Simple Summary Lung perfusion PET/CT is an emerging imaging modality for the assessment of regional lung function, especially to optimise radiotherapy planning. A key step of lung functional avoidance radiotherapy is the delineation of lung functional volumes. We developed an automated relative to whole lung function segmentation method to delineate lung functional volumes. As compared to the commonly used relative to the maximal pixel value threshold method, this new approach allows for reproducible contouring, is relatively unaffected by the presence of hot spots, provides reliable and consistent functional volumes, and is clinically meaningful for clinicians. Abstract Background: Gallium-68 lung perfusion PET/CT is an emerging imaging modality for the assessment of regional lung function, especially to optimise radiotherapy (RT) planning. A key step of lung functional avoidance RT is the delineation of lung functional volumes (LFVs) to be integrated into radiation plans. However, there is currently no consistent and reproducible delineation method for LFVs. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate an automated delineation threshold method based on total lung function for LFVs delineation with Gallium-68 MAA lung PET/CT imaging. Material and Method: Patients prospectively enrolled in the PEGASUS trial—a pilot study assessing the feasibility of lung functional avoidance using perfusion PET/CT imaging for lung stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) of primary or secondary lesion—were analysed. Patients underwent lung perfusion MAA-68Ga PET/CT imaging and pulmonary function tests (PFTs) as part of pre-treatment evaluation. LFVs were delineated using two methods: the commonly used relative to the maximal pixel value threshold method (pmax threshold method, X%pmax volumes) and a new approach based on a relative to whole lung function threshold method (WLF threshold method, FVX% volumes) using a dedicated iterative algorithm. For both methods, LFVs were expressed in terms of % of the anatomical lung volume (AV) and of % of the total lung activity. Functional volumes were compared for patients with normal PFTs and pre-existing airway disease. Results: 60 patients were analysed. Among the 48 patients who had PFTs, 31 (65%) had pre-existing lung disease. The pmax and WLF threshold methods clearly provided different functional volumes with a wide range of relative lung function for a given pmax volume, and conversely, a wide range of corresponding pmax values for a given WLF volume. The WLF threshold method provided more reliable and consistent volumes with much lower dispersion of LFVs as compared to the pmax method, especially in patients with normal PFTs. Conclusions: We developed a relative to whole lung function threshold segmentation method to delineate lung functional volumes on perfusion PET/CT imaging. The automated algorithm allows for reproducible contouring. This new approach, relatively unaffected by the presence of hot spots, provides reliable and consistent functional volumes, and is clinically meaningful for clinicians.


As a cellular interface between the blood and tissues, the endothelial cell (EC) monolayer is involved in the control of key functions including vascular tone, permeability and homeostasis, leucocyte trafficking and hemostasis. EC regulatory functions require long-distance communications between ECs, circulating hematopoietic cells and other vascular cells for efficient adjusting thrombosis, angiogenesis, inflammation, infection and immunity. This intercellular crosstalk operates through the extracellular space and is orchestrated in part by the secretory pathway and the exocytosis of Weibel Palade Bodies (WPBs), secretory granules and extracellular vesicles (EVs). WPBs and secretory granules allow both immediate release and regulated exocytosis of messengers such as cytokines, chemokines, extracellular membrane proteins, coagulation or growth factors. The ectodomain shedding of transmembrane protein further provide the release of both receptor and ligands with key regulatory activities on target cells. Thin tubular membranous channels termed tunneling nanotubes (TNTs) may also connect EC with distant cells. EVs, in particular exosomes, and TNTs may contain and transfer different biomolecules (e.g., signaling mediators, proteins, lipids, and microRNAs) or pathogens and have emerged as a major triggers of horizontal intercellular transfer of information.


We analyzed postsurgery linguistic outcomes of 43 hemispherectomy patients operated on at UCLA. We rated spoken language (Spoken Language Rank, SLR) on a scale from 0 (no language) to 6 (mature grammar) and examined the effects of side of resection/damage, age at surgery/seizure onset, seizure control postsurgery, and etiology on language development. Etiology was defined as developmental (cortical dysplasia and prenatal stroke) and acquired pathology (Rasmussen's encephalitis and postnatal stroke). We found that clinical variables were predictive of language outcomes only when they were considered within distinct etiology groups. Specifically, children with developmental etiologies had lower SLRs than those with acquired pathologies (p =.0006); age factors correlated positively with higher SLRs only for children with acquired etiologies (p =.0006); right-sided resections led to higher SLRs only for the acquired group (p =.0008); and postsurgery seizure control correlated positively with SLR only for those with developmental etiologies (p =.0047). We argue that the variables considered are not independent predictors of spoken language outcome posthemispherectomy but should be viewed instead as characteristics of etiology.


Writing is extremely important for our academic and professional life and can affect our performance in productive educational activities, favouring us or not. Schoolchildren with dyslexia bring difficulties and reduced school performance due to their condition of deprivation in written production. This is because schoolchildren with dyslexia have difficulty acquiring spelling knowledge and show poor phonological skills. This study aimed to characterize the performance of schoolchildren with dyslexia in "gaze" for the handwriting of High and Low-frequency words. A total of 24 schoolchildren participated in the study. They were between 8 to 11 years and 11 months of age, of both sexes, and they were attending the 3rd to the 5th year of Elementary School in the city of Marília-SP. The schoolchildren were divided into groups: GI, composed of 12 schoolchildren with an interdisciplinary diagnosis of developmental dyslexia, and GII, composed of 12 schoolchildren with good academic performance, paired with GI according to the school grade level. These schoolchildren were submitted to computerized handwriting evaluation using a Brazilian adaptation of the Software Ductus. All schoolchildren were submitted to a copy of words already selected according to Brazilian Portuguese criteria of frequency and codification rule. A measure of "gaze" was used, that is, when the schoolchildren stopped their handwriting to search/look up at the screen to confirm the information about the words. The results indicated a significant difference between GI and GII, with GI schoolchildren performing more gaze when compared with GII, i.e., taking longer motor breaks to perform the gaze. Therefore, there was a rupture in the central processing with the peripheral when the child performed the gauze more times since he had to confirm the characteristics of this word during the writing process (difficulty in accessing the orthographic lexicon) and with that, there was a break in the movement of handwriting (since there was not enough information in the central plane to complete that motor memory and finish the word). It was concluded that there were gaps between the central (orthographic) and peripheral (motor pauses) processes, suggesting deficits in the formation of motor programs for GI and the lack of automation of motor processes.


Abstract We prove the existence and uniqueness of renormalized solutions of the Liouville equation for n particles with an interaction potential in BV loc except at the origin. This implies the existence and uniqueness of a a.e. flow solution of the associated ODE.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on how the University sector in the UK has undertaken a massive transformation over recent years, resulting in a current mass market. Institutions (and their managers) are facing enormous challenges to establish competitive advantages whilst attending to customer need and focus. A smarter, cost-effective, lean teaching and learning environment needs to evolve in order for UK universities to compete in a flatter global educational market place. Design/methodology/approach – Adopting an action research methodology the paper seeks to analyze how much-hyped Web 2.0, which moves away from static "read only" web sites to those which are "read-write" and interactive and are clearly here to stay. An eclectic mix of multi-media technology and social networking, blogs, Wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, social software, broadband and megalithic search engines are changing the way people live – and learn. Findings – This paper considers and highlights opportunities for increasing operational efficiency, from a personal perspective, based on a blended approach to technology enhanced learning by creating a 24/7 learning environment for the Google-eyed YouTube generation. The challenges of teaching large groups of students from a very diverse range of backgrounds and abilities are also discussed. Originality/value – This article balances interests in the immense potential of Web 2.0 in teaching and learning, with concern for the limitations of the technology.


Vegetables that have been physically altered from its original state but remain in its fresh state are considered minimally processed. These vegetables are subjected to one or more physical changes (processes of washing, peeling, slicing and cutting), which make them ready for consumption. However, in the dicing step occurs the release of internal cellular fluids, rich in nutrients, which allow microorganisms to multiply rapidly increasing the initial microbial load and thus reducing considerably the shelf life of these products (FARBER, 1999). Therefore, the sanitization step aiming the reduction or destruction of pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms to acceptable levels is critical for these products (BACHELLI, 2010) since food poisoning outbreaks associated with contamination of vegetables continue to exist despite the technological advances. Leafy vegetables have been identified as significant vehicles of pathogens relevant to public health, including enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (O157: H7), Listeria sp., Salmonella sp. and Shigella spp. (FRANK & TAKEUSHI, 1999) especially if proper care is not met on the steps of growing, harvesting and processing (GARG et al., 1990). Thus, a minimally processed product should be consistent, to have fresh look, be of acceptable color, free from defects and safe from a microbiological standpoint.


ABSTRACT Background A reformed view of science education positions argumentation as a central epistemic discourse practice in the science classroom, however, science education researchers have found that typical norms of classroom discourse fall short of promoting argumentation. Recent scholarship on teachers' personal epistemologies has suggested that epistemic cognition may impact the dialogic practices adopted in the classroom. Purpose We explored how teachers' epistemic cognition, specifically epistemic aims and epistemic ideals, impacts their dialogic processes as they engage in argument-based inquiry. Sample Seventy-seven kindergarten through eighth-grade teachers in eight moderate to large school districts in the Midwest United States served as participants in the study. Design and methods Teachers recorded science lessons in which students were asked to analyse the results of an investigation and engage in evidence-based argumentation to promote meaning making. To investigate teachers' epistemic cognition, participants were interviewed using the Teacher Beliefs Interview. Results Teachers' reflective epistemic cognition varied according to their orientation to science instruction and this orientation impacted the discursive climate of their classrooms. We found that teachers' epistemic aims and ideals shaped their dialogic feedback practices as well as the quality of their implementation of evidence-based argumentation in the classroom. Conclusion This study shows that there is a relationship between teachers' epistemic cognition and their use of dialogic feedback to promote evidence-based argumentation in science classes. Further, the type and quality of dialogic feedback vary according to teachers' epistemic cognition; specifically their epistemic aims and ideals. With respect to professional development it may be beneficial to consider helping teachers acquire not only dialogic feedback skills but also a suite of epistemic aims and ideals that align with reformed views of science education.


The Background Mode of operation for the M68HC16 and M68300 families of microcontrollers has provided a method whereby an external host development system can take control of the microcontroller causing it to execute certain elementary commands. As shown here, a more complex system can be built using the Background Mode as a base to form an inexpensive, yet capable, emulation system. The addition of a bus state analyzer and appropriate software can further enhance a host development system's usefulness without significantly impacting the complexity of the emulation/debugging system. Most importantly, the Background Debug Mode allows the actual microcontroller in the target system to emulate itself providing, perhaps, the most accurate form of emulation.


There is substantial evidence for individual differences in personality and cognitive abilities, but we lack clear intuitions about individual differences in visual abilities. Previous work on this topic has typically compared performance with only 2 categories, each measured with only 1 task. This approach is insufficient for demonstration of domain-general effects. Most previous work has used familiar object categories, for which experience may vary between participants and categories, thereby reducing correlations that would stem from a common factor. In Study 1, we adopted a latent variable approach to test for the first time whether there is a domain-general object recognition ability, o. We assessed whether shared variance between latent factors representing performance for each of 5 novel object categories could be accounted for by a single higher-order factor. On average, 89% of the variance of lower-order factors denoting performance on novel object categories could be accounted for by a higher-order factor, providing strong evidence for o. Moreover, o also accounted for a moderate proportion of variance in tests of familiar object recognition. In Study 2, we assessed whether the strong association across categories in object recognition is due to third-variable influences. We find that o has weak to moderate associations with a host of cognitive, perceptual, and personality constructs and that a clear majority of the variance in and covariance between performance on different categories is independent of fluid intelligence. This work provides the first demonstration of a reliable, specific, and domain-general object recognition ability, and suggest a rich framework for future work in this area.


Action learning is one of the "action science" or "action oriented research methods" one finds in the literature. The method is to be used when a firm or a manager is confronted with complex, non‐routine problems for which no standard solutions exist. As a result of applying the method, new problem solving strategies may be identified and personal growth may be realized. The action learning literature suggests that thereafter, organizational growth will occur as well. However, transferring personal into organizational growth is a process that is less clear‐cut than is mostly thought. Knowledge management systems have to be set up in order to avoid moral hazard from appearing, so that an organization may reap the full benefits of an action learning program. The institutions that shape an organization, and organizational culture in particular, influence the structure of such a system. Unless these elements are sufficiently taken into account, they may explain why action learning fails to achieve its wider potential, as is sometimes proclaimed in the literature.


Perchlorate ions ClO4–, known to inhibit competitively the uptake of iodine by the thyroid, have been detected in drinking water in France as well as in infant formulae. A tolerable daily intake (TDI) has been established at 0.7 µg kg–1 bw day–1 based on the inhibition of iodine uptake. Due to this mechanism of action, the iodine status could strongly influence the biological effect of perchlorate. Perchlorate concentrations in water and infant formulae were measured and the exposure of children under 6 months of age calculated. It appeared that the TDI could be exceeded in some children. As the iodine status is not optimal within the entire French population, there appears to be a need to clarify the sources of perchlorate ultimately to decrease exposure.


Administration of lipids into the upper intestine of rats has been shown to acutely decrease endogenous glucose production (EGP) in the preabsorptive state, postulated to act through a gut-brain-liver axis involving accumulation of long-chain fatty acyl-CoA, release of cholecystokinin, and subsequent neuronal signaling. It remains unknown, however, whether a similar gut-brain-liver axis is operative in humans. Here, we infused 20% Intralipid (a synthetic lipid emulsion) or saline intraduodenally for 90 min at 30 mL/h, 4 to 6 weeks apart, in random order, in nine healthy men. EGP was assessed under pancreatic clamp conditions with stable isotope enrichment techniques. Under these experimental conditions, intraduodenal infusion of Intralipid, compared with saline, did not affect plasma glucose concentration or EGP throughout the study period. We conclude that Intralipid infusion into the duodenum at this rate does not elicit detectable effects on glucose homeostasis or EGP in healthy men, which may reflect important interspecies differences between rodents and humans with respect to the putative gut-brain-liver axis.


This paper comparatively evaluates the effect of real-time velocity estimation methods on the passivity and fidelity of virtual walls implemented using haptic interfaces. Impedance width or <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX"> $Z$</tex-math></inline-formula>-width is a fundamental measure of performance in haptic devices. Limited accuracy of velocity estimates from position encoder data is an impediment in improving the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Z$</tex-math></inline-formula>-width in haptic interfaces. We study the efficacy of Levant's differentiator as a velocity estimator to allow passive implementation of higher stiffness virtual walls as compared to some of the commonly used velocity estimators in the field of haptics. We first experimentally demonstrate feasibility of Levant's differentiator as a velocity estimator for haptics applications by comparing <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Z$</tex-math></inline-formula>-width performance achieved with Levant's differentiator and commonly used finite difference method (FDM) cascaded with a low-pass filter. A novel <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Z$</tex-math></inline-formula>-width plotting technique combining the passivity and fidelity of haptic rendering is proposed, and used to compare the haptic device performance obtained with Levant's differentiator, FDM+low-pass filter, first-order adaptive windowing (FOAW), and Kalman-filter-based velocity estimation methods. Simulations and experiments conducted on a custom single degree-of-freedom haptic device demonstrate that the stiffest virtual walls are rendered with velocity estimated using Levant's differentiator, and the highest wall rendering fidelity is achieved by FOAW-based velocity estimation scheme.


Nanoneurology and nanopsychiatry are today promising, rapidly growing disciplines, and many research efforts have so far been focused in design of nanoparticle-based biosensors and drug delivery systems that would be an addition to conventional diagnostic methods and therapeutic strategies. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are especially important in these research areas since it has been shown that they can successfully alter physical and chemical properties of many medications, as well as other substances applicable in neuroscience research. This concise article focuses on experiments and theoretical assumptions regarding application of AuNPs in neurosciences performed during the past 10 years in in vitro conditions and animal experimental models. Issues such as AuNP mediated detection of brain neurotransmitters, and transport through blood brain barrier are also discussed, as well as association of AuNPs with medications commonly applied in modern neurological and psychiatric practice.


AIDS has become a leading cause of death for women between the ages of 25 and 34. An overwhelming proportion of these women are Black (52%) or Hispanic (20%). Despite the disproportionate number of minority women who are HIV infected, the majority of AIDS educational programmes have been directed at the White gay male. The purpose of this paper is to present a qualitative research technique which used focus group interviews to promote the development of a programme devised to reduce risk behaviours in minority populations. A summary of the investigation and implications for nursing are also presented.


This study aims at describing conceptual metaphor in Gola Gong's novel "Bila Waktu Bicara" in the perspective of George Lakoff's theories of metaphor. This research is a (qualitative) bibliographical research. The object of the study is the use of metaphor in Gola Gong's novel "Bila Waktu Bicara" and there are 59 metaphorical expressions. Having analyzed the data, the researcher concludes that there are seven most outstanding conceptual mapping on that novel: time is an individual, the world is the hell or paradise, people is a stream of water, seeing is touching, eye ball is a container, body part is a landscape, ambulance is an individual. Among this seven conceptual mappings, the conceptual pattern of time is an individual is the most frequent use and  it shows that there has been an increase of creativity in the creation of socio-religious metaphor of Indonesian young novelist such as Gola Gong.


Director-General of the General Directorate of Research at the European Commission, Achilleas Mitsos reviews European action to promote research. Expressing
optimism, he stresses the importance of the present time for the expansion of a sector he
feels essential to EU development. He proposes that in addition to quantitative
improvement, European policy should focus on six qualitative objectives.


The lineage and stage specificity of human isotype switch recombination was investigated by examining the IgH gene configuration in 61 hemopoietic malignancies representing different stages of B and T cell development. An unexpectedly high frequency (20%) of IgM-producing B cell leukemias and lymphomas had undergone CH gene rearrangements and deletions consistent with attempted switch recombination. These CH gene alterations were found on productive, non-productive, and 14q+ chromosomes. These data support the concept of a non-specific (common) switch recombinase activity that is often ineffective. No evidence of such switch recombination was found in 25 mu- or mu+ pre-B cell leukemias with the single exception of a mu- pre-B leukemia in which subsets of the cells were producing gamma- or alpha-H chains. The switch recombinase activity gamma- or alpha-H chains. The switch recombinase activity may be restricted to the B cell lineage, inasmuch as CH gene deletions were not observed in T lineage malignancies.


Reactions of three lots of SHF antigen with several homologous antisera in Ouchterlony and immunoelectrophoretic slides were studied. Standard patterns of lines were delineated which could be used reliably in the identification of identical antigens in other source materials. Particular attention was paid to characterization of the parasite components (P1, P2, P3), most often present in antigens which were potent in the HA test. Chromatographic methods used to separate serum components were applied to SHF antigen. Separation of parasite and host antigens was not accomplished with either ion-exchange columns or various Sephadex columns. Considerable amounts of host material were removed by serial cycling of the antigen through a G-50 Sephadex column followed by cycles through long G-200 Sephadex columns. A stable, serologically reactive antigen resulted that still contained at least six components.


This work highlights the utilization of the floating body effect and charge-trapping/de-trapping phenomenon of a Silicon-nanowire (Si-nanowire) charge-trapping memory for an artificial synapse of neuromorphic computing application. Charge trapping/de-trapping in the nitride layer characterizes the long-term potentiation (LTP)/depression (LTD). The accumulation of holes in the potential well achieves short-term potentiation (STP) and controls the transition from STP to LTP. Also, the transition from STP to LTP is analyzed through gate length scaling and high-κ material (Al2O3) for blocking oxide. Furthermore, the conductance values of the device are utilized for system-level simulation. System-level hardware parameters of a convolutional neural network (CNN) for inference applications are evaluated and compared to a static random-access memory (SRAM) device and charge-trapping memory. The results confirm that the Si-nanowire transistor with better gate controllability has a high retention time for LTP states, consumes low power, and archives better accuracy (91.27%). These results make the device suitable for low-power neuromorphic applications.


Specific nonequilibrium states of the quantum harmonic oscillator described by the Lindblad equation have been hereby suggested. This equation makes it possible to determine time-varying effects produced by statistical operator or statistical matrix. Thus, respective representation-varied equilibrium statistical matrixes have been found. Specific mean value equations have been found and their equilibrium solutions have been obtained.


Although carp is in a position to utilize carbohydrates efficiently, lipids are an important energy source in carp diets. In general fat-enriched high-energy diets result in rapid growth and favourable feed conversion. Many authors emphasize the protein-sparing effect of lipid supplementation in carp diets. For efficient protein-utilization an optimal protein/energy ratio in feed is necessary. Good results may be obtained with diets containing 30-50% high-quality protein, > 14 MJ digestible energy/kg and a lipid level of at least 15%. Low protein-high energy diets bring about low nitrogen excretion which is important for maintenance water quality. Lipid-supplemented diets lead to increased lipid content in the carp. Fingerling carp with high fat deposits exhibit an improved overwintering ability. By using fish oil as lipid source it is possible to produce carp meat with high concentrations of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids which are beneficial for human health.


Objective: To compare the effects of traditional dancing with formal exercise training in terms of functional and cardiovascular benefits and motivation in patients with chronic heart failure. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Setting: Sports Medicine Laboratory. Subjects: Fifty-one Greek male patients aged 67.1±5.5 years with chronic heart failure of New York Heart Association (NYHA) class II–III, participated in an eight-month study. Interventions: They were randomly assigned to either training with Greek traditional dances (group A, n=18), formal exercise training (group B, n=16) or a sedentary control group (group C, n=17). Main measures: At entry and the end of the study all patients underwent cardiopulmonary exercise testing, functional ability assessment and quality of life evaluations. The Intrinsic Motivation Inventory was also used to assess participants' subjective experience. Results: After training group A showed increased peak oxygen consumption by 33.8% (19.5 vs. 26.1 ml/kg/min, p<0.05) and B by 32.3% (19.5 vs. 25.8 ml/kg/min, p<0.05), maximal treadmill tolerance by 48.5% (p<0.05) and by 46.4% (p<0.05), and a decreased Slope of expired minute ventilation for carbon dioxide output (VE/VCO2) slope by 18% (p<0.05) and 19.5% (p<0.05), respectively. Trained patients revealed significant improvement in the quality of life indices. Intrinsic Motivation Inventory was increased only in group A by 26.2% (3.08 vs. 3.87, p<0.05). Conclusions: Exercise training in chronic heart failure patients with Greek traditional dances led to functional and cardiovascular benefits similar to formal exercise training and to a higher level of motivation.


The Purpose of this research is to Find out the effect of macro economics factor including syaria economics like SBIS, JUB, and Inflation Rare in effect to Rupiah Exchange rate Agaisnt US Dollar, in Long Term or Short Term in 2012-2017. This Research is a quantitative research using data time series. method used in this research is multiple linear regression with monthly data in 2012-2017 period. this research use data gained from the Central Statistic Agency (BPS) and Indonesia Economic Finance Statistic (SEKI). Result of this Research showed partialy, Bank of Indonesia Syaria Certificate and Total Issued Money are positively and significantly effecting Rupiah exchange rate against US Dollar in 2012-2017 Period, in the other hand Inflation Rate are negatively and not significantly effecting the Rupiah exchange rate against US Dollar in 2012-2017 Period. Simultaniously, Bank of Indonesia syaria Ceritificate (SBIS), Total Issued Money (JUB), and Inflation Rate are significantly effecting the Rupiah exchange rate against US Dollar in 2012-2017 Period.


This paper has as principal objective to determine the value of some parameters of light that are determinants in the activation or inhibition of the growth stimulus of wheat seeds (Triticum aestivum L). In this case intensity and dose, as important parameters, were considered. GaAlAs laser with lambda=850 nm was used to irradiate the biological system. The growth of main shoot was considered. All data were processed using statistical methods. Results obtained indicate that when the appropriate light parameters are used activation can occur.


Introduction and objective: Contaminated egg and its products are increasing the risks of illness in humans. The significance of these diseases in humans can vary from mild symptoms to life threatening conditions. This study was conducted to determine the contamination of egg to food borne pathogens; Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogens, Campylobacter jejuni and Escherichia coli in Shahrekord. Materials and methods: One hundred normal eggs randomly purchased in the spring and summer of 2008 from small and big supermarkets of Shahrekord, and delivered to the food microbiology lab to be tested. The contents of eggs cultured for those bacteria on selective agar and standard microbiological tests performed to identify the isolated organism. Results: The result showed that there was no contamination by Salmonella spp., L. monocytogens and C. jejuni in all 100 eggs. However, 19 samples were contaminated by E. coli, four samples by Proteus spp. and one sample by Klebsiella spp. Average colony count of coli form bacteria was 20cfu/g and E. coli was 12/6cfu/g. Conclusion: We concluded that Salmonella spp., L. monocytogens and C. jejuni contamination of eggs does not make up a serious health hazard in this area. E. coli are known to contaminate the surface of egg while mechanical process can spread the bacteria through eggs. Significance and impact of the study: It is important to remember that control is required at all levels in the food chain and by separating cooked and raw.


"Marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and freely exchanging products and services of value with others."-Philip Kotler. Marketing is everywhere. Formally or informally, people and organizations engage in a vast number of activities that could be called marketing. There are four P's of marketing mix namely 1. Product 2. Price 3. Promotion 4. Place (Distribution). A major focus of this article related to channels of distribution in Cement industry. A channel of distribution comprises a set of institutions which perform all of the activities utilized to move a product and its title from production to consumption. This research has focused in cement industries confined with retailers and consumers.


This project aims to see if accelerators based on FPGAs are worthwhile for DNA assembly. It involves reprogramming an already existing algorithm - called Ray - to be run either on such an accelerator or on a CPU to be able to compare both. It has been achieved using the OpenCL language. The focus is put on modifying and optimizing the original algorithm to better suit the new parallelization tool. Upon running the new program on some datasets, it becomes clear that FPGAs are a very capable platform that can fare better than the traditional approach, both on raw performance and energy consumption.


It is important to implement the PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) interoperability in the process of digital certificate application of e-commerce and e-government services. The solution of PKI interoperability using VA (Validation Authority) is proposed to achieve the digital certificate validation in a dedicated server side. In this solution, the related clients do not have to implement the complicated path construction and validation. Moreover, the verification strategies can be uniformly achieved.


PURPOSE
Ewing sarcoma (EwS) is the second most common bone sarcoma in children, with 1 case per 1.5 million in the United States. While the survival rate of patients diagnosed with localized disease is ~70%, this decreases to ~30% for patients with metastatic disease and only ~10% for treatment refractory disease, which have not changed for decades. Therefore new therapeutic strategies are urgently needed for metastatic and refractory EwS.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
This study analyzed 19 unique EwS patient or cell line-derived xenografts (from 14 primary and 5 metastatic specimens) using proteomics to identify surface proteins for potential immunotherapeutic targeting. Plasma membranes were enriched using density gradient ultracentrifugation and compared to a reference standard of 12 immortalized non-EwS cell lines prepared in a similar manner. In parallel, global proteome analysis was carried out on each model to compliment the surfaceome data. All models were analyzed by Tandem Mass Tags (TMT)-based mass spectrometry to quantify identified proteins.

RESULTS
The surfaceome and global proteome analyses identified 1,131 and 1,030 annotated surface proteins, respectively. Among surface proteins identified, both approaches identified known EwS-associated proteins including IL1RAP, CD99, STEAP1, and ADGRG2, and many new cell surface targets, including ENPP1 and CDH11. Robust staining of ENPP1 was demonstrated in EwS tumors compared to other childhood sarcomas and normal tissues.

CONCLUSIONS
Our comprehensive proteomic characterization of the EwS surfaceome provides a rich resource of surface-expressed proteins in EwS. This dataset provides the preclinical justification for exploration of targets such as ENPP1 for potential immunotherapeutic application in EwS.


Ti-2 at%Fe-10 at%Si amorphous powder was synthesized by mechanical alloying (MA) of elementary Ti, Fe and Si powders using planetary ball milling for 1440 ks. Crystallization temperature of the obtained amorphous powder was ca. 830 K. Ti-2 at%Fe-10 at%Si amorphous powder was consolidated using a pulsed current sintering (PCS) process at a die temperature of 773 K under a pressure of 372 MPa. Then the compact was densified at a die temperature between 743 K and 763 K, which is around the crystallization temperature of the amorphous phase. The obtained Ti-2 at%Fe-10 at%Si alloy consists mainly of nanocrystalline α-Ti phase. The compressive strength of the nanocrystalline compact at room temperature was more than 1.7 GPa, much higher than that of a commercial Ti-6 mass%Al-4 mass%V alloy.


Exploring a possible compromise between an impeachment and taking no congressional action, certain Members of Congress and congressional commentators have suggested a congressional "censure" of the President to express the Congress' disapproval of the President's conduct which has been the subject of an ongoing independent counsel investigation. This report provides and overview and discussion of the legal basis and congressional precedents regarding a congressional "censure" of the President.


ABSTRACT This study aims to delineate the sociodemographic differences in disability prevalence across the population aged 60 years and over in Bangladesh, and to investigate the association of factors with reporting disability in later life. A microdata sample for those aged 60 years or over from the Census of Bangladesh 2011 was used where disability was assessed with a self-reported single response question. Logistic regression models were performed separately for men and women. Results reveal that the disability prevalence rate increased sharply with age, and it was higher among older women (5.2 per cent) compared to men (4.8 per cent). Physical and vision disabilities were the two categories with the highest prevalence of reported disabilities, with a higher prevalence of physical disability among men and vision disability among women. Being older, female, currently not in marital partnership, and having a lower educational attainment, not being employed, living alone, and residing in the rural areas were significantly associated with reporting disability in later life. The higher prevalence of disability among older women, those who are illiterate, and those residing in rural areas highlights the need for policies prioritising these groups. Special attention should also be given to those who are currently not in marital partnership, particularly women who are living alone.


In this paper a model for the formation of sustainable supply chains of raw materials for a timber processing complex is proposed. The model allows one to optimize the plan of purchases from the Russian Commodity Exchange, as well as the plan of manufacturing finished products. The model presents the task of mathematical programming, whereby the company's profit is used as the objective function, and the input data include the forecasted values of structure and volumes of offers available on the Russian Commodity Exchange, as well as demand for finished products. The recurrence dependencies of the model describe the flow of raw materials at the enterprise's warehouse, taking into account revenues from purchased lots, transportation time and consumption of resources that are required for production of simulated volumes of products. Constraints of the model represent formalization of the limited flow of financial resources, taking into account sales and warehouse characteristics. The optimization task deals with variables including volumes of daily output of finished products according to a given nomenclature, as well as variables that specify the inclusion of lots into the portfolio of applications purchased on the exchange. The model solution is found using the branch and bound method with preliminary clipping based on the modified Chvatal–Gomory method. One example considers formation of optimal plans for the purchase and sales in a timber processing complex located in the Primorsky Territory (Russia), which does not have its own forest plots providing production with raw materials. The usefulness of the interaction of the enterprise with the timber department of the commodity and raw materials exchange is assessed.


SUMMARY:  Auditing standards prescribe that the auditor should consider client management's attitude toward fraud when making fraud risk assessments. However, little guidance is provided in the auditing standards or the existing fraud literature on observable indicators of fraud attitude. We test whether observable indicators of narcissism, a personality trait linked to unethical and fraudulent behavior, is viewed by auditors as an indicator of increased fraud attitude risk. We administered an experiment to 101 practicing auditors from one international public accounting firm who assessed fraud risk based on a scenario in which client manager narcissism (attitude) and fraud motivation were each manipulated at two levels (low and high). Our results show that narcissistic client behavior and fraud motivation are significantly and positively related to auditors' overall fraud risk assessments. Implications of these findings for further research and the auditing profession are discussed. Data Availability: Co...


This paper proposes a novel equalization digital on-channel repeater (EDOCR) with a feedback interference canceller (FIC) for a single frequency network (SFN) of the advanced television systems committee (ATSC) terrestrial digital television (DTV) system. The proposed EDOCR with an FIC not only has high output power by the cancellation of feedback signals caused by insufficient antenna isolation through the FIC, but also shows better quality of output signals than conventional digital on-channel repeaters (DOCRs) by removing multipath signals existing between the main transmitter and DOCR, as well as residual feedback signals through an equalizer. Computer simulation results are provided to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed EDOCR with an FIC.


Correction for 'A facile deoxyuridine/biotin-modified molecular beacon for simultaneous detection of proteins and nucleic acids via a label-free and background-eliminated fluorescence assay' by Fei Yin, et al., Analyst, 2019, 144, 5504-5510, DOI: 10.1039/C9AN01016E.


By a classical result of Weyl, for any increasing sequence $(n_k)_{k \geq 1}$ of integers the sequence of fractional parts $(\{n_k x\})_{k \geq 1}$ is uniformly distributed modulo 1 for almost all $x \in [0,1]$. Except for a few special cases, e.g. when $n_k=k, k \geq 1$, the exceptional set cannot be described explicitly. The exact asymptotic order of the discrepancy of $(\{n_k x\})_{k \geq 1}$ is only known in a few special cases, for example when $(n_k)_{k \geq 1}$ is a (Hadamard) lacunary sequence, that is when $n_{k+1}/n_k \geq q > 1, k \geq 1$. In this case of quickly increasing $(n_k)_{k \geq 1}$ the system $(\{n_k x\})_{k \geq 1}$ (or, more general, $(f(n_k x))_{k \geq 1}$ for a 1-periodic function $f$) shows many asymptotic properties which are typical for the behavior of systems of \emph{independent} random variables. Precise results depend on a fascinating interplay between analytic, probabilistic and number-theoretic phenomena.
Without any growth conditions on $(n_k)_{k \geq 1}$ the situation becomes much more complicated, and the system $(f(n_k x))_{k \geq 1}$ will typically fail to satisfy probabilistic limit theorems. An important problem which remains is to study the almost everywhere convergence of series $\sum_{k=1}^\infty c_k f(k x)$, which is closely related to finding upper bounds for maximal $L^2$-norms of the form $$ \int_0^1 (\max_{1 \leq M \leq N}| \sum_{k=1}^M c_k f(kx)|^2 dx. $$ The most striking example of this connection is the equivalence of the Carleson convergence theorem and the Carleson--Hunt inequality for maximal partial sums of Fourier series. For general functions $f$ this is a very difficult problem, which is related to finding upper bounds for certain sums involving greatest common divisors.


Using monthly data on the stock price index of the Athens Stock Exchange over the period 1989-1998, we obtain evidence that a univariate Markov switching regimes process captures the dynamics of stock prices well, but it does not outperform a naive random walk model in out-of-sample forecasting. However, when we enlarge the information set with the GRD/$ exchange rate series, the bivariate Markov model gives consistently better out-of-sample forecasts, regardless of the forecast horizon and the post-sample period. These results suggest that information from the foreign exchange market is useful for stock price forecasting and that the Greek stock market is not weakly efficient. JEL Classification: C53, F37, G14


Supplementary material for the paper "Bibliometric delineation of scientific fields" published in Springer Handbook of quantitative Science and Technology Research 2018 edition, Wolfgang Glanzel editor


An analysis of the official life tables for the Netherlands for the period 1980-1984 is presented. It is noted that for almost all ages the mortality quotients for females are lower than that for males with the greatest differences at ages 16.5-27.5 and 55.5-74.5 years. A bibliography of publications on life tables in the Netherlands since 1840 is included. (summary in ENG) (ANNOTATION)


Edmund Burke needs to be rescued. His legacy is held hostage by the modern conservative movement, which proclaims Burke to be its intellectual progenitor. Conservatives consider Burke the fountainhead of their political philosophy - the great thinker and eloquent eighteenth-century British statesman who provides conservatism with a distinguished heritage and a coherent body of thought. Burke has achieved iconic status; Reaganites wore his silhouette on their neckties. Legal scholars applaud court decisions and jurisprudential philosophies as Burkean, or denounce them as being not genuinely Burkean. But Burke's memory has been wrongfully appropriated. Edmund Burke was a liberal - at least by today's standards - and it is time to restore him to its proper home. This Article has three objectives. The first is to demonstrate Burke's liberalism. The second is to argue that Burke might also be considered a conservative, but a certain kind of conservative only, namely, a traditional conservative. Edmund Burke's philosophy is at war with that of the dominant conservatives of today - libertarians, neoconservatives, and social conservatives - even though these conservatives seek to associate their thinking with his. Thus, I seek to deny to these groups Burke's good name. At the same time, I wish to show that Burke offers common ground to some liberals and conservatives. These groups have their differences, to be sure, but by recognizing how much they have in common with Edmund Burke they will discover they have much in common with each other. At a time of bitter partisanship, this will allow some liberals and conservatives to begin a cheerful, and potentially fruitful, dialogue. The third objective of this Article is to stimulate this dialogue.


To evaluate the predictive factors of response to anticonvulsant therapy in children with complex partial epilepsy, we studied prospectively 74 children and adolescents suffering from this type of epilepsy. All children were prospectively followed for at least 2 years after the beginning of anticonvulsant therapy. At the end of follow-up, the children were subdivided into two groups according to the frequency of seizures: group A, children who were seizure free in the last year, and group B, children with at least six seizures in the previous year. Children with a poor response to anticonvulsant therapy had a more frequent personal history of neonatal seizures, an interval of less than 6 months between the first and the second seizures, and persistent abnormal electroencephalograms than the seizure-free patients and were often treated with poly-therapy. (J Child Neurol 2004;19:262-264).


The wide adaption of 3D point-cloud data in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving makes adversarial samples a real threat. Existing adversarial attacks on point clouds achieve high success rates but modify a large number of points, which is usually difficult to do in real-life scenarios. In this paper, we explore a family of attacks that only perturb a few points of an input point cloud, and name them nudge attacks. We demonstrate that nudge attacks can successfully flip the results of modern point-cloud DNNs. We present two variants, gradient-based and decision-based, showing their effectiveness in white-box and grey-box scenarios. Our extensive experiments show nudge attacks are effective at generating both targeted and untargeted adversarial point clouds, by changing a few points or even a single point from the entire point-cloud input. We find that with a single point we can reliably thwart predictions in 12--80% of cases, whereas 10 points allow us to further increase this to 37--95%. Finally, we discuss the possible defenses against such attacks, and explore their limitations.


Two experiments (Experiment 1 and 2) were conducted to evaluate growth performance, ascites mortality, and concentrations of plasma Arg, urea, and ornithine in male broilers raised in floor pens (2 x 4 factorial experiment, six pens for treatment) and exposed to cool temperatures averaging 16 C after 21 d of age. Broilers were fed low- or high-CP diets in both Experiments. In Experiment 1, Arg treatments consisted of control (no supplemental Arg); 0.15 or 0.3% supplemental Arg in the diet (low- and medium-Arg feed, respectively); and 0.3% supplemental Arg in the drinking water (Arg-water). Arginine levels were increased in Experiment 2 and consisted of the following: control (no supplemental Arg); 0.3 or 0.85% supplemental Arg in the diet (medium- and high-Arg feed, respectively); and 0.6% supplemental Arg in the drinking water (Arg-water). The water treatment followed a 3-d cyclic regimen, with supplemental Arg being provided for 24 h, followed by tap water for 48 h. When the broilers reached 37 d of age and all groups had consumed tap water for the previous 48 h, blood samples were collected from one bird per pen (Time 0, 0700 h); then supplemental Arg was provided in the Arg-water group, and additional blood samples were collected from the control and Arg-water groups at 3, 6, 12, and 36 h after Time 0. Plasma amino acids were analyzed using HPLC. Birds fed the high-CP diet were heavier at 49 d than birds fed the low-CP diet in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. No differences were found in feed conversion or ascites mortality due to CP or Arg treatments in either experiment. In both experiments, plasma Arg was similar for all groups at Time 0, but increased in the Arg-water group at 3, 6, and 12 h after Arg was provided in the water. Within 12 h after returning to tap water, plasma Arg levels of the Arg-water group did not differ from the control group. Plasma urea and ornithine were parallel to plasma Arg concentrations, and the high-CP diets resulted in higher plasma levels of urea and ornithine compared with low-CP diets. These results indicate that kidney arginase was readily activated by Arg provided in the water, resulting in an immediate increase in plasma urea and ornithine. Plasma Arg was increased significantly, but no effects were observed in ascites mortality.


Environmental degradation is real and presents threats to all living habitat on earth. Thus, the inclusion of environmental issues for a language class is close to a must. This paper is intended to describe 1) the students' perspective on using environmental topics for essay writing class, and 2) their problems when writing essay. The study uses a case study design. There were 17 students participated in the research. The instruments were interview and chat documentations. The data were collected in June 2021. All data are in the form of words and sentences. The result shows that 1) most of the students said that the environmental issues are informative, important, useful, needed, effective, real, and educative. The use of environmental issues helps them to enhance their environmental awareness; 2) almost all students have psychological problems when writing an essay, such as anxiety, nervousness, the feeling of pressure in timed writing, self- demand of perfect work, and low self-confidence. Yet, the psychological problems might be triggered by the demand of more readings about environmental issues to make the essay convincing. The result implies that content-based material discussing environmental topic should be incorporated into EFL writing class.
Keywords: environment, essay, issues, problems, views


Two processes for chloroaluminum phthalocyanine (ClAlPc) synthesis using phthalonitrile and phthalic anhydride are compared based on ClAlPc purity, cost analysis of reactants, and performance for low-cost organic photovoltaic applications. Purity of ClAlPc is characterized through UV-vis and HPLC-mass spectrometry. The UV-vis spectra of ClAlPc from phthalic anhydride and phthalonitrile show strong Q-band absorption at 670 nm and 677 nm respectively, and 670 nm for reference ClAlPc. Also, liquid chromatogram of ClAlPc from two precursors and reference ClAlPc have the same retention time at 7 min with 580.16 m/z and the same isotope distribution. The power conversion efficiency of ClAlPc photovoltaic devices varies from 0.22% to 1.9% depending on the precursor. The best devices made with material synthesized using the phthalonitrile process have comparable efficiency to reference devices.


This paper presents an enhanced Marchand balun that offers excellent amplitude and phase balance performance. The enhanced Marchand balun is designed using compensated coupled lines. It employs capacitive compensation, a renowned technique for compensating the unequal even- and odd-mode phase velocities encountered in parallel-coupled microstrip. Analysis carried out in this study has proven that the finite directivity of coupled lines significantly affects the balun Performance. The proposed capacitively-compensated Marchand balun is demonstrated at 2.1GHz and has offered excellent results.


Why do some countries protect minority shareholders from rent-seeking by corporate insiders while others do not? To the extent that there has been convergence toward shareholder-friendly laws, what factors have shaped that convergence? We explore this question by examining the worldwide diffusion of insider trading laws through a series of event history analyses. We argue that variation in the adoption and enforcement in insider trading laws can be best explained by the interaction of rising international competitive pressures to attract investment capital through investor-friendly laws and electoral laws that make governments more or less vulnerable to economic voting. We find that governments are more likely to adopt and enforce insider trading laws when they face reelection under electoral laws that make them relatively vulnerable to economic voting and when they face international competitive pressures. Moreover, we find that the impact of domestic political institutions declines in significance as international competitive pressures increase, and vice-versa.


Among its attributes, the mythical philosopher's stone is supposedly capable of turning base metals to gold or silver. In an analogous fashion, we are finding that protein crystallization optimization using ionic liquids (ILs) often results in the conversion of base protein precipitate to crystals. Recombinant inorganic pyrophosphatases (8 of the 11 proteins) from pathogenic bacteria as well as several other proteins were tested for optimization by 23 ILs, plus a dH2O control, at IL concentrations of 0.1, 0.2, and 0.4 M. The ILs were used as additives, and all proteins were crystallized in the presence of at least one IL. For 9 of the 11 proteins, precipitation conditions were converted to crystals with at least one IL. The ILs could be ranked in order of effectiveness, and it was found that ~83% of the precipitation-derived crystallization conditions could be obtained with a suite of just eight ILs, with the top two ILs accounting for ~50% of the hits. Structural trends were found in the effectiveness of the ILs, with shorter-alkyl-chain ILs being more effective. The two top ILs, accounting for ~50% of the unique crystallization results, were choline dihydrogen phosphate and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate. Curiously, however, a butyl group was present on the cation of four of the top eight ILs.


AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY : To study urinary abnormalities and renal histological changes in patients with chronic liver disease.
METHODS AND MATERIALS : During February 2013 to January 2015, consecutive patients with chronic liver disease and patients who had undergone shunt surgery or TIPSS were recruited prospectively for the study. Besides routine evaluation, urinalysis was done in all. Severity and cause of liver disease was ascertained on a cases-by-case basis. The urinalysis was termed as abnormal if either urine showed RBCs was ≥5/HPF or 24 hour urine protein was ≥150 mg/day.
In a retrospective analysis, we included all patients (during January 2012 to December 2013) who underwent renal biopsy with an underlying co-existent liver disease. Data regarding the etiology of liver and renal disease was abstracted from the medical records.
RESULTS : 157 patients with chronic liver disease (Age : 44.7 ±13.2 years; Male :134; Child status : A-35%, B-32.5%, C-31.8%) and 13 patients with post shunt/TIPSS (Age :33.7±113.3 years, Male: 7, Duration since shunt : 49.2±49.6 months) were included for the study.
Urinalysis was abnormal in 29.9 % of patients with CLD and 53.8% % of patients with prior
shunt/TIPSS. Prevalence of abnormal urinalysis was significantly higher in advanced liver disease (CTP B/C: 39.8%) as compared to early CLD (CTPA: 13.2% %; p-value: 0.001). Prevalence of nephrotic range proteinuria was 1.8%, 11.7% and 4.1% in CTP-A, CTP-B and CTP-C class of liver disease respectively.
Post shunt surgery or TIPSS patients have higher prevalence of abnormal urinalysis (53.8%) and
nephrotic range proteinuria (16.7%) as compared to decompensated chronic liver disease.
The etiology of liver disease was not associated with abnormal urinalysis.
In the retrospective arm of the study, we had 36 patients with renal biopsy who had an underlying coexistent liver disease. Most common renal and liver pathology in these 36 patients was IgA nephropathy and Hepatitis B respectively. None of IgA nephropathy patients had portal hypertension (PHT).
CONCLUSION : There is higher prevalence of abnormal urinalysis and proteinuria with worsening liver disease.
Patients with either shunt surgery or TIPPS had higher prevalence of abnormal urinalysis and
nephrotic range proteinuria as compared to compensated or decompensated chronic liver disease
patients, this signifies that shunting and bypassing of liver of gut derived antigen / immune
complexes leads to renal exposure of these agents and causes renal injury.
Most common pathology in liver disease patients was IgA nephropathy. None of these patients
had PHT, this suggest some alternate mechanism (other than PHT) that leads to renal injury.


Nine patients with multiple myeloma underwent limb salvage surgery and custom megaprosthesis replacement for tumours involving long bones. The lower limb was commonly involved with an average age of 47.7 years at presentation. All patients had pathological fractures. Resection and reconstruction was done using custom megaprostheses. A proximal femoral prosthesis was used for proximal femoral tumours and an intercalary prosthesis for tumours involving the femoral shaft. One patient each had total femoral prosthesis and total knee prosthesis. With an average follow-up of 88.2 months, three patients died of their disease. One patient with total knee prosthesis had delayed deep infection requiring removal of the prosthesis and another patient with an intercalary prosthesis had a periprosthetic fracture and declined revision surgery. Radiological evidence of loosening was seen in one patient. The functional outcome was excellent in 3 and good in 3 patients. The 5-year Kaplan-Meier survival rate of the patients was 66.7%.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the injury stress responses caused by ischemia reperfusion and its effects on the salivary secretory function of rat submandibular glands.

METHODS
An in situ ischemia reperfusion experimental model of rat submandibular glands was developed. The rat submandibular glands were subjected to 90 min of ischemia without denervation followed by reperfusion for 1, 12, 24, and 72 h. Salivary secretion, histological changes, reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, and cellular apoptosis of the involved submandibular glands were detected after reperfusion.

RESULTS
The secretory function of the glands decreased at 1 and 12 h, and the saliva secretion gradually had the same value as that of the control sample 72 h after reperfusion. Increasing inflammatory cells infiltration, cellular atrophy, and tissue edema were observed especially after reperfusion for 12 h. The level of ROS and the number of apoptotic cells exhibited the same tendency, and higher ROS levels and more apoptosis cells 1 and 12 h after reperfusion were observed.

CONCLUSION
Our study suggests that ischemia reperfusion can cause a series of injury stress responses in submandibular glands, which might have an important function in the early phase dysfunction of transplanted submandibular glands.


We propose a new metric for effectively and accurately evaluating the performance of self-stabilizing algorithms. Self-stabilization is a versatile category of fault-tolerance that guarantees system recovery to normal behavior within a finite number of steps, when the state of the system is perturbed by transient faults (or equally, the initial state of the system can be some arbitrary state). The performance of self-stabilizing algorithms is conventionally characterized in the literature by asymptotic computation complexity. We argue that such characterization of performance is too abstract and does not reflect accurately the realities of deploying a distributed algorithm in practice. Our new metric for characterizing the performance of self-stabilizing algorithms is the expected mean value of recovery time. Our metric has several crucial features. Firstly, it encodes accurate average case speed of recovery. Secondly, we show that our evaluation method can effectively incorporate several other parameters that are of importance in practice and have no place in asymptotic computation complexity. Examples include the type of distributed scheduler, likelihood of occurrence of faults, the impact of faults on speed of recovery, and network topology. We utilize a deep analysis technique, namely, probabilistic model checking to rigorously compute our proposed metric. All our claims are backed by detailed case studies and experiments.


Estimating room impulse responses (RIRs) has a number of applications, including personalized audio, analyzing and improving acoustic behavior of concert halls, listening room compensation, sound source localization, and many others. RIRs have been estimated in essentially the same fashion for the last 50 years: Compute the cross correlation between a signal played at point A, and the signal received at point B. Best results are obtained when the signal played is white noise, or a maximum length sequence. No prior knowledge is exploited in computing the RIR, which is simply assumed to be the cross correlation between played and received signals. In contrast, research in adaptive RIR estimation (a.k.a. adaptive Acoustic Echo Cancellation) has made huge progress by (among other things) incorporating models for the RIR. In this paper we propose a new RIR estimation technique, based on a maximum a posteriori formulation. More specifically, we estimate the room reverberation time, as well as the room noise level, and use those as priors for the RIR estimation. Comparison with ground truth shows an average improvement of 12 dB compared to traditional methods.


The proposed estimator, namely weighted maximum likelihood (WML) correlation coefficient, for measuring the relationship between two variables to concern about missing values and outliers in the dataset is presented. This estimator is proven by applying the conditional probability function to take care of some missing values and pay more attention to values near the center. However, outliers in the dataset are assigned a slight weight. These using techniques will give the robust proposed method when the preliminary assumptions are not met data analysis. To inspect about the quality of the proposed estimator, the six methods—WML, Pearson, median, percentage bend, biweight mid, and composite correlation coefficients—are compared the properties in two criteria, i.e. the bias and mean squared error, via the simulation study. The results of generated data are illustrated that the WML estimator seems to have the best performance to withstand the missing values and outliers in dataset, especially for the tiny sample size and large percentage of outliers regardless of missing data levels. However, for the massive sample size, the median correlation coefficient seems to have the good estimator when linear relationship levels between two variables are approximately over 0.4 irrespective of outliers and missing data levels


This paper addresses the problem of placing memory fences in a concurrent program running on a relaxed memory model. Modern architectures implement relaxed memory models which may reorder memory operations or execute them non-atomically. Special instructions called memory fences are provided to the programmer, allowing control of this behavior. To ensure correctness of many algorithms, in particular of non-blocking ones, a programmer is often required to explicitly insert memory fences into her program. However, she must use as few fences as possible, or the benefits of the relaxed architecture may be lost. Placing memory fences is challenging and very error prone, as it requires subtle reasoning about the underlying memory model. We present a framework for automatic inference of memory fences in concurrent programs, assisting the programmer in this complex task. Given a finite-state program, a safety specification and a description of the memory model, our framework computes a set of ordering constraints that guarantee the correctness of the program under the memory model. The computed constraints are maximally permissive: removing any constraint from the solution would permit an execution violating the specification. Our framework then realizes the computed constraints as additional fences in the input program. We implemented our approach in a tool called FENDER and used it to infer correct and efficient placements of fences for several non-trivial algorithms, including practical concurrent data structures.


Despite the utility and benefits of omnidirectional images in robotics and automotive applications, there are no datasets of omnidirectional images available with semantic segmentation, depth map, and dynamic properties. This is due to the time cost and human effort required to annotate ground truth images. This paper presents a framework for generating omnidirectional images using images that are acquired from a virtual environment. For this purpose, we demonstrate the relevance of the proposed framework on two well-known simulators: CARLA Simulator, which is an open-source simulator for autonomous driving research, and Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V), which is a very high quality video game. We explain in details the generated OmniScape dataset, which includes stereo fisheye and catadioptric images acquired from the two front sides of a motorcycle, including semantic segmentation, depth map, intrinsic parameters of the cameras and the dynamic parameters of the motorcycle. It is worth noting that the case of two-wheeled vehicles is more challenging than cars due to the specific dynamic of these vehicles.


Regulation of biological control (biocontrol) is essential to ensure its continued safety and to enhance its acceptability as a key contributor to the management of damaging invasive alien plants in South Africa. Local researchers were concerned that regulators may become risk averse and over-cautious, thus preventing introductions of safe biocontrol agents, as bureaucratic impediments have contributed to the decline in the number of biocontrol releases in several other countries. In South Africa, the introduction of a transparent and inclusive review process has averted these concerns. Legislation in South Africa enables departments concerned with protecting environmental and agricultural resources, to work together to regulate potential risks. An interdepartmental committee, advised by independent specialists, facilitate the review of research into the safety of potential biocontrol agents. Regulators have reviewed and timeously assessed 26 potential biocontrol agents between 2013 and 2020. This has ensured that the considerable benefits from safe biocontrol agents are available for management of some of South Africa's worst invasive alien plants. We review the system in South Africa and suggest possible improvements to the regulatory framework.


People of Bhadran are educated, cultured and rich. It was need of time to establish a cooperative store in such rich and reputed village, where Patidar of Charotar had very good reputation. Bhadran Seva Sahakari Mandali Ltd. (BSSM), Bhadran was registered as a Cooperative Society Act, 1961. The effort has been made to study the change in the trade of mandali during 1980-81 to 2012-13. The trade of "The Bhadran Seva Sahakari Mandali" is analyzed in four parts viz; (a) regular trade (b) irregular trade (c) ancillary service trade and (d) total trade. There are 4 items in Regular trade, 10 items in irregular trade, 3 items in ancillary trade, and total trade 17 items. The study is based on both primary and secondary data. A critical analysis of composition of trade reveals that diesel, petrol and chemical fertilizers in this study area contribute of the driving force at local development. There is a significant growth of BSSM trade in financial terms but in physical terms, the same is not very satisfactory.


The paper intents to give a perspective for amateur engineers who are related in company transformation from a current situation to the industry 4.0 and IoT implementation. The present work is focused on people without any kind of expertise or specialization of IoT or automation concepts, but due to the possibility of being involved in topics related to industry 4.0 have the needs to have any kind of basic knowledge in order to know if a small or medium enterprises need these kinds of new technology.


The two-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in primitive variables have been solved by a pseudospectral Chebyshev method using a semi-implicit fractional step scheme. The latter has been adapted to the particular features of spectral collocation methods to develop the monodomain algorithm. In particular, pressure and velocity collocated on the same nodes are sought in a polynomial space of the same order; the cascade of scalar elliptic problems arising after the spatial collocation is solved using finite difference preconditioning. With the present procedure spurious pressure modes do not pollute the pressure field.

As a natural development of the present work a multidomain extent was devised and tested. The original domain is divided into a union of patching sub-rectangles. Each scalar problem obtained after spatial collocation is solved by iterating by subdomains. For steady problems a C1 solution is recovered at the interfaces upon convergence, ensuring a spectrally accurate solution.

A number of test cases have been solved to validate the algorithm in both its single-block and multidomain configurations.

The preliminary results achieved indicate that collocation methods in multidomain configurations might become a viable alternative to the spectral element technique for accurate flow prediction.


Chloramphenicol, despite its well-recognized toxic side effects, is a cheap and useful antibiotic in the management of meningitis, typhoid, brain abscess and severe Haemophilus influenza infections. Where possible, drug levels should be monitored.


We present a forecasting analysis on the growth of scientific literature related to COVID-19 expected for 2021. Considering the paramount scientific and financial efforts made by the research community to find solutions to end the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented volume of scientific outputs is being produced. This questions the capacity of scientists, politicians and citizens to maintain infrastructure, digest content and take scientifically informed decisions. A crucial aspect is to make predictions to prepare for such a large corpus of scientific literature. Here we base our predictions on the ARIMA model and use two different data sources: the Dimensions and World Health Organization COVID-19 databases. These two sources have the particularity of including in the metadata information on the date in which papers were indexed. We present global predictions, plus predictions in three specific settings: by type of access (Open Access), by NLM source (PubMed and PMC), and by domain-specific repository (SSRN and MedRxiv). We conclude by discussing our findings.


The B-16 melanoma transplanted into C57BL/6 mice was used to investigate the antitumor effect of Schizophyllan (SPG) when applied alone and in combination with local irradiation using pions with 4 dose fractions of 2 Gy or 6 Gy each. SPG was given intramuscularly in a daily dose of 10 mg/kg body weight for 25 consecutive days from day 4 after the initiation of irradiation, and thereafter three times a week up to day 45. The antitumor effect was evaluated by the changes in tumor volume. survival, the size of metastatic lymph nodes grossly involved, and the number of pulmonary metastatic nodules on the surface of the lungs. After 24 Gy, significant differences were found between the group treated with combined pions and SPG, and the group treated with pions alone in terms of tumor volume change. survival and lymph node, and pulmonary metastases. However, when SPG was applied to non-irradiated tumors or to tumors irradiated with only 8 Gy, it had neither antitumor nor life-prolonging effect. From the present study, it seems that a SPG, as a Biological Response Modifier, has some adjuvant effect only where a limited number of tumor cells remain following pion irradiation. Combination therapy using SPG may, therefore, be advantageous for patients with complete response or good partial response to pion irradiation.


Placement is a critical step in modern chip design, aiming to determine the positions of circuit modules on the chip canvas. Recent works have shown that reinforcement learning (RL) can improve human performance in chip placement. However, such an RL-based approach suffers from long training time and low transfer ability in unseen chip circuits. To resolve these challenges, we cast the chip placement as an offline RL formulation and present ChiPFormer that enables learning a transferable placement policy from fixed offline data. ChiPFormer has several advantages that prior arts do not have. First, ChiPFormer can exploit offline placement designs to learn transferable policies more efficiently in a multi-task setting. Second, ChiPFormer can promote effective finetuning for unseen chip circuits, reducing the placement runtime from hours to minutes. Third, extensive experiments on 32 chip circuits demonstrate that ChiPFormer achieves significantly better placement quality while reducing the runtime by 10x compared to recent state-of-the-art approaches in both public benchmarks and realistic industrial tasks. The deliverables are released at https://sites.google.com/view/chipformer/home.


Frequency support capability is becoming an important requirement for wind turbines, as wind power is increasingly integrated into power systems. In this paper, a frequency controller is implemented and validated. Such a controller allows wind turbines to help regulate the system frequency automatically and includes virtual inertia to help limit the rate of change of frequency. Compared with other methods, the controller achieves satisfactory frequency support capability with considerable simplicity. The controller is added to the grid-side converter controls, together with cascaded inner loops, which enables wind turbines to operate in grid-forming mode with overcurrent protection. The influence of the controller parameters on the frequency response is investigated.


Abstract. Experimental studies of epixylic bryophytes require stable, biologically inactive substrata with physical properties that mimic those of coarse decayed wood. In two preliminary tests, we compared three synthetic logs (made from upholstery wadding, mattress foam, and floral foam) to decayed natural logs, in terms of their physical properties, moisture transmission, and ability to support growth of Dicranum flagellare in the laboratory. We also tested the effects of clumped vs. smeared propagule application on growth response. Vegetative moss propagules (flagellae and dried gametophore fragments) were applied as clumps or smears with nutrient agar gel, and evaluated as to horizontal expansion, vertical growth and dry weight of new growth over 6 months. Synthetic logs had higher porosity and lower density than natural logs, but showed similar moisture transmission capabilities to each other and to natural logs when moisture was supplied from the base. Nevertheless, surficial water potentials were consistently less than -5 MPa, and were therefore incapable of supporting bryophyte growth without applying liquid water from above. Horizontal expansion of D. flagellare was greatest with a smear application on floral foam logs, but vertical growth was greatest on upholstery wadding logs with a clumped application. Although floral foam (substratum) and smear (application) produced the greatest new shoot growth, observations suggest that the moss may allocate more growth to rhizoids on more penetrable substrata (those with a larger mean pore size). Future studies must modify the structure of synthetic substrate units to more closely mimic the moisture-related characteristics of rotting wood of target species, and further isolate the components of bryophyte growth.


Site is an important factor in the building design process, where it is analysed to determine design strategies for responding the microclimate. It is also considered important in Building Energy Simulations (BES) where a weather file is used to represent the site location and its microclimate. However, many cases of BES in the design process use weather file from a nearby weather station rather than site specific microclimate. In fact, site microclimate can be affected by nearby parameters such as ground surface and vegetation, with unknown effects. In the Wellington, New Zealand context, micro-climates vary widely due to the local topography while suburban houses can be located on the side or bottom of a hill. These houses are likely to have different exposure to the sun and wind which can influence energy consumption for space heating.  Many studies about site-parameters impacts mainly focus on the vegetation and nearby buildings effect on microclimate. Only a few estimated the impact of site-parameters on building energy use and mostly their cases are in urban areas (flat terrain). Unfortunately, site parameters, such as altitude and slope, associated with the Wellington topography (hilly terrain) have never been examined. This thesis investigates the importance of site parameters on house heating energy modelling for the Wellington context. BES software, EnergyPlus, was used and explored to identify limitations in modelling site parameters. An attempt was made to solve these limitations through the integration with microclimate software. Three microclimate software programmes were reviewed: ENVI-met, UWG (Urban Weather Generator) and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamic) software.  ENVI-met was selected to generate the local air temperature and relative humidity affected by site parameters, which was used for EnergyPlus weather-file modification. A parametric study of ENVI-met basic input with model evaluation was also conducted. The results of parametric test integrating ENVI-met with EnergyPlus showed that ENVI-met mostly produce insignificant impacts of site parameters on house heating energy, unlike the results found in the literature review. This is likely due to the cool weather conditions (winter in Wellington) used in simulation, which suggests that the idea of microclimate modelling using ENVI-met is not applicable for house heating energy modelling in the temperate, Wellington context.


Digital broadcasting system has become a highlight of research on computer application. To respond to the changes of the playbill in the broadcasting system in real time, the response time of the system must be studied. There is scarcely the research on this area currently. The influence factors in the response time are analyzed; the model on the response time of the system service is built; how the influence factors affect the response time of the system service is validated; and four improvement measures are proposed to minimize the response time of system service.


Case of J. S., ?et. 47, employed in the Eubber Works in Edinburgh. For two years the patient has been nearly constantly exposed to the fumes of the poison rising from the "curing troughs." After three months of exposure he became very languid and easily tired. He lost all appetite, frequently vomited, and had always more or less nausea. Then, after a month or two, he found himself drowsy in the evening after his work, but sleepless at night, constantly waking up with a start, and frequently dreaming that he was falling over a precipice. He also began to suffer from severe headaches. He became very nervous, and his memory was impaired. His eyes, too, became weak and his vision dim, and more lately he failed to recognise his own wife a few yards off. About a year ago he began to get thin and weak. He could not walk far without resting frequently, and his back was so weak that he had difficulty in raising himself. He had constant tingling, numbness, and coldness of hands, feet, and legs as far as the


Background: The pathophysiology of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is complex and includes disruption of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). We freshly isolated BBB endothelial cells (BECs) by 2 distinct methods after experimental SAH and then interrogated their gene expression profiles with the goal of uncovering new therapeutic targets. Methods: SAH was induced using the prechiasmatic blood injection mouse model. BBB permeability studies were performed by administering intraperitoneal cadaverine dye injections at 24h and 48h. BECs were isolated either by sequential magnetic-based sorting for CD45 - CD31 + cells or by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) for Tie2 + Pdgfrb - cells. Total RNA was extracted and analyzed using Affymetrix Mouse Gene 2.0 ST Arrays. Results: BBB impairment occurred at 24h and resolved by 48h after SAH. Analysis of gene expression patterns in BECs at 24h reveal clustering of SAH and sham samples. We identified 707 (2.8%) significant differentially-expressed genes (403 upregulated, 304 downregulated) out of 24,865 interrogated probe sets. Many significantly upregulated genes were involved in inflammatory pathways. These microarray results were validated with real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Conclusions: This study is the first to investigate in an unbiased manner, whole genome expression profiling of freshly-isolated BECs in an SAH animal model, yielding targets for novel therapeutic intervention.


Recovery processes responsible for evolution of microstructures in 0.1mm thin cold-drawn Ni-Ti shape memory alloy wire heat treated by DC electric pulse were investigated by combination of in-situ tensile stress - strain, electrical resistance and X-ray diffraction measurements. The X-ray data were used to obtain direct experimental information on the evolution of the phase fractions, internal strain and defects in the microstructure evolving through activation of a sequence of recovery processes during the short time electropulse treatment. It is shown that superelastic functional properties of the treated Ni-Ti wire can be precisely set by controlling the progress of the recovery processes by prescribing the time evolution of temperature T(t) and tensile stress s(t) (displacement control) in the treated wire.


Heteroepitaxy of CuInS2 has been carried out on ZnSe by the LPE method from an In solution. The optimum growth conditions were a maximum temperature Tm of 700°C and a cooling rate CR of 0.5°C/min. LPE growth was not successful when Tm was 500–650°C. The critical value of Tm for successful LPE growth was near 700°C. The coefficient kLPE defined as the ratio of the optimum Tm to the melting temperature of the solute, was than those for other chalcopyrite materials investigated previously. The optimum growth conditions are considered to be related to the energies of formation and melting temperatures of the substrate and solute, and the I2-VI, III2-VI3 and other compounds produced in the LPE system.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Brachial plexus blockade by the interscalene approach, described by Winnie, is one of the most effective techniques in promoting postoperative analgesia in surgeries of the shoulder. Diaphragmatic paralysis is one of the consequences of this technique. This paralysis can cause respiratory failure in patients with prior lung dysfunction. Brachial plexus blockade by the posterior approach has become increasingly more popular. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of diaphragmatic paralysis after interscalene brachial plexus blockade by the posterior approach with 0.2% ropivacaine.

METHODS
Twenty-two patients who underwent interscalene brachial plexus blockade by the posterior approach with 0.2% ropivacaine were evaluated in the postoperative period to identify radiological signs of elevation of the hemidiaphragm that could suggest hemidiaphragmatic paralysis. Forty mL of 0.2% ropivacaine were used in 20 patients; inspiratory chest X-rays were done in these patients. Twenty mL of 0.2% ropivacaine were used in two patients, with posterior fluoroscopic evaluation.

RESULTS
There were no complications related to the procedure. The anesthesia was effective in every patient, providing good postoperative analgesia. Every patient in this study presented elevation of the diaphragm compatible with hemidiaphragmatic paralysis.

CONCLUSIONS
We observed that brachial plexus blockade by the posterior approach is associated with a high prevalence of diaphragmatic paralysis, even with low concentrations of local anesthetics.


First-order methods are widely used to solve convex quadratic programs (QPs) in real-time applications because of their low per-iteration cost. However, they can suffer from slow convergence to accurate solutions. In this paper, we present a framework which learns an effective warm-start for a popular first-order method in real-time applications, Douglas-Rachford (DR) splitting, across a family of parametric QPs. This framework consists of two modules: a feedforward neural network block, which takes as input the parameters of the QP and outputs a warm-start, and a block which performs a fixed number of iterations of DR splitting from this warm-start and outputs a candidate solution. A key feature of our framework is its ability to do end-to-end learning as we differentiate through the DR iterations. To illustrate the effectiveness of our method, we provide generalization bounds (based on Rademacher complexity) that improve with the number of training problems and number of iterations simultaneously. We further apply our method to three real-time applications and observe that, by learning good warm-starts, we are able to significantly reduce the number of iterations required to obtain high-quality solutions.


Cutaneous angiosarcoma can sometimes mimic other benign and malignant lesions, thereby presenting a difficult differential diagnosis. In the two cases of cutaneous angiosarcoma presented herein, extensive foamy cell alteration of tumor cells resembled a reactive xanthogranulomatous process. Foamy cell angiosarcoma is an unusual and deceptively benign morphologic variant of cutaneous angiosarcoma. Critical features for diagnosis include the presence of a deep, permeative, sometimes 'scaffolding' growth pattern and subtle areas of vascular formation.


Rabbits fed a 1% cholesterol diet with or without the antioxidant butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) developed typical atherosclerotic lesions. The addition of BHT gave higher levels of total cholesterol (+40%), triglycerides (+250%), low density lipoprotein (LDL), and very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) in plasma. Despite the lower plasma lipid levels, the degree of atherosclerosis of the aortic surface was considerably higher in rabbits fed cholesterol than in the group treated with cholesterol and BHT. The mean atherosclerotic involvement was 18.6 +/- 4.4% in the former group and 5.9 +/- 1.7% in the latter group (p = 0.02). In all animals, there was a high correlation between the area of the arterial lesion and cholesterol content (r = 0.96). Serum levels of cholesterol autooxidation products (7-ketocholesterol and cholesterol 5 alpha,6 alpha-epoxide) were lower in the group of rabbits treated with BHT (p less than 0.005). Serum levels of vitamin E were slightly higher in the BHT group. There was no significant difference in the clearance of beta-VLDL between the two treatment groups after using either beta-VLDL from cholesterol-fed animals or beta-VLDL from BHT-fed animals. The results are in accord with the contention that oxidative modification of lipoproteins is important for the development of atherosclerosis and that antioxidants may have a protective effect. At present, however, other explanations cannot be completely excluded, for example, effects of antioxidants on immunologic factors or monocyte adhesion.


In this study, we have investigated the impact of the implementation of AAOIFI (Accounting and Auditing Organization of Islamic Financial Institutions) on the level of corporate social responsibility disclosures (CSRD) within the context of Islamic banks. We measured the level of CSRD in annual reports using a disclosure instrument based on AAOIFI governance standard and other indexes from the previous studies. We have used data of 36 Islamic banks that was located in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) between 2012 and 2016. We found out that AAOIFI adoption had a positive effect on CSRD. Furthermore, this paper is the first one that has investigated to what extent adoption of financial accounting standards as AAOIFI can enhance the level of CSRD in Islamic banks. We contributed for the debate and literature about the economic consequences of adoption financial accounting standards specifically for Islamic standards. Does the adoption of AAOIFI affect corporate social responsibility Dr/ Mona AL Hakim & Dr/ Sherif Al Halaby ددعلا يناثلا 0202 201


The red beds exposed at El Cobre Canyon consist of lenticular channel sandstones with U-shaped cross sections and trough crossbeds, interbedded with structuieless overbank mudstoneslnd thin crevasse-sDlav sandstones. Calcareous rhizoliths are abundant in the mudstbnes, but strongly deveioped paleocaliches are rare. The sediments were deposited in a single-channel low-sinuosity stream system in an upper alluvial plain, near a distal alluvial fan and braided-stream complex. Sedimentation was episodic in a semiarid climate. Ephemeral'channels were the loci oi sporadic, but very high, ratei of sedimentation, in contrast to the much lower rates of sedimentation over most of the floodplain. Overall higher rates of basin-wide sediment aggradation were maintained by frequent shifting of channel depocenters.


Animals living at high population densities commonly experience greater exposure to disease, leading to increased parasite burdens. However, social animals can benefit immunologically and hygienically from cooperation, and individuals may alter their socio-spatial behaviour in response to infection, both of which could counteract density-related increases in exposure. Consequently, the costs and benefits of sociality for disease are often uncertain. Here, we use a long-term study of a wild European badger population (Meles meles) to investigate how within-population variation in host density determines infection with multiple parasites. Four out of five parasite taxa exhibited consistent spatial hotspots of infection, which peaked among badgers living in areas of low local population density. Combined movement, survival, spatial, and social network analyses revealed that parasite avoidance was the likely cause of this negative density dependence, with possible roles for localised mortality, encounter-dilution effects, and micronutrient-enhanced immunity. These findings demonstrate that animals can organise their societies in space to minimise parasite infection, with important implications for badger behavioural ecology and for the control of badger-associated diseases.


In this work, the post-breakdown characteristics of metal gate/Al2O3/InGaAs structures were studied using surface analysis by x ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The results show that for dielectric breakdown under positive bias, localized filaments consisting of oxidized substrate atoms (In, Ga and As) were formed, while following breakdown under negative bias, a decrease of oxidized substrate atoms was observed. Such differences in the microstructure at the oxide-semiconductor interface after breakdown for positive and negative voltages are explained by atomic diffusion of the contact atoms into the gate dielectric in the region of the breakdown spot by the current induced electro-migration effect. These findings show a major difference between Al2O3/InGaAs and SiO2/Si interfaces, opening the way to a better understanding of the breakdown characteristics of III-V complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor technology.


Debugging embedded softwares is very different from debugging general softwares. For examples, debugging embedded software requires more information, such as information on power consumption, information on the distribution of executed instructions, information on the distribution of used registers, and information on the amount of clocks consumed during the execution of a program, that is not needed in debugging general softwares. In this paper, we propose more effective method fer debugging embedded softwares using an instruction set simulator for the microprocessor that is executing embedded softwares. In this research, we develop a debugger based on an instruction set simulator for a domestic embedded microprocessor called SE1608 and we shows an effective debugging method using a MiBench program which is widely used to benchmark embedded softwares. The debugging method proposed in this paper is relatively easy to implement and shows many advantages compared with existing debugging methods.


2-Mercapto-3-phenyl-quinazolin-4(3H)-one have been prepared by the reaction between anthranilic acid and phenyl thiourea. The sodium salt of 2- mercapto-3-phenyl-quinazolin-4(3H)-one on condensing with substituted aroyl chloride yielded thioesters of 3-phenyl-quinazolin-4(3H)-one.All the synthesized thioesterswere screened for their antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus subtilis. Some of the compounds showed good activity by taking Norfloxacin as standard.


In order to acquire the peak performance of one storage system quickly and accurately, an automatic parameter optimization method is used in performance test. By introducing artificial intelligence into storage test, the algorithms such as particle swarm optimization help to optimize parameters automatically on performance test. Experimental results show that this method can significantly improve efficiency and accuracy of performance test, so saving cost. The method based on intelligent optimization algorithms can acquire the optimal performance value of storage systems more quickly, especially in the case of there are too many parameters in performance test.


The pressure behaviour of a series of transition metal borides has been studied both experimentally and by means of ab initio calculations. X-ray diffraction patterns measured up to ∼50 GPa for VB2 and ZrB2 show no obvious phase transition. Bulk moduli of 322 and 317 GPa, respectively, were obtained using a Murnaghan equation of state. Hartree–Fock LCCO (linear combination of crystal orbitals) calculations performed for TiB2 have allowed its compression behaviour to be studied. The bulk modulus obtained (292 GPa) and the proposed important contribution of the interlayer interaction to the elastic behaviour under high pressure are consistent with the experimental results for the other borides.


In this paper, marginal versions of the Bayesian Bhattacharyya lower bound (BBLB), which is a tighter alternative to the classical Bayesian Cramér- Rao bound, for discrete-time filtering are proposed. Expressions for the second and third-order marginal BBLBs are obtained and it is shown how these can be approximately calculated using particle filtering. A simulation example shows that the proposed bounds predict the achievable performance of the filtering algorithms better.