Passive margins form by continental splitting which may follow an early pre-split graben stage of development. Such margins are divisible into rifted and sheared types. After formation the margins develop by predominantly vertical tectonics as the intervening ocean widens by seafloor spreading. The plate splitting mechanism is not yet understood, but evidence from aseismic ridges and associated continental volcanism is relevant. Location of the original continent-ocean contact is also problematical in many regions, especially where quiet magnetic zones occur above crust of uncertain status. Rifted margins are notable for great subsidence resulting from early graben formation and later flexural subsidence of the shelf and slope regions. Graben formation is attributed to wedge subsidence of the upper crust in response to crustal stretching, possibly associated with doming before splitting. Four factors have been recognized as contributing to flexural subsidence: gravity loading, thermal subsidence of the adjacent oceanic lithosphere, possible thermal subsidence of the continental lithosphere following heating and erosion at the time of break-up, and thinning of the continental crust by seaward creep of lower crustal material. The relative importance of these four mechanisms needs clarification.


Washing pods became a popular way to add detergent to washing machines. Despite the claims about the degradability of the pod film, the sludge in pipes can be observed after the usage of such pods. This study fo-cused on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of washing pod films as a source of microplastic.


Abstract—The object of this study is to investigate the effect of pulsator on washing performance quantitatively for front-loading washer. The front-loading washer with pulsator shows washing performance improvement of 18% and the particle-based body simulation technique has been applied to figure out the relation between washing performance and mechanical forces exerted on textile during washing process. As a result, the mechanical forces, such as collision force and strain force, acting on the textile have turned out to be about twice numerically. The washing performance improvement due to additional pulsate system has been utilized for customers to save 50% of washing time.


We describe the use of high T/sub c/ flip-chip dc SQUID magnetometers in systems for several geophysical prospection methods. For use in the Transient Electro Magnetics (TEM) method, a one-channel SQUID magnetometer system (vertical field component) was adapted to rough conditions in the field. We report on measurements in South Africa over a geophysically interesting target in real production mode. Transients up to 200 ms could be recorded, which is about a factor of 100 more than with conventional coils. For investigation of the magnetic field gradient a two-channel system, built as a first-order electronic gradiometer with a baseline up to 1 m, was designed and manufactured. It can be used, e.g., for surface exploration or for archeometry. The system can be moved in the Earth's magnetic field. We achieve a common mode rejection of 100. The reasons for the imbalance and the possibility of further improvement of the system are discussed.


The stress dependence of the intensity of 3 MHz ultrasound backscattered at an oblique angle from a water-Duralumin interface is reported. Tensile test specimens of Duralumin were subjected to cyclic stresses of amplitude 200 MPa. The amplitudes of backscattered signals having a well defined frequency were obtained by spectrum analysis. If the changes in backscatter amplitude are assumed to have been related to dislocation damping, it is shown that the damping must have increased by typically 0.6 dB mu s-1 before plastic deformation occurred. The possibilities of using the technique for practical non-contact monitoring of local plastic deformation and related effects are discussed.


When a DS-SSMA communication system uses in common the frequency region which narrow-band communication systems have used, the interference power falling on the narrow-band systems from the SS system should be considered. We propose a method that rejects the interference signal component on the transmitting side of the SS system and the transmission signals of the narrow-band systems on the receiving side of the SS system. We clarify the relationship between the signal-to-noise power ratio of the SS system with these band rejection filters and the ratio of narrow bandwidth to the chip rate, and show that prediction error filters are useful to the rejection filters.<<ETX>>


The notion of genre has been the topic of discussion by school curriculum designers and textbook writers. According to the National Foreign Language (NFL) 2020 project proposed by Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), students should be exposed to a wide range of text types and their features. In view of the important role played by textbooks in Vietnam classroom and the impact of textbook quality on learning, this study examines the range of genres of the reading passages and their generic features in two series of high school English textbooks: Tiếng Anh Grade 10, 11, 12 (TA series) and Solutions Grade 10, 11, 12 (SG series). The results indicated a variety of genres in the textbooks but the spread is uneven. There are also differences among levels in the range of genres. Generally, the range of genres in both series matches the MOET's guidelines, but certain genres are more dominant. The topics are also found to be more or less the same, with the TA series being slightly more suited to Vietnamese students' needs. The detailed analysis of selected texts also showed they all display many features of the established patterns of the typical genres. Nonetheless, the repetition of simplified structures within genres might not be enough to help sensitize students to real-life authentic texts or might be too easy for some learners. These findings suggest several implications for improving the texts found in both series.


Agricultural leading enterprises in the agricultural industrialization plays an important role, is the core of agricultural industrialization. The level of performance of Agricultural Leading Enterprises will have a direct bearing on the success of agricultural industrialization. In view of this, this paper based on BP neural network model and the traditional AHP to build Heilongjiang Province leading agricultural enterprise performance evaluation system. The results show: built in this paper evaluation system is running well, suitable for Agricultural leading enterprises performance evaluation in Province .


A coarse-grained model for colloid–polymer mixtures is investigated where both colloids and polymer coils are represented as point-like particles interacting with spherically symmetric effective potentials. Colloid–colloid and colloid–polymer interactions are described by Weeks–Chandler–Andersen potentials, while the polymer–polymer interaction is very soft, of strength kBT/2 for maximum polymer–polymer overlap. This model can be efficiently simulated both by Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics methods, and its phase diagram closely resembles that of the well-known Asakura–Oosawa model. The static and dynamic properties of the model are presented for systems at critical colloid density, varying the polymer density in the one-phase region. Applying Lees-Edwards boundary conditions, colloid–polymer mixtures exposed to shear deformation are considered, and the resulting anisotropy of correlations is studied. Whereas for the considered shear rate, , radial distribution functions and static structure factors indicate only small structural changes under shear, an appropriate projection of these correlation functions onto spherical harmonics is presented that allows us to directly quantify the structural anisotropies. However, the considered shear rate is probably not high enough to see anisotropies in static structure factors at small wavenumbers that have been predicted by Onuki and Kawasaki (1979 Ann. Phys. 121 456) for the critical behavior of systems under shear. The anomalous dependence of the polymer's self-diffusion constant on polymer density is referred to the clustering of the colloid particles when approaching the critical point.


The Arctic marine environment is facing increasing risks of oil spills due to growing maritime activities such as tourism and resource exploration. Encapsulation and migration of spilled oil through the brine channel system in sea ice poses significant risk to ice-associated biological communities. The first objective of this study was to establish mesocosms that allow the growth of artificial sea ice leading to sea ice physical properties similar to young natural sea ice. In addition, the mesocosms should be capable of growing and maintaining a sea ice community. Six sea water tanks with 360 l capacity each were inoculated with biological cultures collected from landfast sea ice near Utqiagvik , AK in April 2014 (year 1) and March 2015 (year 2). The two experiments lasted 24 and 27 days, and final ice thickness reached a mean value of 33 cm. The light conditions under the ice mimicked natural spring irradiances of 15 ^mol photons m2 s-1. Different inoculation approaches for ice biota were used. In year 1 we did not observe any algal growth. In year 2, biological characteristics in the ice prior to oil release (chlorophyll a, Extracellular Polymeric Substance (EPS) concentrations and algal and bacterial abundances) were similar to natural concentrations from early spring first year ice. The second objective was to evaluate the impact of Alaska North Slope crude oil on sea ice biota. Two different oil spill scenarios were tested in the mesocosms: discrete oil lenses and dispersed emulsions. Tanks were sampled prior to oil release and 13 or 10 days post-release in year 1 and year 2, respectively. In year 1, bacterial abundances increased after oil release, while establishment of algal populations was unsuccessful. In year 2, algal growth rates and EPS production increased over time in the control tanks, while they did not change in the oil exposed tanks. Differential response of bacteria and algae between year 1 and 2 not only point to the potential of nutrient competition, but also to the need of measuring several biological properties to detect effects of oil exposure in the event of a spill. Future studies can build upon the developed experimental framework including biological responses to low, sub-lethal oil dosing.


In harmonic analysis on a reductive symmetric space X an important role is played by families of generalized eigenfunctions for the algebra D (X) of invariant dierential operators. Such families arise for instance as matrix coeAEcients of representations that come in series, such as the (generalized) principal series. In particular, relations between such families are of great interest. We recall that a real reductive group G; equipped with the left times right multiplication action, is a reductive symmetric space. In the case of the group, examples of the mentioned relations are functional equations for Eisenstein integrals, see [23] and [25], or Arthur-Campoli relations for Eisenstein integrals, see [1], [14]. In this paper we develop a general tool to establish relations of this kind. We show that they can be derived from similar relations satised by the family of functions obtained by taking one particular coeAEcient in a certain asymptotic expansion. Since the functions in the family so obtained are eigenfunctions on symmetric spaces of lower split rank, this yields a powerful inductive method; we call it induction of relations. In the case of the group, a closely related lifting theorem by Casselman was used by Arthur in the proof of the Paley-Wiener theorem, see [1], Thm. II.4.1. However, no proof seems yet to have appeared of Casselman's theorem.


With the development of WAP and the subsequent morphosis of the mobile phone and the Web, a need arises for a system capable of accessing telephony and Web-browsing features in WAP enabled cellular phones with ease. The paper develops such a system capable of handling voice request and response thus greatly simplifying the above tasks. The hardware as well as the protocol considerations involved is discussed. Aimed at packet switched networks (e.g. GSM GPRS), it proposes a tightly coupled speech analysis (recognition and synthesis) engine, embedded in the mobile device itself.


The main objective was to evaluate the stability and toxicity of a Solution Enhanced Dispersion by Supercritical Fluids (SEDS) formulated A. paniculata extract that was intended for food applications. The best formulated SEDS A. paniculata extract with improved dissolution of andrographolide (data not shown) was obtained using 25 mg/mL A. paniculata extract (maceration in acetone) and 6 mg/mL Eudragit L100-55 with acetone as feed solvent at the following SEDS co-precipitation conditions: 150 bar, 40 ̊C, 15 L/min CO2 flow rate (1 bar, 25 ̊C), 0.5 mL/min liquid feed flow. Sticky A. paniculata extract with 16% w/w andrographolide was transformed into SEDS co-precipitates concentrated with 20.4% w/w andrographolide. Only 20-30% of andrographolide was degraded after two-month storage under 5, 30, 45 ̊C at 75% relative humidity (RH). About 30-60% of andrographolide was degraded after addition into drinking water, orange drink, soybean milk for a day. This would imply its unstable nature after being dispersed and wetted in liquid food. SEDS co-precipitate was found to be practically acetone-free (< 0.1 ppm) by Headspace Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). This showed the capability of the SEDS process in stripping off acetone. Higher cytotoxic potential of SEDS co-precipitates (LC50 = 46.46 μg/mL) than extract (LC50 = 150.45 μg/mL) was observed.


This article considers statistical process control (SPC) of univariate processes when the parametric form of the process distribution is unavailable. Most existing SPC procedures are based on the assumption that a parametric form (e.g., normal) of the process distribution can be specified beforehand. In the literature, it has been demonstrated that their performance is unreliable in cases when the prespecified process distribution is invalid. To overcome this limitation, some nonparametric (or distribution-free) SPC charts have been proposed, most of which are based on the ordering information of the observed data. This article tries to make two contributions to the nonparametric SPC literature. First, we propose an alternative framework for constructing nonparametric control charts, by first categorizing observed data and then applying categorical data analysis methods to SPC. Under this framework, some new nonparametric control charts are proposed. Second, we compare our proposed control charts with several representative existing control charts in various cases. Some empirical guidelines are provided for users to choose a proper nonparametric control chart for a specific application. This article has supplementary materials online.


A formal resemblance between thermodynamics and mechanics has been found. In this respect, the fundamental ideas of quantum theory can be obtained from this analogy. We have deduced a correspondence between Carathéodory's theorem and Bohr's stationary states principle. Using the deduced correspondence rules, we obtain the quantification rule of Bohr–Sommerfield. Also, starting from the theory of thermodynamic fluctuations, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle has been deduced without use of any quantum assumption. Our results show then that the Bohr–Sommerfield rule and Heisenberg's principle are the mechanical versions of thermodynamics laws. Exactly as the Schrödinger equation and the quantum mechanics pulse are the mechanical versions of the geometrical optics laws.


The theory and the data in this Paper challenge the view that there is no structure in prices and allocations when markets are off equilibrium. Starting from the observation that price-taking usually applies only to small orders, a theory of equilibration is derived based on the assumption that orders are optimal only locally. Prices adjust in the direction of the order imbalance. In the context of mean-variance preferences, the theory predicts that a security's price will correlate with excess demands in other securities, and the sign of this correlation is the same as that of the covariance of the final payoffs. In the short run, prices tend to a local equilibrium where the risk-aversion weighted endowment portfolio (RAWE) is mean-variance optimal. Relative to the market portfolio, RAWE overweighs securities that are held disproportionally by more risk averse agents; RAWE puts less weight on securities that are held primarily by more risk tolerant agents. Throughout equilibration, portfolio separation is violated generically, and violations are more extreme when payoff covariances are positive. For a variety of patterns of initial allocations (including identical initial holdings), the equity premium is larger at the outset than at (CAPM) equilibrium. Experimental evidence confirms the predictions conclusively.


Abstract Surveys for shushuks Platanista gangetica were conducted during January to April 1999 in Kaptai Lake and the southern rivers of Bangladesh. A population of at least 125 dolphins was recorded in the Karnaphuli and Sangu rivers and connecting canal. The overall encounter rate was 0.76 dolphins per km. Density was highest in the lower reaches of the Sangu, where we recorded 1.36 dolphins per km. These rates are fairly high when compared with other areas of shushuk distribution. Dolphin movements in the Sikalbaha–Chandkhali Canal were consistent with it being used as a corridor for migration and dispersal between the Karnaphuli and Sangu. Shushuks were also sighted in marine waters of the Karnaphuli and Sangu river mouths, adding credibility to the hypothesis that dolphins move along the coast between the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna and Karnaphuli–Sangu systems, perhaps during the monsoon when freshwater plumes extend into the Bay of Bengal. No dolphins were nobserved in Kaptai Lake, a dam-created reservoir of the upper Karnaphuli, despite reports of occasional sightings by local fishermen. No shushuks were observed in the Bagkhali and Matamuhuri rivers, possibly because of seasonal-closure dams present near the mouths of both rivers. The main threats to dolphin survival in the Karnaphuli-Sangu system are probably accidental entanglement in monofilament gillnets, bioaccumulation of persistent contaminants and possibly collisions with motorized vessels and a decline in prey as a result of over fishing. The most significant conservation measure that could be taken would be to establish a protected area for dolphins in the Sangu River below the Dohazari Bridge.


Comparisons are performed to study the drive current of accumulation-mode (AM) p-channel wrap-gated Fin-FETs. The drive current of the AM p-channel FET is 15%–26% larger than that of the inversion-mode (IM) p-channel FET with the same wrap-gated fin channel, because of the body current component in the AM FET, which becomes less dominative as the gate overdrive becomes larger. The drive currents of the AM p-channel wrap-gated Fin-FETs are 50% larger than those of the AM p-channel planar FETs, which arises from effective conducting surface broadening and volume accumulation in the AM wrap-gated Fin-FETs. The effective conducting surface broadening is due to wrap-gate-induced multi-surface conduction, while the volume accumulation, namely the majority carrier concentration anywhere in the fin cross section exceeding the fin doping density, is due to the coupling of electric fields from different parts of the wrap gate. Moreover, for AM p-channel wrap-gated Fin-FETs, the current in channel along (110) is larger than that in channel along (100), which arises from the surface mobility difference due to different transport directions and surface orientations. That is more obvious as the gate overdrive becomes larger, when the surface current component plays a more dominative role in the total current.


The aim of this study was to monitor accumulation of lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic in leg skeletal muscle of some wild birds from selected areas of Slovakia and the correlations among the heavy metals. A total of 160 wild birds representing 3 species—Eurasian coot (Fulica atra) (n = 24), mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) (n = 68) and pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) (n = 68) were involved for analyses. Concentrations of heavy metals from samples were measured using atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS). Metal concentrations are expressed as mg/kg wet weight. The order of lead and arsenic concentrations in muscles of wild birds were as follows: mallard > pheasant > Eurasian coot; in the case of arsenic the differences were significant (P < 0.05). Muscle of Eurasian coot accumulated the highest concentration of cadmium and mercury followed by pheasant and the lowest in mallard, but differences were not significant (P > 0.05). Moderately negative correlations were noted in pheasant between cadmium and mercury (r = −0.39), and between mercury and arsenic (r = −0.45). Moderately negative correlation between cadmium and arsenic (r = −0.31) was found for Eurasian coot.


Abstract The Mekong Delta region of Vietnam has great potential for agricultural development thanks to natural incentives. Many livestock industries have developed for a long time and play an important role in the country with many agricultural export products. In the era of breakthrough technologies and advances in information technology, many techniques are used to support the development of smart agriculture. In particular, computer vision techniques are widely applied to help farmers save a lot of labour and cost. This study presents an approach for counting eels based on Mathematical Morphology Operations and Boundary Detection from images of breeding eels captured with the proposed photo box. The proposed method is evaluated using data collected directly from a breeding eel farm in Vietnam. The authors of the research evaluate and investigate the length distribution of eels to select the appropriate size for counting tasks. The experiments show positive results with an average Mean Absolute Error of 2.2 over a tray of more than 17 eels. The contribution of the research is to provide tools to support farmers in eel farms to save time and effort and improve efficiency.


The primary purpose of this study is to examine the impact of high-tech and non-high-tech mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on the credit rating changes in Taiwan. We utilized the ordered probit model with random effect for the empirical works. A variety of econometric tests were conducted using pooled data of 101 firms in Taiwan over the period Sep. 1996 to Dec. 2001. This paper tries to examine whether the financial and strategy factors affect the credit risks. Our results indicate that Insider Ownership and Leverage Ratio are negatively related to credit rating changes, while Return on Equity and High-tech Firm are positively related to credit rating changes for both pre-and post-M&A activities. Although higher Institutional Ownership increases in credit rating changes for pre-M&A, it decreases credit rating changes for post-M&A.


Background There is insufficient evidence of cost-effectiveness of COPD disease management (COPD-DM) programs. Aim The aim of this study is to review the impact of COPD-DM on healthcare costs and outcomes. We also investigated the impact of disease-, intervention-, and study-characteristics. Methods We conducted a systematic review to identify cost-effectiveness of COPD-DM. The data, results, and characteristics of the studies were grouped and, if feasible, included in a random-effects meta-analysis. Results We included 16 papers describing 11 studies. The meta-analysis showed that DM decrease hospitalizations (RR: 0.76 [95CI: 0.63-0.93]), and let to a significant reduction of hospitalization costs (€1196 [95CI: €722 -€1670]) per patient per year (PPPY). Average healthcare savings were €1914 [95CI: €1464-€2365] PPPY. These savings have to be weighed against the costs of developing, implementing and managing the DM program. Our results showed great variability in disease-, intervention-, and study-characteristics. There are indications that DM showed greater savings in hospital costs in studies with: severe COPD patients (GOLD stage 3+), patients with exacerbations, smokers, non-RCT design, short intervention duration, low methodological quality, 1-2 Chronic Care Model components and non-EU origin. Conclusion DM decreased the risk of hospitalization and healthcare costs (excluding program costs). Furthermore, cost-effectiveness was influenced by heterogeneity in study-, intervention-, and disease-characteristics. Although favourable results on healthcare costs and effects have been demonstrated, more studies are needed to draw conclusions on the impact of DM on total costs and cost-effectiveness of DM in different settings.


This work concerns the optimization of treatment schemes for viral infections using drugs that stimulate the humoral immune response. The dynamics of the disease is based on Marchuk's formulation of the behavior of immune systems. The model is extended to include the effect of treatment and to allow a representation of the pathological consequences of the infection and the side effects of the drugs on the patient. The performance index uses the concept of fuzzy sets to model non-exact subjective quantities such as patient well-being, that should be traded off against quantities that can be objectively measured, such as cost of medication. The admissible controls are assumed to belong to the class of piecewise constant functions. A numerical example using influenza dynamics show a considerable improvement of the optimized drug administration policy, when compared to non-optimized policies, in terms of reduction in the achieved performance index.


The incidence of contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) increases in the range from patients with unstable angina to ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Platelet activation has been associated with pathophysiology of nephropathy and thrombus burden in the infarct-related arteries. We investigated the impact of thrombus burden on CIN in patients with STEMI. We enrolled 883 patients with STEMI who received primary percutaneous coronary intervention. Patients were divided into groups according to thrombus burden and CIN development. Thrombus burden was scored based on thrombolysis in myocardial infarction thrombus grades (TGs). Thrombus grade 4 was defined as large thrombus burden (LTB), while thrombus burden <TG 4 was defined as small thrombus burden. A total of 126 (14.2%) patients with STEMI had CIN, while 313 (35.4%) patients had LTB. Compared to CIN (−) patients, CIN (+) patients were older, had lower hemoglobin levels, lower ejection fraction, and higher contrast media volume administration. Multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated that LTB, age, hypertension, and admission glomerular filtration rate were independent predictors of CIN (P = .016, P < .001, P = .028, P < .001, respectively). Thrombus burden, which is measurable during angiography, may be helpful in the determination of CIN risk in patients with STEMI.


A critical aspect of highly potent regimens such as lung stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is to avoid collateral toxicity while achieving planning target volume (PTV) coverage. In this work, we describe four dimensional conformal radiotherapy using a highly parallelizable swarm intelligence-based stochastic optimization technique. Conventional lung CRT-SBRT uses a 4DCT to create an internal target volume and then, using forward-planning, generates a 3D conformal plan. In contrast, we investigate an inverse-planning strategy that uses 4DCT data to create a 4D conformal plan, which is optimized across the three spatial dimensions (3D) as well as time, as represented by the respiratory phase. The key idea is to use respiratory motion as an additional degree of freedom. We iteratively adjust fluence weights for all beam apertures across all respiratory phases considering OAR sparing, PTV coverage and delivery efficiency. To demonstrate proof-of-concept, five non-small-cell lung cancer SBRT patients were retrospectively studied. The 4D optimized plans achieved PTV coverage comparable to the corresponding clinically delivered plans while showing significantly superior OAR sparing ranging from 26% to 83% for Dmax heart, 10%–41% for Dmax esophagus, 31%–68% for Dmax spinal cord and 7%–32% for V13 lung.


In the quest for understanding correlated electrons, high-temperature superconductivity remains a formidable challenge and a source of insight. This paper briefly recalls the central achievement by the study of heat transport at low temperatures. At very low temperatures, nodal quasi-particles of the d-wave superconducting gap become the main carriers of heat. Their thermal conductivity is unaffected by disorder and reflects the fine structure of the superconducting gap. This finding had led to new openings in the exploration of other unconventional superconductors


Abstract With the development of virtual reality (VR) and human-computer interaction technology, how to use natural and efficient interaction methods in the virtual environment has become a hot topic of research. Gesture is one of the most important communication methods of human beings, which can effectively express users' demands. In the past few decades, gesture-based interaction has made significant progress. This article focuses on the gesture interaction technology and discusses the definition and classification of gestures, input devices for gesture interaction, and gesture interaction recognition technology. The application of gesture interaction technology in virtual reality is studied, the existing problems in the current gesture interaction are summarized, and the future development is prospected.


Effects of 10 MeV electron and fast reactor neutron irradiations on carrier removal rate and deep traps spectra were compared for undoped n-GaN samples. It is shown that for electron irradiation the carrier removal rate is well accounted for by the difference in introduction rates of nitrogen-vacancy-related donors with activation energy 0.2 eV and of nitrogen-interstitial-related acceptors at Ec-1.2 eV. In the case of neutron irradiation the introduction rate of all deep traps was much lower than the carrier removal rate indicating that the main contribution to electron removal was due to disordered regions. These regions give rise to a marked persistent photocapacitance signal and a hole-trap-like feature in deep traps spectra. The Fermi level position in the core of disordered regions is located near Ec-(0.85-1) eV.


Lexical knowledge is complex, multidimensional, and difficult to pin down to a set of defined components. The development, organization, and use of lexical knowledge in the first and additional languages are studied in a number of neighbouring disciplines beyond second language acquisition and applied linguistics, including psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, and language education. In this introduction, we highlight how the five articles in this special issue hone our understanding of different aspects of second language (L2) lexical knowledge, its acquisition, and use by adopting innovative research design, methods, and approaches to data collection and analysis from these distinct but related disciplines, affording new theoretical and empirical insights.


Packed with photographs and clear, informative text, this reference explores coffee's many different uses, from aromatic beverage to indispensable cooking ingredient. It is divided into two main sections: reference and recipes. The reference section includes an introduction to the history of coffee drinking, while the step-by-step recipe section features over 70 recipes which include classics such as tiramisu and recipes that serve as the perfect companion to a cup of coffee such as coffee biscotti.


Abstract The behavior of multivalent elements such as Fe, Cr, V, and Eu in magmatic systems reflects the fO₂ of the environment. In particular, Eu behavior in pyroxene from basaltic systems has been demonstrated to be an effective measure of fO₂. We selected two nearly isochemical lunar pigeonite basalts (15058, 15499), a lunar high-Ti basalt (75035), and Pasamonte (representing asteroid 4 Vesta, an unequilibrated eucrite), to explore other potential variables that may affect this indicator of fO₂. All of these basalts crystallized at an fO₂ of approximately IW-1, yet they experienced different cooling and crystallization histories and their pyroxenes exhibit a wide range of compositional trajectories within the pyroxene quadrilateral. There are several variables that influence the Eu/Eu* recorded in pyroxene that may compromise the determination of fO₂. Previous experimental studies show that pyroxene composition influences the ability of pyroxene to accommodate REE and fractionate Eu2+ from Eu3+. We demonstrate that in addition to the influence of Ca in the M2 site, the Al content in the pyroxene and its influence on coupled substitutions will also influence the fractionation of Eu2+ from Eu3+. For example, the coupled substitution TSi4+ + M2R2+ → TAl3+ + M2REE3+ may accommodate REE3+ in preference to Eu2+, which is too large. Different pyroxene growth surfaces will incorporate Eu2+ and Eu3+ differently due to differences in growth rate, Al content, and site configuration. In consort with the pyroxene composition, fractionation of Eu2+ from Eu3+ will be aided by the Al content of the basaltic melt, which increases the activities of network-forming components such as CaAl2O4 and FeAl2O4 in the melt during pyroxene crystallization. The Al content will result in changing the partitioning behavior of Eu3+ while having very little effect on Eu2+. Melt composition, the appearance of plagioclase on the liquidus, and the kinetics of plagioclase crystallization are influenced by cooling rate. Data from the four basalts selected also suggest that Eu2+/Eu3+ in the melt remains buffered even with extreme differences in cooling rate and plagioclase crystallization kinetics. Unexpectedly, many of these same variables affect the substitution of multivalent V. If the fO₂ determined from Eu behavior in pyroxene is not placed within a petrologic and crystal-chemical context, errors of 1 to 2 log units may result. The influence of these variables may be reduced by using multiple, co-crystallizing phases (i.e., plagioclase and pyroxene) and ratioing DEu to adjacent REE (DSm, Gd).


Usnic acid (UA) is a dibenzofuran derivative naturally present in lichens, organisms resulting from the symbiosis between a fungus and a cyanobacterium, or an alga. UA shows antimicrobial, antitumor, antioxidant, analgesic, anti-inflammatory as well as UV-protective activities. Its use as pharmacological agent is widely described in traditional medicine, and in the past few years, the product has been marketed as a food supplement for the induction of weight loss. However, the development of severe hepatotoxicity in a limited number of subjects prompted the FDA to issue a warning letter, which led to the withdrawal of the product from the market in November 2001. Data published in literature on UA toxicology, genotoxicity, mutagenesis, and teratogenicity have been reviewed, as well as the case reports of subjects who developed hepatotoxicity following oral administration of UA as a slimming agent. Finally, we reviewed the most recent studies on the topical use of UA, as well as studies aimed at improving UA pharmacologic activity and reducing toxicity. Indeed, advancements in this field of research could open the possibility to reintroduce the use of UA as therapeutical agent.


Defects in freestanding gallium nitride were examined in this work. Electron beam induced current mapping evidence a low density of dislocations in the first microns from the upper Ga-terminated surface; correspondingly, deep levels detected by junction spectroscopy exhibit point-like characteristics. Spectral photoconductivity measurements in the poorly dislocated region show the characteristic red, yellow, green, and blue bands, which shift toward higher energies with decreasing temperatures according to Varshni's law. Spectral photoconductivity measurements carried out in depth evidenced, instead, the quenching of the defect-related yellow band and the prevalence of the green band when temperature increases. This behavior suggests a dislocation-assisted connection between the yellow and green bands, in agreement with theoretical models on their common origin involving complexes VGa-ON.


The Dutch cytological coding system, KOPAC, enables to code for eight inflammatory events, that is koilocytosis (related to human papillomavirus (HPV)), Trichomonas, dysbacteriosis [related to bacterial vaginosis (BV)], Candida, Gardnerella, Actinomyces, Chlamydia, and non‐specific inflammation (leucocytosis). This study presents an analysis of 1,008,879 smears. Of each smear, the age of the woman and the reason for smear taking (screening or indication) was available. The cytoscores (per mille) for these codes were calculated. For the screening smears, the cytoscores were for koilocytosis (HPV) 2.6, for Trichomonas vaginalis 1.9, for dysbacteriosis 31.4, for Candida albicans 9.8, for Gardnerella vaginalis 0.7, for Actinomyces 6.9, for Chlamydia 0.8, and for non‐specific inflammatory changes 66.4. For the calculation of the Odds Ratio (OR), normal smears were used as a reference. The cytoscores for Chlamydia and Gardnerella covaried with high grade SIL (HSIL), with an OR of 7 and 12, respectively. In addition, the OR for Trichomonas vaginalis, for dysbacteriosis, and for leucocytosis proved to be significantly high in the indication smears. This study provides an oversight of HSIL and the full range of cervical infections as detected by cytology, proving that this infectious byproduct of screening can be very valuable. Diagn. Cytopathol. 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Phenols are ethynylated at the ortho position with silylated chloroethyne in the presence of a catalytic amount of GaCl3 and lithium phenoxide. The lithium salt is essential for the catalysis, and addition of 2,6-di(tert-butyl)-4-methylpyridine inhibits desilylation and hydration of the products. The reaction can be applied to various substituted phenols giving the ortho-ethynylated products in high yields, and the turnover numbers based on GaCl3 are between 8 and 10. The reaction mechanism involves addition of in situ formed phenoxygallium to the haloethyne followed by the elimination of GaCl3.


"Maintenance therapy with budesonide and formoterol in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease" P. It has been brought to the authors9 attention by the safety group at AstraZeneca Lund Sweden that the manuscript "Maintenance therapy with budesonide and formoterol in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease" [1] contained inaccuracies in the safety data. In the manuscript, one patient with a severe exacerbation of COPD was documented with a non-fatal outcome in the formoterol treatment group. The company, in the course of routine safety follow-up, later revealed that the outcome was fatal. The investigator reported the causality to study treatment as unlikely. The safety data were correctly handled in line with regulatory authority reporting regulations. All authors have reviewed all additional information in light of the original data and agreed that these errors do not change the conclusions in the paper. The finding initiated an extended quality check of the study safety data, which revealed a limited number of inconsistencies in the presentation of adverse events (AEs) (including serious AEs). In light of this new information, the text in the Safety section (p. 917, beginning line 11, left-hand column) and table 5 (p. 917) should have read as follows. "The lowest number of withdrawals was in the budesonide/formoterol group (table 1) and the lowest number of serious AEs other than deaths were in the budesonide/formoterol and placebo groups (64, 83, 84 and 67 in the budesonide/formoterol, budesonide, formoterol and placebo groups, respectively). The number of serious AEs related to COPD were 41, 40, 55 and 39 in the budesonide/formoterol, budesonide, formoterol and placebo groups, respectively. The number of deaths were 5, 6, 14 and 5 in the budesonide/formoterol, budesonide, formoterol and placebo groups, respectively." Page 917: table 5. The most frequently reported adverse events (AEs). In the B/F column, the correct percentage of patients with COPD reported as an AE should read 49 not 48. Errors of this type can easily creep into the report of large multi-centre trials like this one, which involved investigators in many countries. The authors are grateful for this opportunity to present the corrected data.


MapReduce-Hadoop has emerged as an effective framework for large-scale data analytics, providing support for executing jobs and storing data in a parallel and distributed manner. MapReduce has been shown to perform very well on large datacenters running applications where the data can be effectively divided into homogeneous chunks running across homogeneous hardware. However, the performance of MapReduceHadoop is far from ideal when either or both hardware and datasets are heterogeneous. Such heterogeneity is unavoidable in many academic computing environments that use multiple generations of hardware, and share resources among users. Heterogeneity is also unavoidable in scientific applications that process a varying number of datasets of different sizes. In these cases, the performance of MapReduce-Hadoop can be a concern. In this paper, we implement MapReduce on top of CometCloud to address the issue of heterogeneity and support applications classes that involve irregular datasets (e.g. large number of small data files or datasets of varying sizes). Furthermore, we develop an autonomic manager that can schedule MapReduce tasks based on user objective, provision resources accordingly, and support on-demand scale up and cloudbursts. These resources can be selected from a hybrid infrastructure such as local clusters, data centers, and public clouds. The performance of the developed solution is verified using a protein data mining application operating on data from the Protein Data Bank. The application is deployed, based on deadline and budget constraints, on a cluster at Rutgers and/or Amazon EC2 resources. The experimental results show that the MapReduce-CometCloud framework can effectively support applications operating on large numbers of small data files on a heterogeneous and distributed environment, and satisfy user objective autonomically using cloudbursts.


glutamine and arginine are two amino acids that have received inexhaustible attention by different research groups all over the world over the past decades. This attention is justified by their potential to enhance recovery of surgical and critically ill patients. The beneficial potential of glutamine and arginine is furthermore supported by numerous trials and an ongoing meta-analysis in surgical and critically ill patients who received a supplemental amount of glutamine or arginine (www.criticalcarenutrition.com).

In this issue of this Journal, Tomlinson et al. (28) present the results of a study in healthy humans about the precursor relation between glutamine and arginine. Apart from the clinical importance of glutamine and arginine as addressed above, the relationship between the two amino acids has gained interest due to the assumed importance of glutamine as a nitrogen and carbon donor for the synthesis of arginine. The importance of glutamine as an important precursor for the synthesis of citrulline, the sole precursor for the de novo synthesis of arginine, was previously established in animal studies by Windmueller and Spaeth and others many years ago (31–34) (Fig. 1). In addition, several studies in animals and humans confirmed the important precursor relationship between glutamine, citrulline, and arginine by showing that plasma levels of citrulline and arginine increased after provision of glutamine (6, 8, 11, 12, 22, 23, 25, 26, 35) (Fig. 2). Also, high correlations were observed between intestinal arterial glutamine uptake and venous release of citrulline (8). Debate about the safety of arginine supplementation in septic critically ill patients (9, 10, 27) and the use of high dosages of glutamine in clinical studies that potentially could lead to stimulated arginine synthesis has further contributed to the relevance of investigating the importance of glutamine as a possible precursor for the synthesis of arginine, especially as no harmful side-effects from supplementation of glutamine have been established so far. Therefore, we need to understand this relationship, which will lead to more defined and scientifically based nutritional interventions. This has resulted in a series of stable-isotope studies by us in mice and surgical patients, which established glutamine to be an important precursor for the de novo synthesis of citrulline and arginine (3, 4, 13, 29). However, we believe that more studies are needed when patients are in the fed state and in critically ill patients, administered high dosages of glutamine and arginine (15, 17, 30). If glutamine is proved to be an adequate precursor of arginine, glutamine supplementation will receive further justification in medical practice and in that case could be viewed as having a dual effect. This hypothesis was recently addressed in the review of Vermeulen et al. (30).

Fig. 1.

Pathways by which glutamine and arginine are considered to contribute their carbon skeleton to the synthesis of citrulline and arginine.

Fig. 2.

Increase in plasma citrulline after ingestion of 14 g of glutamine in 2 h in healthy controls (26).

However, doubt about the interpretation of the results of mentioned stable-isotope studies and the discussed importance of glutamine as an important precursor for arginine production via the production of citrulline is raised by recent publications of Marini and colleagues (19–21). These authors showed in mice using different isotopomers of glutamine (l-[2-15N], l-[5-15N], and l-[U-13C5]) that glutamine was a poor carbon precursor of citrulline and arginine. Also, glutamine nitrogen was an important source of all nitrogen atoms in citrulline and arginine, indicating a complex role of glutamine as a nitrogen precursor. However, comparison with the previous studies in postabsorptive humans (3, 4, 13, 29) is hampered because the studies by Marini and colleagues were performed in fed mice.

The study in humans by Tomlinson et al. in this issue (28) is the first step of unraveling these important research questions in humans. Their results contradict the findings of Marini and colleagues with respect to the importance of glutamine as a carbon precursor for the synthesis of arginine via the intermediate citrulline, because they observed by using the l-[1-13C]glutamine tracer that glutamine contributed 56% to the de novo synthesis of arginine from citrulline. This percentage approaches the 64% contribution of glutamine to the de novo synthesis of arginine observed by Ligthart-Melis et al. (13). Also, Tomlinson et al. do not confirm significant labeling of the ureido N by l-[2-15N]glutamine, as observed by Marini et al. (20). Both observations support the notion that results in mice are not easily translated to humans (1, 8). It may be that the metabolic pathways and necessary enzymes are present in the different species but that this does not guarantee that they are quantitatively equally important.

With respect to the applied tracer methodology, Tomlinson et al. (28) seem to use the same precursor-intermediate-product approach as Marini et al. (19–21). This model relies on the intragastric infusion of tracers (precursor) and their recovery as plasma amino acid products of intestinal metabolism. Although Marini and colleagues (19–21) combine this approach with the dilution equation using an additional intravenous tracer to determine whole body rate of appearance of the amino acid product of interest, Tomlinson et al. (28) use the dilution equations straight away. Furthermore, like the mice in studies by Marini and colleagues, the humans in the study by Tomlinson et al. were studied in the fed state. This approach by Tomlinson raises some questions. First, is it justified to use dilution equations when tracers are provided by the gastrointestinal route? The consequence is an overestimation of rate of appearance or turnover of the amino acid of which the concomitant tracer is provided, because the infusion rate of the tracer is overestimated due to splanchnic extraction of the tracer. Also although less likely, absorption of the tracer could have been reduced because of amino acids coming from the simultaneously ingested meals. With this in mind, one could state that Tomlinson et al. may have underestimated the relative contribution of carbon provided by glutamine for the synthesis of citrulline. Furthermore, by conducting only a protocol involving enterally provided tracers it is not clear how much is contributed by the labeled amino acids that have recycled back to the intestines and could have a different metabolic fate (24). To be able to compare the effect of route of delivery, subjects should have received an additional tracer protocol that could be done on a different day, involving intravenous administration of the same tracers. Second, measurement in the fed state will change the relative contribution of the different metabolic pathways (2), which complicates comparison with results from studies in the fasted state (13, 14, 29). Also, the provided food will further add to the dilution of the tracers. Therefore, it is more than likely that the contribution of glutamine-to-arginine biosynthesis depends on the amount and composition of amino acids provided by the diet.


T cell responses to Ags involve recognition of selected peptide epitopes contained within the antigenic protein. In this report, we describe a new approach for direct identification of CD4+ T cell epitopes of complex Ags that uses human class II tetramers to identify reactive cells. With a panel of 60 overlapping peptides covering the entire sequence of the VP16 protein, a major Ag for HSV-2, we generated a panel of class II MHC tetramers loaded with peptide pools that were used to stain peripheral lymphocytes of an HSV-2 infected individual. With this approach, we identified four new DRA1*0101/DRB1*0401- and two DRA1*0101/DRB1*0404-restricted, VP16-specific epitopes. By using tetramers to sort individual cells, we easily obtained a large number of clones specific to these epitopes. Although DRA1*0101/DRB1*0401 and DRA1*0101/DRB1*0404 are structurally very similar, nonoverlapping VP16 epitopes were identified, illustrating high selectivity of individual allele polymorphisms within common MHC variants. This rapid approach to detecting CD4+ T cell epitopes from complex Ags can be applied to any known Ag that gives a T cell response.


The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hurricane Hunters protect lives and property by using increasingly-sophisticated instrumentation to collect atmospheric data in and around the hurricane environment. This article describes why the NOAA Hurricane Hunters fly into severe weather, along with their day-to-day responsibilities when not flying into storms. In addition, this article highlights NOAA's entire fleet of aircraft, focusing on the two main platforms used by the Hurricane Hunter crews. With an emphasis on instrumentation and primary missions, ways in which the collected data is used by researchers and forecasters is discussed.


We show, by way of an example, that numerical bifurcation tools for ODE yield reliable bifurcation diagrams when applied to the pseudospectral approximation of a one-parameter family of nonlinear renewal equations. The example resembles logistic-and Ricker-type population equations and exhibits transcritical, Hopf and period doubling bifurcations. The reliability is demonstrated by comparing the results to those obtained by a reduction to a Hamiltonian Kaplan-Yorke system and to those obtained by direct application of collocation methods (the latter also yield estimates for positive Lyapunov exponents in the chaotic regime). We conclude that the methodology described here works well for a class of delay equations for which currently no tailor-made tools exist (and for which it is doubtful that these will ever be constructed).


A 2-month-old female infant was referred to DebRA Mexico from the Regional Children's Hospital because of a generalized dermatosis from birth characterized by multiple blisters and erosions on the trunk, face and limbs, associated with minor trauma. A skin biopsy showing subepidermal blisters associated with a dermal infiltrate of Giemsa-positive cells and CD117-positive antibody was consistent with the diagnosis of bullous mastocytosis. Treatment with oral antihistamines, topical steroids, and antibiotics was initiated, leading to a remission of the lesions.


In a closed inpatient unit, valproate and lithium were initially combined in the treatment of 12 severely manic patients (ICD-10 F30, F31, F25). Onset of response and the use of additional neuroleptic medication were analyzed. For 5 patients a comparision was performed between the index episode and a pre-treatment period during which lithium therapy was administered without valproate. Outcome criteria for the analysis were the latency of response and remission, as well as the dose of neuroleptic medication necessary for additional sedation. The mean severity of mania syndrome (AMDP-System) in the study patients was comparable to the mean mania score of the total manic patient population of the inpatient unit. All patients responded to the combination of valproate and lithium, and the mean total-remission time was 30 days for the whole group. Mean serum levels were 0.8 mmol/L for lithium and 73.8 mg/L for valproate. The mean remission time for the 5 readmitted patients was 22.8 days under combination treatment compared to 35.6 days in the pre-treatment episode without additional valproate (p = 0.06). It was possible to markedly reduce the use of neuroleptic medication in these patients from 18 601.6 mg CPZ equivalents to 3927.6 mg (p < 0.025). Initially combining valproate and lithium thus appears to be an effective therapeutic option for the inpatient management of severe manic syndromes.


We analyze the superconducting state and the c-axis charge dynamics of cuprates using a charged ordered bilayer superlattice model in which pairing is supported by inter-layer Coulomb energy gain. The superlattice nature of high temperature superconductivity is experimentally suggested by the smallness of the coherent length \xi = 10 to 30 A which is comparable with a width of a 4X4 to 8X8 square supercell lattice layer. The temperature induced 2D-3D quantum phase transition of the hole-content is also studied. Pair condensation leads to the sharp decrease of the normal state c-axis anisotropy of the hole-content and reduces inter-layer dielectric screening. The decrease of the c-axis dielectric screening can be the primary source of the condensation energy. The 2D pair condensate can be characterized by a charge ordered state with a"checkboard"pattern seen by scanning tunneling microscopy.


Haptic guidance is a promising way to support unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operators, but the design of haptic guidance forces is often heuristic. This paper describes the design and experimental validation of a systematic neuromuscular analysis-based tuning procedure for haptic guidance, here applied to haptic collision avoidance system for UAV teleoperation. This tuning procedure is hypothesized to reduce operator workload as compared with current heuristic tuning methods. The proposed procedure takes into consideration the estimated mechanical response of the neuromuscular system (NMS) to haptic cues. A "relax-task" setting of the NMS, for which reflexive and muscular activation is minimal, is chosen as the design point for tuning the haptic support, as this setting is expected to yield minimal physical workload. The paper first presents a neuromuscular identification experiment, performed to estimate the "relax task" admittance of an operator's arm. The averaged admittance of a group of subjects (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n=10$</tex-math></inline-formula>) was then used for tuning the haptic shared controller, which was subsequently evaluated in its ability to support different operators ( <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n=12$</tex-math></inline-formula>) in a simulated unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance task. Results show that our novel tuning procedure indeed reduces operator workload and also improves situation awareness compared with haptic settings that ignore the NMS. In fact, it is shown that overtuning, which frequently occurs for these heuristically tuned systems, leads to even lower user acceptance scores than interfaces without any haptic support.


In this paper Proposes, makes an attempt to develop grid connected modeling of the Photovoltaic Power Conversion using Modular Multilevel Converter (PPCMMC). The proposed system makes use of single stage power conversion with maximum power point tracking and modeling of the Photovoltaic Power Conversion using Modular Multilevel Converter (PPCMMC) as interfacing unit into the grid. In this paper, perturb & observe method of maximum power point algorithm is used to regulate the DC link voltage of the MMC and to synchronize the grid utility voltage with the current for attaining near unity power factor operation under varying environmental conditions. Recently renewable energy power supplied into the utility grid has been paid much attention due to increase in fossil fuel prices, environmental pollution and energy demand boom. Among various renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, biomass etc., the solar photovoltaic system being more attractive and promising green resource because of its abundant availability, safe resource, cost free and eco-friendly. The solar photovoltaic (PV) modules directly converts the light energy into the electrical energy, but energy obtained from the PV module acts as low voltage DC source and has relatively low conversion efficiency. In order to improve the efficiency and convert low voltage DC source into usable AC source, the power electronics converters are used to transform DC into AC. The simulation results presented in this paper verifies the operation of proposed MMC topology such that the AC output is free from the higher order harmonics and grid voltage and current are in phase. Mathematical modeling of the Photovoltaic Power Conversion using Modular Multilevel Converter (PPCMMC) and the results of simulations in MATLAB/SIMULINK software are presented to investigate the correctness of the results.


Foamy viruses make up a distinct subgroup of retroviruses. They are widely distributed among nonhuman primates, felines, and bovines. In their natural hosts and in cases of rare zoonotic transmissions to humans foamy viruses cause persistent and apparently benign infections. While foamy viruses are not of medical importance in causing human or animal diseases, they may become valuable tools for somatic gene transfer in the future. However, a better understanding of the molecular biology of this virus group is a prerequisite for the development of foamy virus vectors. In this respect, recent research has revealed major differences between the foamy virus and the general retroviral replication strategies and some similarities to hepadnaviruses.


Introduction: National family health survey (NFHS)-3 conducted in India recently has not reported on nutritional status of children in 6 -15 years age group. So this study was carried out to assess the nutritional status of the children aged 6- 15 years of age using WHO z-score for BMI for age and its socio-demographic correlates in urban area of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Methodology : Cross sectional study was carried out among children of 6-15 years age group residing in field practice area of urban health training centre (UHTC) of a medical college in Bho-pal.270 children were enrolled in study 54 children were selected from each one of the five localities catered by UHTC. Data was collected with the interview technique followed by anthropometric measurements by door to door survey. Results: The prevalence of under nourishment was 51.1% with prevalence of thinness 37.4% and of severely thin 13.7%. Variables such as sex, age, education of mother, occupation of mother, Education & occupation of father, number of siblings were found to be significant on bivariate analysis. When controlling for other variables, sex, Education of mother and occupation of mother were found to be significant and other variables lost their significance on binary logistic regression analysis. Conclusions: Sex, Mothers education and occupation were some of the correlates which are significantly related with nutritional status of children in 6-15 years age group.


By means of graphical and numerical simulation of the binding of a biological key molecule to a receptor, Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD) allows the semi-quantitative prediction of the activity of potential drug molecules. New drugs can be tailor-made for a specific receptor without animal testing; substances with little or no pharmacological activity are unambiguously identified and removed from the evaluation process before preclinical "in vivo" tests become necessary. Two methods, direct CADD and Receptor Mapping are presented.


The purpose and scope of the human genome project are discussed. Basic biological concepts underlying the project are reviewed. The two processes-logic and experimentation-used to understand DNA sequences are compared, and the process of obtaining the sequence is described. Two problem areas in this collaboration between biologists and computer scientists are examined. They arise from differences in training that can make communication difficult, and nomenclature problems.<<ETX>>


Background: An inclusive, whole-child model of education is shifting the paradigm into an integrative mind-body approach. Toward contextualizing learning at the close of the cartesian era, the current work explores embodied instruction through the lens of a teacher whose primary focus is the integration of mind and body. Perhaps the longest standing curriculum aimed at embodied learning, yoga provides a unique perspective on techniques and experiences of embodied teaching. Method: This case study employed an in-depth explorative participatory design to observe instructor intentions in and performance of instruction. Consecutive interviews (5) in conjunction with participatory observation of weekly classes (8) were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and triangulated with researcher memos. A grounded and comparative methodology was used to analyze expressed understanding of embodied learning and performed instruction. Results: In-depth interviews revealed four themes of expressed understanding of embodied instruction: energetic state, personality of instruction, inviting experience and student vulnerability. Participatory observations revealed four themes of performance of embodied instruction: scoping, cadence, silence, and inviting practice. Overlap in expressed understanding and observed instruction were found in each theme. An example of the expressed understanding of a thematic concept is inviting experience: "If someone comes in the very first time and the teacher is very invasive and says, "Do this, do this, do this." And the next pose the teacher is hovering over them, you are not going to go back. You are going to hate it so much [I] let people be really all over the place at the beginning as long as they are safe. [I] allow them that kind of freedom, initially". This was further supported in the observed instruction; an example of this is: "We're going to play with [a posture]. that firmness in your abs, engage the core so a foot might lift. Maybe both feet." And "with the arms firm, maybe the legs straighten". Conclusion: The current study yields preliminary insight into yoga instruction strategies to support further development of embodied teaching and learning.


Synthetic gene circuits require cellular resources, which are often limited. This leads to competition for resources by different genes, which alter a synthetic genetic circuit's behavior. However, the manner in which competition impacts behavior depends on the identity of the "bottleneck" resource which might be difficult to discern from input-output data. In this paper, we aim at classifying the mathematical structures of resource competition in biochemical circuits. We find that some competition structures can be distinguished by their response to different competitors or resource levels. Specifically, we show that some response curves are always linear, convex, or concave. Furthermore, high levels of certain resources protect the behavior from low competition, while others do not. We also show that competition phenotypes respond differently to various interventions. Such differences can be used to eliminate candidate competition mechanisms when constructing models based on given data. On the other hand, we show that different networks can display mathematically equivalent competition phenotypes.


Left-Peripheral Constructions: A Domain-Based Approach
Even though the word order in English is rather straightforward,
the distributional possibilities of left-peripheral elements like
topic phrases, wh-phrases, and negative operators
(introducing an SAI) are quite intriguing and complex. In
particular, there seems to exist no straightforward way of
capturing the linear order asymmetries of these elements in the
main and embedded clauses. The prevailing analyses have resorted
to movement processes with multiple functional projections. The
goal of this paper is to explore an alternative analysis to such
movement-based analyses. In particular, this paper adopts the
notion of topological fields (DOMAIN) proposed by Kathol (2000,
2001) within the framework of HPSG. The paper shows that within
this DOMAIN system, the distributional possibilities as well as
the asymmetries we find in English left peripheral constructions
can easily follow from the two traditional views: (i) a topic
precedes a focus element, and (ii) in English a wh-phrase
and a complementizer competes with each other for the same
position.


For monaural speech enhancement, contextual information is important for accurate speech estimation. However, commonly used convolution neural networks (CNNs) are weak in capturing temporal contexts since they only build blocks that process one local neighborhood at a time. To address this problem, we learn from human auditory perception to introduce a two-stage trainable reasoning mechanism, referred as global-local dependency (GLD) block. GLD blocks capture long-term dependency of time-frequency bins both in global level and local level from the noisy spectrogram to help detecting correlations among speech part, noise part, and whole noisy input. What is more, we conduct a monaural speech enhancement network called GLD-Net, which adopts encoder-decoder architecture and consists of speech object branch, interference branch, and global noisy branch. The extracted speech feature at global-level and local-level are efficiently reasoned and aggregated in each of the branches. We compare the proposed GLD-Net with existing state-of-art methods on WSJ0 and DEMAND dataset. The results show that GLD-Net outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of PESQ and STOI.


WiMAX has brought a revolution in broadband services today. It be taken as a main technology in the design of wireless sensor networks. We have analysed the model of Physical layer if WiMAX Simulink model in Matlab. In this paper we show performance evaluation of the WiMAX under different modulation mapping under different channel conditions. Standards from IEEE 802.16e are used in this model. The model is built with considering MAC Packet Data processed by the Physical Layer with Convolutional Encoding the modulation is OPSK and transmitted after OFDM/OFDMA(256 carriers) symbols. We have compared the performance of OFDM and OFDMA system in fading channel environment at different repetition factor of OFDMA system.


BACKGROUND
Given the dearth of high quality research on conservative treatment for spinal stenosis, an empirical understanding of the scope of physical therapy provided in the community can help focus research and build standards of care.

OBJECTIVES
Provide preliminary insight into current physical therapy practice in the treatment of lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS), from both patient and physical therapist perspectives.

METHODS
Patients greater than 50 years of age with LSS diagnosed by a spine surgeon were recruited to participate in a telephone survey regarding treatment. Physical therapists were recruited to complete a survey regarding treatments offered to patients with LSS.

RESULTS
Of the patients participating in the study (n=75), 44 (59%) reported receiving physical therapy treatment. Treatments most frequently reported by patients were massage (27%), strengthening exercises (23%), flexibility exercises (18%), and heat/ice (14%). The most frequently advocated treatments by the 76 physical therapists included flexibility (87%), stabilization (86%) and strengthening exercises (83%), followed by heat/ice (76%), acupuncture (63%) and joint mobilization (62%).

CONCLUSIONS
These results can guide both clinical research priorities and standards of care for physical therapy treatments of LSS. Based on the results of this study, future research foci should include massage, flexibility and strengthening exercises, stabilization techniques and heat/ice treatments.


Today's e-commerce environment requires that interactive systems exhibit abilities such as autonomy, adaptive and collaborative behavior, and inferential capability. Such abilities are based on the knowledge about users and their tasks to be performed (Raisinghani, Klassen and Schkade, 2001). To adapt users' input and tasks an interactive system must be able to establish a set of assumptions about users' profiles and task characteristics, which is often referred as user models. However, to develop a user model an interactive system needs to analyze users' input and recognize the tasks and the ultimate goals users trying to achieve, which may involve a great deal of uncertainties. Uncertainty refers to a set of values about a piece of assumption that cannot be determined during a dialog session. In fact, the problem of uncertainty in reasoning processes is a complex and difficult one. Information available for user model construction and reasoning is often uncertain, incomplete, and even vague. The propagation of such data through an inference model is also difficult to predict and control. Therefore, the capacity of dealing with uncertainty is crucial to the success of any knowledge management system. Currently, a vigorous debate is in progress concerning how best to represent and process uncertainties in knowledge based systems. This debate carries great importance because it is not only related to the construction of knowledge based system but also focuses on human thinking in which most decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty. This chapter presents and discusses uncertainties in the context of user modeling in interactive systems. Some elementary distinctions between different kinds of uncertainties are introduced. The purpose is to provide an analytical overview and perspective concerning how and where uncertainties arise and the major methods that have been proposed to cope with them.


Recently PRAM (Phase-change RAM) is emerging as a promising next generation non-volatile memory device, because it supports fast byte-level access capability and in-place update (no erase-before-program constraint) unlike traditional NAND Flash. Although this PRAM technology is not matured yet, in terms of capacity and write performance, we expect that using this PRAM with traditional NAND Flash enables us to design high-performance and low cost storage for consumer electronics. So in this paper, we introduce a PRAM and NAND hybrid storage design as a practical approach. To this end, we first define a hybrid storage architecture, and then design a hybrid FTL (Flash Translation Layer) and a hybrid FAT filesystem. Finally, we demonstrate that our proposed hybrid storage solution enhances the storage performance 6 times faster and lifetime 6.4 times longer, on the average.


Apical surgery cuts off the apical root and the crown-to-root ratio becomes unfavorable. Crown-to-root ratio has been applied to periodontally compromised teeth. Apical root resection is a different matter from periodontal bone loss. The purpose of this paper is to review the validity of crown-to-root ratio in the apically resected teeth. Most roots have conical shape and the root surface area of coronal part is wider than apical part of the same length. Therefore loss of alveolar bone support from apical resection is much less than its linear length.The maximum stress from mastication concentrates on the cervical area and the minimum stress was found on the apical 1/3 area. Therefore apical root resection is not so harmful as periodontal bone loss. Osteotomy for apical resection reduces longitudinal width of the buccal bone and increases the risk of endo-perio communication which leads to failure. Endodontic microsurgery is able to realize 0 degree or shallow bevel and precise length of root resection, and minimize the longitudinal width of osteotomy. The crown-to-root ratio is not valid in evaluating the prosthodontic prognosis of the apically resected teeth. Accurate execution of endodontic microsurgery to preserve the buccal bone is essential to avoid endo-perio communication.


The nonlinear model presented in Part I is linearized and numerically evaluated to investigate the impact of linearization on interpreting turning dynamics. As described in Part I, the equations of motion are so derived that the motion of the workpiece machining surface is in the plane orthogonal to the spindle axis and the motion of the tool is along the axis and coupled with the machining surface. The nonlinear 3D model is linearized about an operating point at (0, 0, Z 0), where zt = Z 0 is the equilibrium location of the tool associated with the (x 2 = 0, y 2 = 0) position of the workpiece. The (0, 0, Z 0 ) operating point is selected to satisfy the ultimate machining goal for always achieving precise workpiece geometry without surface error and waviness. Taylor series expansion about the operating point is applied to linearize the nonlinear equations of motion. Modifications are also made to the nonlinear tool stiffness term and the cutting force to minimize linearization errors. The mass and stiffness of the workpiece remain functions of time after the modifications are performed. Numerical results show that the linearized model underestimates tool vibrations in the time domain and overestimates system behavior in the frequency domain; whereas the nonlinear model agrees with the physical results reported in the literature in describing machining stability and chatter.


SUMMARY Authors analysed field test data (collected and owned by the National Institute for Agricultural Quality Control between 1994-1999) of various pig breeds (Belgian Landrace, Duroc, Pietrain), and constructions (Duroc × Belgian Landrace, Belgian Landrace × Hampshire, Pietrain × Hampshire, Pietrain × Duroc, the D and E-lines of the Ka-Hyb hybrid pig). Gilts are kept in groups up to 25 pigs while boars are raised in smaller groups up to 15 on an ad libitum feeding regime. In the field test three ultrasonic back fat measurements are taken from boars and gilts between 80 and 110 kg at the middle of the spinal chord (shoulder, mid-back, loin). Average back fat thickness is calculated as the average of these three measurements. Heritability of average back fat depth was estimated using the REML method. The estimates varied between 0.12-0.51 depending on the genotype. The existence of genetic ties between the herds of the various pig populations was measured through the use of boars across the herds. Concerning the Belgian Landrace breed and the E-line of the Ka-Hyb hybrid pig no genetic ties were found, which means that the boars of these populations were only used within the herds. On the other hand week connections (5-14%) were found for the other genotypes. Boars having been used in two or more herds showed more reliable breeding values (lower prediction error variance) than those animals, which had progeny in one herd only. Based on the results authors suggested the exclusive application of the BLUP method in the Hungarian pig evaluation.


We investigate a GaAs/(Ga,Al)As Fabry-Perot microcavity, into which (In,Ga)As quantum wells have been inserted. The cavity is wedge shaped, i.e., the detuning between the bare-exciton resonance and the bare optical cavity mode depends on the spatial position on the sample. Linear transmission spectra reveal a well-resolved Rabi splitting of 8 meV at resonance, an inhomogeneously broadened exciton transition of 4-5-meV width, and an 0.7-meV-wide Fabry-Perot mode. The time-resolved transmission exhibits deep beatings and a subpicosecond exponential decay: a behavior similar to that foreseen in the strong-coupling regime and in the absence of electronic disorder. Conversely, the four-wave mixing response appears weakly influenced by the cavity and not much different from what is expected for bare excitons. A photon echo, dephasing times as long as 50 ps, and only weak Rabi oscillations are observed. The experimentally observed features can be explained by a model based on the numerical solutions of the Maxwell-Bloch equations. This model confirms the dramatic influence structural disorder in the quantum wells has on the coherent nonlinear exciton-photon dynamics.


Recent years, there has been a surge in lawsuits at Investors State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) forum proposed by foreign investors to host state including Indonesia. Most of claims caused by policy of host state which is intended to protect basic rights of its society such as the right to health, right to healthy environment, tax, also the minimum standard of worker's wage. This policy gives damages to foreign investor and considered as violation of Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). Most of BIT is open ended language, open up wide interpretation. This has prompted many countries including Indonesia to review Its International Investment Agreements (IIA) especially Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). Indonesia have already reviewed and terminated many of its Bilateral Investment Treaty despite being aware of the continued importance of BIT to increase the entry of investment to Indonesia. This study provides a comprehensive understanding regarding international investment law and gives a picture of the new model of BIT for Indonesia to balance the interest of both host state and foreign investor.


Five species of phocid seal of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica come ashore occasionally on the southern Australian coast but do not breed there. We document records (specimens and sightings) of visits to South Australia (SA) by southern phocids from 1883 until August 2011. We used records from the SA Museum, reports from coastal officers of SA Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the DENR fauna database, information from the public, the literature and newspapers. Thirty-six southern elephant seal records included two births, in November 1932 and October 1986. The latter pup suckled for 20 days and then stayed ashore for eight weeks; both are similar to average durations at Macquarie Island. Of 33 dated records, 31 were between August and April, when elephant seals at Macquarie Island (the closest breeding site) are ashore to breed or moult. A recognisable male on Kangaroo Island has been sighted often over 10 years to 2010. Of the ice-breeding species, there were 54 leopard seal records. All of 40 dated records were between June and December, with the maximum (12) in August, similar to the seasonal distribution in Tasmania. There were five records of crabeater seals, one of a Ross seal, and one of a Weddell seal.


As power dissipation of the register file in modern processor designs tends to dominate, measures must be taken to keep it under control. This paper introduces an approach to reduce the power dissipation of register file window structure by using the operation of the Partitioned Register File Inspector added in the integer pipeline of microprocessor. The power savings show that, when the size and entry-content of the Register File Inspector is properly fixed, the average saving on the energy consumption of the register file could be up to 79% compared with the traditional register file control scheme.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the use of a handheld device for measurement of β-hydroxybutyrate (BHBA) concentration to identify prepartum dairy cattle at risk of developing hyperketonemia during the first week after parturition.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional study. Animals-210 prepartum dairy cows from 6 herds.

PROCEDURES
A blood sample was collected from each cow 3 to 9 days before its expected calving date. β-Hydroxybutyrate concentration was immediately measured with a handheld device. Serum was harvested from the remaining sample and submitted to a laboratory for measurement of BHBA and nonesterified fatty acid (NEFA) concentrations. β-Hydroxybutyrate concentration determined with the handheld device was compared with that determined by laboratory methods. The association between prepartum BHBA concentration and the development of hyperketonemia (BHBA concentration, ≥ 1.2 mmol/L) during the first week after parturition was determined. The agreement between prepartum BHBA and NEFA concentrations for identification of cows at risk of developing postpartum hyperketonemia was evaluated.

RESULTS
β-Hydroxybutyrate concentration determined by the handheld device was moderately correlated with that determined by laboratory methods. Cows with a prepartum BHBA concentration ≥ 0.6 mmol/L were 2.2 times as likely to develop hyperketonemia within 1 week after parturition as were cows with a prepartum BHBA concentration < 0.6 mmol/L. There was substantial agreement between prepartum BHBA and NEFA concentrations for identification of cows at risk of developing postpartum hyperketonemia.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Results indicated the handheld device was a valid tool for measurement of BHBA concentration in prepartum dairy cattle, and measurement of prepartum BHBA concentration may be helpful for identifying cows at risk of developing postpartum hyperketonemia.


This research develops and applies a new structure for the transportation planning model that includes feedback between demand, assignment, and traffic control. New methods, combined with a renewed interest in transportation planning models prompted by the Clean Air Act of 1990 and the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, warrant a reconsideration of the traditional "four-step" transportation planning model. This paper presents an algorithm for feedback which results in consistent travel times as input to travel demand and output from route assignment. The model, including six stages of Trip Generation, Destination Choice, Mode Choice, Departure Time Choice, Route Assignment and Intersection Control is briefly outlined. This is followed by an application comparing a base year 1990 application with a forecast year of 2010. The 2010 forecast is solved both with and without feedback for comparison purposes. Incorporation of feedback gives significantly different results than the standard model.


A highly integrated transmitter IC fabricated in Conexant's 0.35 um SiGe BiCMOS process and packaged in a 6 mm /spl times/ 6 mm Land Grid Array (LGA) package provides dual band/tri-mode transmitter functionality in a CDMA handset meeting TIA/EIA 98-D specifications. This chip upconverts the I/Q baseband signals to RF in two stages and delivers the amplified RF signal to the power amplifier. It consists of the following stages: an I/Q modulator, VHF VCO, VHF PLL, IF VGA, UHF LO buffer, UHF PLL, 3 wire serial interface, RF image reject upconverter, a cellular PA driver and dual PCS drivers. It is designed to deliver 8 dBm in CDMA mode in Cellular band, 11 dBm in AMPS mode and 9 dBm in CDMA mode in PCS band at 90 mA, 88 mA and 108 mA respectively at nominal supply and temperature. It also provides IF dynamic range of 80 dB in the IF VGA and RF Gain dynamic range of 20 dB in Cellular band and 15 dB in PCS band. The IC operates from a supply ranging from 2.7 V to 3.3 V and a temperature range of -30C to 85C.


71  Abstract—This paper describes the design and implementation of a Low Power 3-bit flash Analog to Digital converter (ADC). It includes 7 comparators and one thermometer to binary encoder . It is implemented in 0.18um CMOS Technology. The pre-simulation of ADC is done in T-Spice and post layout simulation is done in Microwind3.1. The response time of the comparator equal to 6.82ns and for Flash ADC as 18.77ns.The Simulated result shows the power consumption in Flash ADC as is 36.273mw .The chip area is for Flash ADC is 1044um 2 .


E. faecalis is a gram-positive bacterium that is receiving more attention due to its "two-face" behavior. This natural inhabitant of the mammalian gastrointestinal tract is also an opportunistic pathogen responsible for urinary tract infections, nosocomial infections, bacteremia and infective endocarditis. Its intrinsic physiological properties such as inherent antibiotic resistance and exceptional ability to adapt to harsh conditions provide this organism with an enormous advantage during the infection process. Objectives


Due to the demand of pursuing a main memory with larger data bandwidth, higher data density, and lower power, the specification of DRAM has been constantly evolved in the past decade. The new DRAM specifications support multiple operating modes with multiple timing settings. It then becomes computationally infeasible to exhaustively validate all the combinations of different operating modes, timing settings and address/data with pure simulation before silicon. In this paper, we propose a framework to generate proper random patterns for validating a newly designed DDR3 SDRAM based on its first silicon chips. The proposed framework needs to not only guarantee the correctness of the generated patterns according to the state diagram and timing constraints defined in the specification but also provide the flexibility of exploring various design corners for the targeted DDR3 SDRAM. We will also show some successful silicon-validation cases of applying the proposed framework to identify the design errors based on real DDR3 SDRAM products.


We generalize the concept of geometrical resonance to perturbed sine-Gordon, nonlinear Schrodinger and complex Ginzburg-Landau equations. Using this theory we can control different dynamical patterns. For instance, we can stabilize breathers and oscillatory patterns of large amplitudes successfully avoiding chaos. On the other hand, this method can be used to suppress spatiotemporal chaos and turbulence in systems where these phenomena are already present. This method can be generalized to even more general spatiotemporal systems.


The Research objection is to observe the Influence of Information
technology complementarities and support of Information technology knowledge
to Corporate performance. Complementarities of information technology are
(Infrastructure IT, making process IT, Human resources IT and Vendor
management IT) management knowledge ( Product, Customer and managerial )
The sample's number of this research are 42 head managers of Main Bank
office in Semarang. The research uses questioner method. Data analyzing of this
research is full mode Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), evaluated by
smartPLS tools by using reflective second order factor approach.
The result of this research, aligned with hypothesis that
complementarities of 4 information technology Relatedness Factors, give positive
influence to inter unit Knowledge Management Capabilitiy, complementarities of
knowledge Management Capabilitiy gives positive influence to corporate
performance, Complementarities Information Technology Relatedness directly
influence to company performance and information technology relatedness
indirectly influence to corporate performance, being mediated by knowledge
management capability


This paper focuses on the ongoing project inside Sahure's pyramid which has brought to light eight magazines—a discovery that has completely changed our understanding of the pyramid's interior and its place in the overall development of pyramid substructures. This discovery inside the pyramid has challenged established beliefs and theories, leading to a paradigm shift in our knowledge. Currently, the work is focused on exploring the burial chamber with the hope that new and important evidence from the burial place of Sahura will come to light.


Despite the tremendous efforts to democratize machine learning, especially in applied-science, the application is still often hampered by the lack of coding skills. As we consider programmatic understanding key to building effective and efficient machine learning solutions, we argue for a novel educational approach that builds upon the accessibility and acceptance of graphical user interfaces to convey programming skills to an applied-science target group. We outline a proof-of-concept, open-source web application, the PHOTON Wizard, which dynamically translates GUI interactions into valid source code for the Python machine learning framework PHOTON. Thereby, users possessing theoretical machine learning knowledge gain key insights into the model development workflow as well as an intuitive understanding of custom implementations. Specifically, the PHOTON Wizard integrates the concept of Educational Machine Learning Code Generators to teach users how to write code for designing, training, optimizing and evaluating custom machine learning pipelines.


A method used by a hospital pharmacy department for manufacturing and testing a ready-to-administer i.v. nitroglycerin injection is described, and costs for this extemporaneously prepared injection are compared with costs for commercially available nitroglycerin products for i.v. use. A powder adsorbate containing one part nitroglycerin and nine parts lactose was used to prepare nitroglycerin injection in two strengths: 0.04 mg/mL (250-mL quantities) in 0.9% sodium chloride injection and 0.4 mg/mL (400-mL quantities) in 5% dextrose injection. Each batch was tested for sterility, for presence of pyrogens (endotoxin testing), and for nitroglycerin concentration (spectrophotometric assay). In one year, a total of 1217 bottles of nitroglycerin injection were prepared. This required 75 hours; preparation from commercial i.v. nitroglycerin products would have required approximately 200 hours (including admixture preparation). First-year costs for extemporaneous preparation (excluding costs of i.v. solutions and containers) were approximately $2200, far less than drug costs alone for the commercial i.v. nitroglycerin products. Nitroglycerin injection of high quality and confirmed potency was prepared extemporaneously in a hospital pharmacy department. Costs for this method were substantially less than those for use of commercial i.v. nitroglycerin products.


Background: Urinary tract infection (UTI) is one of the most common infections in both outpatients and hospitalized patients. The increasing prevalence of antimicrobial resistance is a major health problem & is associated with high morbidity & mortality. Objectives of the study: 1. To analyse the antimicrobial resistance pattern of uropathogen during a period of 6 month in patients of UTI. 2. To know the prevalence of uropathogens. Materials and Method: A prospective study was conducted on urine specimens suspected to be having urinary tract infection between July 2016 and December 2016 received at Department of Microbiology, SIMS Shimoga. Fresh midstream urine samples were aseptically collected in sterile containers and plated on Blood agar & MacConkey agar plates using a standard loop technique & the growth was processed by standard bacteriological technique. Antimicrobial sensitivity testing was done using Kirby-Bauer methods on Mueller-Hinton agar. Results were interpreted as per the CLSI guidelines. Result: Out of 510 samples 250 samples showed significant bacteriuria. Most common uropathogen isolated was Escherichia coli 61. 6%(154/250) followed by Staphylococcus aureus 19. 2%(48/250), Enterococcus species 10%(25/250), Klebsiella species 3. 2%(8/250), Pseudomonas species 1. 2%(3/250), CONS 0. 8%(2/250). Gram negative organisms were highly sensitive to Fosfomycin, Nitrofurantoin, Imipenam and highly resistant to Norfloxacin, Ciprofloxacin, Levofloxacin. Gram positive organisms were highly sensitive to Linezolid, Vancomycin, Fosfomycin, Nitrofurantoin and least sensitive to Norfloxacin, Ciprofloxacin, Amoxyclavulanic acid. Conclusion: This study showed that high resistance was observed for commonly used antibiotics. Fosfomycin and Nitrofurantoin were the most sensitive drug for gram negative organisms mainly E. coli which is the most common uropathogen isolated.


Service computing has increasingly been adopted by the industry, developing business applications by means of orchestration and choreography. Choreography specifies how services collaborate with one another by defining, say, the message exchange, rather than via the process flow as in the case of orchestration. Messages sent from one service to another may require the use of different XPaths to manipulate or extract message contents. Mismatches in XML manipulations through XPaths (such as to relate incoming and outgoing messages in choreography specifications) may result in failures. In this paper, we propose to associate XPath Rewriting Graphs (XRGs), a structure that relates XPath and XML schema, with actions of choreography applications that are skeletally modeled as labeled transition systems. We develop the notion of XRG patterns to capture how different XRGs are related even though they may refer to different XML schemas or their tags. By applying XRG patterns, we successfully identify new data flow associations in choreography applications and develop new data flow testing criteria. Finally, we report an empirical case study that evaluates our techniques. The result shows our techniques are promising in detecting failures in choreography applications.


We report on nonlinear optical compression of passively Q-switched pulses accessing sub-10 ps domain, which is so far dominated by mode-locked systems. The concept implements the SPM-induced spectral-broadening of passively Q-switched microchip pulses in optical waveguides and a supplementary compression with bulk optics e.g. a pair of diffraction gratings or a chirped-Bragg-grating. Used seed-source is a fiber-amplified, passively Q-switched microchip laser operating on a single longitudinal mode and consists of a monolithically bonded combination of Nd:YVO4-crystal and semiconductor saturable absorber mirror. The microchip laser provides pulses with durations of 100-150 ps, pulse energies of ~200 nJ at various repetition rates from hundreds of kilohertz to more than a megahertz, and line width of ~20 pm at wavelength of 1064nm. During the amplification process in the photonics crystal fiber, the pulses are spectrally broadened to up to ~0.7nm at energy of 17μJ. Using a diffraction grating compressor with 1740 l/mm, the pulses are compressed to duration as short as 6ps assuming a numerically calculated de-convolution factor of 0.735. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported realization of nonlinear compression of the Q-switched pulses and the shortest pulses from a passively Q-switched laser system.


Offshore oil-well drilling has been a subject of great interest to environmental regulatory agencies worldwide. The drilling fluids used in this process involve a complex mixture of chemicals and are largely discharged into the ocean. Acute and chronic toxicity tests have been done to better understand the effects of different types of drilling fluids on aquatic organisms. The aim of this article was to analyze all the studies related to the toxicity of drilling fluids published during the period of 2000 to 2017 by conducting a thorough review through the Scopus and Science Direct databases. Out of 154 articles, only 25 showed relevant information about the toxicity of drilling fluids. Acute toxicity tests were the predominant tests employed, appearing in 56% of the articles. Invertebrates were the most evaluated taxa, used in 64% of cases and represented mainly by Crustacea (32%), Mollusca (16%), and other invertebrates. Vertebrates were represented only by fish, constituting 32% of the cases. Water-based drilling fluids (WBFs) (32%) were the most frequently tested, followed by synthetic-based fluids or muds (SBFs) (24%) and oil-based fluids (OBFs) (16%). Individual components were tested in 12% of the cases, while 16% of studies included more than one type of drilling fluid. After analyzing the toxicity of drilling fluids and the sensitivity of aquatic organisms presented in 25 articles published in scientific journals, we concluded that WBFs—showing, in general, lower values of median lethal concentrations than do natural oiland SBFs—are the most toxic drilling fluids to invertebrates in the short term. The gaps of information found in this review indicate that future studies need to address the acute and chronic effects of WBFs in both juvenile and adult fish and in other vertebrates; they also need to address the chronic effects of nonaqueous-based fluids on adult invertebrates. As crustaceans are more sensitive to drilling fluids than are mollusks, it is also recommended that they be used in future studies.