Low-cost switched-reluctance-motor (SRM) drive systems are actively sought for high-efficiency home appliances and power tools. Minimizing the number of switching devices has been in power converters that is the main method to reduce drive costs. Single-switch-per-phase converters have been cost effective due to the compactness of the converter package resulting in a possible reduction in their cost. However, some of the single-switch-per-phase converters have the drawbacks that include higher losses and low-system efficiency. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the choice narrows down to the split ac converter through the quantitative analysis in terms of device ratings, cost, switching losses, conduction losses, and converter efficiency. Simulations to verify the characteristics of the converter circuit and control feasibility are presented. The motor drive is realized with a novel two-phase flux-reversal-free-stator SRM and a split ac converter. The efficiency with various loads is numerically estimated and experimentally compared from the viewpoint of subsystem and system in details. The acoustic noise with no load and full load is also compared. The focus of this paper is to compare the considered split ac converter to the asymmetric converter through experiments and demonstrate that the split ac converter is the most advantageous with respect to cost, efficiency, and acoustic noise


A73 Laser capture microdissection (LCM) is a recent development that enables the enrichment of specific cell types for subsequent molecular analysis and biomarker discovery efforts thus overcoming the problem of tissue heterogeneity. However, conventional LCM is manual and recognition of cells of interest is still a considerable bottleneck. Hence, automated identification of specific target cells for subsequent laser capture and analysis is desirable. Here, we described the development of an automated Cellenger-assisted LCM system and used it for proteomics of clinical breast tumors. Cellenger rule sets for automated recognition of breast cancer cells was developed and target tumor cells were microdissected by using LCM on toluidine blue stained frozen sections of breast cancer. Captured samples were subsequently analyzed using liquid chromatography-based mass spectrometry. Cellenger automates the otherwise manual and tedious detection of tumor cells during LCM and makes acquisition of tumor cells by LCM automated and efficient. The adaptation of automated LCM to proteomic technologies should also yield accurate insights into the pathobiology of breast cancer and have implications in biomarker discovery for early detection and prognostication.


We prove the analog of Kostant's Theorem on Lie algebra cohomology in the context of quantum groups. We prove that Kostant's cohomology formula holds for quantum groups at a generic parameter $q$, recovering an earlier result of Malikov in the case where the underlying semisimple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g} = \mathfrak{sl}(n)$. We also show that Kostant's formula holds when $q$ is specialized to an $\ell$-th root of unity for odd $\ell \ge h-1$ (where $h$ is the Coxeter number of $\mathfrak{g}$) when the highest weight of the coefficient module lies in the lowest alcove. This can be regarded as an extension of results of Friedlander-Parshall and Polo-Tilouine on the cohomology of Lie algebras of reductive algebraic groups in prime characteristic.


Although there were several outbreaks of the 'sweating sickness' (Sudor anglicus) in England between 1485 and 1551, only in 1529 did the disease spread far into the continent. In that year it had a devastating impact, spreading rapidly throughout Germany and thence into Scandinavia and the Baltic area, as well as into the Low Countries, Switzerland, and Austria. This study surveys the effect of the disease in Germany, and in particular draws attention to the astonishing speed with which the medical profession and the book trade there reacted to the crisis, which contrasts markedly with the apparent sluggishness of the response by English physicians and publishers. Nevertheless, it seems that it was the long English experience of the disease that eventually taught the Germans how to deal with it effectively; it is possible that the Reformer Robert Barnes (1495–1540), then in Lübeck, played a role in this. (pp. 147–176)


evaporative demand. Unexpectedly, this slope was genetically correlated with WUE in two 56 experiments with high evaporative demand: genotypes that most transpired had the highest 57 WUE. Conversely, a negative correlation was observed under low evaporative demand. 58 Genotypes with high WUE and response to evaporative demand were also those allowing 59 maximum light penetration into the canopy. We suggest that this caused the observed high 60 WUE of these genotypes because leaves within the canopy had sufficient light for 61 photosynthesis whereas we observed a lower VPD in the canopy than in open air when leaf 62 area index reached 2.5-3, thereby decreasing transpiration. 63


Few studies compare complications of continuous and bolus epidural analgesia. Ninety-eight postoperative and trauma patients receiving epidural infusions over 15 months were retrospectively studied. Continuous epidural analgesia was used for pain management in 60 patients (61%). Bolus epidural analgesia was administered to 38 patients (39%). Sixty patients reported 98 complications. Sixty-eight per cent of complications occurred in patients receiving continuous infusions. For the continuous infusions, motor blockade (18%), nausea/vomiting, (18%), and catheter leaks (12%) were the most common complications. For bolus infusions, nausea/vomiting (25%), mental status changes (21%), and erythema at placement site (13%) were encountered. Continuous infusions were associated with an increased incidence of complications compared with bolus infusions (P < 0.05). Patients undergoing abdominal surgery had an increased incidence of complications compared with other patients (P < 0.05). Epidural catheters are safe and effective for pain management, but they are not without risk. Hemodynamic stability and pulmonary status should be considered when evaluating patients.


To evaluate the prevalence of ocular abnormalities among children with cerebral palsy, 140 patients with age between 6 months and 16 years were selected and the overall incidence of ocular abnormalities in this study was 42.1%. Two major ocular abnormalities identified in these cases were strabismus in 36.4%. Myopia was detected in 12.9% children while hypermetropia in 8.6% and astigmatism in 3.6% cases. Non-glaucomatous optic atrophy was present in 10.7% cases and nystagmus in 9.3% cases. Raised intra-ocular pressure was detected in 2.1% cases. Cortical visual impairment was seen in 20.7% children. Ocular abnormalities are frequent manifestations in cerebral palsy patients. Therefore, evaluation of all cerebral palsy cases emphasises the need for a full ophthalmological examination in order to detect ocular problems and to institute necessary therapy of the abnormalities for better livelihood of these physically challenged patients.


Six hundred and twelve patients with previously untreated invasive carcinoma of the uterine cervix were treated by irradiation alone at the National Cancer Hospital from 1972 to 1983. The number of patients was 7, 39, 43, 127, 15, 319, 28 and 34 in stages IA, IB, IIA, IIB, IIIA, IIIB, IVA and IVB respectively. Low-dose-rate intracavitary irradiation with or without external irradiation was used in 383 patients, high-dose-rate intracavitary irradiation with or without external irradiation in 130, external irradiation alone in 98, and external irradiation combined with radon-222 seed implantation in one patient. Five-year-survival rates were 85, 65, 57, 41, 14 11% for stages IB, IIA, IIB, IIIB, IVA, and IVB respectively. The rate of complications was rather high in the present series, and so we have been investigating whether it is possible to reduce the dose. Low-dose-rate intracavitary irradiation has been replaced by high-dose-rate irradiation by using a remotely controlled afterloading system.


The treatment of leishmaniasis relies primarily on highly toxic, parenterally administered drugs. Therefore, the search for more effective and safer drugs is considered a priority for leishmaniasis' control. The antileishmanial activity of the oestrogen receptor modulator tamoxifen was previously described in experimental models of leishmaniasis. However, the mechanisms responsible for the antileishmanial activity of tamoxifen remain unknown. Since tamoxifen has been shown to affect plasma and intracellular membranes in tumour cells, the aim of this study was to investigate the activity of the drug on Leishmania amazonensis membranes. Through morphological analysis and labelling with propidium iodide and DiSBAC 2 (3), we demonstrated that tamoxifen led to plasma membrane depolarization without general membrane disruption or permeabilization. Tamoxifen also caused mitochondrial damage, with loss of membrane potential, as shown by Rhodamine 123 accumulation. Mitochondrial swelling followed, signalling the mitochondrial dysfunction. Therefore, the effect of tamoxifen on Leishmania is mediated, at least in part, by disorder in parasite's membranes. These alterations are sufficient to trigger a series of lethal events.


This study investigates the effects of respiratory mechanical loading and unloading on phrenic nerve activity and ventilation. Ten adult cats were anesthetized, intubated, and connected to a servocontrolled infant ventilator while breathing spontaneously in continuous positive airway pressure mode. The ventilator was then set to decrease the pressure at the airway opening in proportion to the inspiratory airflow or the volume of spontaneous breathing (resistive or elastic loading) or to increase the pressure at the airway opening accordingly (resistive or elastic unloading, also called proportional assist ventilation). When compared with continuous positive airway pressure, both resistive and elastic loading increased the number of phrenic nerve impulses per breath and the mean frequency of impulses (p < 0.01, ANOVA). In contrast, elastic unloading decreased phrenic nerve activity significantly in normal and injured lungs. Resistive unloading in normal lungs did not change phrenic nerve activity significantly. The compensatory response in phrenic nerve activity was not large enough to completely offset effects of loading and unloading on ventilation: elastic and resistive loading decreased ventilation. Unloading had the opposite effect on ventilation, particularly in injured lungs. We conclude that respiratory mechanical loading and unloading have statistically significant, opposite effects on phrenic nerve activity and opposite effects on ventilation.


The diode array multichannel detector is used to acquire spectral information at specified intervals in the elution profile of atenolol and its related impurities for post-chromatographic data analysis. The applicability of a number of peak homogeneity testing methods, including spectral normalization, absorbance ratio, chromatographic derivatives, and spectral suppression (SS), are assessed for suitability in simultaneous determinations of the coeluting atenolol-related synthetic impurities, PPA-Diol. Spectral suppression displays a superior performance in comparison to all the other techniques in that both qualitative and quantitative information are acquired on the system.


Review of Mary Godwin, Ethics and Diversity in Business Management Education. A Sociological Study with International Scope, Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag, 2015, eb, x + 94 pages, ISBN 978-3-662-46654-4Mary Godwyn's Ethics and Diversity in Business Management Education is part of Springer book series on CSR, Sustainability, Ethics and Governance. Godwyn's book draws on a qualitative study of business ethics programmes in 17 different countries, spanning five continents. As a sociologist, rather than a philosopher or an economist, her goal was to research the various business management education programs, but also delve into public opinion within various cultural backgrounds in order to provide the data for a rich comparative analysis. Such a goal should certainly be praised, since so much work in the field of business ethics is done almost exclusively by philosophers or economists, and it is often discussed without the benefit of solid empirical work as a building foundation. Godwyn's work is precisely that - a solid social scientific empirical foundation for a number of questions that are of great interest for researchers and teachers from various academic fields with an interest in business ethics, such as philosophy, economics, law, sociology, etc. The foremost research questions that Godwyn wanted her respondents to answer were:1. Are there different definitions and expectations for business ethics and socially normative ethics, and if so, how do they differ?2. How much does business ethics education affect business practices?3.How do larger cultural values impact the presentation and interpretation of business ethics?Based on this research, Godwyn concluded that ethical behaviour is not merely relative to space, time (in terms of geographical and historical context) and culture, but that it I..J depends upon the group with which [respondents] are currently identifying.' (p. v) In short, she found that the same person would make different decisions and have a different grounding for their ethical arguments, depending on whether they are asked the same questions as members of companies, or citizens, or consumers, etc.Godwyn presents and comments on her findings through five chapters and a conclusion. In the first chapter, A Qualitative Study of Business Ethics: A Sociologist Walks into a Business School (pp. 1- 20) she introduces the idea of ethical reasoning and behaviour as relative to the group with which a person currently identifies, and explains the basic theoretical framework of her research. This framework is crucial for explaining unethical behaviour in business, and in creating it; Godwyn relies on Hannah Arendts concept of the banality of evil, and Emile Durkheims concept of solidarity. This also makes the first chapter the most interesting and engaging from a philosophical point of view, which is why we will grant it a bit more space in this review.Ultimately, Godwyn is interested in why essentially good people do bad things in business, and the framework connecting Arendts and Durkheims concepts allows her to say that this is often done out of a sense of group solidarity, or rather solidarity with the prevalent ethos within companies, the business environment, or any other environment for that matter. To show this, Godwyn cites examples from Nazi concentration camps, to large companies like Enron, to business schools and professional athletic associations. The point that she tries to make in presenting her theoretical framework is that throughout human societies we will often be able to find pockets of activity in which the actors conduct themselves according to a moral framework that is often at odds with, and sometimes completely contradicts the moral framework of the society at large. When the activities in one such pocket (a political party or movement, company, or association of competing athletes) become so immoral that it is hard to believe they actually occur, they can only be explained by reference to an ethos that is specific to that same pocket. …


Abstract-A new functional, resonant-tunneling hot electron transistor (RHET) is demonstrated in which electrons are injected from emitter to base by resonant-tunneling through a quantum well, and are near-ballistically transferred to a collector. The main feature of this device is a peaked collector-current characteristic with respect to the base-emitter voltage. This enables us to build a frequency multiplier or an Exclusive-NOR gate using only one transistor.


The topic of this paper is the foundation for individual rights proposed by David Gauthier in his seminal 1986 book Morals by Agreement, and particularly the role of conception of rationality in this foundation. The foundation of rights is a part of Gauthier's broader enterprise: to ground morals in rationality – more specifically, in the economic conception of rationality. Because of the importance of this conception for the whole of Gauthier's project, we reconstruct first the conception of rationality which can be found in decision theory and game theory, presenting simultaneously in a relatively non-technical way some basic concepts of the aforementioned disciplines. We proceed then to reconstruction of the foundation of rights itself – it turns on Gauthier's interpretation of the so-called "Lockean proviso." Lastly, we turn to the connection between rationality and foundation of rights. It is to be found in the narrow compliance – the disposition to enter only into cooperation which satisfies conditions of fairness set out in part by the Lockean proviso.


Abstract This paper examines the evolution of aspectual formations in Insular Celtic. It is argued that the emergence of these formations and their unusual morphosyntactic structure have been determined by internal systemic factors. It is also suggested that the manner in which these formations developed is of importance for our understanding of the processes involved in the emergence of grammatical subsystems in general. It is demonstrated that the Celtic aspectual system evolves in a manner reminiscent of the concept of developmental stratification and, significantly, that it evolves in a remarkably coherent and ordered fashion. The inexorable and structured nature of this evolution would seem to provide evidence for the claim that there may exist within languages a certain teleological impulse; in other words, that rather than being simply random, language change is in some fundamental and meaningful sense goal-directed.


This study examines if Human Resource Planning (HRP) is used effectively in organisations to achieve organisational goals. The aims and objectives are to explore HRP as useful in achieving organising goal and improving business performance and as important in forecasting on employees, the origins of and Conceptual frameworks for HRP. It discusses key perspectives of HRP, approaches to forecasting future HR demands and its internal and external supply. The purpose of HRP and its importance to organisations are explored. It argues the need for futuristic, scientific HRP, driven by increased technology and globalization of the economy, suggesting factors relevant for consideration by way of recommendations and conclusion. _____________________________________


A non-circular wire helical spring generally has a high spring constant and reduces the spring height at fully compressed condition, although the energy absorption decreases during deformation. For improving this energy absorption, we have applied Fe-Mn-Si based alloy ( FMS ) to the spring. FMS that is one of the shape memory alloys ( SMA ) have more reasonable and workable than any other type of the SMAs, e.g. Ti-Ni alloy. Its shape memory effect and super elasticity that are caused with the stress-induced γ( Austenite )⇔ ε martensitic transformation have been studied for. The cycled tensile tests are conducted on the springs made of FMS, S45C and SUS304. The load-displacement curve of FMS obtained by the cycled tensile test indicates a reversible large hysteresis loop. This is caused by deformation in two different processes of stress-induced martensitic transformation at loading, and reverse transformation at unloading. The non-circular wire helical spring of FMS is able to absorb more energy in early stage during large deformation than of S45C and SUS304.


Bone is continuously repaired and remodeled through the well‐coordinated activity of osteoblasts, which form new bone, and osteoclasts, which resorb it. How osteoclasts sense the properties of the bone surface remains unclear. By combining light and electron microscopy, we compared osteoclast behavior on three distinct surfaces: glass, calcite single crystals, and bone. Podosomes, the basic units of the adhesion structure, and their organization into superstructures were found to be common to cells that were attached to all three substrates, whereas the structure of the resorption organelle, the so‐called "ruffled border," markedly differed. Moreover, the integrity, stability, and dynamic behavior of the adhesion superstructures also fundamentally differed, depending on the substrate. We conclude that osteoclasts sense the local properties of the underlying substrate and respond to these signals, both locally and globally.


On 26 October 2001, the South African and Burundian governments signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Pretoria, which paved the way for the Department of Defence to deploy SA National Defence Force (SANDF) troops to Burundi. On the morning of Sunday, 28 October 2001, the first group of about 234 troops left the Waterkloof Air Force Base under the command of Brigadier-General Steven Kobe, general commanding officer of the 43rd South African Brigade. Later the same day they arrived in Burundi's lakeside capital, Bujumbura.


Vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) thin films have been produced by pulsed laser deposition. AFM, Raman, optical and electrical measurements have been made on the films in order to understand the growth mechanism of laser ablated V2O5 thin films. The investigations revealed the growth of stoichiometric and high-quality V2O5 thin films at low substrate temperatures. The optical band gap and the electrical conductivity of V2O5 thin films grown at a temperature of 200 °C at an oxygen partial pressure of 100 mTorr are 2.35 eV and 10-4 S cm-1, respectively.


Spoken word recognition involves at least two basic computations. First is matching acoustic input to phonological categories (e.g. /b/, /p/, /d/). Second is activating words consistent with those phonological categories. Here we test the hypothesis that the listener's probability distribution over lexical items is weighted by the outcome of both computations: uncertainty about phonological discretisation and the frequency of the selected word(s). To test this, we record neural responses in auditory cortex using magnetoencephalography, and model this activity as a function of the size and relative activation of lexical candidates. Our findings indicate that towards the beginning of a word, the processing system indeed weights lexical candidates by both phonological certainty and lexical frequency; however, later into the word, activation is weighted by frequency alone.


OBJECTIVES
The primary objectives of this research were to: (i) identify and present methodologies for estimating three types of 'cost-of-illness' measures using healthcare and disability claims data -- specifically 'cost of treatment', 'incremental cost of patient', and 'incremental cost of illness'; and (ii) perform a case-study analysis of these cost measures for women treated for stress urinary incontinence (SUI).

STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS
In this paper, we discuss aspects of cost-of-illness methodologies in the context of SUI. We first distinguish between 'cost of treatment' (i.e. the costs of treating a specific condition), 'incremental cost of patient' (i.e. the additional costs associated with patients with a particular condition, irrespective of any comorbid conditions they may also have), and 'incremental cost of illness' (i.e. the additional costs resulting from a particular illness, as distinct from the costs of other conditions that the patient might have, including conditions which might have caused the illness in question). The latter case is in many ways the most complex to model, requiring controls for related causal conditions. We then applied these three methodologies by analysing the costs associated with SUI. Using data from a large employer claims database (n > 100 000), we estimated a series of regression models that reflected cost of treatment, incremental cost of patient, and incremental cost of illness for SUI.

RESULTS
The three approaches yielded substantially different results. For many purposes the incremental cost-of-illness model provides the most appropriate results, as it controls for comorbid conditions, as well as patient demographics. On a per capita basis using the incremental cost-of-illness model, patients with SUI had direct costs that were 134% more than those for their controls and indirect costs that were 163% more than those for controls. Estimating costs for the average (i.e. mean) person results in dollar-termed estimates of the costs of SUI. In particular, we found that in 1998, the average direct medical cost of SUI was $US5642 and the indirect workplace cost of SUI was $US4208.

CONCLUSIONS
Since the various methods yield substantially different results, it is important that the end user of cost-of-illness analyses of claims data have a clear purpose in mind when reporting the cost of the condition of concern. The incremental cost-of-illness measure for claims data has substantial advantages in terms of enhancing our understanding of the specific cost impact of SUI.


Working out from an encounter with a series of memorial benches at Mullion Cove, Cornwall, this paper develops an account of landscape in terms of absence and the non-coincidence of self and world. Arguing that recent work on the topics of landscape, embodiment, perception and material culture has tended to stress presence in various ways, I seek to explore instead here motifs of absence, distance, loss and haunting. The paper further attempts to combine descriptive and experiential accounts of the memorial benches and the views they open with conceptual arguments regarding the limits of certain phenomenological understandings of self and landscape. In particular, Derrida's critical reading of Merleau-Ponty is outlined and explored. The final substantive section of the paper then takes a further cue from the memorial benches to discuss what it terms the geographies of love. The argument here is that such geographies constitute a fracture forbidding any phenomenological fusion of self and world, entailing instead a simultaneous opening-onto and distancing-from. It is within the tension of this openness and distance, perhaps, that landscape, absence and love are entangled.


Abstract Background Cognitive training (CT) and aerobic exercise both show promising moderate impact on cognition and everyday functioning in schizophrenia. Aerobic exercise is hypothesized to increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and thereby synaptic plasticity, leading to increased learning capacity. Systematic CT should take advantage of increased learning capacity and be more effective when combined with aerobic exercise. Methods We examined the impact of a 6-month program of cognitive training & exercise (CT&E) compared to cognitive training alone (CT) in 47 first-episode schizophrenia outpatients. All participants were provided the same Posit Science computerized CT, 4 h/week, using BrainHQ and SocialVille programs. The CT&E group also participated in total body circuit training exercises to enhance aerobic conditioning. Clinic and home-based exercise were combined for a target of 150 min per week. Results The MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery Overall Composite improved significantly more with CT&E than with CT alone (p = 0.04), particularly in the first 3 months (6.5 v. 2.2 T-score points, p < 0.02). Work/school functioning improved substantially more with CT&E than with CT alone by 6 months (p < 0.001). BDNF gain tended to predict the amount of cognitive gain but did not reach significance. The cognitive gain by 3 months predicted the amount of work/school functioning improvement at 6 months. The amount of exercise completed was strongly associated with the degree of cognitive and work/school functioning improvement. Conclusions Aerobic exercise significantly enhances the impact of CT on cognition and functional outcome in first-episode schizophrenia, apparently driven by the amount of exercise completed.


The development of liver transplantation has led to technical refinements such as liver graft reduction or splitting for transplantation in two recipients, the use of living related donors, and the temporary orthotopic transplantation of auxiliary liver grafts. Regarding immuno-suppression, new drugs are currently under evaluation, such as tacrolimus (FK 506) which could be effective on some severe rejections. On the other hand, the indications of liver transplantation have been revisited according to clinical results. In France, the increasing development of organ and tissue transplantation has led to the creation of the Etablissement Français des Greffes, which has the following missions: managing the waiting lists, supporting organ donation, ensuring sanitary safety, and evaluating transplantation activities. Future alternatives to allogenic liver transplantation are mainly represented by xenografting with monkey or pig livers, hepatic assistance and bioartificial liver, and gene therapy.


The objectives of this study are (a) to determine if native speakers of Canadian French at different English proficiencies can use primary stress for recognizing English words and (b) to specify how the second language (L2) learners' (surface-level) knowledge of L2 stress placement influences their use of primary stress in L2 word recognition. Two experiments were conducted: a cross-modal word-identification task investigating (a) and a vocabulary production task investigating (b). The results show that several L2 learners can use primary stress for recognizing English words, but only the L2 learners with targetlike knowledge of stress placement can do so. The results also indicate that knowing where primary stress falls in English words is not sufficient for L2 learners to be able to use stress for L2 lexical access. This suggests that the problem that L2 word stress poses for many native speakers of (Canadian) French is at the level of lexical processing.


Rate 1/2 convolutional codes over the ring of integers modulo M are combined with M-ary continuous phase modulation (CPM) schemes whose modulation indices are of the form h=1/M. An M-ary CPM scheme with h=1/M can be modeled by a continuous-phase encoder (CPE) followed by a memoryless modulator (MM), where the CPE is linear over the ring of integers modulo M. The fact that the convolutional code and the CPE are over the same algebra allows the state of the CPE to be fed back and used by the convolutional encoder. A modified Euclidean distance function that substantially simplifies the search for good codes has been derived and used to find new codes. Numerical results show that this approach consistently improves the performance as compared to coded schemes using binary convolutional codes with the same decoding complexity.


Osteoarthritides of the hip and knee represent two of the most important causes of pain and physical disability in the community. Recent studies have helped delineate the different patterns, rates of progression, and determinants of outcome in these two conditions. For example, patellofemoral and tibiofemoral osteoarthritis of the knee appear to have different associations and consequences; psychosocial factors and muscle strength seem to be the key determinants of pain and disability. These insights have contributed to a parallel development in new treatment strategies for established hip and knee osteoarthritis, including increased psychosocial support, educational and fitness programs, and different drugs and physical interventions. Therapeutic regimens geared to the specific needs of patients with lower limb osteoarthritis are emerging. They should replace the inappropriate application of treatments designed for inflammatory arthropathies to patients with osteoarthritis.


Abstract Objective: The current study summarizes the results of a 2020 survey that solicited information regarding backgrounds, beliefs, practices, and incomes of clinical neuropsychologists who practice in Canada. Methods: Clinical neuropsychologists who practice in Canada were invited to participate in an online survey that was available from 1/17/20 to 4/02/20. Available survey findings were obtained from 111 respondents, which reflects a response rate of 51.3% of the 216 doctoral-level Canadian neuropsychologists identified in at least one major North American or international professional organization membership list (AACN, INS, NAN, or SCN). Results: Most of the current respondents were White/Caucasian women who identified as adult providers and worked full-time in urban institutional settings. Four Canadian provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec) accounted for more than 91% of the current respondent sample. Incomes and career satisfactions were largely encouraging, though some important variations were noted by province, work setting, and professional identity. Incomes were significantly associated with forensic practices and years of clinical experience. Most respondents made use of technician support in their practices, largely to increase productivity and patient volume. Only a small minority of respondents were board-certified and there was generally limited interest in future board certification. Conclusions: While important similarities were observed in the current Canadian sample relative to recent survey findings obtained in a U.S. sample, results also reveal a number of important differences that serve as important areas of future consideration.


The postcoordinated interligand-coupling strategy provides a useful and complementary protocol for synthesizing polydentate ligands. Herein, diastereoselective photoreactions of Λ-[Ir(pq)2(d-AA)] (Λ-d) and Λ-[Ir(pq)2(l-AA)] (Λ-l, where pq is 2-phenylquinoline and AA is an amino acid) are reported in the presence of O2 under mild conditions. Diastereomer Λ-d is dehydrogenatively oxidized into an imino acid complex, while diastereomer Λ-l mainly occurs via interligand C-N cross-dehydrogenative coupling between quinoline at the C8 position and AA ligands at room temperature, affording Λ-[Ir(pq)(l-pq-AA)]. Furthermore, the photoreaction of diastereomer Λ-l is temperature-dependent. Mechanistic experiments reveal the ligand-radical intermediates may be involved in the reaction. Density functional theory calculations were used to eluciate the origin of diastereoselectivity and temperature dependence. This will provide a new protocol for the amination of quinoline at the C8 position via the postcoordinated interligand C-N cross-coupling strategy under mild conditions.


The optimization of microelectronic devices and Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) technology depends on the knowledge of the mechanical and thermophysical properties of the thin film materials used to fabricate them. The thickness, stoichiometry, structure and thermal history can affect the properties of thin films causing their mechanical and thermophysical properties to diverge from bulk values. Moreover, it is known that the mechanical and thermophysical properties of thin films vary considerably at different temperatures. Bulk properties of semiconductors have been characterized over a wide range of temperatures; however there is limited information on thin film properties of silicon-based compounds such as silicon nitride, specially at high temperatures. In our work, MEMS devices designed to record the localized maximum temperature during high temperature thermal processes, which we call Breaking T-MEMS, will be presented as a way to determine some of the mechanical properties (Young's modulus and fracture strength) and thermophysical properties (coefficient of thermal expansion) of silicon-rich nitride thin films at high temperatures. The Breaking T-MEMS device consists of a thin film bridge suspended over a substrate. During testing, the devices are thermally loaded in tension by heating the sample. The low coefficient of thermal expansion of the film relative to that of the substrate causes the thin film bridge to break at a specific temperature. Through a combination of indirect experimental measurements, analytical expressions, numerical and statistical analysis, and if the experiments are conducted using at least two different substrates of known temperaturedependent coefficients of thermal expansion, some of the material properties of the film can be calculated from the breaking temperatures of various devices. The two candidate materials for the substrate are silicon and aluminum oxide (sapphire).


In this paper, a generalized approach of the backstepping method for stabilizing and solving system of ordinary differential equations will be applied for systems of differential equations with multiple delay by transforming the non-linear system of delay differential equations into a system of ordinary differential equations with cooperation of the method of steps. The basic idea of this approach is to find Lyapunov function for stabilizing the system of different time steps which is chosen as the definitions of the present approach.


Prison officials have historically been afforded considerable discretion to administer sanctions designed to maintain order and security within a prison. Such discretion can generate disparate treatment of offender groups, but few studies have investigated whether sanction disparities exist within prisons, despite considerable research on sanctioning decisions made by other criminal justice actors. We use data collected from a nationally representative sample of inmates housed in state operated confinement facilities to examine potential influences of prison officials' decisions to impose one type of sanction—disciplinary segregation. Multi-level analyses reveal that both legally relevant criteria such as prior misconduct history and extralegal factors such as age and holding a prison job affected whether an inmate was placed in disciplinary segregation for a rule violation. Also, prisons in which a greater proportion of the inmate population is involved in prison work and prisons with a higher density of inmates classified minimum-security use disciplinary segregation less frequently.


When developing a black box model, the precise functional relationship between inputs and output is unknown. Engineers and scientists have turned to various regression tools in order to effectively capture the relationship based on past data observations. When modeling this data, however, it is important to only use inputs that provide information about the output. This paper presents a method of selecting the most informational input vectors for use in regression model building. This information-theoretic analysis for input vector selection requires only past data observations. Experimental results show that models built on the most informational input vectors produce less mean squared error on both training and validation data sets.Copyright © 2002 by ASME


Eurycoma longifolia is one of the commonly consumed herbal preparations and its major chemical compound, eurycomanone, has been described to have antimalarial, antipyretic, aphrodisiac, and cytotoxic activities. Today, the consumption of E. longifolia is popular through the incorporation of its extract in food items, most frequently in drinks such as tea and coffee. In the current study, the characterisation of the physicochemical and pharmacokinetic (PK) attributes of eurycomanone were conducted via a series of in vitro and in vivo studies in rats and mice. The solubility and chemical stability of eurycomanone under the conditions of the gastrointestinal tract environment were determined. The permeability of eurycomanone was investigated by determining its distribution coefficient in aqueous and organic environments and its permeability using the parallel artificial membrane permeability assay system and Caco-2 cultured cells. Eurycomanone's stability in plasma and its protein-binding ability were measured by using an equilibrium dialysis method. Its stability in liver microsomes across species (mice, rat, dog, monkey, and human) and rat liver hepatocytes was also investigated. Along with the PK evaluations of eurycomanone in mice and rats, the PK parameters for the Malaysian Standard (MS: 2409:201) standardised water extract of E. longifolia were also evaluated in rats. Both rodent models showed that eurycomanone in both the compound form and extract form had a half-life of 0.30 h. The differences in the bioavailability of eurycomanone in the compound form between the rats (11.8%) and mice (54.9%) suggests that the PK parameters cannot be directly extrapolated to humans. The results also suggest that eurycomanone is not readily absorbed across biological membranes. However, once absorbed, the compound is not easily metabolised (is stable), hence retaining its bioactive properties, which may be responsible for the various reported biological activities.


We demonstrate a planar, tunable superconducting qubit with energy relaxation times up to 44 μs. This is achieved by using a geometry designed to both minimize radiative loss and reduce coupling to materials-related defects. At these levels of coherence, we find a fine structure in the qubit energy lifetime as a function of frequency, indicating the presence of a sparse population of incoherent, weakly coupled two-level defects. We elucidate this defect physics by experimentally varying the geometry and by a model analysis. Our "Xmon" qubit combines facile fabrication, straightforward connectivity, fast control, and long coherence, opening a viable route to constructing a chip-based quantum computer.


Objectives To determine the prevalence of radiographic and histologic superior semicircular canal dehiscence (SSCD) and posterior semicircular canal dehiscence (PSCD) and associated changes in temporal bone thickness in children aged 0 to 7 years. Study Design Retrospective chart review and histopathologic review of cadaveric bone specimens. Setting Two tertiary referral centers. Patients Children younger than 7 years who underwent high-resolution computed tomography scan including the temporal bones between 1998 and 2013 and temporal bones harvested from children younger than 7 years. Intervention(s) Two hundred twenty-eight computed tomography studies and 58 temporal bone specimens were reviewed. Available patient demographics were tabulated. Main Outcome Measure(s) Prevalence of SSCD and PSCD and bone thickness over semicircular canals, with comparison across age groups. Clinical data were extracted for patients with radiographic dehiscence. Results Prevalence by ear of SSCD was 11.9%, 4.9%, 2.8%, and 0% and of PSCD was 16.7%, 2.4%, 1.4%, and 0% in children aged less than 6 months, 6 to 11 months, 12 to 35 months, and 3 to 7 years, respectively. SSCD was statistically more common before 1 year of age and PSCD before 6 months of age. Bone thickness overlying both the SSC and the PSC increased with age. Radiographic PSC bone was significantly thicker than SSC bone in patients older than 12 months. No dehiscences were found in the histologic specimens. Conclusion Radiographic dehiscence of the canals is common in the first 6 months of life, with thin bone seen histologically. Prevalence decreases with increasing age as the bone overlying the canals increases in thickness.


Wide Area Motion Imagery (WAMI) enables the surveillance of tens of square kilometers with one airborne sensor Each image can contain thousands of moving objects. Applications such as driver behavior analysis or traffic monitoring require precise multiple object tracking that is dependent on initial detections. However, low object resolution, dense traffic, and imprecise image alignment lead to split, merged, and missing detections. No systematic evaluation of moving object detection exists so far although many approaches have been presented in the literature. This paper provides a detailed overview of existing methods for moving object detection in WAMI data. Also we propose a novel combination of short-term background subtraction and suppression of image alignment errors by pixel neighborhood consideration. In total, eleven methods are systematically evaluated using more than 160,000 ground truth detections of the WPAFB 2009 dataset. Best performance with respect to precision and recall is achieved by the proposed one.


In this paper, the wave concept iterative procedure (WCIP) is presented to analyse the H-shaped patch antenna circuits. The principles of the WCIP is described, the advantages of the WCIP is discussion. The two-dimension Fast Fourier Transformation (2D-FFT) is used to simplify calculations and to take the excellence of the spatial and spectral domain for analysis. The numerical results show a good agreement compared with the HFSS simulation data, which illustrates the efficiency and correctness of WCIP.


It is commonly assumed that the alpha effect of mean-field magnetohydrodynamics essentially stops acting wherever the mean-field size reaches a certain value. We show that if the mean velocity is approximately constant, the regions where the field reaches such a threshold tend to shrink in size or the field tends to become constant there. The rate of this process is also estimated.


The aim of this study was to investigate further some efferent actions and axonal properties of the unmyelinated fibres innervating rabbit and rat skin. This investigation can be separated into two parts. Firstly, single unit studies were carried out to determine which functional class(es) or sub-class(es) of C-fibre are responsible for antidromic vasodilatation in both rabbit and rat skin. The findings of these single unit studies were compared with the flare responses of the skin to noxious mechanical and heat stimuli. Secondly, activity-dependent slowing of conduction velocity and axonal spike shape were examined in identified cutaneous C-fibres in the rat in order to determine whether such axonal properties could be used to identify the different functional classes of C-fibre. For the antidromic vasodilatation study, fine filaments were dissected from the cut proximal end of the saphenous nerve in anaesthetized rabbits and rats. Individual C-fibres (conduction velocity <2m/s) were classified into functional groups according to their responses to mechanical and thermal stimulation. The threshold for electrical stimulation of individual C-fibres was determined using the collision technique. Filaments were antidromically electrically stimulated at intensities sufficient to excite the conducting Cfibres, and skin blood flow was monitored before, during and after filament stimulation using laser Doppler perfusion imaging or laser Doppler fiowmetry. In both species, the only C-fibres capable of producing a detectable vasodilator response following antidromic stimulation were nociceptive in nature, and in all cases the area of vasodilatation coincided well with the afferent receptive field. However, not all nociceptors produced a detectable vasodilatation, and it seems that a sub-group of polymodal and heat nociceptors are responsible for the efferent action of antidromic vasodilatation in rabbit and rat skin. Flare responses in rabbit and rat skin were only detected following mechanical and heat stimuli within noxious ranges. The spread of the flare responses, together with the sizes of the afferent and efferent receptive fields of individual C-units, provide support for the axon reflex mechanism for the production of flare and antidromic vasodilatation. The percentage slowing of conduction velocity was calculated following a standard electrical tetanus in identified C-fibres dissected from the saphenous nerve in anaesthetized rats. Nociceptive C-fibres showed a greater slowing of conduction velocity than non nociceptive fibres, and moreover, one could separate the two classes of non-nociceptive afferent C-fibres found in the rat saphenous nerve (the mechanoreceptors and cold thermoreceptors) on the basis of their conduction velocity slowing. In addition, activitydependent slowing of conduction velocity could be used to differentiate between the afferent and non-afferent populations of inexcitable C-fibres. Spike shapes of functionally classified C-fibres were recorded extracellularly using standardized filter settings, and some variations in spike shape in relation to receptor type were found. Polymodal nociceptors displayed wider spikes than mechanoreceptors, and cold thermoreceptor units tended to have monophasic spikes. Also, the spontaneously active sympathetic efferent Cfibres tended to have spikes of relatively long duration. The use of axonal properties such as activity-dependent slowing of conduction velocity and spike shape to differentiate nociceptors from non-nociceptors has great potential in experiments where axons are isolated from their terminals.


Traditionally, scholars in physics education research pay attention to students solving well-structured learning activities, which provide restricted room for collaboration and idea-generation due to their close-ended nature. In order to encourage the socialization of information among group members, we utilized a real-world problem where students were asked to generate a well-structured physics task, and investigated how student groups collaborated to create physics problems for younger students at an introductory physics course at a university in northern Chile. Data collection consists of audio recording the group discussions while they were collaborating to develop their physics problems as well as the solutions they created to their problems. Through interviews, we accessed students' perceptions on the task and its challenges. Results suggest that generating problems is an opportunity for students to propose ideas and make decisions regarding the goals of the problem, concepts and procedures, contextual details and magnitudes and units to introduce in their generated problems. In addition, we found evidence that groups tested the validity of their creations by engaging in strategies often observed with algebra-based physics problems, such as mathematical procedures and qualitative descriptions of the physics embedded in the problem, yet groups invested more time with algebra-based strategies compared to more qualitative descriptions. Students valued the open-ended nature of the task and recognized its benefits in utilizing physics ideas into context, which in turn enabled collaboration in a way not experienced with traditional algebra-based problems. These findings support the use of generative activities as a pathway for students to engage in real-world physics problems that allow for a range and variety of collective processes and ideas.


The ability to discover useful behaviours from past experience and transfer them to new tasks is considered a core component of natural embodied intelligence. Inspired by neuroscience, discovering behaviours that switch at bottleneck states have been long sought after for inducing plans of minimum description length across tasks. Prior approaches have either only supported online, on-policy, bottleneck state discovery, limiting sample-efficiency, or discrete state-action domains, restricting applicability. To address this, we introduce Model-Based Offline Options (MO2), an offline hindsight framework supporting sample-efficient bottleneck option discovery over continuous state-action spaces. Once bottleneck options are learnt offline over source domains, they are transferred online to improve exploration and value estimation on the transfer domain. Our experiments show that on complex long-horizon continuous control tasks with sparse, delayed rewards, MO2's properties are essential and lead to performance exceeding recent option learning methods. Additional ablations further demonstrate the impact on option predictability and credit assignment.


Sustained monoculture often leads to a decline in soil quality, in particular to the build-up of pathogen populations, a problem that is conventionally addressed by the use of either fungicide and/or soil fumigation. This practice is no longer considered to be either environmentally sustainable or safe. While the application of organic fertilizer is seen as a means of combating declining soil fertility, it has also been suggested as providing some control over certain soil-borne plant pathogens. Here, a greenhouse comparison was made of the Fusarium wilt control efficacy of various treatments given to a soil in which chrysanthemum had been produced continuously for many years. The treatments comprised the fungicide carbendazim (MBC), the soil fumigant dazomet (DAZ), the incorporation of a Paenibacillus polymyxa SQR21 (P. polymyxa SQR21, fungal antagonist) enhanced bio-organic fertilizer (BOF), and applications of BOF combined with either MBC or DAZ. Data suggest that all the treatments evaluated show good control over Fusarium wilt. The MBC and DAZ treatments were effective in suppressing the disease, but led to significant decrease in urease activity and no enhancement of catalase activity in the rhizosphere soils. BOF including treatments showed significant enhancement in soil enzyme activities and microbial communities compared to the MBC and DAZ, evidenced by differences in bacterial/fungi (B/F) ratios, Shannon–Wiener indexes and urease, catalase and sucrase activities in the rhizosphere soil of chrysanthemum. Of all the treatments evaluated, DAZ/BOF application not only greatly suppressed Fusarium wilt and enhanced soil enzyme activities and microbial communities but also promoted the quality of chrysanthemum obviously. Our findings suggest that combined BOF with DAZ could more effectively control Fusarium wilt disease of chrysanthemum.


In original essays, fourteen nationally known scholars examine the practical, philosophical, and epistemological implications of a variety of research traditions. Included are discussions of historical, theoretical, and feminist scholarship; case-study and ethnographic research; text and conversation analysis; and cognitive, experimental, and descriptive research. Issues that cross methodological boundaries, such as the nature of collaborative research and writing, methodological pluralism, the classification and coding of research data, and the politics of composition research, are also examined. Contributors reflect on their own research practices, and so reflect the current state of composition research itself.


Background The proportion of the global population aged 60 and over is increasing, more so in Latin America than any other region. Depression is common among elderly people and an important cause of disability worldwide. Aims To estimate the prevalence and correlates of late-life depression, associated disability and access to treatment in five locations in Latin America. Method A one-phase cross-sectional survey of 5886 people aged 65 and over from urban and rural locations in Peru and Mexico and an urban site in Venezuela. Depression was identified according to DSM–IV and ICD–10 criteria, Geriatric Mental State–Automated Geriatric Examination for Computer Assisted Taxonomy (GMS–AGECAT) algorithm and EURO–D cut-off point. Poisson regression was used to estimate the independent associations of sociodemographic characteristics, economic circumstances and health status with ICD–10 depression. Results For DSM–IV major depression overall prevalence varied between 1.3% and 2.8% by site, for ICD–10 depressive episode between 4.5% and 5.1%, for GMS–AGECAT depression between 30.0% and 35.9% and for EURO–D depression between 26.1% and 31.2%; therefore, there was a considerable prevalence of clinically significant depression beyond that identified by ICD–10 and DSM–IV diagnostic criteria. Most older people with depression had never received treatment. Limiting physical impairments and a past history of depression were the two most consistent correlates of the ICD–10 depressive episode. Conclusions The treatment gap poses a significant challenge for Latin American health systems, with their relatively weak primary care services and reliance on private specialists; local treatment trials could establish the cost-effectiveness of mental health investment in the government sector.


The choleriform diarrhoea may be caused by Vibrio cholerae, but also by other Vibrionaceae exhibiting the cholera-toxin antigenic determinants. The authors report three instances of gastroenteritis in infants, caused by 3 strains of non-O1 Vibrio and they carry out bacteriological study on these strains and their pathogenicity-strength factors.


Many people are involved in the management of small projects, but software to assist with this has been too complex to be of much use to other than full-time professional project managers. The authors contend that after word processors, spreadsheets and database managers, project management software is destined to become the fourth software tool, and should change the way that even small projects are planned, implemented, and managed. Most computing courses give token recognition to project management, but if is in the way project management is typically taught in undergraduate computing degrees at many universities that we see room for improvement. Our research has shown that most computing students draw Gantt and PERT charts only because this is required, not because they find them useful.<<ETX>>


Financial characteristics are presented for small firms whose sales increased at a rate greater than the inflation rate over the period 1974–1979. It is noted that these characteristics differ somewhat depending on whether they were a retailer, manufacturer or wholesaler. A growing small firm is generally characterized as one which increases its leverage, decreases its liquidity and incurs a heavy investment in operational assets. Interestingly, it is also shown that these same characteristics, if taken to extremes, are typical of the failed companies in the sample. The reward of growth is success; the risk of growth is failure.


This paper reports a study in which a form of online problem based learning was employed with a group of on campus students in an undergraduate university course. The paper explores the practical issues associated with teaching and learning in this fashion and describes the responses and perceptions of the learners. In the main, the students responded very positively to the changed learning environment despite the fact that it caused them to spend more time in these courses doing different things to which they were accustomed. In particular the students' perceived that the various problem based activities contributed substantially to their learning and enjoyment in the course. The results do, however, suggest some caution is necessary in the use of this approach. While the environment seems readily transferable to flexible and open learning settings, the students frequently indicated that they valued the input of the teacher and saw this component as a valuable part of teaching and learning. The results suggest the need to remember the important place of the teacher in any learning process and the need to ensure students have adequate access to, and lines of, communication with their teachers.


European energy policy seeks to achieve a substantially increased contribution from renewable sources of electricity, and the creation of a pan-European competitive electricity market. The existing infrastructure of the European electricity grid, and generally low levels of integration and co-ordination in the planning and operation of the grid, will not enable these goals to be achieved. The European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) has therefore examined the developments that are required in grid planning, operation and infrastructure to accommodate more renewable sources of electricity and to support a European electricity market. The study concludes that developments are required in planning a European grid to ensure that investments are made in the right places, in the way the grid is operated so that maximum benefit is extracted from a given infrastructure, and in transmission technologies so that effective options are available for environmental, operational, energy efficiency and investment considerations. Specific recommendations are made in each of these areas. The report is addressed to policy-makers in the European Union institutions and at Member State level, to research funders, professional and regulatory bodies, and to all other interested parties. Our objective is to provide the scientific evidence to inform and stimulate further debate on the challenges, and to indicate some specific options for change while recognising, of course, that much is already being achieved in Europe. On behalf of EASAC, I thank the members of the Working Group, and Professor Michael Sterling and Professor Harry Frank who chaired it. Their hard work and knowledge is much appreciated. Working Group members were drawn from ten European countries and a range of relevant disciplines, providing a breadth of experience and viewpoints that proved invaluable in developing the findings and recommendations set out in this report. Professor Volker ter Meulen Chairman, EASAC


Background Despite a significant progress in treatment (ttt) of gout, urate-lowering ttt (ULT) remains problematic, in our country too, partly because the patients with gout are often observed by non-rheumatologists (n-rhs). Objectives To assess some aspects of ULT in gout, to evaluate its regularity and effectiveness by rheumatologists (rhs) and interviewed patients. Methods 360 patients with gout (2010-2014) were chosen for the interviewing, the diagnosis was based on the ACR criteria (1977). 83.6% of patients were males, the mean age was 56.4±11.3 years, the average disease duration was 11.8±7.4 years. Patients admitted to the Rheumatology Unit were questioned by rhs on lifestyle, diet, previous and current ULT. We focused our questions on the regularity and effectiveness of ULT as viewed by both rhs and patients. In addition, it was of an interest what doctor (n-rh or rh) had administered and controlled this ttt. Results According to patients, 59.7% (n=215) of them were taking ULT regularly, while the rhs specified that ULT was prescribed to 16.9% (n=61) of patients between gouty attacks and to 22.5% (n=81) of patients during the attacks of gout (more frequently at the beginning of attacks). In both groups, ULT course lasted not more than 1-2 months. Only 20.3% (n=73) received regular ULT daily, administered correctly by the rhs (duration>2-24 months). 14.2% (n=51) of patients had an experience of ULT, but at the time of the interview, 45 subjects were not taking it because of comorbid conditions (allergies, gastric and duodenal ulcers, hepatitis and cirrhoses, chronic renal failure). 26.1% (n=94) of patients with gout duration of 2-12 years never tried ULT due to various causes (self-treatment, another diagnosis, rare attacks, comorbidities, refusal, polypragmasia). In total, 18.3% (n=66) of patients had indications for ULT in the absence of contra-indications. 32.2% (n=87) of patients receiving ULT now or earlier appreciated its effectiveness. A significant number of patients - 152 (67.8%) - considered ULT to be low- or non-effective. Patients with gouty arthritis considered the ULT to be effective if gouty attacks repeated not more than once per year (OR-2.66, 95% CI 1.92 to 3.69; p=0.0023), and the ULT was controlled by rhs (OR-3.54, 95% CI 2.61 – 4.82; p<0.0001). The rhs stated a very small number of patients under regular ULT - 5,5% (n=4), achieving the effectiveness of it (absence of gout activity, ACR, 2012) Conclusions The ULT administered by non-rheumatologists is often not optimal. In our series, 18.3% of patients do not receive this treatment despite the indications; among the patients under ULT, only 20.3% took it regularly. Certain scepticism of patients with gout towards ULT is due to the lack of improvement of their condition, non-rational current or previous ULT and follow-up by non-rheumatologists. References Khanna D., J. Fitzgerald, P. Khanna and all. 2012 American College of Rheumatology Guidelines for Management of Gout. Part 1: Systematic Nonpharmacologic and Pharmacologic Therapeutic Approaches to Hyperuricemia. Arthritis Care and Res. 2012; 10: 1447-1461. Disclosure of Interest None declared


The concept of reducing intraocular pressure by way of surgery which preserves the internal trabeculum has recently enjoyed renewed interest.1-4 It mirrors an expanding body of reports proposing non-penetrating surgery as a viable alternative to conventional trabeculectomy in glaucoma management. Central to the appeal of this technique is the avoidance of ocular entry which obviates the need for an iridectomy and theoretically limits early postoperative hypotony. This in turn minimises the attendant sequelae of hyphaema, choroidal effusions, shallow anterior chambers, and cataract.

Non-penetrating surgery is broadly descriptive of two technical approaches. Deep sclerectomy, initially described by Krasnov,5 then Kozlov et al 6 in slightly modified form, creates a Descemet's window that allows aqueous seepage from the anterior chamber. Subsequent fluid egress is thought to proceed subconjunctivally, resulting in a filtration bleb, as well as along deeper suprachoroidal routes. Further placement of a collagen implant in the scleral bed has been advocated to help maintain the scleral drainage reservoir.78 The second technique, viscocanalostomy, also requires deep scleral dissection and creation of a filtering window. Ultimate outflow, however, relies on the patency of putative aqueous exit channels, supposedly achieved through identifying and dilating Schlemm's canal using high density viscoelastic. Here, the superficial scleral flap is sutured down tightly, minimising subconjunctival fluid outflow and bleb formation.9

Current debate concerning the role of non-penetrating surgery as a successor to the gold standard trabeculectomy has revolved around its relative effectiveness in short to medium term intraocular pressure (IOP) control and safety.1011 Its justification will, however, have to be judged on the stage of randomised control trials12 that examine longer term IOP control, safety, and visual outcomes. Secondary issues relate to introducing a new surgical technique and involve audit, quality of life and cost considerations, and research into …


Maternal diet impacts the development of the fetal brain and can have long-term consequences for offspring behavior. Amounts of sucrose (table sugar) are high in modern diets, but we do not know how a maternal high-sucrose diet affects the next generation. Our previous data in rats show that a maternal high-sucrose diet (25% of calories from sucrose), which is human-relevant, alters the metabolism of the mother and has long-term effects on the offspring. Adult female offspring showed elevated corticosterone levels in the blood and brain. Adult male offspring had an increased preference for highly palatable food and were more motivated to work for a sugar reward. In this study with rats, we examined how a maternal high-sucrose diet affects steroids in the dam, placenta, and fetus at E19.5. Maternal sucrose intake increased maternal and fetal levels of glucocorticoids (11-deoxycorticosterone (DOC) and 11-dehydrocorticosterone (DHC)) and the mineralocorticoid aldosterone. In addition, maternal sucrose intake decreased levels of androgens (androstenedione and testosterone) in the placenta and fetal brain. Moreover, maternal sucrose intake reduced placenta mass. In summary, we found dramatic changes in maternal, placental, and fetal steroids that might mediate the long-term effects of maternal sucrose consumption on adult offspring neuroendocrinology and behavior.


Pedestrian detection is one of the important features in autonomous ground vehicle (AGV). It ensures the capability for safety navigation in urban environment. Therefore, the detection accuracy became a crucial part which leads to implementation using Laser Range Finder (LRF) for better data representation. In this study, an improved laser configuration and fusion technique is introduced by implementation of triple LRFs in two layers with Pedestrian Data Analysis (PDA) to recognize multiple pedestrians. The PDA integrates various features from feature extraction process for all clusters and fusion of multiple layers for better recognition. The experiments were conducted in various occlusion scenarios such as intersection, closed-pedestrian and combine scenarios. The analysis of the laser fusion and PDA for all scenarios showed an improvement of detection where the pedestrians were represented by various detection categories which solve occlusion issues when low number of laser data were obtained.


The human Xg molecule is a 26 kD transmembrane glycoprotein normally displayed by red cells only. It shows 48 % of homology with CD99, known as a regulator of cellular adhesion and migration. Xg is encoded by the PBDX gene located on the pseudoautosomal region of X chromosome. To determine the functional role of Xg we have developed a Jurkat T cell model transfected with the Xg cDNA. Xg positive Jurkat T cells spontaneously display a strongly activated cytoskeleton with extensive actin polymerization, microvilli formation and strong aggregation. Moreover, this was accompanied by an increase migratory ability upon SDF-1 chemoattraction.
 Unexpectedly, we found Xg to be expressed by malignant cells and particularly by 80% of Ewing sarcomas cell lines. We have transfected the Xg cDNA in Xg negative Ewing's sarcoma cell line BRZ which induced similar activities as those we found for transfected Jurkat T cells. It must be now looked whether Xg expression like CD99 expression is restricted to ES cells among sarcoma cells is linked to an invasive phenotype.


Interleukin-11, a cytokine with multiple biological activities, has been shown to stimulate the proliferation and to support the long-term growth of human myeloma cell lines. Despite this, no expression of the interleukin-11α receptor has so far been demonstrated in myeloma cells. We have investigated the expression of interleukin-11α receptor and interleukin-11 at the level of mRNA and protein product in bone marrow mononuclear cells isolated from patients with multiple myeloma using reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction and flow cytometry. The mRNA for interleukin-11α receptor and/or the corresponding protein were identified in 9 of 15 patients with multiple myeloma. In contrast, the interleukin-11 was not detected in any of the patients examined.


Electrical properties of (120)-oriented BaMgF4 films grown on n-Si(111) substrates have been investigated. It has been found that capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics of Al/ BaMgF4(120)/n-Si(111) structures show hysteresis loops with counterclockwise traces and that the memory window (the loop width) is proportional to the magnitude of the voltage applied to the film. It is speculated from these phenomena that the hysteresis loop is caused by remanent polarization of the BaMgF4 film. The value of the surface charge density, which was estimated from the memory window, was about 0.1 µ C/cm2 in a 330-nm-thick BaMgF4 film. It has also been found from C-V and current-voltage characteristics that typical dielectric constant and average resistivity of BaMgF4 films are 9.4 at 5 kHz and 3.6×1011 Ω cm at a current density of 1 µ A/cm2, respectively.


The distribution of vector-borne diseases is changing on a global scale owing to issues involving natural environments, socioeconomic conditions and border disputes among others. Geographic information systems (GIS) provide an important method of establishing a prompt and precise understanding of local data on disease outbreaks, from which disease eradication programs can be established. Having first defined GIS as a combination of GPS, RS and GIS, we showed the processes through which these technologies were being introduced into our research. GIS-derived geographical information attributes were interpreted in terms of point, area, line, spatial epidemiology, risk and development for generating the vector dynamic models associated with the spread of the disease. The need for interdisciplinary scientific and administrative collaboration in the use of GIS to control infectious diseases is highly warranted.


We first study the conf relation proposed by E. Brinksma and G. Scollo to formalize testing conformance. It is well-known from their work that, in order to test whether an implementation I is a valid implementation of a specification S (i.e. I conf S), it suffices to build, from S, a canonical tester T (S) such that, when T (S) is synchronized with an implementation I, it always reaches a correct final state if, and only if, I conf S. For instance, if I is not a valid implementation of S, the canonical tester T (S) may deadlock with I before reaching a correct final state. We put into evidence the role of the equivalence relation, conf-eq, associated naturally with conf. An important result states that if S1 conf-eq S2, their canonical testers T1 and T2 must also satisfy T1 conf-eq T2, and reversely. Therefore, the best approach is to define the canonical tester modulo confeq, whereas it is currently defined modulo the testing equivalence te. Taking into account that conf-eq is weaker than te, we were able to propose a minimum canonical tester which is simpler than T (S): unlike T (S), it may have fewer traces than the specification S. The term minimum means that no trace from this tester can be deleted without losing the exhaustive test property or, stated otherwise, without taking the risk of accepting an invalid implementation (in the conf sense).


Copper phthalocyanine blue was encapsulated with a copolymer of styrene and maleic acid (PSMA) via a phase-separation technique, and a PSMA-encapsulated pigment dispersion was prepared. The effects of the additive on the stability of the dispersion were studied. Scanning electron microscopy photographs revealed that the particles in the PSMA-encapsulated pigment dispersion were more uniform than those in a PSMA-dispersed pigment dispersion. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy provided evidence that the PSMA-encapsulated pigment acquired abundant carboxylic groups that could improve its wettability to water. Moreover, the results also indicated that the PSMA-encapsulated pigment dispersion had improved color strength, its stability could be greatly influenced by the pH value and ion strength, and its apparent viscosity changed little with an increase in the shear rate. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010


Abstract A validation study was performed for a nonlinear computer simulation model describing xenobiotic absorption, whole plant allocation, and metabolism. Validation involved comparisons of predicted xenobiotic behavior with actual data (from independent studies in the literature) for the herbicides bentazon, chlorimuronethyl, prosulfuron, rimsulfuron, thifensulfuron, clopyralid, picloram, fluroxypyr, imazaquin, imazethapyr, acifluorfen, 2,4-D, 2,4-DB, dicamba, haloxyfop-methyl, sethoxydim, and pyridate. Simulations were performed with parameters describing the plant, the herbicide physicochemical properties, and the environmental conditions used in the experimental studies. The conformity between simulated and actual absorption, whole plant distribution, and metabolism data were evaluated by the ratio of simulated values to actual values in 25 species treated with 18 herbicides from several chemical families such as benzothiadiazole, pyridinecarboxylic acid, imidazolinone, diphenyl ether, phenoxyalkanoic acid, benzoic acid, aryloxyphenoxypropionate, cyclohexanedione, and phenylpyridazine. In general, most predicted values for herbicide absorption, whole plant allocation, and metabolism were close to actual values for this group of herbicides. Comparisons between model prediction and actual herbicide absorption showed that in 79% of comparisons the ratios of predicted/[served were between 0.8 and 1.2. For whole plant allocation, 61% of the comparisons showed a ratio of 1 ± 0.3. These results demonstrate the utility of this new computer simulation model in predicting xenobiotic behavior in plants and the potential use of such models in rational design of herbicide molecules for optimal plant uptake and whole plant allocation.


The electrical discharge machining (EDM) is one of the latest non-traditional machining processes, based on thermoelectric energy between the workpiece and an electrode. In this machining process, the material is removed electrothermally by a series of successive discrete discharges between two electrically conductive materials (electrode and workpiece). The performance of the machining process depends on the material, design and manufacturing method of the electrodes. Usually, the machine manufacturer uses the standard workpiece and electrode materials to establish the EDM parameter settings. The present study focused on the effect of Copper and Brass electrodes on material removal rate (MRR) and tool wear rate (TWR) for AISI D2 tool steel by using Die- Sinker EDM. The current was varied from 4 to 10 amp, the voltage and flushing pressure were constant, the MRR for copper electrode was in the range of 4.8139 -22.6580 mm 3 /min whereas the range of MRR for brass electrode was 7.2213-9.8203 gm/min. The trend of TWR as shown in results increases with current for both the electrodes. The effect of voltage on MRR and TWR for both the electrodes was analyzed. The MRR for copper electrode was continuously decreasing with voltage whereas MRR for brass don't follow any specific trend. The TWR for both the electrodes decreases with voltage. It has been observed that copper electrode is the best for machining AISI D2 tool steel by using Die- Sinker EDM.


Ferroptosis is a novel form of programmed cell death morphologically, genetically, and biochemically distinct from other cell death pathways and characterized by the accumulation of iron-dependent lipid peroxides and oxidative damage. It is now understood that ferroptosis plays an essential role in various biological processes, especially in the metabolism of iron, lipids, and amino acids. Gastric cancer (GC) is a prevalent malignant tumor worldwide with low early diagnosis rates and high metastasis rates, accounting for its relatively poor prognosis. Although chemotherapy is commonly used to treat GC, drug resistance often leads to poor therapeutic outcomes. In the last several years, extensive research on ferroptosis has highlighted its significant potential in GC therapy, providing a promising strategy to address drug resistance associated with standard cancer therapies. In this review, we offer an extensive summary of the key regulatory factors related to the mechanisms underlying ferroptosis. Various inducers and inhibitors specifically targeting ferroptosis are uncovered. Additionally, we explore the prospective applications and outcomes of these agents in the field of GC therapy, emphasizing their capacity to improve the outcomes of this patient population.


One of the Machiavelli's most famous and innovative thesis states that good laws arise from social conflicts, according to the Roman Empire example of the opposition between plebs and nobles. Conflicts are able to bring about order in virtue of the characteristic constrictive force of necessity, which prevents the ambition to prevail. Nonetheless, law does not neutralize the conflict; just give it a regulation. So, law is subjected to history, to the continuous change, which means that it is potentially corruptible. On this account, Machiavelli says that a State can only maintain its authority through a continuous return to the originary moment, viz. to the revival of the experiences of "fear", "terror" and "punishment" lived in the originary event of the foundation. For that reason, in the origin of law is also the violence, whose combined function is to provide legitimacy to its exercise by the State apparatus as the only form to preserve political life from ruin.


Currently, it is noticed that users tend to choose shorter password as their authentication which can be easily attacked. Biometric technologies such as fingerprint scanning, voice authentication, face recognition, signature, hand geometry and iris recognition is now playing an important role especially in application related to security issue. In this work, we present an approach to generate a unique and more secure cryptographic key from iris template. The iris images are processed to produce iris template or code to be utilized for the encryption and decryption tasks. AES cryptography algorithm are employed to encrypt and decrypt the identity data. Distance metric such as hamming distance and Euclidean distance are used for the template matching identification process. Experimental results show that this system can obtain a higher security with a low false rejection or false acceptance rate.


This study aims to jind out tI,e quality ofheallhcare services and the relationships between thejilctors that ilrjluence the quality ofhealthcare services such as teamwork, commitment. knowledge and skills and care and empathy. A lotal of 82 respondents was randomly chosen from 255 population. Data gathered was analyzed using SPSS ( Stalistical Package for Social Sciences) versioll 11.0. Thejindings showed that 68.3% (56) respondents have high perception of the quality ofhealth care services and Ihatthere is no sigllijicallt relationship between the quality ofhealth care services witlr teamwork (r =0.075. p = 0.501). commitment (r =-0.060. p = 0.594) and knowledge and skills (r =0.308. p = 0.005). However the jltldings showed tlratthere is sigllijicant relatiollslrip between quality ofhealth care services with care and empathy (r = 0.308. p = 0.005). Based on the findings. it is recommended that healthcare organizatioll to conduct more training sessions with all it employees to enSlire that tIle services rendered to the public is of high quality.


Many natural images have low intrinsic dimension (a.k.a. sparse), meaning that they can be represented with very few coefficients when expressed in an adequate domain. The recent theory of Compressed Sensing exploits this property offering a powerful framework for sparse signal recovery from undetermined linear systems. In this thesis, we deal with two different applications of remote Fourier sensing, for which the available measurements relate to the Fourier coefficients of our concerned sig- nal: optical interferometry and diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI). In both applications, we face challenging problems due to a restricted number of available measure- ments and the nonlinearity of the direct model for the data. Inspired by the Compressed Sensing framework, our strategy to solve these nonlinear and ill-posed problems resorts to reformulating them as linear inverse problems and propose novel priors to leverage the intrinsic low dimensionality of the solution. The first part of this thesis is devoted to image reconstruction from optical interferom- etry data. State-of-the-art methods are nonconvex due to the intrinsic data nonlinearity and are therefore known to suffer from a strong sensitivity to initialization. We reformu- late the problem as a tensor completion problem, where the aim is to recover a tensor from which we have information through some linear mapping. We propose two different alternatives to solve it, one being a purely convex approach. An original nonconvex alter- nate minimization method has also been explored. We present results on synthetic data and compare pros and cons for both approaches. Our original formulation can be seen as a generalization of the Phase Lift approach and can potentially be applied to other partial phase retrieval problems. In the second part, we tackle the problem of fiber reconstruction in dMRI. dMRI exploits the anisotropy of the water diffusion in the brain to study the organization of its tissue. Particularly, the goal of our work is to recover the local properties of the axon tracts, i.e. their orientation and microstructural features in every voxel of the brain. We resort to a reweighting scheme to leverage the structured sparsity of the solution, where i?Œthe structure originates from the spatial coherence of the fiber characteristics between neighbor voxels. Imposing this original prior promotes a powerful regularization that guarantees a strong robustness to undersampling. Due to a time-consuming measuring process, this ability to solve the imaging problem from few dMRI data points is crucial to guarantee the feasibility of this technique in a clinical context. We present results on real and simulated data and compare our approach to other state-of-the-art methods. We also discuss how our novel approach can actually be applied in a more generic framework for multiple correlated sparse signal recovery.


Generally, it is known that the spleen accompanied by liver cirrhosis is hypertrophied or enlarged. We examined the wave pattern of the spleen by using abdominal CT images of a patient with liver cirrhosis, and found that they are different from those of a person with a normal liver In the abdominal CT image of the patient with liver cirrhosis, there is a deep wave part on the left side of the spleen. In the case of the normal liver, there are waves on the left side, but they aren`t deep. Therefore, the total area of waving parts of the spleen with liver cirrhosis is found to be greater than that of the spleen with the normal liver. Moreover, when examining circularity by abstracting the waves of the spleen from the image iO liver cirrhosis, we found they are more circular than those of the spleen accompanied by a normal liver. This paper suggests an automatic method to diagnose splenic enlargement by using the wave pattern of the spleen in abdominal CT images on the basis of the two principles. It tells us that we can judge if the abdomen has a focal splenic enlargement automatically, without the manual test of the size of spleen, only with the shape of spleen.


The max edge-coloring problem is a natural weighted generalization of the classical edge-coloring problem arising in the domain of communication systems. In this problem each color class is assigned the weight of the heaviest edge in this class and the objective is to find a proper edge-coloring of the input graph minimizing the sum of all color classes' weights. We present new approximation results, that improve substantially the known ones, for several variants of the problem with respect to the class of the underlying graph. In particular, we deal with variants which either are known to be NP-hard (general and bipar-tite graphs) or are proven to be NP-hard in this paper (complete graphs with bi-valued edge weights) or their complexity question still remains open (trees).


Circular domains in phase-separated lipid vesicles with symmetric leaflet composition commonly exhibit three stable morphologies: flat, dimpled, and budded. However, stable dimples (i.e., partially budded domains) present a puzzle since simple elastic theories of domain shape predict that only flat and spherical budded domains are mechanically stable in the absence of spontaneous curvature. We argue that this inconsistency arises from the failure of the constant surface tension ensemble to properly account for the effect of entropic bending fluctuations. Formulating membrane elasticity within an entropic tension ensemble, wherein tension represents the free energy cost of extracting membrane area from thermal bending of the membrane, we calculate a morphological phase diagram that contains regions of mechanical stability for each of the flat, dimpled, and budded domain morphologies.


Here we report the first encapsulation of sulphated β-cyclodextrin in organic polymer monolith in capillary columns. The columns were prepared, characterized and investigated for the enantioselective nano-liquid chromatographic separation of 37 racemic pharmaceutical drugs, namely, α- and β-blockers, catecholamines, sedative hypnotics, anti-inflammatory drugs, antifungal drugs, norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors, antihistaminics, anticancer drugs, antiarrhythmic drugs and miscellaneous drugs. Acceptable resolution was achieved for some drugs by using reversed phase chromatographic conditions while no separation observed by using normal phase conditions. The developed columns get more economical analysis under environmentally benign conditions.


Modeling energy and charge transfer in DNA has been a challenging issue because of many conformations DNA can take. Due to its simplicity, we propose a discrete variational approach to study the charge transfer mechanism in DNA based on the Holstein-Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model. It is shown that bright solitary waves may propagate through the DNA and the variational approximation provides explicit relations between experimental parameters and important characteristics of the waves such as amplitude, width, chirp and homogenous phase, and energy. Our analytical predictions are confirmed by intensive numerical simulations with a good accuracy.


We present an agent-based approach, for the design and implementation of a Web-based learning environment for use within the Computer Science Department of University College Dublin (UCD). The design is modular consisting of intelligent software entities (intelligent agents-IA), a core intelligent tutoring system (ITS), presentation engine and various information feeder modules. CORBA is used as the middleware technology to link the modules together and allow independent development and use of separate or third party tools. Sub-components are built as enterprise Java beans (EJB) with all in house developed software being Java based. The ITS is used in conjunction with the existing lecturing system within the college and not as a stand alone system.


In practical control systems differences between nominal and real systems arise from internal uncertainties and/or external disturbances. This paper presents a model-based low-order disturbance observer for a sinusoidal disturbance with unknown constant offset. By using the disturbance model of a biased harmonic signal, the proposed method can successfully estimate the biased sinusoidal disturbance with unknown amplitude and phase but known frequency. At the first stage of the observer design, a model-based disturbance observer is designed when all the system states are measurable. Next, a sufficient condition is presented for the proposed observer to estimate the sinusoidal disturbance with a minimal-order additional dynamics using only output measurement. Comparative computer simulations are performed to test the performance of the proposed method. The simulation results show the enhanced performance of the proposed disturbance observer.


For helping SoC designers to make right choices at the first development steps, we present here a new Hw/Sw high-level SoC model in order to facilitate the exploration. Because they offer a large optimization capacity, we particularly aim on operating system (OS) services, tasks mapping and some architectural parameters like frequency, supply voltage or data width. Simulation results provide consumption and time metrics and allow to verify our application functional validity. We focalize our work on a realistic mono-processor sensor architecture while aiming a future evolution to multi-processor and dynamically reconfigurable architecture. Our model is based on SystemC and allows very fast co-simulation including C++ tasks, OS and high-level models of the hardware architecture.


Who are the individuals who utilize brief advice clinics? Are they the middle-income educated who take pride in self-advocacy? The moderate-income who, in this age of increasing income inequality, pinch pennies by not hiring private counsel? Or the very poor who do not have access to free legal services after these services have been slashed? And whatever the demographics of the clinic clients, how well does the brief advice clinic meet their needs? This case study of a free brief advice clinic in Salt Lake City, Utah answers these questions and more. What emerges is a portrait of very low-income individuals trying to handle complex, often contested cases on their own. Though highly grateful for the free clinic in the exit interviews, their frustrations rise as the referrals to legal aid prove unhelpful and the challenge of drafting their own court documents proves more substantial than they and their advisers had imagined. This study highlights honorable efforts by volunteer law students and expert family lawyers, but identifies gaps and weaknesses in the public's access to justice.


The authors consider a flow control mechanism that dynamically regulates the rate of data flow into a network based on feedback information about the network state. Such mechanisms have been introduced in a variety of networks, and have been advocated for future high-speed networks. The authors first model the flow control mechanism by a discrete-space stochastic process and define appropriate performance measures for transient and steady-state regimes. However, the model does not appear to be analytically tractable, and the authors study it through simulation. They then simplify it to a continuous-space deterministic (or fluid) model for which closed-form solutions can be derived easily. It is found that the analytical results for the fluid model agree well with the simulation results obtained using the discrete-space model. Both models explicitly consider delay of the feedback information, thus making them relevant for high-speed networks.<<ETX>>


In this paper we present an application of iterative approximation on source and channel coding for images transmission over noisy channels. The proposed approach to this joint source-channel coding includes a new PSNR evaluator. With this evaluator, an early termination technique is used to reduce the iterative decoding loops. In additions, we propose two schemes for different compressed image. One is for the low bitrate image quality and the other is for the high bit-rate image quality. For each time of iteration, it gains the average PSNR up to 8/spl sim/9 dB in the same bit-rate with the vary channel condition. In order to achieve the corresponding performance, the optimal computation on iterations is investigated in these two schemes. With the lower quality image transmission, there is little PSNR improvement on more than 5 iterations. With the higher quality image transmission, a less-iteration decoding is applied with the early termination supporting. The results show our approach can decrease the complexity of the source decoder. This technique is suitable for real time system.


As multimedia applications emerge as an important driving force for the integration of microelectronic systems for computing, communication, and signal processing, powerful front-end information processing at the sensor part becomes increasingly important to enhance the precision and processing bandwidth of communication receivers or signal acquisition devices. Monolithic realization of robust real-time sensory processors is specially desired to handle in-coming signal ssquence to more informative or compressed format. Mixed-signal very large scale integration (VLSI) microsystems design is an extremely effective enabling technology for the array sensors when data throughput, silicon area, and power consumption are considered.
In order to resolve the challenging situation of co-existence of the circuit behavior and the algorithmic function of a smart VLSI sensor, an arckitecture-driven design approach is suitable for the concurrent development in algorithmic level and circuit level while maintaining design integrity. State-constrained neuron model is an invented mathematical neuron model which eliminates the out-of-bound problem and ensures the stability in solving combinatorial optimization problems. Compact neural network is a scalable VLSI massively parallel processing architecture consisting of state-constrained neurons.
With collective computation and programmable data routing mechanism, a two-way multiplexing and pipelined VLSI architecture has been invented to fully exploit the parallelism of the input data stream. Array sensory processors have been successfully implemented for a combinatorial optimization chip, a VLSI detector chip for partial response signaling, and a VLSI connected component detector chip for early computer vision. Algorithmic studies on wireless communication receiver design and signal processing machine design were also performed. The current-mode CMOS VLSI implementation for partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) detector chip have been designed to achieve a detection rate of 53 Mb/s for class IV partial response signaling with a 20-neuron processing engine in a 2.3 x 2.6 $mm\sp2$ die in a 1.2-$\mu m$ high performance CMOS technology through the MOSIS Service, of USC/Information Sciences Institute in Marina Del Rey, California.


Labeling social-media data for custom dimensions of toxicity and social bias is challenging and labor-intensive. Existing transfer and active learning approaches meant to reduce annotation effort require fine-tuning, which suffers from over-fitting to noise and can cause domain shift with small sample sizes. In this work, we propose a novel Active Transfer Few-shot Instructions (ATF) approach which requires no fine-tuning. ATF leverages the internal linguistic knowledge of pre-trained language models (PLMs) to facilitate the transfer of information from existing pre-labeled datasets (source-domain task) with minimum labeling effort on unlabeled target data (target-domain task). Our strategy can yield positive transfer achieving a mean AUC gain of 10.5% compared to no transfer with a large 22b parameter PLM. We further show that annotation of just a few target-domain samples via active learning can be beneficial for transfer, but the impact diminishes with more annotation effort (26% drop in gain between 100 and 2000 annotated examples). Finally, we find that not all transfer scenarios yield a positive gain, which seems related to the PLMs initial performance on the target-domain task.