PARENTAL STRESS, SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS, SATISFACTION WITH SERVICES, AND FAMILY QUALITY OF LIFE AMONG PARENTS OF CHIDREN RECEIVING SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES by Heather F. Lundy Family quality of life (FQOL) refers to the degree to which families of individuals with disabilities are able to meet their basic needs, enjoy time together, and pursue leisure interests and activities (Park et al., 2003). Researchers have identified barriers that families of individuals with disabilities encounter as they pursue a life of quality including elevated parental stress (Hauser-Cram, Warfield, Shonkoff, & Kraus, 2001), low socioeconomic status (SES) (Park, Turnbull, & Turnbull, 2002) and inadequate social service support (Soresi, Nota, & Ferrari, 2007). This study utilized data collected from a sample of parents (N = 389) of children receiving special education services from preschool through fifth grade to determine parental stress levels, satisfaction with social service supports and FQOL. Instruments included a demographic questionnaire, Parental Stress Scale (PSS; Berry & Jones, 1995), Client Satisfaction Questionnaire-8 (CSQ-8; Larsen, Attkisson, Hargreaves, & Nguyen, 1979) and Family Quality of Life Survey (FQOLS; Turnbull et al., 2004). A MANCOVA analysis failed to reflect significant differences between parental stress levels and FQOL based on child disability type. Point biserial correlations did not reveal significant relationships between children's free or reduced lunch (FRL) status, parental stress, satisfaction with social services, and FQOL. Initial linear regression analysis indicated that parental stress was a significant predictor of FQOL (p < .001) while satisfaction with social services approached significance (p = .057). However, a subsequent linear regression analysis that included the interaction between satisfaction with social services and parental stress failed to support a moderation effect between satisfaction with social services and parental stress in the prediction of FQOL (p = .142). The examination of parental stress and FQOL within a school-based setting was a unique contribution to the literature that focuses primarily on FQOL and families of children with disabilities within clinical, medical and mental health settings. Limitations of this study, future research directions, and implications for school-based mental health providers are presented. PARENTAL STRESS, SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS, SATISFACTION WITH SERVICES, AND FAMILY QUALITY OF LIFE AMONG PARENTS OF CHIDREN RECEIVING SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES by Heather F. Lundy


The concern for the global environment ensues researchers from various disciplines to work in collaboration to tackle with the issues of sustainability and environmental conservation for well-being of the people. In this study, we have selected and focused on few basic environment-effecting factors such as temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide and oxygen concentration level and referred them as meteorological data. In this paper, we present the development of our own customized hardware setup, environmental monitoring device (EMD) to obtain the data. Utilizing the relationship among these basic parameters, represented in the form of formulas and equations, we tried to encode them using Matlab programming. Data visualization is achieved by plotting the graphs of basic parameters obtained from EMD as well for the derivatives using Matlab programs.


The Herschel Space Observatory Telescope is the first of its kind to cover the 60-670 μm far infrared spectral band. Its optical characterization, performed in the visible range, was a true technological challenge requiring very large dynamic range coupled to very high accuracy. A specific Hartmann Wavefront Sensor (HWFS) was designed to meet the demanding specifications of the measurement. The metrological system used by the EADS Astrium team to characterize the silicon car-bide based telescope will be presented as well as the main features of the specifically developed HWFS. The large expected wavefront error was measured in a double path set-up using the HWFS positioned in an extra-focal plane and a point source in the focal plane. The auto-collimation was carried out thanks to several liquid mirrors covering the M1 pupil plane and located in the conjugation plane of the HWFS sub-apertures. The results on the wavefront error obtained at the Centre Spatial de Liege (CSL) in Belgium will be shown as well as the simulated Point Spread Function to be compared to the real PSF obtained during on flight measurements. The thermally induced focal length variations are also presented as the telescope is meant to operate at 70°K in space.


In Bhartṛhari's 'Vākyapadīya' Ātman is occasionally identified with the substance. This identification might have been a view of some early school of Vedānta. It can be traced from the early prose Upaniṣads until the middle of the 1st Millennium CE. The gold or clay analogy can be considered a typical means of illustrating this doctrine.


In this paper we intend to evaluate the role that nature has in the philosophy of technology of Albert Borgmann. According to the author, contemporary life has been taken by the device paradigm; technology follows a pattern that transforms the rich dimensions of things into devices; these are composed of commodities, easily available and without demanding any effort, and mechanisms, hiding the ways how natural resources are used. This pattern does not make explicit the promoted notion of the good life. The experience of nature shows how something that escapes the device paradigm can endure and flourish beyond our utilitarian purposes; its eloquence can thus take us to propose a reform of technology through the notion of a center; however, this center demands to be cultivated through focal things and practices in order to turn in to a structuring habit of our lives.


: Properties of the receptor cells responses in n. telsoni ventralis to the change in the direction, velocity and angle of displacement of the uropod hairs were studied in acute experiments with the crayfish Astacus leptodactylus. It is shown that the receptor neurons are characterized by an inverse relation between the latent period and the velocity of hairs displacement and by impulse frequency proportional to this velocity. The selective sensibility of the various receptor neurons to the direction and change of angular displacement of a hair was found. Certain zones of the angle of displacement of the uropod cells characterized by evoked maximum receptor cells responses are distinguished.


Among hematophagous arthropods, ticks transmit the greater variety of pathogens of public health and veterinary importance. Due to socio-economic and environmental factors, such as human practices, increased travel, global market, global warming, and environmental changes, the incidence of tick-borne diseases in both humans and animals is increasing worldwide, leading to a need for extended surveillance tools. Recently, in Europe a large scale epidemiological study was conducted on 19,474 Ixodes ricinus nymphs collected from five European countries using a powerful new high-throughput approach to screen tick-borne pathogens (Michelet et al., 2014). The technology used in this study is a microfluidic high-throughput Taqman realtime PCR (BioMarkTM dynamic arrays, Fluidigm Corporation), allowing the simultaneous detection of 25 bacterial, 12 parasitic and 22 viral species across 94 samples of ticks. They successfully determined the prevalence of expected tick-borne pathogens (Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, Babesia divergens, Tick-Borne Encephalitis virus, etc.), unexpected (Borrelia miyamotoi, Nairo-like virus) or rare (Bartonella henselae, Eyach virus) tick-borne pathogens. This surveillance method represents a major improvement in epidemiological studies, able to facilitate comprehensive testing of tick-borne pathogens in various samples, and which can also be customized for the survey of emerging diseases in different areas of the world. Caribbean, are a risk area for the (re)-emergence of vector-borne diseases. Population in Caribbean is in expansion, leading to a growing food demand. Maintaining a healthy livestock industry is crucial but often difficult to manage because of tick-borne diseases such as anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, or babesiosis. The Caribbean is also a world interface, with numerous air and maritime networks (tourism, and animals trade) leading to a serious risk of dispersion of tick and their tick-borne pathogens in this area. Moreover, few reports are available on tick-borne diseases in the Caribbean and are only focusing on livestock pathogens such as Ehrlichia ruminantium, Babesia (bovis and bigemina) and Anaplasma marginale. In this context, the DOMOTICK project was designed to apply the high-throughput realtime-PCR technology for a large scale screening of tick-borne pathogens in the Caribbean. Methods included a comprehensive analysis of the literature on tick-borne pathogens, as well as pathogen detection by RNA-sequencing on nucleic acids extracted from ticks collected in Guadeloupe and Martinique to determine which pathogens need to be included in this new high-throughput technology. Preliminary results obtained from NGS analysis suggest that these ticks may harbor more pathogenic microorganisms than the currently known in the Caribbean, such as Rickettsia and Borrelia species of public health importance. Up to now, 40 bacterial species have been listed, including the genera Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, Bartonella, Borrelia, Rickettsia, Mycoplasma, Francisella, Coxiella, Aegyptianella, Mycoplasma ; 14 parasites species, belonging to the genera Babesia, Theleria, Hepatozoon, Leishmania, Rangelia vitalii, Cytauxzoon felis ; and 25 arboviruses belonging to viral families of Orthobunyavirus, Phlebovirus, Nairovirus, Asfivivirus, Thogotovirus, Flavivirus, Coltivirus and Orbivirus. The detection tool will be validated with tick samples collected on various vertebrate hosts through the Caribbean islands thanks to the CaribVet network, and to local veterinarians. Results obtained will be used to do an exploratory epidemiological study on the tick-borne pathogens circulating in the Caribbean. (Resume d'auteur)


This paper presents the Russian eighteen years experience of the generator electric brake used for improving of the power system dynamic stability. The bang-bang control is known to be used for dynamic brake. Ten years ago it was employed at the 1330-MW Zeya hydroelectric power plant for dynamic braking resistors. Some results of the experimental researches which have been obtained during of the development and commissioning of the unique control system are given. The basic research methods were as following: (1) control device laboratory testing with the physical model for power transmission system; (2) field testings in the power system with the emergency switching-off of the 500-kV transmission line; (3) experience analysis of the Zeya multiple generator electric brake and survey of the further exploration for 2010-MW Bureya hydroelectric power plant; (4) simulation of Zeya and Bureya dynamic brake action coordination.


We performed geometric pulsar light curve modeling using static, retarded vacuum, and offset polar cap (PC) dipole B-fields (the latter is characterized by a parameter ϵ), in conjunction with standard two-pole caustic (TPC) and outer gap (OG) emission geometries. The offset-PC dipole B-field mimics deviations from the static dipole (which corresponds to ). In addition to constant-emissivity geometric models, we also considered a slot gap (SG) E-field associated with the offset-PC dipole B-field and found that its inclusion leads to qualitatively different light curves. Solving the particle transport equation shows that the particle energy only becomes large enough to yield significant curvature radiation at large altitudes above the stellar surface, given this relatively low E-field. Therefore, particles do not always attain the radiation-reaction limit. Our overall optimal light curve fit is for the retarded vacuum dipole field and OG model, at an inclination angle and observer angle . For this B-field, the TPC model is statistically disfavored compared to the OG model. For the static dipole field, neither model is significantly preferred. We found that smaller values of ϵ are favored for the offset-PC dipole field when assuming constant emissivity, and larger ϵ values favored for variable emissivity, but not significantly so. When multiplying the SG E-field by a factor of 100, we found improved light curve fits, with α and ζ being closer to best fits from independent studies, as well as curvature radiation reaction at lower altitudes.


Abstract. Contemporary Western societies are characterized by 'until further notice' relationships (and precarious or very loose social bonds), historically high levels of mobility of both capital and labour and growing numbers of single person households. As artefacts of freedom and choice these social arrangements do not inevitably give cause for concern but they may come at a price and that might involve more frequent and more sustained experiences of loneliness. This article argues that we know very little about loneliness even though some observers have described it as a new plague. The article sets out to describe the dimensions of a sociology of contemporary loneliness in terms of its social distribution, its extent and impact as well as its nature as an emotional and ontological experience. While we may be heading towards a civilization which, as Michel Houellebecq darkly hints in the recent novel The Possibility of an Island (2006), may have little further need for 'the social', for the time being it seems as though this problem (that would 'rather not' speak its name) is the cause of considerable suffering and pain.


Little is known about changes in soil organic C (SOC) and total N with depth and wilh land use. We conducted this study to determine the depth of changes in SOC and total N under different management regimes in the chernozem soil. Four sites were sampled: a native grassland field (not cultivated for at least 300 yr), an adjacent 50-yr continuous-fallow field, a yearly cut hay field in the V.V. Alekhin Central-Chernozem Biosphere State Reserve in the Kursk region of Russia, and a continuously cropped field in the Experimental Station of the Kursk Institute of Agronomy and Soil Erosion Control. All sampled soils were classified as fine-silty, mixed, frigid Pachic Hapludolls. Soil organic C, total N contents, and bulk densities with depth were compared. Significant reductions in SOC and total N concentrations were detected to a depth of 120 to 130 cm in the 50-yr continuous-fallow field and to a depth of 80 cm in the continuously cropped field. Highest reductions were observed in the top 10 cm of soil, where reduction in SOC ranged from 38 to 43% and reduction in total N ranged from 45 to 53%. Significant losses of SOC and total N per equivalent soil mass on an area basis were observed to a depth of 60 cm in the continuously cropped field and to a depth of 100 cm in the 50-yr continuous-fallow field.


53-year-old patient with multiple recurrent admissions for chest pain and low-grade fever presented after recent discharge for the same complaint. In his previous admission, cardiac work-up was done with no significant findings and he was discharged on oral antibiotics. However, upon this admission he developed cardiac arrest due to ventricular fibrillation and was intubated. Upon further assessment and intervention, he was found to have Pacemaker-lead-wire infective endocarditis. We share this interesting case as Infective endocarditis could present as a vague symptom that needs further intervention.


The field of Information Communication Technology (ICT) is a rapidly developing and expanding arena. With the expansion of it, the need for specialists, skilled in ICT, is in high demand. The recent outbreak of Covid-19 virus has reshaped the current labor market for people with IT skills. People with tech skills in place need to evolve under new circumstances as the business where they work faces huge changes influenced by remote work. In this study, we set out to investigate what challenges may rise in IT-students skill sets and competences after the Covid-19 pandemic due to remote work, lack of formal and informal face-to-face communication and other factors. Further the paper analyzes how the IT specialists feel in a changing environment, and recommends how businesses and people need to change themselves to adapt to the Covid-19 effects based on the analysis and how to grow in their future skills.


With the advent of Technology and increasing growth in volume of data the business are finding the cloud as suitable option to host their data. However, putting the sensitive data on third-party infrastructure poses several security risks to their data utilizing the advantages of the Clouds. Though there are many risks and concerns are involved in cloud computing according many surveys conducted by different organizations the prime concern of clients when opting for cloud solution is the security of their data. Key issue is to protect important data from unauthorized access by adversaries in case the confidentiality of data is broken by internal or external attacks on the cloud hosting those data. HDFS is the file system suitable for storing and processing large volume of data using MapReduce model. When public cloud is based on the Hadoop which uses HDFS to store data, the data are stored in plain text and by default the transport of data is also insecure when client submit the data to storage servers on cloud. Requirement here is design and implement a prototype to secure the HDFS to harness is with security features so that it can be deployed in public cloud to provide storage and computing services. We have proposed and implemented secure HDFS by incorporating Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption which provides data confidentiality as well as integrity in Hadoop. Experiments were carried out to analyze the performance with respect to other hybrid encryption schemes. KeywordsHDFS, Cloud, Security, ECIES


Self-healing polymeric materials have a great potential to be explored and uti-lized in many applications such as engineering and surface coating. Various smart materials with self-healing ability and unique self-healing mechanisms have been reported in recent publications. Currently, the most widely employed technique is by embedding microcapsules that contain a healing agent into the bulk polymer matrix. When cracks develop in the polymer matrix, the curing agent is released from the microcapsules to cross-link and repair the cracks. Microencapsulation of the healing agent in the core can be achieved by in situ polymerizing of shell material. This chapter presents a general review on self-healing materials, and par-ticularly, self-healing of epoxy matrices that includes epoxy composite and epoxy coating by microencapsulation technique. Microencapsulation processes, including types of resin used, processing parameters such as core/shell ratio, concentration of emulsifiers, viscosities of aqueous and organic phases and stirring rate are discussed.


We describe a case of a urinary tract infection with an unusual pathogen, Photobacterium damsela, in a pregnant female. This pathogen has been described as having a virulent life threatening nature, so a detailed history and prompt treatment is needed.


Aims. The core collapse supernova rate provides a strong lower limit for the star formation rate (SFR). Progress in using it as a cosmic SFR tracer requires some confidence that it is consistent with more conventional SFR diagnostics in the nearby Universe. This paper compares standard SFR measurements based on Hα, far ultraviolet (FUV) and total infrared (TIR) galaxy luminosities with the observed core collapse supernova rate in the same galaxy sample. The comparison can be viewed from two perspectives. Firstly, by adopting an estimate of the minimum stellar mass to produce a core collapse supernova one can determine a SFR from supernova numbers. Secondly, the radiative SFR can be assumed to be robust and then the supernova statistics provide a constrain on the minimum stellar mass for core collapse supernova progenitors. Methods. The novel aspect of this study is that Hα, FUV and TIR luminosities are now available for a complete galaxy sample within the local 11 Mpc volume and the number of discovered supernovae in this sample within the last 13 years is high enough to perform a meaningful statistical comparison. We exploit the multi-wavelength dataset from 11 HUGS, a volume-limited survey designed to provide a census of SFR in the Local Volume. There are 14 supernovae discovered in this sample of galaxies within the last 13 years. Although one could argue that this may not be complete, it is certainly a robust lower limit. Results. Assuming a lower limit for core collapse of 8 M� (as proposed by direct detections of SN progenitor stars and white dwarf progenitors), the core-collapse supernova rate matches the SFR from the FUV luminosity. However, the SFR based on Hα luminosity is lower than these two estimates by a factor of nearly 2. If we assume that the FUV or Hα based luminosities are a true reflection of


The local surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) of dielectric-Ag core-shell nanospheres are studied by the discretedipole approximation method. The result shows that LSPRs are sensitive to the surrounding medium refractive index, which shows a clear red-shift with the increasing surrounding medium refractive index. A dielectric-Ag core-shell nanosphere exhibits a strong coupling between the core and shell plasmon resonance modes. LSPRs depend on the shell thickness and the composition of dielectric-core and metal-shell. LSPRs can be tuned over a longer wavelength range by changing the ratio of core to shell value. The lower energy mode ω− shows a red-shift with the increasing dielectric-core value and the inner core radius, while blue-shifted with the increasing outer shell thickness. The underlying mechanisms are analyzed with the plasmon hybridization theory and the phase retardation effect.


Orlando-Correction of hyperopia promises to be a very exciting area of refractive surgery in the future, said Douglas D. Koch, MD, at "Back to the Future," the refractive surgery subspecialty day prior to the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting.


The fully developed laminar mixed-convection flow in horizontal ducts of rectangular, circular and semicircular cross-sections has been studied using a numerical model of the governing equations of motion, subject to the Boussinesq approximation and an axially uniform heat-flux condition. Dual solutions with a two- and a four-vortex flow pattern have been observed in all cases. The rectangular geometry, with its aspect ratio and Grashof number as parameters, is posed as a two-parameter problem. In this parameter-space, the critical points where the transition between the two- and the four-vortex pattern occur, follow a tilted cusp. This is akin to the phenomenon in the Taylor problem which has been thoroughly investigated by Benjamin and co-workers in a general study of bifurcation phenomena for viscous flow problems. The bifurcation phenomenon in circular ducts, which is essentially a one-parameter problem, has features similar to that observed for the Dean problem, by Nandakumar and Masliyah.


The aim of the present systematic review and meta-analysis was to address the following Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome question: Is the efficacy of articaine better than lignocaine in adults requiring dental treatment? Four percent articaine was compared with 2% lignocaine for maxillary and mandibular infiltrations and block anesthesia, and with the principal outcome measures of anesthetic success. Using RevMan software, the weighted anesthesia success rates and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated and compared using a random-effects model. For combined studies, articaine was more likely to achieve successful anesthesia than lignocaine (N = 18, odds ratio [OR]: 1.92, 95% CI: 1.45-2.56, P < 0.00001, I2  = 32%). Maxillary and mandibular infiltration studies showed obvious superiority of articaine to lignocaine (N = 8, OR: 2.50, 95% CI: 1.51-4.15, P = 0.0004, I2  = 41%). Maxillary infiltration subgroup analysis showed no significant difference between articaine and lignocaine (N = 5, OR: 1.69, 95% CI: 0.88-3.23, P = 0.11, I2  = 19%). For combined mandibular anesthesia studies, articaine was superior to lignocaine (N = 14, OR: 1.99, 95% CI: 1.45-2.72, P < 0.0001, I2  = 32%), with further subgroup analysis showing significant differences in both mandibular block anesthesia (N = 11, OR: 1.55, 95% CI: 1.19-2.03, P = 0.001), I2  = 0%) and mandibular infiltration (N = 3, OR: 3.87, 95% CI: 2.62-5.72, P < 0.00001, I2  = 0%), indicating that articaine is more effective than lignocaine in providing anesthetic success in routine dental procedures.


This study aims at comparing performance among subjects along a series of tests dealing with verbal comprehension, verbal fluency, and reasoning. The subjects were, approximately, the same age. However theirs were different educational levels. The samples drawn were 180 male subjects, approximately 22-years old, distributed into 3 groups according to their education level, i.e. primary school, high school, and college. Three subtests, Verbal Meaning, Word Fluency, and Reasoning (SRA Primary Mental Abilities Test Ages 11 to 17-Form AH) with a high saturation of the above mentioned factors were administered. The results of the simple variation analysis on each subtest scores showed a significant principal effect on education although a strict covariation among scores and the subjects' education level were not detected.


Anthropogenic activities may have posed a serious threat to the environment due to the release of heavy metal into the environment. In this study, the adsorption behaviour of Newbouldia leavis as regards Pb(II), Ni(II) and Cd(II) ions from wastewater has been studied. A series of experiments were conducted in a batch system to assess the effects of the system variables such as of pH, temperature and initial metal concentrations in solution ranging from 10 to 50 mg/L. The experiment showed that the solution pH strongly influenced the adsorptive capacity of the adsorbent as maximum adsorption occurred at pH 4 for Pb(II) ions and pH 6 for both Ni(II) and Cd(II) ions. For the isotherms models applied for sorption studies, Freundlich best described the data properly. The maximum adsorption capacity of Pb(II), Cd(II) and Ni(II) are 0.0042 mg/g, 0.178 mg/g and 0.552 mg/g respectively. The negative value of  G0 indicates the feasibility and spontaneous nature of the process. The negative value of  H0: -50707.09, -8804.53 and -7234.01 for Pb(II), Cd(II) and Ni(II) ions respectively confirms the exothermic nature of adsorption. Moreover, the negative value of  S0:  -51197.6, -62.79 and -209.18 for Ni(II), Cd(II) and Pb(II) ions respectively suggests the decreased randomness at the solid-solution interface during adsorption process. According to the equilibrium studies, the selectivity sequence can be given as Ni2+ > Cd2+ > Pb2+. These results show that Newbouldia leavis holds great potential to remove cationic heavy metal species from industrial wastewater. Key Words: Heavy metal, Newbouldia leavis, biosorption, Equilibrium, Thermodynamics.


The Woreta Agricultural Technical Vocational Education and Training College (WATVETC) is provided with a considerable area with the primary objective of using it for practical training and demonstration of improved agricultural and natural resource management technologies. In addition, the land is expected to be used for agricultural production on sustainable basis and supplement the internal revenue of the College. More importantly, since research and extension services are the two of the three mandates of the College, the farm has to eventually develop to the level of an agricultural research center of the Amhara Agricultural Research Institute. However, although knowledge on soil physical and chemical characteristics plays a vital role in enabling production and productivity of the agricultural sector on sustainable basis and to undertake research in the College, there is no much information about the soils of the research farm of the College as well as the campus as a whole.


In this paper, the useful concept of energy and exergy utilization is analyzed, and applied to the boiler system. Energy and exergy flows in a boiler have been shown in this paper. The energy and exergy efficiencies have been determined as well. In a boiler, the energy and exergy efficiencies are found to be 89.21% and 45.48%, respectively. A boiler energy and exergy efficiencies are compared with others work as well. It has been found that the combustion chamber is the major contributor for exergy destruction followed by heat exchanger of a boiler system. Furthermore, Modifications are examined to increase gas-fired steam power plant efficiency by reducing irreversibilities in the steam generator, including Decreasing the fraction of excess combustion air, and/or the stack-gas temperature. Overall-plant energy and exergy efficiencies both increase by 0.19%, 0.37% respectively when the fraction of excess combustion air decreases from 0.4 to 0.15, and by 0.84%, 2.3% when the stack-gas temperature decreases from 137°C to 90°C.. Keywords—Energy analysis, Exergy analysis, Ambient


The multienzyme cascade has received growing attention to obtain structurally defined glycans in vitro. However, due to poor enzyme stability and low compatibility between glycoenzymes, artificially designed multienzyme pathways to access glycans are often inefficient. Herein, based on the strategy "Modular-Enzymes Assembly by Spatial Segregation" (MASS), we developed a universal immobilization platform to assemble multiple glycoenzymes in compartmentalized MOF particles, inside and outside, significantly reducing the undesired interference and cross-inhibitions. By changing the enzyme modules, a series of glycosyl donor, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides bearing cofactor regeneration were efficiently prepared. This bioreactor was further successfully applied to the reaction system with high substrate concentration to demonstrate its industrial potential. This robust multienzyme immobilization platform should serve to promote the enzymatic synthesis of more complex glycans.


The present study aims to investigate students' responses toward peer assessment of students' descriptive text writing assignments by using Facebook. The author built two research questions: (1) In what way does Facebook assist students in giving peer assessment on students' descriptive text writing? and (2) What are the students' responses toward these activities? The current study recruited seventeen students in tenth grade as the participants. Drawing on action research through interviews and observation data, qualitative findings show positive results, those are: (1) the use of students' peer assessment through Facebook had an impact on raising the students' revised drafts, (2) the students expressed an optimistic response towards using Facebook for peer assessment, and (3) the students' difficulties on peer assessment through Facebook, and (4) the students' involvement during peer assessment activities on Facebook. Furthermore, the quantitative findings of the observation checklist show that the average percentage is 88.4% (15 students of the class were actively involved in the writing activities = very good). Therefore, this present study shows the provident of the importance of peer assessment through Facebook as an assessment method to help enhance learners' English writing acquisition.


Tirzepatide (TZP), a novel once-weekly GIP/GLP-1 receptor agonist, demonstrated superior glycemic control vs insulin degludec (IDeg) in SURPASS-3 CGM. This post-hoc analysis evaluated changes from baseline to Week (Wk) 52 in Time in Range (TIR) (71-180 mg/dL), Time in Tight Range (TITR) (71-140 mg/dL), and glycemic variation (within-day coefficient of variation (CV) and Mean Amplitude of Glycemic Excursions (MAGE)) in TZP-treated patients achieving or not achieving HbA1c <5.7% at Wk 52. Interstitial glucose values were collected by CGM at 5-minute intervals for 7 days at baseline, Wk 24, and Wk 52 in a subset of patients in the SURPASS-3 trial. Analyses used pooled data from all TZP arms (5, 10, 15 mg) only due to limited sample size for IDeg patients achieving HbA1c <5.7% at Wk 52. Patients achieving HbA1c <5.7% were slightly younger, had lower HbA1c and FSG, and higher TITR and TIR vs those not achieving HbA1c <5.7% at baseline (Table). Increases in daily TITR and TIR from baseline (61.02% and 41.12% respectively) were seen in patients achieving HbA1c <5.7% while those not achieving HbA1c <5.7% had increased daily TITR and TIR of 36.62% and 32.40% (Table). Within-day CV and MAGE were reduced in both patient groups but more apparent in those achieving HbA1c <5.7%. In TZP-treated patients, improvements in TIR, TITR, and glycemic variability were more pronounced in those achieving HbA1c <5.7%.

 R.M.Bergenstal: Advisory Panel; Abbott Diabetes, Eli Lilly and Company, Medtronic, Novo Nordisk, Roche Diabetes Care, Zealand Pharma A/S, Consultant; Ascensia Diabetes Care, Bigfoot Biomedical, Inc., CeQur SA, Dexcom, Inc., Hygieia, Onduo LLC, Sanofi, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, Research Support; Abbott Diabetes, Dexcom, Inc., Eli Lilly and Company, Insulet Corporation, Medtronic, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, UnitedHealth Group. Á.Rodríguez: Employee; Eli Lilly and Company, Stock/Shareholder; Eli Lilly and Company. B.D.Benneyworth: Employee; Eli Lilly and Company, Stock/Shareholder; Eli Lilly and Company. C.Nicolay: Employee; Eli Lilly and Company. K.Brown: Employee; Eli Lilly and Company.

 Eli Lilly and Company


MOTIVATION
Comparing tandem mass spectra (MSMS) against a known dataset of protein sequences is a common method for identifying unknown proteins; however, the processing of MSMS by current software often limits certain applications, including comprehensive coverage of post-translational modifications, non-specific searches and real-time searches to allow result-dependent instrument control. This problem deserves attention as new mass spectrometers provide the ability for higher throughput and as known protein datasets rapidly grow in size. New software algorithms need to be devised in order to address the performance issues of conventional MSMS protein dataset-based protein identification.

METHODS
This paper describes a novel algorithm based on converting a collection of monoisotopic, centroided spectra to a new data structure, named 'peptide finite state machine' (PFSM), which may be used to rapidly search a known dataset of protein sequences, regardless of the number of spectra searched or the number of potential modifications examined. The algorithm is verified using a set of commercially available tryptic digest protein standards analyzed using an ABI 4700 MALDI TOFTOF mass spectrometer, and a free, open source PFSM implementation. It is illustrated that a PFSM can accurately search large collections of spectra against large datasets of protein sequences (e.g. NCBI nr) using a regular desktop PC; however, this paper only details the method for identifying peptide and subsequently protein candidates from a dataset of known protein sequences. The concept of using a PFSM as a peptide pre-screening technique for MSMS-based search engines is validated by using PFSM with Mascot and XTandem.

AVAILABILITY
Complete source code, documentation and examples for the reference PFSM implementation are freely available at the Proteome Commons, http://www.proteomecommons.org and source code may be used both commercially and non-commercially as long as the original authors are credited for their work.


In this paper we present a new parsing algorithm for linear indexed grammars (LIGs) in the same spirit as the one described in (Vijay-Shanker and Weir, 1993) for tree adjoining grammars. For a LIG L and an input string x of length n, we build a non ambiguous context-free grammar whose sentences are all (and exclusively) valid derivation sequences in L which lead to x. We show that this grammar can be built in O(n6) time and that individual parses can be extracted in linear time with the size of the extracted parse tree. Though this O(n6) upper bound does not improve over previous results, the average case behaves much better. Moreover, practical parsing times can be decreased by some statically performed computations.


Abstract The phyllostomid bat genus Vampyressa often has been allied with Uroderma, Chiroderma, Platyrrhinus, Vampyrodes, and Mesophylla. However, the relationships among the genera have proven difficult to resolve, and a number of studies have suggested that Vampyressa is not monophyletic. Mesophylla includes a single species, which some taxonomists have placed in Vampyressa and others in the more distantly related genus Ectophylla. Our analysis of sequence data from the cytochrome-b gene (Cytb) gives strong support for Mesophylla being closely related to Vampyressa, rather than Ectophylla. Examination of the Cytb data indicates that Vampyressa pusilla and Mesophylla are members of a lineage distinct from V. bidens and V. brocki. Therefore, we recognize the genus Vampyriscus for V. brocki and V. bidens. Brazilian specimens of V. pusilla are strongly divergent from specimens from elsewhere in Latin America. The degree of genetic distance indicates species-level divergence between these taxa, and supports the recent recognition of Vampyressa thyone for the northern populations.


In any in-depth reflection on the ground of certainty in Christian thought, particularly as this bears on the intermeshing of Word and Spirit, it is fitting to explore the rationalist legacy within evangelicalism. I have often observed that one of the banes of modem evangelicalism is rationalism, although it is always necessary to point out that this is a believing rationalism. In such a perspective reason prepares the way for faith and confirms faith, but it does not procure faith. Rationalists in both Catholic and Reformation traditions have acknowledged the role of the Spirit in assisting the will to embrace what reason plainly shows to be true. In the deism and latitudinarianism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Spirit was largely eclipsed by an emphasis on the universal logos and the omni competence of reason to discover and establish truth.


Desmoplastic small round cell tumour (DSRCT) is a rare tumour, usually arising in the abdominal cavity. DSRCT remains an aggressive malignancy, with a poor prognosis despite multi-modality treatments. In the published literature, there has been no patient who lived for three years or more without surgical excision. This report describes a case of DSRCT arising from the brachial plexus and successfully treated with caffeine-assisted chemotherapy. A 29-year-old male presented with pain and numbness in his left forearm. Radiological findings were suggestive of malignant tumour. Histology, immunohistochemical stain and fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) results confirmed the diagnosis of DSRCT. He underwent caffeine-potentiated chemotherapy and the tumour disappeared. The tumour was not removed surgically as it was intertwined in the brachial plexus. Four years after the initial diagnosis, no local relapse and no distant metastases have been observed. Therefore, it is concluded that caffeine-assisted chemotherapy should be one of the treatment options for DSRCT.


Microorganisms can be present in common equipment of practice, which spread Healthcare-associated infections (HALs), generating major health issues, not only in the hospital environment but outside as well. Especially in this impending crisis due to SARS CoV-19 virus, disinfection (in general) turns out to be of paramount importance and portable disinfection in particular. The rampant spread of the COVID 19 virus, has pushed thinkers to come up with unique disinfection solutions that can help curb the spread of the virus in other places other than the medical facilities. The article aims to establish a design of a portable ultraviolet c disinfectant device that is based on the core principles of origami- the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. Resorting to origami has helped to make the device ultra-portable, robust and can be easily manufactured in order to be commercially produced as an inexpensive alternative to the cost portable disinfection devices in the market.


The intramolecular [2 + 2] photocycloaddition of three 4-(alk-4-enyl)coumarins and three 1-(alk-4-enoyl)-2,3-dihydropyridones was studied in the absence and in the presence of Lewis acids (irradiation wavelength λ = 366 nm). Spectral and kinetic data were collected for the respective parent compounds with a pent-4-enyl and a pent-4-enoyl chain. For the substrates with a methyl group in cis- or trans-position of the terminal alkene carbon atom (hex-4-enyl and hex-4-enoyl substitution), the stereochemical outcome of the [2 + 2] photocycloaddition was investigated. The mechanistic course of the uncatalyzed coumarin reactions was found to be a singlet pathway, whereas Lewis acid-catalyzed reactions proceeded with higher reaction rates in the triplet manifold. Contrary to that, the dihydropyridones underwent a fast triplet reaction in the absence of the Lewis acid. In the presence of a chiral Lewis acid the reactions slowed down but, due to the high extinction coefficient of the Lewis acid/dihydropyridone complexes at λ = 366 nm, still resulted in high enantioselectivity.


Mining user behavior features is an essential part of recommender systems. As user preferences change dynamically, long-term interest features are very useful for predicting users' future behavior. Hence, the accuracy of temporal prediction will be greatly improved, if we can combine user behavior regularities with the item features. In this paper, we propose a long short-term memory (LSTM) variant, named Multi-type Feature Mining and Fusion (MFMF) model, to mine the long-term dynamic user behavior pattern and the potential relationships between items. We combine these features with user and item attributes to predict which items users will click next. Experiments on two real-world datasets, LastFM dataset and movie dataset, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach comparing to both traditional and state-of-the- art methods.


Scope: Pervasiveness of networks has made possible to interconnect systems that were independently developed, operated, managed, and evolved, yielding a new kind of complex system, i.e. a system that is itself composed of systems, the so-called System-of-Systems (SoS). Software-intensive SoS (SiSoS) has become a hotspot in the last years, from both the research and industry viewpoints. Indeed, various aspects of our lives and livelihoods have progressively become dependent on some sort of Software-intensive SoS. This is the case of SiSoS found in different areas as diverse as energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation; and applications that address societal needs, e.g. environmental monitoring, distributed energy grids, emergency coordination, global traffic control, and smart cities. Moreover, ubiquitous platforms such as the Internet of Things and nascent kinds of SoS such as Cyber-Physical SoSs are accelerating the deployment of Software-intensive SoS in the near future. Definitely, the unique characteristics of Software-intensive SoS raise a grand research challenge for the future of software-reliant systems in our industry and society due to its intrinsic features, among which evolutionary development and emergent behavior. This conference track fostered original submissions ranging from SiSoS foundations to applications, from theory to practice.


Thermogenic fat burner treatments are used to increase an individual's basal metabolic rate, thus mimicking exercise and inducing weight loss. In rare circumstances, these supplements are associated with hepatotoxicity. We describe the case of a 21-year-old male who presented with painless jaundice and a weight loss of 25% of body weight following 8 weeks of thermogenic fat burner supplementation. Laboratory investigations revealed a severe transaminase and bilirubin elevation (AST/ALT>2000 IU/L, total bilirubin=148 μmol/L). An otherwise extensive workup, including a liver biopsy, did not identify a precise cause. Two weeks after discharge, his condition stabilized with a significant improvement in his laboratory abnormalities. In this report, we discuss the likely ingredients that contributed to the patient's condition, including Garcinia cambogia and green tea leaf extract, and review similar cases documented in the literature.


This paper investigates relative clauses (RCs) in the diachrony of Italian aiming at shedding light on the syntactic derivation of RCs. Building on Sauerland's (2003) claim that RCs involve two non-distinct heads, Cinque (2008, 2013) unifies all RCs under a single derivation proposing that the two heads can either be both lexical or both null elements in syntax. When the two heads are lexical expressions, the RC will be lexically-headed, whereas when the heads are null elements, the RC will be headless, and thus a free RC. According to Cinque (2013: ch. 17), languages differ as to which head or which portion of heads they spell out according to the PF requirements available in a language. In some languages the internal head is always deleted at PF, in others it is spelled out, in some others both heads are fully spelled out, whereas in others languages portions of the heads can be spelled out. In this paper we argue that this variation may not be due to PF requirements only, but it depends on the syntactic derivation. We claim that the usual typology of RCs has to be enriched to include another type in which the two heads enter the derivation as distinct elements. The testing ground for our proposal is provided by the history of Italian. We show that, whereas in Modern Italian the two heads must be non-distinct, Old Italian allowed a configuration where the two heads differed, in the sense that the RC-external head could be a lexical expression while the RC-internal head a null element analogue to a free relative. We argue that the variation between Old and Modern Italian depends on the version of the matching relation involved in the Agree relation between the two heads. Whereas in Modern Italian the matching relation is set on its strict version, and thus results in identity between the two heads, in Old Italian matching involved an inclusion relation, thereby allowing the two heads not to be completely identical.


Individual psychodynamic psychotherapy for people with learning disabilities has been more available since the 1980s, with numerous case studies and reports of effectiveness, yet little is know about the history of psychodynamic psychotherapy. This paper is a historical account of the international development of psychodynamic psychotherapy for people with learning disabilities. It discusses some of the clinicians' case reports, views and conclusions. It is important that, as therapists, we continue to learn and develop. This is a story of 'opportunities lost'. Although a number of therapists were well‐placed to develop psychotherapy as a valuable treatment option, it did not happen. The paper discusses the reasons, ranging from widespread therapeutic pessimism to inability in the therapist to process the 'disability transference'. It outlines the various British contributions before and since the ground‐breaking and well‐known work of Valerie Sinason, whose 1992 book is still the most influential contribution. Psychodynamic psychotherapy has developed more of a tradition than other therapy approaches in this field, but there is still only sparse literature on and recognition of this work.


A total of 1,358 coins struck in Reval, 90 coins struck in Narva, and 11 coins struck in Riga was recorded in Swedish finds. Reval and Narva used the Swedish accounting system, but Riga did not, which explains the few coins from the latter city. The peak period was during Chrictina to Charles XI when especially coins of Reval played an important role in coin circulation in Sweden.


We discuss how the motivic integration will be generalized to wild Deligne-Mumford stacks, that is, stabilizers may have order divisible by the characteristic of the base or residue field. We pose several conjectures on this topic. We also present some possible applications concerning stringy invariants, resolution of singularities, and weighted counts of extensions of local fields.


Multicell coordinated beamforming (MCBF) has been recognized as a promising approach to enhancing the system throughput and spectrum efficiency of wireless cellular systems. In contrast to the conventional single-cell beamforming (SBF) design, MCBF jointly optimizes the beamforming vectors of cooperative base stations (BSs) (via a central processing unit (CPU)) in order to mitigate the intercell interference. While most of the existing designs assume that the CPU has the perfect knowledge of the channel state information (CSI) of mobile stations (MSs), this paper takes into account the inevitable CSI errors at the CPU, and study the robust MCBF design problem. Specifically, we consider the worst-case robust design formulation that minimizes the weighted sum transmission power of BSs subject to worst-case signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) constraints on MSs. The associated optimization problem is challenging because it involves infinitely many nonconvex SINR constraints. In this paper, we show that the worst-case SINR constraints can be reformulated as linear matrix inequalities, and the approximation method known as semidefinite relation can be used to efficiently handle the worst-case robust MCBF problem. Simulation results show that the proposed robust MCBF design can provide guaranteed SINR performances for the MSs and outperforms the robust SBF design.


1. Gralnek IM, Dumonceau JM, Kuipers EJ et al. Diagnosis and management of nonvariceal upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage: European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ESGE) Guideline. Endoscopy 2015;47: a1-a46. 2. Qureshi W, Mittal C, Patsias I et al. Restarting anticoagulation and outcomes after major gastrointestinal bleeding in atrial fibrillation. American Journal of Cardiology 2014; 113: 662-8. 3. Makam RCP, Hoaglin DC, McManus DD et al. Efficacy and safety of direct oral anticoagulants approved for cardiovascular indications: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Plos One 2018;13(5). 4. Siau K, Hannah JL, Hodson J, Widlak M, Bhala N, Iqbal TH. Stopping antithrombotic therapy after acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding is associated with reduced survival. Postgrad Med J 2018;94:137-142. 5. Melkonian M, Jarzebowski W, Pautas E, Siguret V, Belmin J, and Lafuente-Lafuente C. Bleeding risk of antiplatelet drugs compared with oral anticoagulants in older patients with atrial fibrillation: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 15:1500-1510.


Already at elementary school level, students are able to produce critical comments on instructional topics. These statements are most often lacking in detailed and sound arguments. Since educational systems are interested in students' further development of critical thinking later at secondary school age, those first manifestations of criticism have to be linked to scientific and philosophical conceptions of critical thinking and competence which means taking into consideration the rules of rational argumentation and informal logic. The ensuing article deals with the mentioned first spontaneous and with pedagogical provoked critical comments by students in classroom lessons and discusses the problems met by observing, analyzing, and classifying (coding) the produced critical statements.


ABSTRACT Introduction: Non-convulsive status epilepticus (NCSE) is a complex and diverse condition which is often an under-recognised entity in the intensive care unit. When NCSE is identified the optimal treatment strategy is not always clear. Areas covered: This review is based on a literature review of the key literature in the field over the last 5–10 years. The articles were selected based on their importance to the field by the authors. Expert commentary: This review discusses the complex situations when a neurological consultation may occur in a critical care setting and provides an update on the latest evidence regarding the recognition of NCSE and the decision making around determining the aggressiveness of treatment. It also considers the ictal-interictal continuum of conditions which may be met with, particularly in the era of continuous EEG, and provides an approach for dealing with these. Suggestions for how the field will develop are discussed.


The binding of human [125I]GH, ovine [125I]GH, bovine [125I]GH, and ovine [125I]PRL, to hepatic microsomal membranes (100,000 g) prepared from fetal, neonatal, and infant lambs and adult ewes has been examined. The specific binding of hGH increases (P less than 0.01) from 3.4 +/- 0.8% in the fetus (n = 7) to 20.0 +/- 2.1% (n = 6) in lambs at least 6 days postpartum. The binding of oGH is low in the fetus (0.7 +/- 0.2%; n = 13) and neonatal lamb (1.3 +/- 0.5%; n = 5) and increases (P less than 0.01) in older lambs (14.6 +/- 4.7%; n = 6) and adult sheep (14.9 +/- 5.3%; n = 4). Similarly, the binding of bGH is less (P less than 0.05) to fetal tissues. In contrast, the binding of oPRL is similar in fetal and postnatal preparations. Cross-reaction studies suggest that the binding of GHs is to a site with lactogenic characteristics in the fetus. In contrast, in lambs at least 4 days postpartum and in adult sheep, binding is to a site with somatogenic characteristics. The inability to detect somatogenic sites in the fetal liver is not due to saturation by endogenous GH or chorionic somatomammotropin, as the binding characteristics do not change after MgCl2 pretreatment of the membrane fractions. No change in binding is observed 25 days after fetal decapitation at 69 days (n = 3), suggesting that circulating GH does not down-regulate the fetal GH receptor. These observations suggest an immaturity of the somatogenic receptor in the ovine fetal liver and its appearance in the perinatal period. Immaturity of this receptor is likely to be the basis for the lack of a major effect of fetal GH on fetal somatic growth.


In stereo matching of images, sample cross-covariances are used commonly as a criterion for deciding whether matched points are truly conjugate. Hereupon window width is a serious parameters to dominate matching stability. This paper argues about relation of matching stability with window width in terms of statistical behavior of sample covariances. For simple circumstances of analysis auto-covariances of a single image are considered instead of cross-covariances of stereo ones. First the mean and variance of sample auto-covariances are derived with parameters, window width and positional lag. Secondly they are evaluated from the correlation function estimated on an aerial image under the assumption of ergodicity to observe how they vary according as two parameters vary. From this result a variation factor is proved usefull to estimate appropriate window width.


Candida auris was discovered in 2009 and has rapidly emerged as a serious public health threat with cases reported in over 20 countries worldwide. As of May 8, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a total of 1122 US cases. C. auris is often multidrug resistant, leaving few options for treatment. Sulfonamides are known to inhibit a bacterial enzyme involved in folate synthesis and may also inhibit yeast organisms by a similar mechanism. The combination of trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole is more commonly used than either drug alone. The objective of this study was to evaluate the combination of fluconazole and trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole against C. auris. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of fluconazole and trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole were determined by ETEST and broth microdilution for 11 C. auris strains. Fluconazole MICs (µg/mL) were 4–>256 by ETEST and 2–>256 by broth microdilution (73% resistant); trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole MICs were >32 by ETEST and 32–>128 by broth microdilution (no interpretive guidelines for C. auris). Using our MIC: MIC ETEST method and a checkerboard method, we investigated the interaction of fluconazole and trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole against all isolates. These interactions were analyzed by calculating the summation fractional inhibitory concentration with synergyof ≤0.5, additivity of >0.5–1.0, indifference of >1–4, and antagonism of >4. The combination of fluconazole and trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole revealed synergy with three (27%) and additivity with one (9%) isolate. Indifference was found for the remaining seven (64%) isolates. With the checkerboard method, synergy was seen in 1/11 (9%) isolates with fluconazole (½ MIC) plus trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole (1/64 MIC); additivity, in 7/11 (64%) isolates with fluconazole (1/8 MIC–1×MIC) plus trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole (1/128 MIC–½ MIC); and indifference in 3/11 (27%) isolates. Regardless, in vitro interactions may or may not correlate with clinical outcomes. Synergy testing with additional drug combinations and isolates should be performed.


About This Document: This paper summarizes findings from a meeting and individual interviews with Carnegie Corporation of New York grantees conducted in October 2021. As educators are grappling with how to build better schools in the 2021–2022 school year and how to spend an unprecedented influx of federal funding to help them do so, this paper focuses on the challenges and opportunities that system leaders face and what success might look like over the next few years.


Planning actions using learned and differentiable forward models of the world is a general approach which has a number of desirable properties, including improved sample complexity over model-free RL methods, reuse of learned models across different tasks, and the ability to perform efficient gradient-based optimization in continuous action spaces. However, this approach does not apply straightforwardly when the action space is discrete, which may have limited its adoption. In this work, we introduce two discrete planning tasks inspired by existing question-answering datasets and show that it is in fact possible to effectively perform planning via backprop in discrete action spaces using two simple yet principled modifications. Our experiments show that this approach can significantly outperform model-free RL based methods and supervised imitation learners.


Libyan Desert Glass contains meteoritic material and, therefore, its origin is most likely associated with an impact event. However, the impact crater has not been found. We performed numerical simulations of impacts of stony and cometary bodies in order to confirm the version that this glass was formed from silica heated by radiation from aerial bursts near the ground. Asteroids were treated as strengthless bodies from dunite with a density of 3.3 g cm−3, and comets as icy bodies with a density of 1 g cm−3. The simulations based on hydrodynamic equations included the equations of radiation transfer. Melting and vaporization of a silica target under action of radiation incident on a planar surface were modeled using a one‐dimensional hydrodynamic equation of energy and equations of radiation transfer in two‐flux approximation. We selected those variants of simulations in which a crater is not formed, a fireball touches the earth surface, and the area of a molten target corresponds to the area of the Libyan Desert Glass strewn field. Appropriate options include the impact of an asteroid with a diameter of 300 m, an entry speed of 35 km s−1, and an entry angle of 8°, and cometary bodies with diameters from 150 to 300 m, speeds of 50–70 km s−1, and entry angles from 15° to 45°. Impact options with crater formation are also discussed. The maximum depth of molten silica at ground zero reaches 10 cm with the cometary impacts and 3–4 cm with the asteroidal impact. Melting occurs during a period of time from 50 to 400 s.


Aim: Individualized care is a reflection of the belief in the individuality of the human being, which forms the basis of nursing philosophy and professional codes of ethics. From this point of view, this study aimed to determine the relationship between moral sensitivity and individualized care perception of nursing students. Methods: This descriptive-correlational study was carried out on 300 students studying in the nursing department of a foundation university in Istanbul. A personal information form, the Individualized Care Scale – Nurse Version (ICS-A) and the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire (MSQ) were used as data collection tools. Results: While the students' total mean score was found to be 3.89±0.81 on the ICS-A, the students' ESS scores were72.00 ± 26.70. When the relationship between the ESS and ICS-A was examined, there was weak positive correlation between decision-making control and benefit and orientation dimensions (r=0.20, r=0.22). There was weak positive correlation between ICS-A rank averages and orientation sub-dimension (r=0.22). Conclusion: According to the results of the study, a weak positive relationship was found between ethical sensitivities and perceptions of individualized care. According to these results, it is considered important to use innovative learning methods to increase students' moral sensitivity in clinical practice.


One of the main conditions for improving the overall competitiveness of the country is the formation of its sustainable logistic potential, since logistics is responsible for promoting the country's products, both in the domestic and foreign markets. This is also characteristic for agricultural companies of the main countries of agricultural production in the world, which need to manage their logistic business processes effectively. The business processes of logistics sphere include the processes of warehousing, transportation and further distribution of agricultural products between the entities of the agrarian market (warehousing, traders, wholesale and retail trade network, consumers) at the national, as well as international level. Internationalization of agricultural production includes the formation of cooperative industrial relations in the agrarian sphere between the countries in the chain of "production, processing and marketing", and the management of business processes in the logistics sphere. The latter is characterized by the business process management of the warehousing, transport, distribution areas at the national and international levels and food safety, which represents increasing demand for food in many countries of the world. These are some of the main signs of sustainable logistic development at the national and international levels. A methodical approach to assessing the logistic potential of the main countries of agricultural production in the world is improved; this method is characterized by a set of competitive elements and includes the assessment of logistics management of countries by blocks: product safety, internationalization of production and logistics, management of business processes. The result of this improved method of assessing the logistic potential of the world countries is a developed criterial basis, which allows making effective managerial decisions at the interstate and state levels regarding the logistic development of agrarian productions.


In line with the fourth industrial revolution, most countries have imposed a variety of regulations or policies for the goals of energy conservation, sustainable development, and industrial transition. Renewable energy production and its production process, which is widely discussed, especially in the context of sustainable energy, has become more important with Industry 4.0. This paper tested the relation among economic growth, renewable electricity generations (% of GDP), Industry 4.0, industrial structure, trade openness, financial development, and research and development expenditure for G20 countries in 2000–2021 by employing a panel quantile regression approach and various panel cointegration tests in addition to investigation of panel Granger causality among the analyzed variables. The variables of industrial structure, trade openness, and financial development were selected as control variables. Since this study is the first study on this topic, it will contribute to the development of the literature by providing resources for future studies about I4.0, renewable energy production, and economic growth. Furthermore, this study will not only contribute to the literature by revealing the theoretical and empirical relationship between these variables but will also shed light on the policies that G20 countries will produce in this regard. According to results, all variables examined have significant causal effects: unidirectional causality from economic growth to Industry 4.0, to research and development, and to renewable energy output and, also, from research and development to renewable energy output. Bidirectional causality and feedback effects between renewable energy and Industry 4.0 are determined. Further, unidirectional causality from industrial structure, from openness to trade, and from financial development to renewable energy output are determined. Results indicate renewable-enhancing effects of Industry 4.0.


Objectives We investigated the neural basis of hallucinations Alzheimer's disease (AD) by applying voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to anatomical and functional data from the AD Neuroimaging Initiative. Methods AD patients with hallucinations, based on the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI-Q) (AD-hallu group; n = 39), were compared to AD patients without hallucinations matched for age, sex, educational level, handedness and MMSE (AD-c group; n = 39). Focal brain volume on MRI was analyzed and compared between the two groups according to the VBM method. We also performed voxel-level correlations between brain volume and hallucinations intensity. A similar paradigm was used for the PET analysis. "Core regions" (i.e. regions identified in both MRI and PET analyses, simply done by retaining the clusters obtained from the two analyses that are overlapping) were then determined. Results Regions with relative atrophy in association with hallucinations were: anterior part of the right insula, left superior frontal gyrus and lingual gyri. Regions with relative hypometabolism in association with hallucinations were a large right ventral and dorsolateral prefrontal area. "Core region" in association with hallucinations was the right anterior part of the insula. Correlations between intensity of hallucinations and brain volume were found in the right anterior insula, precentral gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and left precuneus. Correlations between intensity of hallucinations and brain hypometabolism were found in the left midcingulate gyrus. We checked the neuropathological status and we found that the 4 patients autopsied in the AD-hallu group had the mixed pathology AD and Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). Conclusion Neural basis of hallucinations in cognitive neurodegenerative diseases (AD or AD and DLB) include a right predominant anterior-posterior network, and the anterior insula as the core region. This study is coherent with the top-down/bottom-up hypotheses on hallucinations but also hypotheses of the key involvement of the anterior insula in hallucinations in cognitive neurodegenerative diseases.


The paper examines the usage potential of n-tuple algebra (NTA) developed by the authors as a theoretical generalization of structures and methods applied in intelligence systems. NTA supports formalization of a wide set of logical problems (abductive and modified conclusions, modelling of graphs, semantic networks, expert rules, etc.). This article mostly describes implementation of logical inference by means of NTA. Logical inference procedures in NTA can include, besides the known logical calculus methods, new algebraic methods for checking correctness of a consequence or for finding corollaries to a given axiom system. Inference methods consider (above feasibility of certain substitutions) inner structure of knowledge to be processed, thus providing faster solving of standard logical analysis tasks. Matrix properties of NTA objects allow to decrease laboriousness of intellectual procedures as well as to efficiently parallel logical inference algorithms. In NTA, we discovered new structural and statistical classes of conjunctive normal forms whose satisfiability can be detected for polynomial time. Consequently, many algorithms whose complexity evaluation is theoretically high, e.g. exponential, can in practice be solved in polynomial time, on the average. As for making databases more intelligent, NTA can be considered an extension of relational algebra to knowledge processing. In the authors' opinion, NTA can become a methodological basis for creating knowledge processing languages.


We determine the irreducible weight modules with weight multiplicities at most 1 over the derivation algebra of the localization of the quantum plane at q = −1.


We report an extensive numerical study of a charged colloidal system with competing short-range depletion attraction and long-range electrostatic repulsion. By analyzing the cluster properties, we identify two distinct regions in the phase diagram: a state composed of stable finite-size clusters, whose relative interactions are dominated by long-range repulsion, and a percolating network. Both states are found to dynamically arrest at low temperatures, providing evidence of the existence of two distinct non-ergodic states in these systems: a Wigner glass of clusters and a gel.


Injecting and storing of carbon dioxide (CO2) in deep geologic formations is considered as one of the promising approaches for geologic carbon storage. Microbial wettability alteration of injected CO2 is expected to occur naturally by microorganisms indigenous to the geologic formation or microorganisms intentionally introduced to increase CO2 storage capacity in the target reservoirs. The question as to the extent of microbial CO2 wettability alteration under reservoir conditions still warrants further investigation. This study investigated the effect of a lipopeptide biosurfactant—surfactin, on interfacial tension (IFT) reduction and contact angle alteration in CO2/water/quartz systems under a laboratory setup simulating in situ reservoir conditions. The temporal shifts in the IFT and the contact angle among CO2, brine, and quartz were monitored for different CO2 phases (3 MPa, 30°C for gaseous CO2; 10 MPa, 28°C for liquid CO2; 10 MPa, 37°C for supercritical CO2) upon cultivation of Bacillus subtilis strain ATCC6633 with induced surfactin secretion activity. Due to the secreted surfactin, the IFT between CO2 and brine decreased: from 49.5 to 30 mN/m, by ∼39% for gaseous CO2; from 28.5 to 13 mN/m, by 54% for liquid CO2; and from 32.5 to 18.5 mN/m, by ∼43% for supercritical CO2, respectively. The contact angle of a CO2 droplet on a quartz disk in brine increased: from 20.5° to 23.2°, by 1.16 times for gaseous CO2; from 18.4° to 61.8°, by 3.36 times for liquid CO2; and from 35.5° to 47.7°, by 1.34 times for supercritical CO2, respectively. With the microbially altered CO2 wettability, improvement in sweep efficiency of injected and displaced CO2 was evaluated using 2-D pore network model simulations; again the increment in sweep efficiency was the greatest in liquid CO2 phase due to the largest reduction in capillary factor. This result provides novel insights as to the role of naturally occurring biosurfactants in CO2 storage and suggests that biostimulation of biosurfactant production may be a feasible technique for enhancement of CO2 storage capacity.


Abstract : A completely automatic ship to ship recognition system utilizing ultra-high frequencies is described. A very short signal (on the order of a millisecond long) consisting of a group of pulses, constitute the challenging and replying signals. A total of 4100 different codings is provided with the reply coded independently of the challenge. An optical reply system is included to corroborate or replace the radio reply at the will of the challenging operator. The automatic operation as well as the coding is obtained almost completely through the use of electronic circuits employing vacuum tube switches and counters. The results of tests conducted on the complete system over a land distance of eight miles are discussed.


Since 2003 year the technic of agroforestry with alley cropping systems has been implemented at the forest areas in Pejarakan Village, District Gerokgak, Regency of Buleleng Province of Bali. These activities are expected to support the progress of welfare for farmers, eventhough they have been neglected to preserve forest around village. After the research it was cleared that the result of activities didnt fulfilled to its expectation. The analysis about the compositions and structures of vegetations in this research shows that the dominant type of species which are mainly cultivated have character of Importance Value Index, the balance of species among Diversity Index are still low at all of the communal forest areas and even at the these slope sides. The composition and the structure of species were still few, and the vegetation itself was disturbed by people, in order to illegal loggings, cuttings top branches or twigs often occur, and these activities bring out obstacle growth of trees in communal forest areas. It is concluded that the technic of agroforestry at the communal forest areas has few compositions of species and structure of vegetations, so the diversity of species become very poor and not stable either for plants in forestry or for agricultural crops. The researcher could not determine that what species of vegetations superior at this area. So it necessary to enough time for intensive observations and research at this communal forest areas.


Intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) therapy has been used to enhance peripheral blood flow for prevention and rehabilitation of ischemic-related vascular diseases. A novel phenomenon has been reported that multiple blood flow surges appeared in the skin blood flow signal during each compression, but its mechanism has not been fully revealed. This study aimed to gain insights into the origins of these blood flow surges through experiment and biomechanical modeling methods. Foot skin blood flow (SBF) signals of 13 healthy adults (23.8 ± 0.5 yr old, 7 males) and air cuff pressure signals were recorded during IPC. Lumped parameter modeling and wavelet analysis were adopted to investigate the multiple blood flow surges (named as Peak1, Peak2 and Peak3). The results of the simulated Peak1 and Peak2 were in good agreements with the experiment results, suggesting that IPC could enhance foot SBF not only by deflation, but also by inflation. Statistical analysis demonstrated that high frequency compression with more frequent occurrence of Peak1 and Peak2 lead to significantly higher (Friedman test, p < 0.001) time-averaged SBF enhancement than the traditional mode. In addition, wavelet analysis showed that the major frequency component of the Peak3 (0.059 Hz) was within the range of the vascular myogenic activity, suggesting a vascular regulation process triggered by intravascular pressure changes. Our study provide new insights into the mechanism of how IPC enhance foot SBF.


The relationship of the sphincter of Oddi to the physiologic and pathologic processes of the biliary tract has received increasing attention during the past decade. Attempts have been made to associate certain aspects of cholecystitis and cholelithiasis, acute pancreatitis and various forms of jaundice with a dysfunction of this muscle. Some of the symptomatology referable to the upper part of the abdomen in cases in which the diagnosis is obscure and many of the poor results following cholecystectomy have been attributed to dyskinesia of the sphincter. It has been suggested that it may be desirable to produce a concomitant incompetence of the sphincter of Oddi in many instances in which function of the gallbladder has been partially destroyed by disease or completely lost by operative removal. An experimental investigation of this problem forms the basis of the present communication. The anatomist Gage1first described the sphincter of the common


This is a straightforward, well duction to skull base surgerjunior residents in neurosurg haps neurologists seeking an this subject. It is well referenc sufficient for the Intercolle exam. There is overlap betw both for neuroradiology ar frontal/anterior visual path giomas. The chapters o interventional radiology, cav pathway and acoustic schw superficial, didactic introducti no introduction to the ethi4 created by some of the more procedures for the more malij There is no mention of Uttle3 transclival approach to aneurysms. In summary, the Johns Ho for skull base surgery have easy-to-read introduction to th not one that really satisfies.


Today's biofuels require large amounts of energy in the production process for the conversion from biomass into fuels with conventional properties. To reduce the amounts of energy needed, future fuels derived from biomass will have a molecular structure which is more similar to the respective feedstock. Butyl levulinate can be gained easily from levulinic acid which is produced by acid hydrolysis of cellulose. Thus, the Institute for Combustion Engines at RWTH Aachen University carried out a fuel investigation program to explore the potential of this biofuel compound, as a candidate for future compression ignition engines to reduce engine-out emissions while maintaining engine efficiency and an acceptable noise level. Previous investigations identified most desirable fuel properties like a reduced cetane number, an increased amount of oxygen content and a low boiling temperature for compression ignition engine conditions. Depending on the chain length, fuel compounds vary in cetane number and boiling temperature. Therefore different blends of butyl levulinate and n-tetradecane, a long-chain alkane, were investigated in this study. To gain knowledge about the combustion process with biofuels, experiments on a single cylinder diesel research engine were performed. Engine results with blends of butyl levulinate and n-tetradcanee are compared to regular diesel fuel and rapeseed oil methyl ester (B100) with respect to all regulated emissions. With the use of butyl levulinate the soot emissions can be significantly reduced up to 100 % depending on the load point. Furthermore, the experimental results indicate an additional potential for future diesel combustion concepts such as HCCI with respect to soot and NOx emissions in the part load range when using oxygenated fuels derived from biomass. Overall, the low particulate matter emissions provide justification for the consideration of butyl levulinate as a candidate for a fuel or fuel compound in future diesel engines. As a drawback malfunctions in various components of the fuel system like fuel hoses and fuel sealings can occur with the standard engine equipment.


SUMMARY: The effects of pre-anesthetic dose of ketamine (10 mg per kg) on acquisition of short-term memory in rats with damage of mesolimbic serotonergic system has been investigated. Chemical lesion of serotonergic neurons in the median raphe nucleus was performed by ibotenic acid. The rats injected ketamine (10 mg per kg i. p.) or vehicle (1 ml per kg i. p.) prior to learning were tested after changes in locomotor activity disappeared. Short-term memory was studied using a two compartment single trial passive avoidance chamber for 180 s. In rats with lesion of median raphe nucleus, the pre-anesthetic dose of ketamine produced a significant decrease reduction of acquisition latencies and percentage of animals without amnesia syndrome compared to naive and sham-operated animals-treated with ketamine. These result suggest that deficits in serotonin


This research has continued to evaluate Saudi Arabia's journals by quality bibliometric indicators and scientific tools and is likely to highlight comparisons between the significance and the rates of indicators. The research has also illustrated the achievements and the information correlated between the selected indicators of well-cited journals and used sophisticated algorithms and reputable databases to evaluate journals ' quality rankings. The research aims primarily to review the scientific journal quality indices that are currently used (2015), with emphasis on the generally used indicators, such as the Journal impact factor (JIF), the Eigenfactor Score (ES), the SCImago Journal Rank Indicator (SJR) and the Google H-5 index. JIF and ES were obtained from the Journal Citation Report and the SJR from SCImago Journal and country-ranked websites. Special Saudi Arabia research journals are selected from their category from Web Science. The ten (10) chosen Saudi Arabia research journals were noted, and their related data and information reclaimed from their primary websites in linking associated Journal impact factor, SJR, ES and Google H-5 quality indicators for ranking and refereeing their quality. Correlations between indicators were represented employing Pearson's and Spearman's statistical correlations, calculated using SPSS software. All retrieved journals are indexed in Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and Google Scholar Metrics. Examined JIFs fluctuated between 3.613 and 0.311; ES ranged between 0.00396 and 0.00052, while JSR extended between 0.552, 0.24, and Google H-5 varied between 29 and 20. A high Pearson (r) statistical correlation between the JIF and SJR indicators (r = 0.607), as well as a rather low statistical relation between JIF and Google H-5 index for the category in which journals were selected (r = 0.522, is apparent from the bivariate correlation between the JIF, ES, SJR, and Google H-5 index indicators for selected journals. This is the lowest correlation of JIF with ES values (r = 0.461). Lecturer, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University Library, Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com; Phone: +966558172752 Assistant Professor, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University Library, Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, E-mail: email@example.com; email@example.com; Phone: +966592512409 Lecturer, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University Library, Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, E-mail: email@example.com; Phone: +966535384523 Assistant Librarian, Jubail Industrial College Library, Jubail, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, E-mail, firstname.lastname@example.com; Phone: +966500255396 Chair Unit of Training & development at Deanship of Postgraduate Studies; Head Proofreading and Revision Dep. at the Centre of Scientific Publications; Professor of water resources and public health at Public health Dept. Of the College of Engineering, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Box 1982, Dammam 31451, KSA, Phone: +966530310018 E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com, email@example.com Concerning Spearman's rho statistical correlation, a high correlation was observed between JIF and each of Google H-5 and SJR indicators for Saudi Arabia research journals (coefficient values of 0.821 and 0.782, respectively), while a low correlation was recorded between JIF and ES rankings (coefficient value = 0.556).


This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that objective distance between team members (e.g., measured in miles) translates directly and fully into subjective distance (i.e., a team's perception of distance between its members). Drawing on social information processing theory, we argue that the level of subjective distance is likely to predict important team outcomes better than the level of objective distance. Using responses from 678 team leaders and team members pertaining to 161 new product development projects in the software industry, our results show that the subjective perception of distance is affected rather by team members' national diversity than their physical distance. We also find that subjective distance has a significant impact on team collaboration, while objective distance measures, however, have no impact on team collaboration. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.


Diagnosis proved difficult in two cases of Aspergillus infection complicating yttrium-90 ablation of the pituitary. This serious complication occurs rarely. Whatever the initial organism obtained from cases with meningitis of late onset, Aspergillus infection should be considered and cerebrospinal fluid should be cultured for fungi.


A graphical synthesis procedure is developed for a slider-crank mechanism, in which end positions of the slider and rotation angle of floating link are specified data. The procedure is based on well known relative pole graphical method, that is somewhat changed to adapt to specified data. Application of developed procedure shows that there are numerous solutions that fulfils the main task, but encounters various functional problems. Change of movement direction of slider and floating link, existing of singular points, minor transmission angles that points out to inadequate efficiency are some of them. There is also a difference between cases where slider is an input or output link. Some of these problems are analyzed and additional phases are added to the procedure to eliminate solutions that are not satisfactory. The procedure has all the advantages of a graphical method: it is simple, obvious and can be done without any special calculations. Obtained picture of the solution can be without difficulties subjected to various constructive limitations, which are not so easily implemented in numerical methods. All of that recommends developed procedure as a satisfactory design tool. keywords: slider-crank mechanism, synthesis, graphical


Long period gratings have been made in non -photosensitive optical fibres by maskless irradiation of the fibre core with a focussed beam of high energy protons. The irradiated fibres exhibit a strongly wavelength dependent transmission.


Atrial myxoma is the most common type of primary cardiac tumor and it is closely associated with stroke in adults. Early diagnosis and treatment of atrial myxomas is essential for the prevention of embolic events. The aim of the present study was to assess neurological complications associated with atrial myxoma. The neurological signs of atrial myxoma were retrospectively assessed in individuals who underwent treatment at West China Hospital (Chengdu, China) and The Affiliated Hospital of Hainan Medical University (Haikou, China), between March 2003 and February 2015. A total of 130 patients with atrial myxoma were included and 22 (17%) exhibited neurologic signs. These patients were aged 39.9±12.6 years (range, 13-78 years) and there were 13 female and 9 male patients. Ischemic cerebral infarct constituted the dominant clinical symptom (68.2%) and 3 patients exhibited concomitant cardiac manifestations. Atrial myxoma was diagnosed by echocardiography in all patients. Irregular surface of atrial myxomas was associated with a high risk of embolic events. The patients with myxoma successfully underwent surgery with no mortality recorded. In conclusion, atrial myxomas frequently manifest as cerebral infarction in individuals without cardiovascular risk factors. These tumors more commonly affect the middle cerebral artery. Irregular surface of myxomas appears to be associated with embolic events. Echocardiography may improve the diagnosis and early treatment of atrial myxomas.


As the complexity of question answering (QA) datasets evolve, moving away from restricted formats like span extraction and multiple-choice (MC) to free-form answer generation, it is imperative to understand how well current metrics perform in evaluating QA. This is especially important as existing metrics (BLEU, ROUGE, METEOR, and F1) are computed using n-gram similarity and have a number of well-known drawbacks. In this work, we study the suitability of existing metrics in QA. For generative QA, we show that while current metrics do well on existing datasets, converting multiple-choice datasets into free-response datasets is challenging for current metrics. We also look at span-based QA, where F1 is a reasonable metric. We show that F1 may not be suitable for all extractive QA tasks depending on the answer types. Our study suggests that while current metrics may be suitable for existing QA datasets, they limit the complexity of QA datasets that can be created. This is especially true in the context of free-form QA, where we would like our models to be able to generate more complex and abstractive answers, thus necessitating new metrics that go beyond n-gram based matching. As a step towards a better QA metric, we explore using BERTScore, a recently proposed metric for evaluating translation, for QA. We find that although it fails to provide stronger correlation with human judgements, future work focused on tailoring a BERT-based metric to QA evaluation may prove fruitful.


Thrombosis originating from the tip of central venous catheter is a well known complication. The calcification of such a thrombus is very rare. Until now, only two cases had been described with long-term indwelling central venous catheters used for total parenteral nutrition. We report the first case of a calcified thrombus occurred during a short-term central venous catheterisation. The presumptive mechanism of thrombus calcification is precipitation of calcium salts and its deposition on a pre-existent thrombus. In total parenteral nutrition the mechanism of calcification seems to be multifactorial. Thus, the precipitation of calcium phosphate is increased by the following factors: higher calcium and phosphate concentrations, the use of calcium chloride instead of calcium gluconate, lower pH solutions, slow infusion rate.


Da-niu-lan is a multi-dialect community. Its most important language, Da-niu-lan dialect, is a special Taiwan Minnan dialect. In the past, Daniu-lan dialect, as a low-class and weak one, was only spoken within families and clans, while Hakka dialect, as a high-class and strong dialect, was spoken as the communicating dialect among different dialect groups. Da-niu-lan community speak different dialect in different situations. When they meet Hakka people outside of the community, they speak Hakka dialect, which is a kind of language convergence; When they meet Hakka women who are married to Da-niu-lan community, they speak Da-niu-lan dialect, which is a kind of dialects divergence. Their choice of the two different languages shows that their social status and social relations are different when Da-niu-lan community speak to Hakka people in or out of the family, and that their social structures running in public and private fields are different.


Singular spectrum analysis is developed as a nonparametric spectral decomposition of a time series. It can be easily extended to the decomposition of multidimensional lattice-like data through the filtering interpretation. In this viewpoint, the singular spectrum analysis can be understood as the adaptive and optimal generation of the filters and their two-step point-symmetric operation to the original data. In this paper, we point out that, when applied to the multidimensional data, the adaptively generated filters exhibit symmetry properties resulting from the bisymmetric nature of the lag-covariance matrices. The eigenvectors of the lag-covariance matrix are either symmetric or antisymmetric, and for the 2D image data, these lead to the differential-type filters with even- or odd-order derivatives. The dominant filter is a smoothing filter, reflecting the dominance of low-frequency components of the photo images. The others are the edge-enhancement or the noise filters corresponding to the band-pass or the high-pass filters. The implication of the decomposition to the image denoising is briefly discussed.


Paraquat (1,1'-dimethyl-4,4'-bipyridylium) and diquat (1,1'-ethylene-2,2'-bipyridylium) are the two most widely used bipyridylium herbicides today. Both compounds, however, have also been found to cause liver damage in animals and man. In this study, isolated rat hepatocytes were used to assess the cytotoxicity of these two compounds. Five indices of cell damage were used to quantitate cytotoxicity: dye (trypan blue) uptake, loss of cell respiration, the extracellular release of lysosomal enzymes, the formation of thiobarbiturate (TBA)-reacting substances, and the oxidation of cellular NADH and NADPH. Diquat was shown to be more toxic than paraquat toward these cells in the first three assay systems. The acute LC50 for diquat was determined to be 80 mM, whereas the acute LC50 for paraquat was estimated to be greater than 1 M. This difference in cell sensitivity could be explained, at least in part, by the observed differences in herbicide uptake rates for these two compounds. Diquat uptake was calculated to be 9.0 +/- 1.1 nmoles/hour/10(6) cells, whereas paraquat uptake was only 5.5 +/- 0.5 nmoles/hour/10(6) cells. The dose-response curves for enzyme release and loss of cell respiration superimposed the lethality curves for both compounds. An oxidative mechanism of cytotoxicity was suggested for diquat by: the establishment of both a concentration-dependent and a time-dependent increase in lipid peroxidation (formation of TBA-reacting substances); complete oxidation of both NADPH and NADH at herbicide levels less than the LC50; and the finding that diquat stimulated glucose oxidation at subtoxic doses.


In the course of certain experiments it became important for us to inform ourselves as accurately as possible as to the absolute or relative specificity of opsonins, the close resemblance in nature between opsonins, precipitins, agglutinins, etc., preparing us for the statement that they are specific. This is not, however, as yet entirely proved. Wright and Douglas and Bullock1seem satisfied about it, and Bullock made experiments as follows: Serum was digested with staphylococci at 37° C. (98.6° F.) and then freed of the organisms by centrifugalization, after which it was found to have lost all opsonic power for staphylococci, though it largely retained that for tubercle bacilli. Conversely, when digested at 37° C. (98.6° F.) with tubercle bacilli and then centrifugalized, it had lost the opsonin for the tubercle bacillus, though it retained it for the staphylococcus. Potter, Ditman and Bradley,2however, came to different experimental results


In this paper we propose a methodology to inject realistic attacks in web applications. The methodology is based on the idea that by injecting realistic vulnerabilities in a web application and attacking them automatically we can assess existing security mechanisms. To provide true to life results, this methodology relies on field studies of a large number of vulnerabilities in web applications. The paper also describes a set of tools implementing the proposed methodology. They allow the automation of the entire process, including gathering results and analysis. We used these tools to conduct a set of experiments to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The experiments include the evaluation of coverage and false positives of an Intrusion Detection System for SQL Injection and the assessment of the effectiveness of two Web Application Vulnerability Scanners. Results show that the injection of vulnerabilities and attacks is an effective way to evaluate security mechanisms and tools.


Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is an electronic labeling technique.These electronic labels are called tags and read wirelessly. In this thesis a battery and amicroprocessor are connected to the tag. The work consisted of programming themicroprocessor to transfers sensor data into the tags memory. The tags are placed ontrains and data is collected from sensors at the train's axle. That way sensor data can betransmitted from a train to readers stationed along the railroad tracks.The aim of the project is to predict service intervals. There is currently no possibility tosee wear in real time and stop a train before it breaks. At present, there is a form of heatdetectors located along the railroad tracks to measure temperatures of wheels and axlesof passing trains. These are expensive and have the disadvantage of being able to detecterrors that have already occurred, they can not detect errors that do not radiate heat.The thesis aims to provide a solution for this. By programming a microprocessor totransmit sensor data to the tags memory it is possible for an RFID reader to read thesensor data from the tag. Ensuring that data and identity can be read from the tag atspeeds up to 250 km/h, you can get the status of a trains wagon before it breaks.


We aim in this paper at eliminating data and reader redundancies in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader networks. These redundancies have negative impact on the performance of an RFID reader network and in analyzing the readings of the network. We meet our objectives by introducing decentralized RFID coverage [reader collision avoidance (RCA)] algorithm. The RFID coverage problem consists of two subproblems: 1) the tag reporting problem, which aims at assigning to each tag in the network a reader responsible for reporting its data and 2) the redundant readers elimination problem, which aims at minimizing the number of readers in the network while preserving the tags coverage. We introduce two deterministic decentralized RFID coverage algorithms called orientation-based coverage and iterated orientation-based coverage (IOB-COVERAGE). The first algorithm runs in one communication round, whereas the latter runs in O(n) rounds, where n is the number of readers in the network. These algorithms are the first decentralized RFID coverage algorithms that use reader-to-reader communications only. We later introduce an algorithm that solves the RCA algorithm, called IOB-(RCA+COV). The algorithm is a minor modification of IOB-COVERAGE. We formally prove the correctness of our algorithms, and we use detailed simulation experiments to study their performance.