicity. This research also aims is to determine the Perceptual Learning Style (PLS) of ESL students and to analyse differences in learning styles regarding student's demographic factors such as gender and race. In this research, the PLS preferences of ESL students was assessed using the PLSPQ research instrument, which Peacock (2001) reported to be of high reliability. In order to familiarise the readers with the larger picture in determining learning styles, some other relevant research instruments are summarised. One hundred and sixty (N=160) students from UNITEN were selected as respondents using the stratiÞed random sampling techniques. Seventy-four female students (46.3%) and eighty-six male students (53.8%) participated in the research. The racial composition of the samples was 56 Malays (35.0%), 52 Chinese (32.5%) and 52 Indian (32.5%). Results revealed that the dominant learning styles of ESL students yielded the following results. In general, students preferred the Kinaesthetic learning style and expressed minor preference for Visual, Auditory, and Group Learning, Keyword: Learning style, Learning Preferences, Students, Lecturers, Learning Styles Inventory, ESL


Thermal activation analysis of plastic deformation of peacock tail feathers, by temperature changes and stress relaxation, gave for the keratin cortex an activation enthalpy of 1.78 ± 0.89 eV and an activation volume of 0.83 ± 0.13 nm³, for both the blue and the white subspecies. These values suggest that breaking of electrostatic bonds is responsible for plasticity in feather keratin. These might be bonds between keratin and nonkeratinous matrix or keratin-keratin cross-links. The mechanical properties of the rachis cortex are surprisingly uniform along the length of the feathers.


Mycoplasma arthritidis–derived mitogen (MAM) is a member of the superantigen family that structurally differs from other members while still capable of initiating cognate APC/T cell interaction. In addition to the critical role of MHC class II molecules, it has been suggested that TLR2 and TLR4 may cooperate with MHC class II during MAM-induced responses. In this study, we investigated the direct involvement of TLR2 and TLR4 in MAM binding and presentation to T cells. Our results showed that MAM fails to bind to TLR2- and TLR4-transfected cells. However, coexpression of TLR2 or TLR4 with HLA-DR significantly increases MAM binding and the subsequent T cell activation compared with cells expressing HLA-DR alone. The upregulated MAM binding and activity in HLA-DR/TLR–transfected cells is abrogated by an anti–HLA-DR Ab. Interestingly, we also found that MAM complexed with soluble HLA-DR is capable of binding to both TLR2 and TLR4. The enhancing effect of TLR2 or TLR4 on MAM-induced T cell proliferation was not due to TLR ligand contamination in the MAM preparation. Taken together, these results strongly suggest that binding of MAM to HLA-DR leads to a conformational change in MAM structure allowing its interaction with TLR2 and TLR4 and a better recognition by T cells.


In less than ten years from its advent in 2008, the concept of distributed ledgers has entered into mainstream research and policy agendas. Enthusiastic reception, fuelled by the success of Bitcoin and the explosion of potential use cases created high, if not hyped, expectations with respect to the transformative role of blockchain for the industry and the public sector. Growing experimentation with distributed ledgers and the emergence of the first operational implementations provide an opportunity to go beyond hype and speculation based on theoretical use cases. This report looks at the ongoing exploration of blockchain technology by governments. The analysis of a group of pioneering developments of public services shows that blockchain technology can reduce bureaucracy, increase the efficiency of administrative processes and increase the level of trust in public recordkeeping. Based on the state-of-art developments, blockchain has not yet demonstrated to be either transformative or even disruptive an innovation for governments as it is sometimes portrayed. Ongoing projects bring incremental rather than fundamental changes to the operational capacities of governments. Nevertheless some of them offer clear value for citizens. Technological and ecosystem maturity of distributed ledgers have to increase in order to unlock the transformative power of blockchain. Policy agenda should focus on non-technological barriers, such as incompatibility between blockchain-based solutions and existing legal and organizational frameworks. This principal policy goal cannot be achieved by adapting technology to legacy systems. It requires using the transformative power of blockchain to be used to create new processes, organizations, structures and standards. Hence, policy support should stimulate more experimentation with both the technology and new administrative processes that can be re-engineered for blockchain.


Imbalance between peptides such as substance P and bradykinin, and related enzymes degrading these peptides may cause the development of cough in various pathological conditions. On the other hand, lack of cough reflex may cause aspiration pneumonia. Down and up regulation by peptides may be useful for treatment of cough and prevention of aspiration pneumonia.


Introduction: Paraphenylene Diamine (PPD) is an aromatic amine not found in nature. It is used in a variety of industrial products and in different hair dye formulations. It is well known that PPD is an allergen that may cause contact dermatitis, erythematous urticarial papules and eczema in susceptible individuals. However, the major systemic problem occurs when it is ingested accidentally, for purposes of suicidal intent or during attempted murder. Information on the systemic effects and outcome of hair dye poisoning in children is limited. In this article we review the literature for PPD intoxication in children.
Review: PPD intoxication is a major health problem in eastern Africa, particularly Sudan, and in Morocco. It is also common in the Indian subcontinent. In two large series from Morocco and Sudan, Children constituted 11.5% and 18% of affected individuals respectively. Acute poisoning by PPD causes characteristic severe angio-edema of the upper airway, often requiring tracheostomy, accompanied by a swollen, dry, hard and protruding tongue. PPD intoxication results in multisystem involvement and can cause rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney injury (AKI), flaccid paralysis, severe gastro-intestinal manifestations, cardiotoxicity and arrhythmias. This form of severe intoxication is fatal if not treated aggressively. There is no specific antidote and treatment is mainly supportive with renal replacement therapy commonly used in cases with AKI. Reported mortality rates range between 12-42%.
Conclusion: PPD intoxication is a life threatening condition. Clinical outcomes rely on early recognition, prompt referral, and aggressive supportive treatment in collaboration with different specialties.

 Keywords: Children; Hair Dye; Paraphenylene Diamine; Poisoning


Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the major etiological agent of human non-A and non-B hepatitis affecting about 180 million people worldwide. The goal of the current study was to find effective anti-HCV proteins. As a result, defensins were selected as promising candidates due to their well-known anti-viral potential and small size. We conducted in vitro evaluation of two kinds of defensins (human α- and β-defensins and synthetic linear avian α-defensins) using tissue culture combined with reverse transcription nested PCR (RT-nested-PCR) and real-time PCR. Human α- and β-defensins showed strong anti-HCV activity in experiments on cellular protection, neutralization, and treatment at all concentrations used (10, 20 and 50 μg). The synthetic linear defensins could reach similar anti-HCV potential only at a noticeably higher concentration (250 μg) and do not show noticeable activity at 10 and 20 μg. This study suggests that defensins are potent anti-HCV agents.


In wind tunnel tests, the cantilever sting supporting system often suffers from low-frequency and large-amplitude resonance due to its inherent low structural damping characteristic, resulting in the degradation of data quality and structural safety. To improve wind tunnel testing safety and data accuracy, this paper is dedicated to establish an active vibration control system using piezoelectric stack actuators. A novel methodology of vibration monitoring based on modal transformation, which uses measured strain and a Strain-to-Displacement Transformation (SDT) matrix to reconstruct dynamic displacement field, is proposed herein. Meanwhile, strain sensor positions are optimized by an improved Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to reduce systematic estimation errors of this method. Furthermore, a Back-Propagated Neutral Network (BPNN) is established to implement a self-adaptive control strategy. A series of verification tests are performed to demonstrate the validity of the proposed system. Experimental results indicate that the relative Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) between estimated vibration displacement and measured vibration displacement is less than 3%, and a vibration attenuation of over 14 dB/Hz is achieved in ground tests, proving the superiority of this intelligent active vibration suppression system.


In this study, we analyze efficient volumetric ultrasonic data compression algorithms which require fewer computations and can be implemented with fewer hardware resources. Discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is used for compression of 3-D ultrasound data. Different wavelet kernels are analyzed and benchmarked for compression of experimental signals. In order to reduce computational complexity, non-uniform DWT method is utilized where different wavelet Alters are applied to ultrasonic axial resolution and spatial resolutions. Axial resolution contains more information than spatial resolutions; therefore simple wavelet filters such as Haar can be used for the spatial resolutions reducing the computations significantly.


BackgroundThe relationship between various systemic inflammatory biomarkers and outcomes in patients with a variety of solid cancers has been reported. However, the relevance of these markers is unclear in elderly patients with unresectable or recurrent gastric cancer (GC). This retrospective study was conducted to identify specific factors associated with the survival of elderly patients with GC.Methods Patients with GC undergoing chemotherapy at our institution from April 2014 to April 2020 were included in the study. The patients were categorized into either the young group (Y group; aged <70 years) or the elderly group (E group; aged ≥70 years). The association between overall survival (OS) and pre-treatment values of systemic biomarkers, including the neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet–lymphocyte ratio, and Glasgow prognostic score, was evaluated using the Kaplan–Meier method and log-rank test in each group. Univariate and multivariate analyses using Cox proportional hazards regression were used to investigate the prognostic factors associated with OS in each group.ResultsA total of 112 patients were eligible for inclusion in the analysis. The patients were categorized into the Y and E groups based on their age, and each group consisted of 56 patients. In both groups, high NLR and high Glasgow prognostic score were associated with poor OS (Y: p = 0.002 and p = 0.009; E: p < 0.001 and p = 0.045, respectively), whereas the platelet–lymphocyte ratio was not (Y: p = 0.296; E: p = 0.346). Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses revealed that poor performance status was correlated with poor OS in the Y group (hazard ratio: 2.56; 95% confidence interval: 1.02–6.43; p = 0.045). However, in the E group, NLR was the only independent prognostic factor of OS (hazard ratio: 4.22; 95% confidence interval: 1.69–10.56; p = 0.002). ConclusionsPoor performance status was an independent marker of poor prognosis in the Y group, whereas a high NLR was an independent marker in the E group. Thus, NLR may be a specific biomarker for predicting the OS of elderly patients with unresectable GC.


Abstract We prove that for a 7-dimensional manifold M with cylindrical ends the moduli space of exponentially asymptotically cylindrical torsion-free G2-structures is a smooth manifold (if non-empty), and study some of its local properties. We also show that the holonomy of the induced metric of an exponentially asymptotically cylindrical G2-manifold is exactly G2 if and only if the fundamental group π1(M) is finite and neither M nor any double cover of M is homeomorphic to a cylinder.


Current landforms are the basis for understanding past geomorphodynamics and human activities. Based on multiple materials and methods, including geomorphometric analyses of a digital elevation model and visual interpretations of satellite images, different landscape units of the Bakırçay and Madra River catchments in the environs of ancient Pergamon are described. The area was mainly shaped by tectonics that formed a horst-and-graben structure; small Miocene horsts and NE-trending subgrabens in the Kozak and Yunt Dağı Mountains were separated by the NEE-trending Plio-Pleistocene Bergama Graben. The asymmetry in relief, drainage network, and sediment accumulation between the Kozak Mountains to the north and the Yunt Dağı Mountains to the south of the lower Bakırçay plain characterize the Pergamon Micro-Region. The regional relief characteristics, with wide flat basin and plateau areas, are suitable for agriculture. Complemented by its richness in natural resources, the Pergamon Micro-Region became a preferred settlement area, with evidence of human impact since the Hellenistic–Roman period at the latest. As a consequence of settlement activities, several landscape engineering measures were implemented simultaneously with a parallel change in morphodynamics.


Various strains of Pseudomonas fluorescens showed different resistance to water deficiency in soils with a low water content (alpha w = 0.75). Humidification of dry soil reactivated the cultures. The period of reactivation took from several hours to three days and depended on the nature of inoculated strains. The growth of various strains of Pseudomonas fluorescens was studied in the conditions of a low water content in soil; the cells were investigated by electron microscopy before and after soil humidification. The results suggest that this organism can be in a certain "resting state" which is characterized by changes in the cell structure and by the time it takes the cells to reactivate after humidification of a dry soil sample.


The principal controls on the fluid properties of biodegraded oil systems have been determined by a combination of petroleum geochemistry, numerical modeling of oil biodegradation in reservoirs, and analysis of oil property data sets from a variety of geological settings. Petroleum biodegradation proceeds under anaerobic conditions in any reservoir that has a water leg and has not been heated to temperatures more than 80C. In most reservoirs with low concentrations of aqueous sulfate, methanogenic degradation is a primary mechanism of petroleum degradation, whereas in waters containing abundant sulfate, sulfate reduction and sulfide production may dominate. Net degradation of petroleum fractions in reservoirs is primarily controlled by the reservoir temperature, the chemical compounds being degraded, and relationships between the oil-water contact (OWC) area and oil volume. The relative volumes of water leg to oil leg, prior level of oil biodegradation, and reservoir water salinity act as second-order controls on the process. Typically, degradation fluxes (kilograms of petroleum destroyed per square meter of oil-water contact area per year or kg petroleum m2 OWC yr1) for fresh petroleum in clastic reservoirs are in the range of 103–104 kg petroleum m2 OWC yr1 and increase with decreasing reservoir temperature, from zero near 80C, to a maximum flux at the OWC of less than 103 kg petroleum m2 OWC yr1 at a temperature less than 40C. At very low reservoir temperatures and with severely degraded oils, such as are seen in the near-surface Canadian tar sands at the present day, the net degradation fluxes are much less than maximum values. Nutrient supply from the aquifer and adjacent shales, mostly buffered by mineral dissolution, probably provides the ultimate control on the range of degradation flux values. Oil compositional gradients and resulting oil viscosity variations are common on both reservoir thickness and field scales in biodegraded oil reservoirs and are a defining characteristic of heavy oil fields produced by crude-oil biodegradation. Continuous vertical gradients in the oil columns document episodic degradation for many millions of years, suggesting that the time scales of oil-field degradation and petroleum charging are similar. The flux-temperature relationship we have derived, coupled with typical reservoir charge histories, defines the range of variation of fluid properties seen in many biodegraded oil provinces and identifies oil charge, mixing of biodegraded and fresh oils, and reservoir-temperature history as the primary controls on fluid properties. These flux-temperature relationships are easily integrated into prospect charge modeling procedures; sensitivity analyses show that the limiting factor in fluid property predictions, using even this first-level approach, are ultimately constrained by the accuracy of current oil-charge modeling estimates. The absence today of any functional geochemical proxies for assessing oil-residence time in oil fields and the substantial uncertainty in petroleum-charging times estimated by forward basin modeling is a major obstacle to more accurate fluid-property predictions that needs to be addressed.


Hydrogen hopping paths in ${\text{LaNi}}_{5}\text{H}$ solid solution were analyzed via first-principles calculations. Potential energy surfaces were determined for hydrogen on the plane with hydrogen sites $6m$, $12o$, and $4h$ and on the plane with hydrogen sites $12n$, $3f$, and $6i$. From the zero-point vibration energy along the hopping path, it was found that hydrogen locations are grouped only at three regions; quasi-$m$ site $(o\text{\ensuremath{-}}m\text{\ensuremath{-}}o)$, $h$ site, and quasi-$f$ site $(i\text{\ensuremath{-}}f\text{\ensuremath{-}}i)$. By applying the nudged elastic band method to hydrogen hopping paths between all the possible two sites, the most probable diffusion route was determined as quasi-$f$--quasi-$m$--quasi-$f$ in the $\mathbit{c}$ direction and quasi-$f$--quasi-$m$--quasi-$f$--quasi-$m$--quasi-$f$ in the $\mathbit{a}$ and $\mathbit{b}$ directions with the same saddle point energy of 0.37 eV, which is in good agreement with the measured activation energy, 0.3--0.5 eV, of the hydrogen diffusion in the solid solution phase of ${\text{LaNi}}_{5}\text{-H}$ system.


The concept of entropy is one of the most important notions of the information theory. Entropy quantifies the amount of uncertainty involved in the value of a random variable or the outcome of a random process. Shannon's entropy is one of the most useful entropy types. The notion of enthalpy is the information energy expressed by the complement of Shannon's entropy. In this paper, we propose the concept of interval-valued hybrid enthalpy fuzzy set by modifying single and interval-valued fuzzy multisets. In this context, an interval-valued hybrid enthalpy fuzzy set contains information about both the data and their entropy. We also provide a cosine similarity measure between interval-valued hybrid enthalpy fuzzy sets. Using this cosine similarity measure, we propose a TOPSIS approach for multicriteria group decision making. Moreover, we apply the proposed TOPSIS method to a research assistant selection problem, and we compare the result with the result of a classical TOPSIS method.


Abstract We investigated body-mass dynamics during incubation of Long-tailed Ducks (Clangula hyemalis) nesting in Canada's central Arctic, 1998–2003. Long-tailed Duck females (n = 37) lost 7% of pre-incubation body mass during incubation; on average, females weighed 618 ± 15 g (mean ± SE) at clutch completion and 575 ± 11 g at hatch. Given the differences in body size, Long-tailed Ducks relied less on endogenous reserves than sympatric King Eiders (Somateria spectabilis), but lost less mass than similar-sized waterfowl species nesting in temperate climates. Preliminary data suggest that Long-tailed Ducks maintain similar or higher nest-attendance rates than temperate-nesting waterfowl of similar size, and we suggest that access to locally abundant, high-quality foods enable Long-tailed Duck females to maintain high incubation constancy without sacrificing female body condition. Nevertheless, Long-tailed Ducks appear to differ widely from most Arctic-nesting waterfowl in nutritional strategy for nesting. Masse corporelle chez l'Harelde kakawi (Clangula hyemalis) au cours de l'incubation


not always kill bacteria. This, however, was convincingly demonstrated only for sporulating bacteria. With other bacteria, growth, if any, was very poor. I may put on record experiments in which it was shown that the pathogenic agent in Jochmann's extract from bone marrow stands treatment with 70 per cent. alcohol for twenty-four hours without any deterioration. From all that is known we may safely infer that non-sporulating bacteria do not stand this treatment. I may finally mention that Mr. Barnard was kind enough to investigate a very potent Jochmanii extract from bone marrow in the ultra-violet light. In visible light a number of granules were seen by dark-ground microscopy, but ultra-violet photographs of these granules did not yield images which, in form or uniformity of size, were suggestive of virus bodies.-I am, etc.,


Investigations in guinea pigs to evaluate interferences between cholestasis and enzymatic induction by phenobarbital, and influences that both experimental conditions exert on the levels of gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase in microsomes and other subcellular fractions, have shown that: 1) cholestasis inhibits inductions of cytochrome P-450 from phenobarbital; 2) gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase is not an inducible enzyme in guinea pig; 3) rises or ferum gamma-glutanyl transpeptidase produced either by cholestasis or phenobarbital administration, are not related to an increased enzymatic synthesis in the various subcellular fractions of liver cell.


In systems biology, identifying vital functions like glycolysis from a given metabolic pathway is important to understand living organisms. In this paper, we focus on the problem of finding minimal sub-pathways producing target metabolites from source metabolites. We translate laws of biochemical reactions into propositional formulas and compute its minimal models to solve the problem. An advantage of our method is that it can treat reversible reactions. Moreover the translation enables us to obtain solutions for large pathways. We apply our method to a whole Escherichia coli metabolic pathway. As a result, we have found the conventional glycolysis sub-pathway described in a biological database EcoCyc.


The modified method for the isolation and purification of B. pertussis toxin has been proposed. Chromatography with the use of hydroxylapatite and lentil lectin--Sepharose 4B has permitted the isolation of the preparation purified 600 times. Its molecular weight is about 90,000. The preparation has been found to possess leukocytosis-stimulating, histamine-sensitising and hemagglutinating activity. Electrophoretic analysis has revealed that the isolated substance consists of four subunits with molecular weights 28,400, 24,300, 21,800 and 15,200. This substance has proved to be capable of hydrolyzing NAD+, as well as of suppressing the GTPase activity of transducin, which is indicative of the covalent modification (ADP-ribosylyzing) of GTP-binding protein under the action of B. pertussis toxin. Two methods for the isolation of B. pertussis toxin (from liquid and solid growth media), as well as the isolation of the toxin from different B. pertussis strains, are evaluated.


The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the impact of different stress factors such as insufficient time, job security on employee behaviour in engineering colleges with respect to Vijayawada city. It analyses the relationship between stress factors (independent variables) and employee behaviour (dependent variable) in the work place. The data employed to analyze the factors were obtain through a questionnaire that was conducted in February 2016 in Vijayawada a city in India. Stress is a term that is widely used in everyday life with most people having some appreciation about its meaning. Occupational stress can be defined as the physiological and emotional responses that occur when workers perceive an imbalance between their work demands and their capability and/or resources to meet these demands. The success of any organization or its failure depends on the employee behavior. Hence in the present study an analysis of the employee behaviour. The major findings of the study indicated that insufficient time (stress factor) is not influencing anxiousness (behaviour factor), insufficient time (stress factor) is influencing conflicting nature of employees (behaviour factor), insufficient time (stress factor) is influencing escape nature of employees (behaviour factor), job security (stress factor) is not influencing regularity (behaviour factor), job security (stress factor) is influencing responsibility (behaviour factor).


We studied the standing accretion shock instability (SASI) for a core-collapse supernova explosion. SASI induces a nonspherically symmetric motion of a standing spherical shock wave. In order to investigate the growth of SASI, we solved the three-dimensional compressible Euler equations using ZEUS-MP/2 code based on the finite-difference method with a staggered mesh of spherical polar geometry. Although the von Neumann and Richtmyer artificial viscosity is used in ZEUS-MP/2 code to capture shock waves, we propose utilizing a tensor artificial viscosity in order to overcome the numerical instability regarded as the carbuncle phenomenon. This numerical instability emerges around the grid polar axis and precludes mode analysis of SASI.


Problems of overlap errors and side-lobe printing by the design rule reduction in the lithography process using attenuated phase-shifting masks (attPSM) have been serious. Overlap errors and side-lobes can be simultaneously solved by the rule-based correction using scattering bars with the rules extracted from test patterns. Process parameters affecting the attPSM lithography simulation have been determined by the fitting method to the process data. Overlap errors have been solved applying the correction rules to the metal patterns overlapped with contact/via. Moreover, the optimal insertion rule of the scattering bars has made it possible to suppress the side-lobes and to get additional pattern fidelity at the same time.


Objective The objective of this study was to explore the medicinal properties of herbal medicines that can interfere with the copper death pathway. Methods The Human Gene Database, Chemical Interactions in Comparative Toxicogenomics Database, Encyclopedia of Traditional Chinese Medicine, China Medical Information Platform, and Cytoscape software were used to find target and chemicals that interfere with copper death targets, as well as herbal medicines containing these chemicals and their four natures and five flavors (basic properties of herbal medicines). Results 27 copper death-related targets were finally retrieved, as well as 2143 chemicals that could interfere with them, including 180 herbal compounds. The compounds with the highest degree values (number of nodes connected to this node) were folic acid, resveratrol, and quercetin. The 180 compounds were related to 278 herbs; those with the highest degree values (number of nodes connected to this node) were Jujubae Fructus, Ginkgo biloba L, and Acanthopanax senticosus. The 27 copper death targets were indirectly associated with 278 herbs; those with the highest degree values (number of nodes connected to this node) were Achyranthis Bidentatae Radix, Polygonum cuspidatum Sieb. et Zucc, and Mori Folium. Among the 278 herbs, 6 had incomplete information. A pharmacological analysis showed that among the 272 Chinese herbs, the most frequent meridians were the liver (133), lung (104), and spleen (91). Of the four natures, the most frequent were cold (73), warm (68), and flat (45). Of the five flavors, the most frequent were bitter (165), pungent (116), and sweet (99). Conclusion This study preliminarily discussed the material basis and medicinal properties of herbs that can intervene in copper death, which can provide reference for the theoretical discussion, drug development, and clinical research of Chinese medicine regulating copper death.


An equation to describe nearly 1D traveling-waves patterns, obtained first by Brand, Lomdahl and Newell, is revisited. In addition to the previously known transverse Benjamin–Feir condition, necessary for stability of plane waves, it is demonstrated that, if this condition is met, a quarter of the plane-wave existence band is unstable against transverse perturbations, while three quarters are stable. Most essential results are obtained for linear defects in the form of grain boundaries (GB's). An effective Burgers equation is derived, in the framework of which a GB is tantamount to a shock wave. Asymmetric GB's are moving at a constant velocity.


VHDL is a critical language for RTL design and is a major component of the $200+ million RTL simulation market. Many users prefer to use VHDL for RTL design as the language continues to provide desired characteristics in design safety, flexibility and maintainability. While VHDL has provided significant value for digital designers since 1987, it has had only one significant language revision in 1993. It has taken many years for design state-of-practice to catch-up to and, in some cases, surpass the capabilities that have been available in VHDL for over 15 years. Last year, the VHDL analysis and standardization group (VASG), which is responsible for the VHDL standard, received clear indication from the VHDL community that it was now time to look at enhancing VHDL. In response to the user community, VASG initiated the VHDL-200x project. VHDL-200x will result in at least two revisions of the VHDL standard. The first revision is planned to be completed next year (2004) and will include a C language interface (VHPI); a collection of high user value enhancements to improve designer productivity and modeling capability and potential inclusion of assertion-based verification and testbench modeling enhancements. A second revision is planned to follow about2 years later. This paper focuses on the 1/sup st/ revision enhancements.


ABSTRACTAt the core of ethology, Konrad Lorenz's notion of spirituality is identical with the notion of culture. In the context of neuroscience, the gap between the spheres of spirituality and culture is significant; however the spiritual aspect of culture depends on the human spirit. In the context of brain evolutionary processes, the thalamus plays an important role in the shaping of spirituality. Animal and human brain structures and functions show an evolutionary leap between the infraorbital region and the prefrontal cortex, which gives good for searching there for human spirituality. Neuroscientists not only associate human spirituality with brain evolution and development, but also see the foundations of morality and consciousness in its structures. Recent neurobiological research is very insightful into what used to be an exclusively philosophical area of expertise. The considerations presented in the article include language, morality, rationality and mind, in the context of evolution.


Logical realism is a view about the metaphysical status of logic. Common to most if not all the views captured by the label 'logical realism' is that logical facts are mind- and language-independent. But that does not tell us anything about the nature of logical facts or about our epistemic access to them. The goal of this paper is to outline and systematize the different ways that logical realism could be entertained and to examine some of the challenges that these views face. It will be suggested that logical realism is best understood as a metaphysical view about the logical structure of the world, but this raises an important question: does logical realism collapse into standard metaphysical realism? It will be argued that this result can be accommodated, even if it cannot be altogether avoided.


Production systems have been widely used as expert system building tools and recognize-and-act models in cognitive science. This paper is intended to introduce parallel/distributed/multiagent production systems, and to reveal their possibilities as research foundations for distributed artificial intelligence: a parallel production system as an agent reactive architecture, a distributed production system as an adaptive agent organization, and a multi-agent production system for organizational learning. Production systems already have been equipped with clear syntax/semantics and efficient pattern matching algorithms. Their functions can be further strengthened with recent algorithms such as realtime search and reinforcement learning.


What drives current? We can think of various devices—such as batteries, generators, wall outlets, and so on—that are necessary to maintain a current. All such devices create a potential difference and are referred to as voltage sources. When a voltage source is connected to a conductor, it applies a potential difference V that creates an electrical field. The electrical field, in turn, exerts force on free charges, causing current. The amount of current depends not only on the magnitude of the voltage, but also on the characteristics of the material that the current is flowing through. The material can resist the flow of the charges, and the measure of how much a material resists the flow of charges is known as the resistivity. This resistivity is crudely analogous to the friction between two materials that resists motion.


Geologic interpretation of 3D anisotropic resistivity models from conventional marine controlled-source electromagnetic (CSEM) data inversion faces difficulties in low-resistivity contrast sediments and structurally complex environments that typify the new frontiers for hydrocarbon exploration. Currently, the typically reconstructed horizontal resistivity [Formula: see text] and vertical resistivity [Formula: see text] models often have conflicting depth structures that are difficult to explain in terms of subsurface geology, and the resulting resistivities may not be close to the true formation resistivities required for estimating reservoir parameters. We have investigated the concept that an objective geologically oriented or structurally tailored inversion can be achieved by requiring that the cross-product of the gradient of horizontal resistivity and the gradient of the vertical resistivity is equal to zero at significant geologic boundaries. We incorporate this boundary-shape criterion in our 3D inverse problem formulations, implemented within nonlinear model-space and conjugate-gradient contexts, for cases in which a priori calibration data from wells and/or seismically derived subsurface boundaries are available and for cases in which these are lacking. The resulting fit-for-purpose solutions serve to better analyze the peculiarity of a given data set. We applied these algorithms to synthetic and field CSEM data sets representing a fold-thrust environment with low-resistivity and low-contrast sediments. The resulting [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] models from cross-gradient joint inversion of synthetic data of appropriate frequency bandwidth without a priori information are structurally similar and consistent with the test models, whereas those from the inversions of band-limited field data are consistent with the available seismic and resistivity well-log data. This particular approach will thus be useful for lithologic correlation in frontier regions with limited a priori information using broadband CSEM data. For these band-limited field data, we found that the anisotropic bulk resistivities of the low-contrast sediments are better determined by incorporating a priori calibration data from triaxial resistivity logs and seismic horizons.


Right hemiparesis with right-sided pain and ataxia developed in a 68-year-old man. Sensation, neuropsychological function, and somatosensory evoked potentials were normal. Computed tomography showed an isolated fresh infarct in the left part of the thalamus. The pain and ataxic disturbances were related to involvement of the thalamus itself, but the hemiparesis with hyperactive tendon reflexes and Babinski's sign was probably due to associated dysfunction in the adjacent internal capsule from compression or edema. In the available clinicopathological reports of cases with hemiparesis and thalamic infarction, contiguous involvement of the internal capsule or no associated lesion has been reported. Because of the occurrence of pain, which is not present in pontine, mesencephalic, or capsular ataxic hemiparesis, we suggest that the syndrome seen in our patient be called "painful ataxic hemiparesis."


Abstract Two major properties that determine weed seed germination are soil temperature and moisture content. Incident radiation is the primary variable controlling energy input to the soil system and thereby influences both moisture and temperature profiles. However, many agricultural field sites lack proper instrumentation to measure solar radiation directly. To overcome this shortcoming, an empirical model was developed to estimate total incident solar radiation (beam and diffuse) with hourly time steps. Input parameters for the model are latitude, longitude, and elevation of the field site, along with daily precipitation with daily minimum and maximum air temperatures. Field validation of this model was conducted at a total of 18 sites, where sufficient meteorological data were available for validation, allowing a total of 42 individual yearly comparisons. The model performed well, with an average Pearson correlation of 0.92, modeling index of 0.95, modeling efficiency of 0.80, root mean square error of 111 W m−2, and a mean absolute error of 56 W m−2. These results compare favorably to other developed empirical solar radiation models but with the advantage of predicting hourly solar radiation for the entire year based on limited climatic data and no site-specific calibration requirement. This solar radiation prediction tool can be integrated into dormancy, germination, and growth models to improve microclimate-based simulation of development of weeds and other plants.


Semantic image segmentation is the process of labeling each pixel of an image with its corresponding class. An encoder-decoder based approach, like U-Net and its variants, is a popular strategy for solving medical image segmentation tasks. To improve the performance of U-Net on various segmentation tasks, we propose a novel architecture called DoubleU-Net, which is a combination of two U-Net architectures stacked on top of each other. The first U-Net uses a pre-trained VGG-19 as the encoder, which has already learned features from ImageNet and can be transferred to another task easily. To capture more semantic information efficiently, we added another U-Net at the bottom. We also adopt Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP) to capture contextual information within the network. We have evaluated DoubleU-Net using four medical segmentation datasets, covering various imaging modalities such as colonoscopy, dermoscopy, and microscopy. Experiments on the MICCAI 2015 segmentation challenge, the CVC-ClinicDB, the 2018 Data Science Bowl challenge, and the Lesion boundary segmentation datasets demonstrate that the DoubleU-Net outperforms U-Net and the baseline models. Moreover, DoubleU-Net produces more accurate segmentation masks, especially in the case of the CVC-ClinicDB and MICCAI 2015 segmentation challenge datasets, which have challenging images such as smaller and flat polyps. These results show the improvement over the existing U-Net model. The encouraging results, produced on various medical image segmentation datasets, show that DoubleU-Net can be used as a strong baseline for both medical image segmentation and cross-dataset evaluation testing to measure the generalizability of Deep Learning (DL) models.


We have previously shown that the C-terminal region of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) Nef antigen present on the outer surface of virus-infected cells has an affinity for uninfected T cells and that the Nef protein is responsible for T cell death. To exclude completely the possibility of MHC restriction of this cytotoxic activity, the in vitro cytotoxic potential of HIV-1 Nef against various CD4+ T cell lines as well as naive T lymphocytes was investigated using a baculovirus expression system. Insect cells expressing myristoylated Nef on their cell surface were shown to kill a proportion of CD4+ T cells within 8 h. However, N-terminal truncated and unmyristoylated Nef proteins were not present on the outer surface of insect cell membranes and failed to show any killing activity. Monoclonal antibodies against the C-terminal region of Nef inhibited cytolysis. Thus, we conclude that specific Nef-mediated cytolysis is induced by contact with unprimed CD4+ T lymphocytes without MHC restriction.


identification of a periodontal biotype in patients has a fundamental meaning in optimal planning of preventive and therapeutic management mainly in periodontology, orthodontics, implantology and dental prosthetics. identification of a periodontal biotype in a specific dentogingival unit is often required. Soft tissue thickness in the periodontium, called gingival thickness (Gt) is an essential factor that has influence on a periodontal biotype assessment. invasive and non-invasive methods are utilized in its examination. Measurement of gingival thickness and the oral mucosa are most commonly carried out using a periodontal probe under local anesthesia, or by more precise method of transgingival probing (tGP) using an endodontic tool with a silicone limiter (bone sounding – BS). the computed tomography allows indeed to assess thickness of the palatal and gingival mucosa in a low invasive way, but it is an expensive and still hard to get method. an ultrasound gingival thickness measurement (UGtM) is a safe and painless method, but an appropriate instrument is required. the aim of this study is to present the prototype of Pirop® Ultrasonic Biometer and its usage in an assessment of periodontal soft tissue thickness (Dent. Med. Probl. 2011, 48, 3, 303–310).


Heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics in a circular tube fitted with full-length strip, short-length strip, and regularly spaced strip elements connected by thin circular rods have been investigated experimentally. The strips have been rectangular, square and crossed in cross-section with different aspect ratio. Laminar flow of water and other viscous liquids was considered. The rod diameter and length of the strip-rod assembly and the length of the strips were varied. Isothermal friction factor data has been generated. The heat transfer test section was heated electrically imposing axially and circumferen-tially constant wall heat flux (UWHF) boundary condition. Reynolds number, Prandtl number, strip length, strip ratio, space ratio, and rod-diameter govern the characteristics. Smaller rod-diameter in the strip-rod assembly or pinching of the strips in place rather than connecting the strip elements by rods performs better thermohydraulically. Short-length strips (upto a limited fraction of the test section tube length) perform better than the full-length strip. The friction factor correlation and the correlation for Nusselt number under UWHF condition for full-length strip have been modified to make them suitable for short-length strip as well as regularly-spaced strip elements. Thermal entrance length in the correlations is represented by Graetz number. Friction factor and Nusselt number correlations for short-length strips as well as regularly-spaced strip elements, in the limit. reduce to their full-length counterparts.


One (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures of zinc oxide and tin oxide (ZnO/SnO) nanocomposites were synthesized by a hydrothermal method using ethylenediamine (EDA) as a capping ligand. The effect of Sn concentration on the morphology of the nanocomposites has been investigated. X-ray diffraction analysis indicated good crystallinity of samples with the presence of both ZnO and SnO phases. The morphological analysis revealed the morphological transformation from ZnO nanorods to ZnO/SnO nanosheets by adding Sn. X-ray photoelectron spectra analyses showed significant peak shift in the electronic state of Zn at the higher concentration of Sn. Elemental mapping results clearly evidenced that both ZnO and SnO moieties were uniformly distributed in the nanosheets. Photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue using as-prepared ZnO/SnO nanocomposites was nine times faster than that of pure ZnO under visible light irradiation. It could be attributed to the formation of a hetero-junction between ZnO and SnO. Our experimental results revealed that photogenerated superoxide (O2−˙) radicals were the main reactive species for the degradation of MB. The maximum degradation efficiency was observed for the sample with 1 wt% of tin chloride, the MB related absorption peak completely disappeared after 6 min of irradiation. ZnO/SnO composites extended the light absorption spectra of ZnO to a visible light region and enhanced the visible light photocatalytic activity.


Lemmatization is a process to extracting root word from an affixed word with the aim of reducing variations of the word into the root word. Previous researches on extraction of root word in Balinese Language has been done with rulebased methods to remove affixes from words. The weakness of the rule-based method is that it must comply with the set of rules provided. However, writings in Balinese often contain typographical errors because speakers tend to write words according to how the word is spoken instead of following the correct rules. In this research, we apply the Levenshtein distance method to overcome the aforementioned shortcoming. After all the rules applied to a given word fail, the Leven-shtein distance method is used to list all words that are "close". Next, we select the closest word as the root word of the given input. Based on the experiments, our proposed method achieved an accuracy of 96.01 %.


In the past few decades, multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) has become a very important research topic along with the increase of the system complexity. In an MDO problem, it is very typical that multiple disciplines are involved, making the problem coupled and complex. Monolithic and distributed architectures have been proposed for solving MDO problems. However, efficient architectures are still needed. In the prior work, a sequential multidisciplinary design optimization (S-MDO) architecture was proposed that has a distributed structure that decomposes the original MDO problem into several subproblems. However, in the original S-MDO work, the theoretical behaviors were not analyzed because its mathematical representations were not clear. In this article, we present a clear mathematical representation of the S-MDO architecture and conduct theoretical analysis on the S-MDO architecture to explain its performance in solving MDO problems. The optimality condition of the S-MDO architecture is derived and summarized as a theorem and a proposition. To demonstrate the general formulation of solving an MDO problem using the S-MDO architecture and validate the correctness of the optimality condition, we use it to obtain the Pareto frontier of a benchmark MDO problem. From the spread of the obtained Pareto frontier, we can conclude that the S-MDO architecture performs well, as long as the global optimum of each disciplinary subproblem can be found.


The efficacy and safety of 0.3% tacrolimus gel and 0.5% tacrolimus cream compared with calcipotriol ointment were evaluated in adults (n = 124) with mild to moderate plaque psoriasis. Treatment was twice daily for a maximum of 12 weeks. Clinical efficacy was assessed by the percentage change in the local psoriasis severity index of a target lesion between baseline and week 12. By week 12, the median percentage changes in local psoriasis severity index of the target lesions in the tacrolimus gel, tacrolimus cream and calcipotriol groups were 55.6%, 50.0% and 58.6%, respectively (no statistically significant differences). Clinical improvement was observed after one week and increased throughout the study. Tacrolimus-treated patients experienced more application site skin burning (tacrolimus gel and cream both 31.0% versus 7.5% for calcipotriol; p = 0.011). Skin burning was mostly mild in intensity and decreased substantially after 1 week of treatment. There were no differences in the nature and incidence of infections and no clinically relevant changes in laboratory values.


In this article, the authors discuss the feminist movement obstacles in Saudi Arabia and the mechanism for decreasing them. Therefore, this paper attempted to achieve two objectives. First, a prospective study was conducted through a social survey of 130 women in leadership positions in government. Using a purposive sample technique, the private sector was focused on in the following ministries: Education, social affairs, health and the Shura Council. This survey was followed by two main questions: What are obstacles to the feminist movement in Saudi Arabia; and what are the mechanisms for decreasing this obstacles and activating a leadership role and effective participation in society for Saudi women to achieve the national objectives? By applying SPSS software, the questionnaires were then verified to test the indications of reliability and validity, which, in turn, will ensure the validity and reliability of the answers regarding empowering Saudi Women.


The measuring system for evaluating the accuracy of a deep hole is developed by using the autocollimation principle. The system consists of a measuring unit and an optical system for light reception. The measuring unit comprises one laser diode, two mirrors, two quarter-wave plates, one polarizing beam splitter, and a feeler. The system detects the displacement of a feeler on the basis of the autocollimation principle. The optical system for light reception, which receives the laser beam irradiated from the laser diode in the measuring unit, comprises a plano-convex lens and a CCD camera. In this research, the measuring unit is manufactured for trial and its measuring accuracies are examined by using the basic experimental apparatus. As a result, the followings are clarified. The optimum values of the CCD image processing parameters are 60 in threshold and 250μs in exposure. The error of measurement by using the measuring unit is ±0.26 μm. Measurement error of its rotational angle is ±0.01°.


Air duct systems in nuclear facilities must be monitored with continuous sampling in case of an accidental release of airborne radionuclides. The purpose of this work is to identify the air sampling locations where the velocity and contaminant concentrations fall below the 20% coefficient of variation required by the American National Standards Institute/Health Physics Society N13.1–1999. Experiments of velocity and tracer gas concentration were conducted on a generic "T" mixing system which included combinations of three sub ducts, one main duct, and air velocities from 0.5 to 2 m s−1 (100 to 400 fpm). The experimental results suggest that turbulent mixing provides the accepted velocity coefficients of variation after 6 hydraulic diameters downstream of the T-junction. About 95% of the cases achieved coefficients of variation below 10% by 6 hydraulic diameters. However, above a velocity ratio (velocity in the sub duct/velocity in the main duct) of 2, velocity profiles were uniform in a shorter distance downstream of the T-junction as the velocity ratio went up. For the tracer gas concentration, the distance needed for the coefficients of variation to drop 20% decreased with increasing velocity ratio due to the sub duct airflow momentum. The results may apply to other duct systems with similar geometries and, ultimately, be a basis for selecting a proper sampling location under the requirements of single point representative sampling.


A batch‐assembly technique for forming 3D electronics on shape memory polymer substrates is demonstrated and is used to create dense, highly sensitive, multimodal arrays of electronic whiskers. Directed air flow at temperatures above the substrate's glass transition temperature transforms planar photolithographically defined resistive sensors from 2D precursors into shape‐tunable, deterministic 3D assemblies. Reversible 3D assembly and flattening is achieved by exploiting the shape memory properties of the substrate, enabling context‐driven shape reconfiguration to isolate/enhance specific sensing modes. In particular, measurement schemes and device configurations are introduced that allow for the sensing of temperature, stiffness, contact force, proximity, and surface texture and roughness. The assemblies offer highly spatiotemporally resolved, wide‐range measurements of surface topology (50 nm to 500 µm), material stiffness (200 kPa to 7.5 GPa), and temperature (0–100 °C), with response times of <250 µs. The development of a scalable process for 3D assembly of reconfigurable electronic sensors, as well as the large breadth and sensitivity of complex sensing modes demonstrated, has applications in the growing fields of 3D assembly, electronic skin, and human–machine interfaces.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#am


Acoustic sensing is a new sensing modality that senses the contexts of human targets and our surroundings using acoustic signals. It becomes a hot topic in both academia and industry owing to its finer sensing granularity and the wide availability of microphone and speaker on commodity devices. While prior studies focused on addressing well-known challenges such as increasing the limited sensing range and enabling multi-target sensing, we propose a novel scheme to leverage the non-linearity distortion of microphones to further boost the sensing granularity. Specifically, we observe the existence of the non-linear signal generated by the direct path signal and target reflection signal. We mathematically show that the non-linear chirp signal amplifies the phase variations and this property can be utilized to improve the granularity of acoustic sensing. Experiment results show that, by properly leveraging the hardware non-linearity, the amplitude estimation error for sub-millimeter-level vibration can be reduced from 0.137 mm to 0.029 mm.


The authors argue that cultures differ in implicit theories of individuals and groups. North Americans conceive of individual persons as free agents, whereas East Asians conceptualize them as constrained and as less agentic than social collectives. Hence, East Asian perceivers were expected to be more likely than North Americans to focus on and attribute causality to dispositions of collectives. In Study 1 newspaper articles about rogue trader scandals were analyzed, and it was found that U.S. papers made more mention of the individual trader involved, whereas Japanese papers referred more to the organization. Study 2 replicated this pattern among U.S. and Hong Kong participants who responded to a vignette about a maladjusted team member. Study 3 revealed the same pattern with respect to individual and group dispositionism using a different design that compared attributions for an act performed by an individual in one condition and by a group in the other condition.


Liquor:serum quotients of IgG and albumin in patients with meningism, meningitis and multiple sclerosis have been studied. Abnormal quotients indicative of disturbed blood‐brain barrier function and/or intrathecal IgG synthesis were found in various proportions of all 3 groups of patients. In some patients with aseptic meningitis and meningism, the abnormal quotients were comparable with those found in patients with multiple sclerosis. The reason for this is unknown. An unspecific reaction to febrile illness may be involved. As a consequence, the findings of abnormal liquor:serum quotients of IgG and albumin should be evaluated with great caution in patients with recent or present febrile illness.


A common fluid model of ion drift in a strong electric field, appearing, e.g., in the sheath, describes ions by the Newtonian equation of motion, with ion-neutral collisions involved by an effective friction force. Such an approach implicitly anticipates a monoenergetic ion beam. We demonstrate that, due to nonlinear effects, the concept based on "average" ions is too simplified. In the suggested model, the conventional equation of ion motion is replaced by a formula considering the energy spectrum of ion flux. The formula is based on the 1-D description of charge-exchange collisions of ions with neutrals. The Newtonian equation of motion is then interpreted from the suggested collision model. It is shown that the ion fluid velocity should be identified with the rms velocity in the ion beam and that the effective ion mean free path appearing in the friction term should be chosen as a double of the ion mean free path for the charge-exchange collisions.


We propose an incremental search method for making planning decisions in real time. As an example, we present the problem of scheduling jobs in a factory as a real-time decision problem, and model the real-time constraints as strict limits on the amount of computation that can be performed before a scheduling decision must be made. Our approach is to use incremental heuristic search techniques to simulate and evaluate the effects of future decisions, and thereby generate each individual scheduling decision as needed. We present four incremental search algorithms that can be used to make real-time planning decisions. We also present preliminary results for the two-machine flowshop scheduling problem which indicate that this is a promising method for real-time planning.


This paper examines the role of the labor market in the transmission process of adjustment policies in developing countries. It begins by reviewing the recent evidence regarding the functioning of these markets. It then studies the implications of wage inertia, nominal contracts, labor market segmentation, and impediments to labor mobility for stabilization policies. The effect of labor market reforms on economic flexibility and the channels through which labor market imperfections alter the effects of structural adjustment measures are discussed next. The last part of the paper identifies a variety of issues that may require further investigation, such as the link between changes in relative wages and the distributional effects of adjustment policies.


The rail surface defects can cause the high impact load on the track and lead to the progress of the rail fatigue damage and the rail break. In case of the rail break, there is a great deal of risk for derailment, and thus the maintenance criteria for the rail surface defects are of great importance. In this study, using the dynamic train-track interaction analysis program, the impact wheel loads and rail bending stresses according to the depths of the surface defects have been calculated with the input data of the rail surface irregularities measured at 43 spots with surface defects in the ballasted track of high-speed railway. Considering the irregularity of track geometry, the allowable limits of wheel load and rail bending stress have been set, and the maintenance criteria for the rail surface defects was suggested by analyzing the relationship of the maximum values of wheel load and rail bending stress versus depth and width of rail surface defect. The analysis results suggest that the allowable depth of the surface defect is determined approximately 0.2mm from the limit of the impact wheel load.


In this paper, the author describes a brief psychotherapy with a man who has struggled with abdominal symptoms for most of his adult life. After an unhappy childhood, the patient (Mr A) married and then was witness to the birth of his stillborn child, in a foreign country. Soon after his abdominal symptoms started, and plagued him for the following 30 years. In the therapy, Mr A began to explore areas of guilt, hostility, and shame, together with previously unknown-about unconscious phantasies. By the end of the therapy, he reported a substantial diminution in his symptoms, as well as changes to his relationships, and mode of thinking and feeling. Some aspects of working psychoanalytically with patients with somatic symptoms, especially those pertaining to the gastrointestinal tract, are discussed.


Proximal policy optimization (PPO) is one of the most successful deep reinforcement-learning methods, achieving state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of challenging tasks. However, its optimization behavior is still far from being fully understood. In this paper, we show that PPO could neither strictly restrict the likelihood ratio as it attempts to do nor enforce a well-defined trust region constraint, which means that it may still suffer from the risk of performance instability. To address this issue, we present an enhanced PPO method, named Truly PPO. Two critical improvements are made in our method: 1) it adopts a new clipping function to support a rollback behavior to restrict the difference between the new policy and the old one; 2) the triggering condition for clipping is replaced with a trust region-based one, such that optimizing the resulted surrogate objective function provides guaranteed monotonic improvement of the ultimate policy performance. It seems, by adhering more truly to making the algorithm proximal - confining the policy within the trust region, the new algorithm improves the original PPO on both sample efficiency and performance.


This article is based on the plenary talk given at the inaugural UHAMKA International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT) and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) (UICELL 2018) in Jakarta, Indonesia, 23 November 2018, and focuses on the explanation of reading as a communicative rhetorical act. Outlining the key features of such reading, it then considers the benefits of reading texts rhetorically. A specific focus is given to the role of rhetorical reading in writing. While the article acknowledges the limited research on the relationship, it provides some evidence that reading texts rhetorical can lead to both more effective reading and more effective writing. A specific technique on how to teach students to read texts rhetorically is also presented in this article.


Microphase separation of a polystyrene-block-polyisoprene-block-polystyrene triblock copolymer thin film under confined conditions (i.e., graphoepitaxy) results in ordered periodic arrays of polystyrene cylinders aligned parallel to the channel side-wall and base in a polyisoprene matrix. Polymer orientation and translational ordering with respect to the topographic substrate were elucidated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) while film thickness and polymer profile within the channel were monitored by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) as a function of time over a 6 h annealing period at 120 degrees C. Upon thermal annealing, the polymer film simultaneously undergoes three processes: microphase separation, evaporation of trapped solvent, and mass transport of polymer from the mesas into the channels. A significant volume of solvent is trapped within the polymer film upon spin coating arising from the increased polymer/substrate interfacial area due to the topographic pattern. Mass transport of polymer during this process results in nonuniform films, where subtle changes in the film thickness within the channel have profound effects on the microphase separation process. The initially disordered structure within the film underwent an orientation transition via an intermediate formation of perpendicular cylinders (nonequilibrium) to a parallel (equilibrium) orientation with respect to the channel base. Herein, we present a time-resolved study of the cylinder reorientation process detailing how changing film thickness during the annealing process dramatically affects both the local and lateral orientation of the observed structure. Finally, a brief mathematical model is provided to evaluate spin coating over a complex topography following a classical asymptotic approximation of the Navier-Stokes equations for the as-deposited films.


Although—following contemporary interpreters—this article qualifies Theodore de Regnon's famous sharp distinction between Eastern and Western trinitarianism, it argues that the 'acid test' of the liturgy makes clear that there simply is a contrast between Eastern and Western ways of conceiving of the Trinity. Historically, this contrast found its focal point in the filioque controversy. Therefore, after a sketch of the broader framework of the divergence between Eastern and Western theology, the pros and cons of the addition of the filioque clause to the Creed are discussed. It turns out that Augustine played an ambivalent role in this connection. Finally—drawing on some recent proposals, a way forward in the filioque debate is suggested.


The objectives of this research study was to evaluate the spatiotriangulation applied to multisensor satellite images, which enabled the simultaneous geometric processing of a large number of images and strips together to reduce the control point requirement. The spatiotriangulation is based on the three-dimensional physical models developed for multisensor images at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, Natural Resources Canada and on a least squares block bundle adjustment process with orbital constraints. The spatiotriangulation was applied to 49 images in six blocks (Landsat-7 ETM+, panchromatic SPOT-4 HRV, multiband ASTER, multimode radar RADARSAT-1, and ERS-1) acquired over the Rocky Mountains, Canada, from different viewing/look angles. The first results of least squares block bundle adjustments showed that the same error residuals (around 20 m) were obtained with the different image blocks whether independently or simultaneously processed. In addition to ground control points (GCPs), elevation tie points (ETPs), with a known elevation value, instead of normal tie points were used in the overlaps because the viewing/look-angle differences of overlapping images were generally small (8/spl deg/). The second and most important results were related to simultaneous bundle adjustments of the largest "master" Landsat-7 block (600 km /spl times/ 500 km) using 25 GCPs in the two outer strips and the smallest "slave" block(s) using no GCP but only ETPs. The errors, verified by a large number of independent check points (ICPs) in the "slave" blocks, were between 15-35 m (1.5-2 resolutions), depending on the "slave" block. However, the combined image pointing and map errors of ICPs (25-30 m) are included in these 15-35-m error results, and the internal accuracy of the blocks should, thus, be better (around one resolution). The research study demonstrated, thus, the possibility to use the largest block with a reduced number of GCPs to simultaneously adjust single image(s)/strip(s) or smallest block(s) with only ETPs, and with no degradation in the accuracy.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the clinical presentation and outcome of known attacks in client-owned dogs caused by the common coyote, Canis latrans.

DESIGN
Retrospective observational study.

SETTING
Private referral hospital.

ANIMALS
One hundred fifty-four client-owned dogs known to be attacked by coyotes.

INTERVENTIONS
None.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Records from a private referral hospital from May 1997 through December 2012 were reviewed. Time of day and month/season of year, signalment, body temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, body weight, location and severity of wounds inflicted, common injuries, length of hospitalization, necessity of surgical wound repair under anesthesia, antimicrobial use and mortality were recorded. Eighty-six percent of dogs presenting following coyote attack weighed <10 kg. Overall mortality rate was 15.6%. Dogs with bite wounds to the thorax had the highest mortality at 21.3%. Criteria for systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) based on admission vital signs were met in 58.8% of dogs and the presence of SIRS was significantly associated with mortality (P < 0.001). Common coyote-induced injuries included rib fracture (38/154; 24.6%), pulmonary contusion (30/154; 19.4%), tracheal tear (18/154; 11.6%), pneumothorax (16/154; 10.3%), abdominal wall hernia (9/154; 5.8%), and abdominal penetrating wounds (8/146; 5.5%). Dogs <10 kg were significantly more likely to incur wounds to multiple body parts or sustain abdominal penetrating wounds. The presence of rib fracture was significantly associated with mortality. Frequency of coyote attacks over the time of this study increased by 330%.

CONCLUSIONS
Coyote attacks on dogs are a problem in Southern California and are associated with substantial morbidity and mortality, especially in dogs with wounds to the thorax. Aggressive management involving surgical wound repair was associated with survival to discharge.


BACKGROUND
Functional and radiographic evaluation at midshaft clavicle fractures is better with surgical than conservative management. The aim of this paper is to describe the functional and radiological evaluation of patients with midshaft clavicle fracture surgery at the Hospital de Traumatología y Ortopedia of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social.

METHODS
Descriptive studies, conducted during the period June 2014 to June 2015, patients undergoing surgical treatment for midshaft clavicle fracture were included. Constant-Murley and Montoya Scales were used to evaluate the functionality and radiological consolidation 6 months after the treatment.

RESULTS
There were 90 patients, average age was 33.63 years, 78.9% were men, left side affected in 53.3% patients. At 6 months after surgery, functional results were excellent in 87.8% of patients, in 91% there was disappearance of fracture line regardless callus. The group of patients aged 18 and 40 years present better functional and radiographic results compared to the other groups (p <0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
The management of patients with diaphyseal clavicle fracture should be surgical, ages between 18 to 40 years and between 61 to 76 years have better functional outcomes with greater consolidation of fracture line regardless of the callus.


Due to nonlinear effects, Power Factor Correction (PFC) ac-dc converters working in Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM) can exhibit nonlinear phenomena such as subharmonic oscillations and chaotic regimes at the line frequency. These undesirable behaviors increase the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) and shift the dc input line current to non null values. This results in a malfunctioning of the system or even damages caused by the increase of the temperature which can jeopardize enormously the performances and shorten the lifetime of the system. In order to avoid these problems, subharmonic line frequency instabilities must be suppressed. In this paper, a selective notch filter based controller is combined with the output voltage compensator to suppress these instabilities and to stabilize a two-stage PFC ac-dc converter. A frequency domain analysis is used to explain the control mechanism of directing subharmonic and chaotic oscillations into stable periodic motion. A detailed study of the effect of this selective filter on the dynamical behavior of the system is presented. A simple harmonic model is used to obtain the control stability domain. This control technique is simple and allows widening the stability domain and improving the performances of the system being its experimental implementation possible using standard devices such as OAs and passive elements. The correctness of the proposed technique is verified with numerical simulations and experimental measurements.


We develop a relationship between the sulfate-methane transition (SMT) and average gas hydrate saturation (AGHS) for systems dominated by methane migration from deeper sources. The relationship is explained by a onedimensional numerical model that simulates gas hydrate accumulation in marine sediments. Higher methane fluxes result in shallow SMT depths and high AGHS, while lower methane fluxes result in deep SMTs and low AGHS. We also generalize the variation between AGHS and scaled SMT depth, a procedure that aids prediction of AGHS at different sites from observations of the SMT, such as along Cascadia Margin.


There is increasing need to address lameness in the dairy industry. Lameness is one of the most costly diseases in the dairy industry and continues to gain attention among consumers. Diagnosing the predominant causes of lameness requires a systematic approach to identify the important risk factors present within each dairy. FirstStep™ is a software program designed to assess key areas of a dairy known to impact lameness and provide reports that identify areas of weakness in the lameness management program. The objective of this study was to use FirstStep™ to evaluate 14 dairies in the western US.


This article analyses the political use of Internet, particularly by the political parties. The studies about the national websites of the parties from different western democracies point out that these websites are more used as a means of supplemental diffusion of information than to benefit the citizen´s engagement. Related to communication, the article intends to question the exposure, when it is possible, of ordinary citizens´speeches on french parties websites. How is the "profane" speech incorporated by the communication processing of the party in internet? And how consider this integration related to the communication processing of the party?


Within Yellowstone National Park, the water emanating from the park's famous hot springs and geysers seems to belong to either one of two distinct types. In some areas, subterranean waters rich in chlorine and dissolved silicates burst from the ground to create the park's iconic geysers. In other areas, highly acidic mud pools form from chlorine-deprived waters rich with sulfate ions. In the 1950s, researchers proposed that these two distinct surface features actually stem from a single type of underground water. Across Yellowstone, geysers and mud pools are often separated by defined geographic boundaries, making a test of their interrelatedness difficult. In northwestern Wyoming, however, acid-rich and silica-rich waters coexist within a roughly 12-squarekilometer watershed that drains into nearby Heart Lake


While the recent advances in deep neural networks (DNN) bring remarkable success, the computational cost also increases considerably. In this paper, we introduce Greenformer, a toolkit to accelerate the computation of neural networks through matrix factorization while maintaining performance. Greenformer can be easily applied with a single line of code to any DNN model. Our experimental results show that Greenformer is effective for a wide range of scenarios. We provide the showcase of Greenformer at https://samuelcahyawijaya.github.io/greenformer-demo/.


The main effects of the transmembrane AMPA receptor (AMPAR) auxiliary proteins (TARPs) on AMPAR gating are slowing of deactivation and desensitization, increasing peak Popen and speeding of recovery from desensitization (Priel et al. 2005; Tomita et al. 2005). All of these observations can be reproduced by increasing the rate of recovery from desensitization, γ, and by one of two additional means: either increasing the open rate, β (as proposed by Dr Howe, 2013), or reducing the cleft opening rate, CO, and desensitization rate, δ (as suggested by myself, MacLean, 2013). Moreover, increasing the channel opening rate or decreasing the cleft open rate both result in the reported substantial left-shift in steady-state glutamate EC50 values produced by TARPs (Priel et al. 2005; Tomita et al. 2005; Kott et al. 2007) as well as the smaller left-shift in peak EC50 values (Morimoto-Tomita et al. 2009). Therefore, such concentration–response data are not helpful in distinguishing an effect on gating transitions from an effect on pre-gating transitions such as stabilizing closed-cleft states.

However, peak inhibition curves using NBQX and CNQX may provide some support for the hypothesis that TARPs affect pre-gating transitions by promoting states with closed ligand-binding domains (LBDs). The LBDs of AMPARs exist in multiple closed-cleft conformations, both when the agonist is bound and in the apo state (Landes et al. 2011). If the presence of TARPs causes AMPAR LBDs to adopt more closed conformations, then even in the apo state the binding cleft would be, on average, slightly more shut. Consequently, larger ligands such as NBQX or CNQX would have slower binding rates since there would be fewer favourable collisions between these compounds and the more closed LBDs. Such slowed binding rates of larger antagonists would result in right-shifts of peak inhibition curves and this is precisely what is observed experimentally. The peak response IC50 values obtained using rapid perfusion on outside-out patches for both CNQX and NBQX are right-shifted approximately 2-fold by stargazin (MacLean & Bowie, 2011). While this observation is consistent with TARPs stabilizing more closed LBD conformations, more compelling evidence is needed. Ultimately, to discriminate between these mechanisms, direct measurements of both the degree of LBD closure and coupling between LBD closure and channel opening will be required.


The organization of actin during meiosis and sporulation in the ascus of the filamentous ascomycete Sordaria macrospora was determined by immunofluorescence without removal of the cell wall. Actin is present as a dense cortical network of microfilaments (MF) and plaques, a perinuclear shell of actin in prophase I of meiosis, and a complex array of MF involved in alignment of prespore nuclei and closure of spore cell membranes. The relationship of actin to the previously examined microtubule system of the ascus was determined by double-label immunofluorescence. The cytoskeletal inhibitors nocodazole, cytochalasin D and 2,3-butanedione monoxime were used to examine the roles of actin and myosin in ascus development. Microfilament and microtubule arrays are interdependant; disruption of one network results in abnormalities in the other. Both microfilaments and actin-myosin interaction are required for separation and migration of duplicated spindle pole bodies, septation and sporulation


Genome-wide association and candidate gene studies implicate different genetic variants within the 6p21 chromosomal region with different non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) subtypes. Complementing these efforts, we conducted human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I and class II genotyping among 610 NHL cases and 555 controls of non-Hispanic white descent from a US multicenter study. Allele-disease associations were assessed by logistic regression for NHL and its subtypes. Statistically significant associations between HLA and NHL subtypes include HLA-DRB1*0101 for follicular lymphoma (odds ratio [OR] = 2.14, P < .001), HLA-DRB1*0401 for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL; OR = 0.45, P = .006), and HLA-DRB1*13 and follicular lymphoma (OR = 0.48, P = .008). We further observed significant heterozygote advantage for HLA class I alleles and NHL, and particularly DLBCL (P trend = .01 for elevated risk with increasing number of homozygous alleles). Our results support a role for HLA in the etiology of NHL and its subtypes.


The antitumor effects of the selective cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 inhibitor SC-236 alone and in combination with radiation were investigated using the human glioma cell line U251 grown in monolayer culture and as tumor xenografts. On the basis of Western and Northern blot analyses, these cells express COX-2 protein and mRNA to levels similar to those in the human colon carcinoma cell line HT29. Treatment of U251 cells in monolayer culture with 50 microM SC-236 resulted in a time-dependent decrease in cell survival as determined by a clonogenic assay. The cell death induced by SC-236 was associated with apoptosis and the detachment of cells from the monolayer. After 2 days of drug treatment, the cells that remained attached were exposed to graded doses of radiation, and the clonogenic assay was performed. Comparison of the survival curves for drug-treated and untreated cultures revealed that SC-236 enhanced radiation-induced cell death. In these combination studies, SC-236 treatment resulted in a dose-enhancement factor of 1.4 at a surviving fraction of 0.1, with the surviving fraction at 2 Gy (SF2) reduced from 0.61 to 0.31. These data indicate that in vitro SC-236 induces U251 apoptotic cell death and enhances the radiosensitivity of the surviving cells. To extend these investigations to an in vivo situation, U251 glioma cells were grown as tumor xenografts in the hind leg of nude mice, and SC-236 was administered in drinking water. SC-236 alone slowed tumor growth rate, and when administered in combination with local irradiation, SC-236 caused a greater than additive increase in tumor growth delay. These in vitro and in vivo results suggest that the selective inhibition of COX-2 combined with radiation has potential as a cancer treatment.


The Human Genome Project has had a significant impact in Medicine. Genomic Medicine is becoming more preventive than curative. The knowledge obtained by the Human Genome Project has allowed the development of genetic diagnostic tests for patients already affected (symptomatic diagnosis) or patients who will develop the condition in the future (presymptomatic diagnosis). These genetic tests may also be used in prenatal or preimplantational genetic diagnosis. Genetic counseling has a central role in the Genomic Medicine. This paper deals with the Human Genome Project and Genetic counseling from a bioethical point of view.


We present a review on the recent study of the type I to type II transition in short-period superlattices of GaAs/AlAs by means of cyclotron resonance and interband magneto-optical spectroscopy in pulsed high magnetic fields up to 500 T. In the magneto-photoluminescence spectra of excitons in , the magnetic-field-induced type I to type II transition was observed with and without the simultaneous application of high pressure. The behaviour of the transition varies depending on the thickness of the AlAs layers. In cyclotron resonance of , the resonance peak at the X minima was observed in the type II regime for n smaller than 14, whereas the resonance at the point was observed for n>15. It was found that the angular dependence of the peak position does not obey the simple cosine dependence due to the subband mixing in high magnetic fields. From the angular dependence, the effective masses at the X point were determined. In high-field cyclotron resonance measurements at 129 meV up to 400 T for n = 16 (type I), the resonance of the X minima expected at around 260 T was indiscernible, despite the fact that the transition should have occurred at lower fields.


Explainable recommendation systems provide explanations for recommendation results to improve their transparency and persuasiveness. The existing explainable recommendation methods generate textual explanations without explicitly considering the user's preferences on different aspects of the item. In this paper, we propose a novel explanation generation framework, named Hierarchical Aspect-guided explanation Generation (HAG), for explainable recommendation. Specifically, HAG employs a review-based syntax graph to provide a unified view of the user/item details. An aspect-guided graph pooling operator is proposed to extract the aspect-relevant information from the review-based syntax graphs to model the user's preferences on an item at the aspect level. Then, a hierarchical explanation decoder is developed to generate aspects and aspect-relevant explanations based on the attention mechanism. The experimental results on three real datasets indicate that HAG outperforms state-of-the-art explanation generation methods in both single-aspect and multi-aspect explanation generation tasks, and also achieves comparable or even better preference prediction accuracy than strong baseline methods.


By analysing the spectrum and the relativistic autoionization probabilities of parts of the spectra of two and three electron atomic systems with the fictitious charge of Z = 2.05, we add further evidence to our previous many-electron interpretation of the recently observed phenomenon of the sudden change of the lifetimes of the Li 4P states just above the Li+ 1s2s 3S threshold. We suggest that relativistic many-electron analyses are necessary for the correct understanding of possible similar threshold phenomena throughout the periodic table.


Pyramidal neurons located within layer V of the medial prefrontal cortex drive cognitive circuits by integrating afferent signals and sending efferent projections to cortical and subcortical targets. This role is supported by cholinergic neurotransmission, which modulates pyramidal neuron excitability via postsynaptic nicotinic receptors. We employed whole-cell electrophysiology with neuron reconstruction in brain slices from mice of both sexes to demonstrate that medial prefrontal layer V pyramidal neurons comprise three subtypes that have distinct electrophysiological properties, receptor isoform-specific nicotinic responses, and projection targets. Burst-firing neurons may be sub-divided into subtypes having (i) α7 isoform nicotinic responses and projections to the contralateral cortex, or (ii) α7 and β2 isoform nicotinic responses and projections to the nucleus accumbens. Regular-firing neurons have β2 isoform nicotinic responses and projections to the ventromedial thalamus. These findings provide new insight into an isoform-specific mechanism by which cholinergic neurotransmission modulates distinct efferent projections from this cognitive brain region.


Abstract Background Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for depression correlate with depression status and chronicity, and provide causal anchors to identify depressive mechanisms. Neuroticism is phenotypically and genetically positively associated with depression, whereas psychological resilience demonstrates negative phenotypic associations. Whether increased neuroticism and reduced resilience are downstream mediators of genetic risk for depression, and whether they contribute independently to risk remains unknown. Methods Moderating and mediating relationships between depression PRS, neuroticism, resilience and both clinical and self-reported depression were examined in a large, population-based cohort, Generation Scotland: Scottish Family Health Study (N = 4166), using linear regression and structural equation modelling. Neuroticism and resilience were measured by the Eysenck Personality Scale Short Form Revised and the Brief Resilience Scale, respectively. Results PRS for depression was associated with increased likelihood of self-reported and clinical depression. No interaction was found between PRS and neuroticism, or between PRS and resilience. Neuroticism was associated with increased likelihood of self-reported and clinical depression, whereas resilience was associated with reduced risk. Structural equation modelling suggested the association between PRS and self-reported and clinical depression was mediated by neuroticism (43–57%), while resilience mediated the association in the opposite direction (37–40%). For both self-reported and clinical diagnoses, the genetic risk for depression was independently mediated by neuroticism and resilience. Conclusions Findings suggest polygenic risk for depression increases vulnerability for self-reported and clinical depression through independent effects on increased neuroticism and reduced psychological resilience. In addition, two partially independent mechanisms – neuroticism and resilience – may form part of the pathway of vulnerability to depression.


In the future 6G integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) cellular systems, networked sensing is a promising technique that can leverage the cooperation among the base stations (BSs) to perform high-resolution localization. However, a dense deployment of BSs to fully reap the networked sensing gain is not a cost-efficient solution in practice. Motivated by the advance in the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) technology for 6G communication, this paper examines the feasibility of deploying the low-cost IRSs to enhance the anchor density for networked sensing. Specifically, we propose a novel heterogeneous networked sensing architecture, which consists of both the active anchors, i.e., the BSs, and the passive anchors, i.e., the IRSs. Under this framework, the BSs emit the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication signals in the downlink for localizing the targets based on their echoes reflected via/not via the IRSs. However, there are two challenges for using passive anchors in localization. First, it is impossible to utilize the round-trip signal between a passive IRS and a passive target for estimating their distance. Second, before localizing a target, we do not know which IRS is closest to it and serves as its anchor. In this paper, we show that the distance between a target and its associated IRS can be indirectly estimated based on the length of the BS-target-BS path and the BS-target-IRS-BS path. Moreover, we propose an efficient data association method to match each target to its associated IRS. Numerical results are given to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed heterogeneous networked sensing architecture with both active and passive anchors.


Background Nutritional risk is associated with adverse clinical outcomes and is more prevalent among pulmonology patients than among patients in other departments. High-altitude environments can affect patients with chronic respiratory diseases, but evidence of the prevalence of nutritional risk among hospitalized patients with respiratory diseases in high-altitude areas is limited. This study aimed to investigate the nutritional risk and status of inpatients with different major respiratory diagnoses permanently living on the Tibetan Plateau (≥3,000 m above sea level). Methods In this cross-sectional study, we consecutively recruited inpatients admitted to the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine at the Tibet Autonomous Region People's Hospital of Lhasa between November 2020 and May 2021. We used the Nutrition Risk Screening (NRS) 2002 tool to assess nutritional risk among these patients. An NRS 2002 score ≥3 points indicates nutritional risk; a score ≥5 indicates high nutritional risk. According to NRS-2002 scores, patients were divided into three groups (NRS-2002 0–2, 3–4, and ≥5). The differences in age, sex, major respiratory diagnoses, comorbidities, body mass index, and laboratory findings among the groups were analyzed. Results A total of 289 eligible Tibetan patients were enrolled in the study, and 46.1% (133/246) of them were at nutritional risk (NRS-2002 score ≥3). Twenty-one (7.3%) patients were at high nutritional risk (NRS-2002 score ≥5). The proportions of patients at nutritional risk were relatively high among patients with lung cancer (58.8%), interstitial lung disease (58.3%), pulmonary embolism (52.9%), and tuberculosis (50.0%). Laboratory findings showed that patients with NRS-2002 scores of 3–4 and ≥5 had lower red blood cell counts, serum albumin and hemoglobin levels, and higher C-reactive protein (CRP) levels than those with NRS-2002 scores < 3. Conclusion The prevalence of nutritional risk was high among pulmonology department inpatients permanently living on the Tibetan Plateau. Patients with lung cancer, interstitial lung disease, pulmonary embolism or tuberculosis were more likely to have nutritional risk than patients with other diagnoses. The nutritional risk of inpatients in the respiratory department in the plateau area should not be ignored, and patients at high nutritional risk should receive timely intervention.


We study the two most common types of percolation processes on a sparse random graph with a given degree sequence. Namely, we examine first a bond percolation process where the edges of the graph are retained with probability p, and afterwards we focus on site percolation where the vertices are retained with probability p. We establish critical values for p above which a giant component emerges in both cases. Moreover, we show that, in fact, these coincide. As a special case, our results apply to power-law random graphs. We obtain rigorous proofs for formulas derived by several physicists for such graphs.


The optical absorption coefficient alpha of liquid sulphur has been measured in a wide absorption range from 5.5*10-2 to 2*105 cm-1 at temperatures from 130 to 450 degrees C. For measurement in the high-absorption range beyond 105 cm-1, we have developed an optical cell of our own design with a sample thickness of about 3000 AA. It was found that the absorption spectra are substantially changed at the polymerization temperature, especially in the high-absorption region; a new absorption band appears at around 3.25 eV and increases with increasing temperature. We discuss the origin of this new absorption band in the high-absorption region together with the details of the spectral changes in the intermediate and low-absorption regions.