Vision and mission statements are believed to play an important role in organisations in their quest to provide clear and concise guidance to their ambitions and purpose. This is especially true for not-for profit organisations as they do not have a 'bottom-line' to drive performances and other strategic decisions. Although several studies have been conducted on the effect of effective vision and mission statements on organisations, there is no evidence of a study having been conducted on secondary schools in the Helderberg area, to the best of the researcher's knowledge. The aim of this study was to explore the extent to which the vision and mission statements are communicated and used within the two secondary schools as part of their decision making processes, especially by the principals of these schools. In order to sufficiently address the implementation, communication and integration of the vision and mission statements in the secondary schools, the following research questions were formulated:  What is the level to which the school's mission and vision statements are used by its principals to guide decision-making processes and the setting of goals and ambitions?  How well are the school's mission and vision statements communicated to – and understood by its stakeholders?  How to properly create and integrate the school's vision and mission statements in order to ensure improved and sustainable academic performances This study explores the levels of communication of the vision and mission statements most notably by the principals to the rest of the school's stakeholders and the integration of these statements into the daily decision making processes. Furthermore, the study investigates the review process of these statements and whether the principals embody the values and visions of their respective schools. From the analysis of the findings, it was clear that these statements are still largely unknown within the two schools, as only 54% of the correspondents have ever seen these statements. The views were varied about whether principals have communicated the vision and mission statements to the stakeholders of the schools. According to Sherman (2001: 24) the ability to clearly and concisely communicate the vision and mission of the organisation is a critical characteristic of leadership. The study also concluded that the statements appeared to not have been fully understood, embodied and communicated by both the principals interviewed. The lack of a clear strategy and Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za


Introduction. Previous work has shown a strong association between alterations in cochlear vasculature, aging, and the development of presbycusis. The important role of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and its receptors Flt-1 and Flk-1 in angiogenesis suggests a potential role for involvement in this process. The aim of this study was to characterize vascular structure and VEGF and its' receptors in young and old C57 Mice. Methods. Young (4 weeks, n = 14) and aged (32–36 weeks, n = 14) C57BL/6 mice were used. Hearing was evaluated using auditory brainstem response. Cochleas were characterized with qRT-PCR, immunohistochemistry, and gross histological quantification. Results. Old C57 mice demonstrated significantly decreased strial area, blood vessel number, luminal size, and luminal area normalized to strial area (vascularity). qRT-PCR showed a significant upregulation of Flt-1, a VEGF receptor, in older animals. No differences were found in VEGF-A or Flk-1. Immunohistochemistry did not show any differences in staining intensity or area with age or cochlear turn location. Conclusion. The marked deafness of aged C57 mice could be in part meditated by loss of vascular development and alterations in VEGF signaling.


Abstract Improving citizen compliance is a major goal of public administration, especially during crises. Although social media are widely used by government agencies across the globe, it is still unclear that whether the use of social media can help local governments improve citizen compliance especially during crises. Based on an original daily panel dataset of 189 cities in China during COVID‐19, this study provides empirical evidence for the positive effect that crisis‐related social media posts published by local government agencies has on citizen compliance. In addition, this effect is mediated by the topic of prevention measures in social media posts, and is stronger in cities with higher GDP per capita, better educated citizens and wider internet coverage. The findings imply that social media is an efficient and low‐cost tool to assist local government agencies to achieve public administration objectives during crises, and its efficacy is largely dependent on regional socioeconomic status.


The renal radiopharmaceutical preparations 99mTc-DMS and 99mTc-GH were examined chemically, biologically and clinically. Both preparations are of high radiochemical purity. The biodistribution of both preparations was examined in experimental animals at different time intervals, from 15 min to 4 hr; the percentage of incorporation of 99mTc-DMS into kidneys is much higher (29.4% to 52.0%) than that of 99mTc-GH (12.80% to 22.20%). Both preparations accumulate to a greater extent in the renal cortex than in the medulla. The most suitable time for renal scintigraphy for "mTc-DMS is 90-150 min while for 99mTc-GH it is 60-90 min. It is concluded that 99mTc-DMS is more suitable for static scintigrams on the scanner and 99mTc-GH for dynamic studies with the gamma camera.


Male sex is considered an independent predictor for the development of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) after adjusting for other confounders. BPD is characterized by an arrest in lung development with marked impairment of alveolar septation and vascular development. The reasons underlying sexually dimorphic outcomes in premature neonates are not known. In this investigation, we tested the hypothesis that male neonatal mice will be more susceptible to hyperoxic lung injury and will display larger arrest in lung alveolarization. Neonatal male and female mice (C57BL/6) were exposed to hyperoxia [95% FiO2, postnatal day (PND) 1-5] and euthanized on PND 7 and 21. Extent of alveolarization, pulmonary vascularization, inflammation, and modulation of the NF-κB pathway were determined and compared with room air controls. Macrophage and neutrophil infiltration was significantly increased in hyperoxia-exposed animals but was increased to a larger extent in males compared with females. Lung morphometry showed a higher mean linear intercept (MLI) and a lower radial alveolar count (RAC) and therefore greater arrest in lung development in male mice. This was accompanied by a significant decrease in the expression of markers of angiogenesis (PECAM1 and VEGFR2) in males after hyperoxia exposure compared with females. Interestingly, female mice showed increased activation of the NF-κB pathway in the lungs compared with males. These results support the hypothesis that sex plays a crucial role in hyperoxia-mediated lung injury in this model. Elucidation of the sex-specific molecular mechanisms may aid in the development of novel individualized therapies to prevent/treat BPD.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is the numerical investigation of the friction laws for incompressible flow in undulated channels, with emphasis on the applicability of the hydraulic diameter concept. A focal point of the study is the derivation of correlations to increase the accuracy of the hydraulic diameter approach.

Design/methodology/approach
Calculations are performed for laminar and turbulent flow, for Reynolds number ranges between 10–2,000 and 5,000–100,000. For turbulent flow, the shear stress transport (SST) model is used. A simple, sawtooth-like undulation shape is considered, where the channel geometry can be described by means of three length parameters. Letting each to take three values, totally 27 geometries are analyzed.

Findings
It is observed that the hydraulic diameter concept applied via analytical or empirical expressions to obtain friction coefficients does not lead to accurate results. For laminar flow, the maximum deviations of analytical values from predicted are about 70%, while 20% deviation is observed on average. For turbulent flow, deviations of Blasius correlation from predicted ones are smaller, but still remarkable with about 20% for maximum deviation and about 10% on average.

Originality/value
Applicability of the hydraulic diameter concept to undulated channels was not computationally explored. A further original ingredient of the work is the derivation of correlations that lead to improved accuracy in calculating the friction coefficient using hydraulic diameter. For laminar flow, the maximum and average deviations of present correlations from numerical predictions are below 5% and 2%, respectively. For turbulent flow, these numbers turn out to be approximately 12% for the maximum deviation and about 2% for the average.


Oxidative phosphorylation, dinitrophenol- and Mg ++ -activated adenosinetriphosphatase and the adenosinetriphosphatein-organic orthophosphate exchange reaction were studied in mitochondria isolated from livers of chronic and acutely diabetic dogs. Although such reactions are readily demonstrable in these preparations, no trends indicating a deficiency of the energy-conservation reactions studied in preparations from diabetic dogs were noted. In addition, electron transport rates with glutamate or succinate as substrate were increased in the diabetic preparations, as was the yield of mitochondria from such animals. This is not in agreement with recently published reports concerning related studies on diabetic cats and rats. The above findings indicate that a metabolic defect in the efficiency of oxidative phosphorylation is not a general primary lesion in the diabetic syndrome.


Purpose: Living kidney donation is safe and effective, but patients in need of a transplant continue to outnumber donors. Disincentives to living donation include lost income, risk of job loss, perioperative complications, and unreimbursed medical expenses. Methods: This study uses US registry and follow-up data on living kidney donors from 2013 to 2015 to identify social predictors of return to work across gender following living kidney donation. Results: Using logistic regression, we find that predictors of return to work following living kidney donation differ for women and men. Among women, age, education, smoking status, and procedure type are associated with return to work. Among men, education, procedure type, and hospital readmission within 6 weeks postdonation are associated with return to work. Notably, single and divorced men are less likely to return to work compared to married men (odds ratio [OR] for single men 0.51, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.37-0.69, P < .001; OR for divorced men 0.51, 95% CI, 0.34-0.75, P = .006). Marital status is not associated with return to work for women. Single and divorced men's greater odds of not returning to work are robust to controls for relevant pre- and postdonation characteristics. Conclusions: Single and divorced men's lack of social support may present an obstacle to work resumption following living kidney donation.


The bacteriophage AP300 infecting Sinorhizobium meliloti was isolated from soil sample from mountainous region of Dagestan, which belongs to the Caucasus Center for Legume Variety under the grant RSF 17-16-01095. The AP300 genome was annotated and its similarity to bacteriophage vB MloP_Lo5R7ANS (NC_025431; Podoviridae family) infecting Mesorhizobium loti strains was revealed. It was found that insertion frequency of the Mesorhizobium phage vB MloP_Lo5R7ANS-like sequences in the chromosomes of S. meliloti strains was 6.591 • 10-4. In the chromosomes of 4 strains of Sinorhizobium meliloti isolated in geographically different regions from soils and nodules of alfalfa plants, intact vB MloP_Lo5R7ANS-like prophages were detected. The 46.39-57.14% ORFs of AP300 and 4 prophages were homologous to ORFs of vB MloP_Lo5R7ANS. The 18 ORFs from mentioned above ORFs were identified in all studied sequences and they were similar to those in vB MloP_Lo5R7ANS. The other 7.22-15.79% ORFs were homologous to other phages. ORFs encoding virion components: head, capsid, tail, virion, integrase were detected in soil bacteriophage AP300 and in all studied prophages determined in rhizobia symbionts of alfalfa. It was revealed that Sinorhizobium prophages could be phylogenetically related not only to Sinorhizobium phages, but also to phages of Mesorhizobium. Tail tubular protein A in all studied sequences has structural differences from the currently known TTPA Klebsiella phage KP32 (pdb5MU4), it has specific sites of post- translational modification, which can probably determine the specificity of interaction with EPS of nodule bacteria of alfalfa.


PurposeThe aim of this work was to study the effect of the different levels of salt and the temperature on some physico-chemical and colour change properties of microwave-dried beef round (M. semitendinosus).Design/methodology/approachThe samples were pretreated with different temperatures (0°C, 40°C and 50°C) and salting (0, 1.5, 2.5%). Later these samples have been dried by the microwave energy at 540 W for seven minutes. Some physical properties (water activity, moisture content, change in diameter, change in thickness, change in shrinkage ratio) and texture, colour and microscopic surface structure analysis were conducted in dried beef round samples.FindingsAs a result, the colour and moisture were the most affected factors. Also, physical and microstructural characteristics were affected by salting and pre-drying. In addition, while the textural structure did not show a significant difference, meat weight and water activity varied.Research limitations/implicationsMeat obtained from a local butcher in Konya was used as the study material. In addition, only a special part of the meat (M. semitendinosus) was used in the study. In the drying process, the parameters were determined as 540 W and 7 min. These are the limitations of the research.Originality/valueAll changes that can occur in the physical properties of the meat after the drying process were examined. The structure of beef round samples formed by microwave drying was shown by using electron microscope. The effects of pretreatment such as salting and pre-drying have been examined on microwave drying.


Using explicitly correlated fixed-node quantum Monte Carlo and density functional theory (DFT) methods, we study electronic properties, ground-state multiplets, ionization potentials, electron affinities, and low-energy fragmentation channels of charged half-sandwich and multidecker vanadium-benzene systems with up to 3 vanadium atoms, including both anions and cations. It is shown that, particularly in anions, electronic correlations play a crucial role; these effects are not systematically captured with any commonly used DFT functionals such as gradient corrected, hybrids, and range-separated hybrids. On the other hand, tightly bound cations can be described qualitatively by DFT. A comparison of DFT and quantum Monte Carlo provides an in-depth understanding of the electronic structure and properties of these correlated systems. The calculations also serve as a benchmark study of 3d molecular anions that require a balanced many-body description of correlations at both short- and long-range distances.


The authors extend a model for the adsorption energy of a close-packed hexagonal monolayer deposited on a substrate of the same structure but different lattice constant as a function of the epitaxy angle between the principal axes. The surface substrate potential is expressed in the form of a periodic potential with the symmetry and periodicity of the substrate surface. The case of lead underpotentially deposited on Ag(111) is examined.


Aim  Temporal variability of annual area burned in Canada (AAB-Can) from ad 1781 to 1982 is inferred from tree-ring width data. Next, correlation analysis is applied between the AAB-Can estimates and Northern Hemisphere (NH) warm season land temperatures to link recent interannual to decadal changes in area burned with large-scale climate variations. The rationale in this use of tree rings is that annual radial increments produced by trees can approximate area burned through sensing climate variations that promote fire activity.

Location  The statistical reconstruction of area burned is at the scale of Canada.

Methods  The data base of total area burned per year in Canada is used as the predictand. A set of 53 multicentury tree-ring width chronologies distributed across Canada is used as predictors. A linear model relating the predictand to the tree-ring predictors is fitted over the period 1920−82. The regression coefficients estimated for the calibration period are applied to the tree-ring predictors for as far back as 1781 to produce a series of AAB-Can estimates.

Results  The AAB-Can estimates account for 44.1% of the variance in the observed data recorded from 1920 to 1982 (92.2% after decadal smoothing) and were verified using a split sample calibration-verification scheme. The statistical reconstruction indicates that the positive trend in AAB-Can from c. 1970–82 was preceded by three decades during which area burned was at its lowest during the past 180 years. Correlation analysis with NH warm season land temperatures from the late 18th century to the present revealed a positive statistical association with these estimates.

Main conclusions  As with previous studies, it is demonstrated that the upward trend in AAB-Can is unlikely to be an artefact from changing fire reporting practices and may have been driven by large-scale climate variations.


N‐Benzyl iodoacetamide, betsamide, at 10 mg kg−1 i.v. blocked the hypertensive and contractile responses of the nictitating membrane of the cat to adrenaline. The blockade had a lag period before full development. Pretreatment of cats with betsamide for 7 or 18 h showed a non‐equilibrium type of α‐adrenoceptor blockade. The responses of the nictitating membrane to adrenaline were markedly depressed and did not recover after high doses of adrenaline. In the same cats, adrenaline caused a profound hypotension. The effect of betsamide lasted for at least 72 h. In the rat isolated vas deferens, 3 times 10−5 M betsamide non‐competitively blocked the contractile responses to noradrenaline; the adrenoceptor blockade was less effective when betsamide was applied with noradrenaline. The blockade lasted for more than 24 h, and was not reversible after extensive washing. Betsamide antagonized the contractile effects of carbachol and 5‐hydroxytryptamine on the rat vas deferens, but not the β‐responses of the guinea‐pig trachea to adrenaline and isoproenaline. Results are discussed in relation to a probable mechanism of action.


Abstract. Knowledge of the undisturbed stress state in the subsurface
is of key interest for the safety assessment of deep geological repositories.
However, stress magnitude data are usually sparse, the available data are subject to large uncertainties, and the acquisition of new data is expensive. This
highlights the importance of 3D geomechanical-numerical models that provide the full stress tensor throughout a volume of interest. Nevertheless, such a model needs some stress magnitude data for calibration. However, what happens if there
are no such data available? We present a novel approach that enables a model to be calibrated on indirect
observations instead of (or in addition to) stress magnitude data. First,
the range of stress states that are theoretically possible are defined.
These stress states are then assessed for plausibility by comparison with
indirect observations or manifestations of the stress state. Amongst
indirect data suitable for the approach are formation integrity tests, borehole breakouts, drilling-induced tensile fractures, and other indirect data: Formation integrity tests
(FITs) are commonly executed during drilling. A successful FIT does not provide
a stress magnitude estimate, but it can be used as a lower bound for the
least principal stress component. Modelled stress states that predict a
least principal stress magnitude higher than an FIT pressure at a corresponding
location and depth are expected to be unreliable. Borehole breakouts
occur if the maximum circumferential stress around a borehole wall exceeds
the compressive strength of the rock. Areas with observed breakouts can be
compared to the modelled circumferential stress state at the corresponding
location and depth in conjunction with an assumption regarding the rock strength. A stress state that shows an agreement between the observations and model
results is expected to be reliable. Drilling-induced tensile fractures
occur if the minimum circumferential stress around a borehole wall is
smaller than the tensile strength of the rock. A modelled stress state's
reliability is assessed analogously to the borehole breakouts. Further
indirect data may be observations of seismicity (stress state reaches a
critical state) or available estimates on the differential stress. All of this indirect information available on a volume of interest is assessed individually in order to single out reliable stress states. Finally, a combination of different types of indirect data allows one to significantly narrow down the range of possible stress states. Instead of pinpointing an uncertain single
best-fit stress state, a range of likely stress states can be provided with
a high level of certainty. In addition, characteristics of the lithology are
reflected in the additional data and help to improve the model.


The discrete element method (DEM) is used to study the response of anisotropic rocks under true triaxial testing. Numerical samples of seven different bedding orientations (β = 0o, 15o, 30o, 45o, 60o, 75o, and 90o) are created. Six series of test simulations (σ3 = 0, 10, 30, 50, 70, and 100 MPa) are conducted on each sample, with five different σ2 values, varied from σ3 to σ1. The effects of anisotropy and intermediate stress on the peak strength, brittle‐ductile transition, and degree of anisotropy are subsequently explained through underlying micromechanics. Results show a "fan‐shaped" variation of the peak strength with σ2, displaying an ascending‐then‐descending trend. An increasing brittleness with σ2 is observed at lower confining pressures for all, but medium anisotropy angles. For higher confining pressures, increasing ductility with σ2 is seen for every anisotropy angle. A U‐shaped variation of peak strength with anisotropy angles is noted that flattens under high intermediate stress. Hence, for numerical models of Posidonia shale under normalized σ2 higher than 0.76, the anisotropy effect is found to be negligible. Micromechanical analyses reveal that the stress asymmetry, suppression of weak plane action as well as the localization and coalescence of microcracks in the intact rock matrix, due to σ2, are the contributors towards the obtained trends. Since existing failure criteria do not weigh in these features in geotechnical assessments, this paper helps future studies by providing a deeper understanding of these effects and a comprehensive data set for the analyses of anisotropic rocks under polyaxial stress conditions.


A less studied strain Aureobasidium mausonii NCIM 1226 was used for pullulan production employing cane molasses as growth medium. The maximum yield of pullulan (70 g l-1) was obtained with 10% molasses in absence of nitrogen source after 120 h of fermentation. Molasses supported growth of Aureobasidium mausonii and also showed adequate pullulan production as compared to other media. Molasses is a rich feedstock along with adequate micronutrients and available in plenty in India. Pullulan produced by Aureobasidium mausonii was compared with standard pullulan by I.R. Spectroscopy. The results indicated that molasses can be an expedient medium for production of pullulan.


This study aimed to analyze the Brazilian scientific production related to tourism consumer behavior without temporal filter, in the databases Spell, Scielo and Scopus, using the systematic review protocol disseminated by Cronin, Ryan and Coughlan (2008). In addition, the bibliometrics by Araújo and Alvarenga (2011) was also adopted as a research strategy. Thus, this research design is descriptive with qualitative approach. The search yielded a sample of 109 papers which were evaluated from three approaches: a) general; b) methodological and; c) theoretical. The papers were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Descending Hierarchical Classification (DHC) and Correspondence Factor Analysis (CFA). About the findings, we identified an increasing interest in the theme after 2014, with the immediately subsequent period being the one with the highest concentration of papers. In relation to the methodological character, the results revealed the preference for descriptive and quantitative researches. The adoption of survey and opinion research were the most recurrent methods. From the DHC and CFA analysis emerged four thematic axes associated with the theme and defined as: "internal influences", "tourism products", "decision making" and "segmented tourism". Therefore, this investigation brings advances to the tourism studies field by enabling a photograph of the Brazilian research and identifying gaps to be filled by future studies.


Background To assess the cardiovascular (CV) risk associated with the use of incretin-based therapy in adult patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) primary prevention group with low CV risks. Methods The clinical studies on incretin-based therapy published in medical journals until August 2014 were comprehensively searched using MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL with no language restriction. The studies were systemically reviewed and evaluated for CV risks using a meta-analysis approach and where they meet the following criteria: clinical trial, incidence of predefined CV disease, T2DM with no comorbidities, age > 18 years old, duration of at least 12 weeks, incretin-based therapy compared with other antihyperglycaemic agents or placebo. Statistical analyses were performed using a Mantel-Haenszel (M-H) test. The odds ratios (OR) and their 95% confidence interval (CI) were estimated and displayed for comparison. Results A total of 75 studies comprising 45,648 patients with T2DM were selected. The pooled estimate demonstrated no significance in decreased CV risk with incretin-based therapy versus control (M-H OR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.81–1.00). Conclusions This meta-analysis suggests that incretin-based therapy show no significant protective effect on CV events in T2DM primary prevention group with low CV risks. Prospective randomized controlled trials are required to confirm the results of this analysis.


The historic city of Shiraz, in the south of Iran, is renowned for its monuments and its remarkable macro skyline, which has been destructively affected by the rapid urban development. This research proposes a systematic historical analysis, which can discover the driving forces behind the evolution of the macro skyline of Shiraz, in the past as well as contemporary times.,The proposed general framework of the methodology is constituted of systematic historical mapping and documentation, which is based on a desk study and field research. Moreover, by means of this methodology, different layers and driving forces of shaping the urban macro skyline are extracted.,The outcome demonstrates 12 driving forces or contributing factors behind the evolution of the urban macro skyline. Based on the results, it is concluded that there was a shift in the subject and content of driving forces during the last century that has contributed to the destructive effects on the silhouette of Shiraz in turn.,It is suggested that the proposed comprehensive method, which is based on the historical analysis and the field survey, can be applied as a documentation platform. It is believed that the analysis and the extraction of driving forces can facilitate future urban landscape management plans as well as possible impact assessments.,Many studies rely on the analysis of historical data in landscape assessment. Nevertheless, this research develops an innovative historical analysis, which identifies the driving forces behind the evolution of the urban macro skyline over time.


Rockfill materials are being used widely in the construction of rockfill dam to trap river water because of their inherent flexibility, capacity to absorb large seismic energy and adoptability to various foundation conditions. Rockfill material is obtained from Noa Dehing dam site, Arunachal Pradesh. The maximum particle size of the material used in the dam is 600 mm. For testing, the size is scaled down to smaller sizes of 4.75, 10, 19, 25, 50 and 80 mm maximum particle size (d max ) using parallel gradation technique. Drained triaxial tests are carried out with a specimen size of 381 mm diameter and 813 mm height with varying confining pressure ( σ 3 ) from 0.2 to 0.8 MPa. All the d max are tested for 87% and 75% relative density (RD). The index properties of the rockfill materials viz. unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and uncompacted void content (UVC) are determined. Stress-strain-volume change behaviour of the modelled rockfill material is studied and presented. The shear strength parameter, angle of internal friction ( φ) is determined for all the d max of modelled rockfill materials tested with 87% and 75% RD. Strength law has been developed to determine the failure stresses using index properties of rockfill materials viz. UCS, UVC and RD and then φ-values are predicted for all the modelled rockfill materials satisfactorily. The φvalue of the prototype rockfill material is predicted using the proposed strength law. The predicted φ-value of prototype rockfill material is compared with the φ-value predicted by commonly used extrapolation technique (power law which requires laboratory triaxial test results) based on d max and found that φ-value match closely. Therefore, it is believed that the proposed method is more realistic, economical, can be used where large size triaxial testing facilities are not available and quick to determine φ-value using index properties.


The review is devoted to one of the unknown, debatable and completely unexplored clinical syndromes –pelvic congestion syndrome. Based on the study of foreign and domestic literature, the probable anatomical, hormonal and other causes of the development of this syndrome were analyzed. An attempt was made to explain and understand the pathogenetic mechanisms leading to impaired reproductive function in this category of patients.


A Cognitive Radio (CR) network should be able to sense its environment and adapt communication to utilize unused licensed spectrum without interfering with the licensed users. In this paper we will look at CR-enabled networks with distributed control. Since CR nodes will need to hop from channel to channel to make the most use of the spectrum opportunities, we believe distributed multichannel MAC protocols to be key enablers for these networks. Besides the spectrum scarcity, energy is rapidly becoming one of the major bottlenecks of wireless operations and has to be considered as a key design criterion. We present here an energy-efficient distributed multichannel MAC protocol for CR networks. Simulation results show that this protocol significantly improves performance by borrowing licensed spectrum and protects primary users from interference, even in hidden terminal situations. Sensing costs are evaluated and shown to contribute only 5% to the total energy cost.


This article offers a brief overview of three faith formation ministries found in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and presents how the partnering of these three ministries with the Life of Faith Initiative would foster a more dynamic and relatable focus on how we live in our faith in daily life as baptized children of God. The author first presents an overview of the Faith Practices Ministry of the ELCA, which is based on the promises or agreements made at baptism. The second ministry, Book of Faith, encourages people to open scripture and join a conversation about the Bible. The third ministry is the Renewal/Prayer/Revival Team that offers revival and healing ministries to those in need of spiritual renewal.


SUMMARY We describe a case of traumatic intra-sphenoidal right internal carotid artery pseudoaneurysm lodged inside the fractured sphenoidal sinus that developed in a patient with a previous history of frontal and skull base fractures involving the sphenoid sinus and walls of the carotid canal, but with normal intracranial findings at early CT angiography. The patient presented two episodes of massive life-threatening delayed epistaxis before successful endovascular treatment combining the use of coils and an uncovered stent was instituted. This case report highlights that patients with head trauma who present sphenoid sinus fractures with or without massive epistaxis should be evaluated for the development of traumatic internal carotid artery pseudoaneurysm as soon as possible. If the first angiographic evaluation reveals normal findings, repeated epistaxis should prompt a second angiographic evaluation because psudoaneurysm takes time to develop. Early treatment with uncovered stent of the aneurysm can be a life-saving therapeutic approach.


A series of novel polymer–clay nanocomposites, that is, liquid-crystalline copolyester/montmorillonite (MMT) nanocomposites, were synthesized by the intercalation polycondensation of terephthalic acid, p-acetoxy benzoic acid, and 1,2-diacetoxy benzene in the presence of different organically modified montmorillonites (OMt's). The OMt's were prepared by the ion exchange of MMT with octadecylamine hydrochloride, p-aminobenzoic acid hydrochloride, or lysine hydrochloride. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy studies indicated that the inorganic cations in the MMT interlayers were already exchanged by organic onium ions and that the OMt intercalated with p-aminobenzoic acid or lysine was good for obtaining more delaminated clay nanocomposites. The glass-transition temperature and modulus of the nanocomposites increased compared with those of the pure polymer, whereas the isotropic temperature decreased. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 89: 3155–3159, 2003


The ABCD3TA readout chip for silicon strip detectors of the ATLAS SemiConductor Tracker (SCT) is described. It is the final design of the single chip implementation of the binary readout architecture. The chip is manufactured in the DMILL radiation-hardened BiCMOS process. Summary of results of irradiations of ABCD3TA chips with up to 100 kGy and 2/spl times/10/sup 14/ n/cm/sup 2/ (1-MeV neutron NIEL equivalent) done with various sources is given in this paper. Measurements of single event effects with high-energy proton and pion beams are also reported. The tests proved that the chips are sufficiently radiation hard for application in the ATLAS SCT.


Abstract SO4 2−/SnO2 was employed for the acylation of a variety of alcohols, phenols, and amines under solvent‐free conditions at room temperature. This method showed preferential selectivity for acetylation of the amino group in the presence of a hydroxyl group. The reported method is simple, mild, and environmentally viable, using several other acid anhydrides at room temperature.


In this work, we have reported a template-free hydrothermal approach to fabricate highly pure single phase ZnMn2O4 pen-type nano needles assembled with flower type nanostructures. The X-Ray Diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy, Energy Dispersive X-Ray spectroscopy, Raman Spectroscopy, Transmission Electron Microscopy, High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy, Selected Area Electron Diffraction and UV-visible spectroscopy techniques were used to study the structural and optical properties of Pen-type nanoneedles assembled with flower like nanostrucutres. Single crystalline hetaerolite ZnMn2O4 pen type nanoneedles of flower like nanostructures have an average diameter of 250 nm. Room temperature Raman spectroscopy reveals the four fundamental vibrational modes. Room temperature UV-vis spectrometer was used to determine the transmittance behaviour pen type nanoneedles of flower like nanostructures. Direct optical band gap of 2.19 eV was acquired by using Davis-Mott model. The UV-visible spectrum points out that the absorption is prominent in visible region and transparency is more than 80% in UV region.


OBJECTIVES
The mechanism of passive smoking in terms of development of periodontitis has not been investigated. This study examined the effect of passive smoking on salivary markers related to periodontitis.

METHODS
Periodontal status was evaluated on the basis of probing pocket depth and clinical attachment level in 273 workers. Salivary marker levels were determined by enzyme assay including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Six periodontal pathogens in saliva were assessed using real-time PCR methodology. Non-, passive and active smokers were defined as subjects exhibiting salivary cotinine levels of 0 (53 subjects), 1-7 (118) and > or = 8 ng/ml (102).

RESULTS
Levels of salivary markers, including IL-1beta, lactoferrin, albumin and aspartate aminotransferase (AST), were elevated significantly in passive smokers relative to non-smokers. Additionally, these marker levels, with the exception of IL-1beta, decreased significantly in active smokers in comparison with passive smokers. However, no meaningful differences in percentages of periodontal pathogens were observed between non- and passive smokers. Multiple linear regression analyses were performed for each marker utilizing age, gender, cotinine level and periodontal status as independent variables. IL-1beta, albumin and AST were independently associated with cotinine level.

CONCLUSION
Passive smoke exposure leads to elevation of IL-1beta, albumin and AST levels in saliva.


Highly amino-functionalized fluorescent carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) were fabricated by hydrothermal carbonization of chitosan at a mild temperature. They were applied to bioimaging of human lung adenocarcinoma A549 cells, showing low cytotoxicity and excellent biocompatibility.


PURPOSE
To investigate the biomechanical responses of the human cornea after small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) procedures, especially their effects of SMILE surgery on stress and strain.

METHODS
Based on finite element analysis, a three-dimensional (3D) model of the human eye was established to simulate SMILE refractive surgery procedures. Stress and strain values were calculated by inputting the intraocular pressure (IOP).

RESULTS
After SMILE refractive surgery procedures, the stress and strain of the anterior and posterior corneal surfaces were significantly increased. The equivalent stress and strain on the anterior and posterior corneal surfaces increased with increasing diopter and were concentrated in the central area, whereas the values of stress and strain at the incision site on the anterior surface of the cornea were approximately 0. Compared with the anterior corneal surface, the stress and strain of the posterior surface were larger. Increasing IOP caused an approximately linear change in stress and a nonlinear increase in corneal strain. In addition, we found that the incision sizes and direction had less of an influence on stress and strain. In summary, SMILE surgery increased the equivalent stress and strain on the human cornea.

CONCLUSIONS
The equivalent stress and strain of the anterior and posterior human corneal surfaces increased after SMILE refractive surgery; these increases were particularly noticeable on the posterior surface of the cornea.


In this paper, an introduction to contactless vector network analysis is given. Furthermore, the implementation of a contactless measurement setup is presented using different printed coupling structures. The coupling structures are connected to a vector network analyzer (VNA) by means of conventional on-wafer probes, as well as planar-coaxial transitions. For the contactless method, conventional calibration algorithms are used to determine the scattering parameters of a device within a complex planar circuit. The contactless measured results are compared to results received with a conventional VNA and to simulation results obtained with a 3-D field simulator. These comparisons show that, especially for small coupling structures of approximately 1 mm, the results correspond well up to 20 GHz.


ABSTRACT This paper conducts a case study of the marketing of Virol – a malt extract preparation that was popular in early twentieth-century Britain – using advertisements from British newspapers. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, it explores how marketers drew upon linguistic/semiotic resources to embed Virol in discourses of scientific knowledge and how these discourses were made to appear true. Through targeted marketing campaigns, Virol established consumer bases framed around three health concerns: malnutrition, constipation and anxiety. Using testimonies, buzzwords, photographs and infographics, Virol created an illusion of scientific rationality, yet the studies or authority figures behind their findings were never explicitly specified, leaving consumers to make assumptions about the product's benefits using their own limited understandings. As women were the primary household shoppers, 'scientific motherhood' (and 'wifehood') was also drawn upon, producing a dichotomy that framed women as responsible for their families' health, yet incapable of this responsibility without expert intervention.


Abstract Seismoelectric methods are based upon physical properties of the earth that produce electrical signals from seismic waves. Electrokinetic sounding (EKS) is one such method that has great potential for hydrogeological studies as the signal arises from the movement of pore fluids under seismic excitation. In principle, the method should be able to directly map changes in hydraulic permeability, rock porosity and fluid-chemistry. A number of researchers have recently tried to exploit the phenomenon in groundwater problems where conventional methods worked poorly. However, publications of successful case histories to support the theory are rare. This may be due to the very weak amplitudes of the electrical signals generated from the seismic wave, which are millivolts to nanovolts in magnitude, and the presence of cultural noise, which is usually much greater in magnitude. We demonstrate electrokinetic responses from formations more than 50 metres deep in two test areas in Western Australia. One is over a saline palaeochannel and the other is over a freshwater aquifer. The seismic waves were generated from a sledgehammer source and acoustic and electrical data were recorded by a seismic acquisition system. Seismic refraction and reflection data provide seismic velocity information for depth conversion and support the seismoelectric data. The data were then compared to borehole logs to find what physical contrasts were detected. Significant hydrogeological boundaries were detected up to 50 m deep in saline groundwater conditions, and to at least 100 m deep in freshwater aquifers.


There are shortcomings in the centralized food regulatory system in Indonesia, such as poor regulatory practices, lack of engagement between regulation and the actual socioeconomic factors, the lack of quantitative and empirical analysis of available academic papers in the decision-making of regulation, the absence of public consultation in the regulatory formulation, and the absence of legal basis and strategy for regulatory review and simplification. The centralized food regulatory system in Indonesia can be categorized as a center-state regulation. Thus, the shortcomings could largely be attributed to the generally perceived failures developed in regulatory theory of state-centered regulation. In developed countries, the solution for the shortcomings is mainly attributed to forms of decentered regulation. To extrapolate those solutions to the Indonesian context might, however, be too simplistic since the socioeconomic setting and the magnitude of food safety problems might substantially differ. This thesis seeks to contribute to food safety policy decision-making, via the design of a more appropriate framework for developing food laws and regulations that can be used by developing countries such as Indonesia to strengthen their national food control system. The FSO/ALOP framework for developing countries can instead be used to align food safety control systems and the socioeconomic prerequisites of Indonesia with decentered regulation. the development of the FSO/ALOP framework as an effective management tool in developing food laws and regulations in Indonesia.


Previous research has rarely addressed trust in leadership at the organizational level. This study addresses this research gap by examining the influence of the magnitude of organizational trust in leadership and consensus about this trust on job satisfaction. The magnitude refers to shared trust in leadership among organizational members, whereas consensus captures the variability in perceptions within organizations, even when overall agreement exists. Moreover, the study examines the mediating role of perceived communication quality in the relationship between the magnitude of organizational trust in leadership and job satisfaction. The sample was composed of 486 employees of 34 transport organizations. Results showed that the magnitude of organizational trust in leadership influenced employees' job satisfaction through perceived communication quality, but its direct effect on job satisfaction was non-significant. Moreover, the organizational consensus on trust in leadership was also positively associated with job satisfaction. Overall, the findings contribute to better understanding trust in leadership as an organizational phenomenon.


Cyclin E supports pre-replication complex (pre-RC) assembly, while cyclin A-associated kinase activates DNA synthesis. We show that cyclin E, but not A, is mounted upon the nuclear matrix in sub-nuclear foci in differentiated vertebrate cells, but not in undifferentiated cells or cancer cells. In murine embryonic stem cells, Xenopus embryos and human urothelial cells, cyclin E is recruited to the nuclear matrix as cells differentiate and this can be manipulated in vitro. This suggests that pre-RC assembly becomes spatially restricted as template usage is defined. Furthermore, failure to become restricted may contribute to the plasticity of cancer cells.


In this study, the effect of the calcination temperature of rice husk on the pozzolanic properties of the resulting rice husk ash (RHA) especially its silica content was investigated. Rice husk was collected from a rice milling plant and washed to remove sand and other impurities, beneficiated using the water beneficiation method and calcined at temperatures of 400, 500, 600, 700and 800°C, respectively for three hours. Samples were taken for XRF analysis, setting time determination and specific gravity test. The result of XRF analysis revealed that RHA calcined at temperatures between 400°C and 800°C contains more than 70% silica as stipulated by ASTM C618 for pozzolanas. The silica content though varies slightly with different calcination temperature of the rice husk ash. Also, calcination removed impurities present in the rice husk. Besides that, the specific gravity of RHA decreases with increasing calcination temperature from 2.00 at 400°C to 1.05 at 800°C. Setting times of RHA mortars at 15% replacement of OPC with RHA shows no definite pattern with increasing temperature. However, the initial and final setting times of OPC-RHA mortars at all calcination temperatures were higher than that of OPC mortar. As a whole, calcination improves the silica content of rice husk ash for use as a pozzolana as well as removes mineral impurities that may affect the pozzolanic properties of the rice husk ash.


We tested a satellite Platform Transmitter Terminal (PTT) in the laboratory (on a float and on captive seals) and on a free-ranging harbor seal in the Southern California Bight to investigate the utility of satellite telemetry in documenting seals'at-sea behavior and movements. We used records from a microprocessor-based time-depth recorder (TDR) to interpret location and diving records from the PTT. For the free-ranging harbor seal, we obtained at least one uplink during 70% (while the seal was at sea) to 82% (while she was ashore) of satellite passes and at least one location each day. Of 62 locations determined by Service Argos for the free-ranging seal, 20 were verified from TDR records to have been at sea; these indicated that the seal may have ranged up to 48 km from the haul-out site, although most locations were within 5 km. The accuracies of locations calculated when the seal was at sea (±15 km) were substantially less than when it was ashore (±1.5 km), thus limiting at-sea tracking of seals by satellite to rather gross movements. Fewer transmissions were detected and locations calculated when the seal was actively diving than when it was swimming near the surface as it departed from or returned to the haul-out site. Consequently, average dive durations indicated by the PTT were substantially shorter than those calculated from TDR records. Documentation of foraging areas and detailed at-sea movements using satellite technology may not be possible for pinnipeds unless PTT-transmission rates are increased substantially from the 1 per 45 set maximum rate now permitted by Service Argos.


We propose a unified approach to disk-based search for deterministic, non-deterministic, and probabilistic (MDP) settings. We provide the design of an external Value Iteration algorithm that performs at most O(lG · scan(|E|) + tmax · sort(|E|)) I/Os, where lG is the length of the largest back-edge in the breadth-first search graph G having |E| edges, tmax is the maximum number of iterations, and scan(n) and sort(n) are the I/O complexities for externally scanning and sorting n items. The new algorithm is evaluated over large instances of known benchmark problems. As shown, the proposed algorithm is able to solve very large problems that do not fit into the available RAM and thus out of reach for other exact algorithms.


Background: In this digital era, the authentication and proof of ownership has become a vital part in all the multimedia data content like audio, image and video. Data Hiding is one of the familiar methodologies used to authenticate and resolve the issues of copyrights of the digital data. Methods: In this paper the FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) implementation of Data Hiding using reversible Dual Image concept is carried out on a gray scale image. Here the FPGA implementation is carried out with and without the concept of pipelining. Findings: In the data hiding process the secret key is embedded in the host image content and analyzed with the values of PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and Embedding capacity. In the last, a comparison for the pipelined and non pipelined mode of data hiding process has been done for the values of area, power and timing. From the results it is noted that the pipelined mode of data hiding gives better result in terms of very less embedding time compared to non pipelined mode with a lesser power consumption. As this data hiding methodology involves only simple operation it is easy to implement as FPGA chip using Verilog HDL Modelling language. Here the entire data hiding operation is carried out by the hardware chip, not by software running on hardware, hence the process of data hiding is fast when compared with all other software implementations. As the whole process of embedding is taking place in real time, we can embed this FPGA data hiding chip as a separate co-processor the data hiding operation with any multimedia device.


Two multi-objective optimization based tuning methods for model predictive control are proposed. Both methods consider the minimization of the error between the closed-loop response and an output reference trajectory as tuning goals. The first approach is based on the ranking of the outputs according to their importance to the plant operation and it is solved by a lexicographic optimization algorithm. The second method solves a compromise optimization problem. The former is designed for systems in which the number of inputs is equal to the number of outputs, while the latter can also be applied to non-square systems. The main contribution is an automated tuning framework based on a straightforward goal definition. The proposed methods are tested on a finite horizon model predictive controller in closed-loop with a 3x3 subsystem of the Shell Heavy Oil Fractionator benchmark system. The simulation results show that the methods proposed here can be a useful tool to reduce the commissioning time of the controller. The methods are compared to an existing multi-objective optimization based tuning approach. The computational time required to run the proposed tuning algorithms is considerably reduced when compared to the existing approach and, moreover, it does not need an a posteriori decision to select a solution from a set of Pareto optimal solutions.


Vasoconstriction induced by dexmedetomidine, a highly selective alpha‐2 adrenoceptor agonist, mainly involves c‐Jun NH2‐terminal kinase (JNK) phosphorylation in the isolated endothelium‐denuded aorta. We carried out an in vitro study to determine the main arachidonic acid metabolic pathway that is involved in dexmedetomidine‐induced JNK activation. Cumulative dexmedetomidine concentration‐contractile response curves were generated in the endothelium‐denuded rat aorta in the presence or absence of the following inhibitors: the JNK inhibitor SP600125, the phospholipase A2 inhibitor quinacrine dihydrochloride, the non‐specific lipoxygenase (LOX) inhibitor nordihydroguaiaretic acid, the 5‐LOX inhibitor AA‐861, the dual 5‐LOX and cyclooxygenase (COX) inhibitor phenidone, the non‐specific COX inhibitor indomethacin, the cytochrome p450 epoxygenase inhibitor fluconazole, the COX‐1 inhibitor SC‐560, and the COX‐2 inhibitor NS‐398. The effect of the alpha‐2 adrenoceptor inhibitor rauwolscine and other inhibitors, such as quinacrine dihydrochloride, nordihydroguaiaretic acid, AA‐861, phenidone, indomethacin and the protein kinase C inhibitor GF 109203X, on dexmedetomidine‐induced JNK phosphorylation was investigated in rat aortic vascular smooth muscle cells with western blotting. The effect of dexmedetomidine on 5‐LOX and COX‐2 expression was investigated in vascular smooth muscle cells. SP600125, quinacrine dihydrochloride, nordihydroguaiaretic acid, AA‐861, phenidone, rauwolscine and chelerythrine attenuated dexmedetomidine‐induced contraction. Indomethacin slightly attenuated dexmedetomidine‐induced contraction. Fluconazole and SC‐560 had no effect on dexmedetomidine‐induced contraction, whereas NS‐398 attenuated contraction. SP600125, rauwolscine, quinacrine dihydrochloride, nordihydroguaiaretic acid, AA‐861, phenidone and GF 109203X attenuated dexmedetomidine‐induced JNK phosphorylation. 5‐LOX and COX‐2 were upregulated by dexmedetomidine. Thus, dexmedetomidine‐induced alpha‐2 adrenoceptor‐mediated contraction is mediated mainly by 5‐LOX and partially by COX‐2, which leads to JNK phosphorylation.


In this work, I show that assimilatory nasalization and lateralization in sequences of nasals and laterals (NL and LN) are driven neither by sonority nor by feature sharing, but by a markedness constraint penalizing non-identical but phonologically similar adjacent segments – which I formalize here in an asymmetric implementation of Agreement by Correspondence (ABC; Walker 2000, 2001; Hansson 2001; Rose & Walker 2004). Typological evidence from a survey of 46 languages provides consistent implicational generalizations regarding the distribution of targets of assimilation; penalties on similarity correctly predect the relative lack of assimilation in heterorganic (ML, LM) sequences and in stop-lateral (TL) sequences. I further show that implementions of ABC in which correspondence is symmetric do not predict the observed preference for NL assimilation over LN assimilation; implementing the correspondence relation asymmetrically solves this problem. Analyses predicated on other considerations do not correctly predict the typology.


This chapter examines the historical development and contemporary operation of the international law of armed conflict. It begins with a discussion of the historical development of this body of law, from the Hague Conventions to the Geneva Conventions and the two 1977 Additional Protocols, to the contemporary relation between international humanitarian law and human rights law, particularly in the field of targeting and detention of members in non-international armed conflicts. It then analyses the status of lawful combatants in international armed conflicts and the question of membership of non-State armed groups, as well as the notion of direct participation in hostilities and 'unlawful combatants'. It then turns to the restrictions on the use of force based on the principles of distinction and proportionality, the choice of weapons, the protection of war victims, and some compliance mechanisms.


This paper presents a new family of high-voltage (HV) analog and digital circuits which are fully compatible with a standard 5 V CMOS technology, without any process change. On the basis of several circuits, it is shown that HV design can be classified in three categories, for which a common design methodology can be identified. Detailed circuit sizing as well as measurements illustrate the performance achieved with this technique.<<ETX>>


Between 1759 and 1767 Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy presented the reader with four major typographical oddities: two black pages, a hand-marbled coloured leaf, a series of squiggly woodcuts, and a woodcut depicting a flourish. This article describes the technical difficulties these non-verbal textual elements present to publishers of Sterne's masterpiece, and argues that they are interconnected.


The N-terminal formamido group on imidazole- and pyrrole-containing polyamides causes stacked polyamides to bind in the minor groove of DNA in the staggered motif, and it also increases the binding affinity compared to those of non-formamido compounds. To further investigate the role of the N-terminal acylamido in affecting sequence specificity and binding affinity, six polyamide analogues containing the core triheterocyclic structure IPI were designed and synthesized, and the acylamido moiety reported herein includes the following: formamido (f-IPI, 1), acetamido (Ac-IPI, 2), trifluoroacetamido (Tf-IPI, 3), N-methylureido (Mu-IPI, 4), N-methylpyrrole-2-carboxamido (PIPI, 5), and the (13)C-labeled formamido-IPI compound ((13)C-f-IPI, 6). In addition, two nonacylated IPI compounds were also synthesized and examined, namely, the amino-containing (NH(2)-IPI, 7) and non-formamido (nf-IPI, 8) compounds. The binding characteristics of compounds 1-8 were investigated using methods of molecular biology and biochemistry, which included biophysical techniques, such as DNA melts, circular dichroism, isothermal titration calorimety, and surface plasmon resonance and DNase I footprinting. With the exception of nf-IPI and NH(2)-IPI, all other compounds preferentially interacted with the cognate sequence, 5'-ACGCGT-3'. The biophysical results suggest that all six compounds bind within the minor groove at their cognate DNA sequence as stacked, staggered, antiparallel dimers. The order from highest to lowest binding affinities is as follows: f-IPI > P-IPI > Ac-IPI > Mu-IPI > Tf-IPI >> NH(2) and nf-IPI. Hence, having an acylamido moiety at the N-terminus is important for the binding of polyamides to DNA in a stacked and staggered motif. According to footprinting analysis, P-IPI (5), Ac-IPI (2), Mu-IPI (4), and Tf-IPI (3) exhibited some enhancement in sequence preference for their cognate 5'-ACGCGT-3' over f-IPI (1). NMR analysis of the [(13)C]f-IPI-CGCGnmr complex showed a slight downfield shift in the formamido (13)C signal indicating that the moiety remained intact. The trend in binding affinity suggests that steric factors play a role, in which small and planar aromatic acylamido units such as f, Ac, and P are preferred. Polar groups, such as in Mu-IPI (4) and Tf-IPI (3), afforded negative effects on binding affinity, compared to that of Ac-IPI (2).


Pyrazidol (1,10-trimethylene-3-methyl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydropyrazino(1,2-a)indole hydrochloride) in low concentrations (0.005 mM) completely blocks the deamination of serotonin, partially that of tyramine, and does not virtually affect the deamination of 2-phenylethylamine by the mitochondria of intestinal cells. There is evidence for the presence of types A and B monoamine oxidases in the rat intestine. Pyrazidol appears to be a selective inhibitor of type A monoamine oxidase of the rat intestine.


Rising temperatures may alter consumer diets through increased metabolic demand and altered resource availability. However, current theories assessing dietary shifts with warming do not account for a change in resource availability. It is unknown whether consumers will increase consumption rates or consume different resources to meet increased energy requirements and whether the dietary change will lead to associated variation in morphology and nutrient utilization. Here, we used populations of Gambusia affinis across parallel thermal gradients in New Zealand (NZ) and California (CA) to understand the influence of temperature on diets, morphology and stoichiometric phenotypes. Our results show that with increasing temperature in NZ, mosquitofish consumed more plant material, whereas in CA mosquitofish shifted towards increased consumption of invertebrate prey. In both regions, populations with plant-based diets had fuller guts, longer relative gut lengths, better-orientated mouths and reduced body elemental %C and N/P. Together, our results show multiple pathways by which consumers may alter their feeding patterns with rising temperatures, and they suggest that warming-induced changes to resource availability may be the principal determinant of which pathway is taken.


Abstract : The University of Wyoming database of seismic recordings of Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNEs) has been recently extended to 19 PNEs recorded along 7 long-range refraction/reflection profiles: QUARTZ, CRATON, KIMBERLITE, RIFT, METEORITE, and RUBY (2 lines). These profiles form a grid traversing the East European Platform, the Ural Mountains, the West Siberian Basin, the Baikal Rift, and the Siberian craton in two directions,., and include dense and reversed linear as well as fan PNE recordings (RUBY). Dense, 3-component recordings along subparallel and crossing profiles provide us with unique opportunities to study large-scale propagation effects of regional seismic phases, allow detailed examination of the regional seismic phases, correlation between the individual PNE records and with geologic and tectonic features. In this report, we extend traditional, travel-time analysis of PNE arrivals to amplitude and waveform inversion and show how short-period PNE recordings are used to constrain the effects of crustal structure on seismic arrivals within 1000 - 3000 km ranges. These new constraints include (1) characterization of crustal attenuation through coda measurements and (2) imaging of the crustal structure using receiver function techniques. Both of these factors are of primary importance for modeling of crustal-guided phases, such as the Pg and Lg, Energy-balance considerations in three dimensions show that an extensive coda is inherent to all P-wave phases. This coda can be explained by crustal scattering and is a result of effectively areal excitation of short-period scattered waves (Pg, Sg, Lg, Rg) within the crust by the waves incident from the mantle, or, conversely, by generation of mantle phases from crustal-guided waves within a distributed source region. The resulting estimates of coda Q range between Q=380 near 2 Hz and Q=430 around 5 Hz and can be associated with crustal attenuation.


Internationalization of software as a previous step for localization is usually taken into account during early phases of the life-cycle of software development. However, the need to adapt software applications into different languages and cultural settings can appear once the application is finished and even in the market. In these cases, software localization implies a high cost of time and resources. This paper shows a real case of a existent software application, designed and developed without taking into account future necessities of localization, whose architecture and source code were modified to include the possibility of straightforward adaptation into new languages. The use of standard languages and advanced programming languages has permitted the authors to adapt the software in a simple and straightforward mode.


Recent research explosion on Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) shows the encouraging potential to represent complex scenes with neural networks. One major drawback of NeRF is its prohibitive inference time: Rendering a single pixel requires querying the NeRF network hundreds of times. To resolve it, existing efforts mainly attempt to reduce the number of required sampled points. However, the problem of iterative sampling still exists. On the other hand, Neural Light Field (NeLF) presents a more straightforward representation over NeRF in novel view synthesis -- the rendering of a pixel amounts to one single forward pass without ray-marching. In this work, we present a deep residual MLP network (88 layers) to effectively learn the light field. We show the key to successfully learning such a deep NeLF network is to have sufficient data, for which we transfer the knowledge from a pre-trained NeRF model via data distillation. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world scenes show the merits of our method over other counterpart algorithms. On the synthetic scenes, we achieve 26-35x FLOPs reduction (per camera ray) and 28-31x runtime speedup, meanwhile delivering significantly better (1.4-2.8 dB average PSNR improvement) rendering quality than NeRF without any customized parallelism requirement.


The paper is concerned with the numerical analysis of an elliptic equation in a polygon with a nonlinear Newton boundary condition, discretized by the finite element or discontinuous Galerkin methods. Using the monotone operator theory, it is possible  to prove the existence and uniqueness of the exact weak solution and the approximate solution. The main attention is paid to the study of error estimates. To this end, the regularity of  the weak solution is investigated and it is shown that due to the boundary corner points,  the solution looses regularity in a vicinity of these points. It comes out that the error estimation depends essentially on the opening angle of the corner points and on the parameter defining the nonlinear behaviour of  the Newton boundary condition. Theoretical results are compared with numerical experiments confirming a nonstandard behaviour of error estimates.


In liberal democracies, fundamental rights and freedoms can conflict, and if they do, it is not always clear which right the state should prioritize. Should the right of parents to choose education in line with their own convictions prevail, or should the right of children to be prepared for a future life in a liberal democratic society be given more moral weight? While the former might lead to establishing and subsidizing orthodox religious schools, the latter implies "liberal", "autonomy-facilitating" education. In order to make this tension concrete, we focus on a case study of an ultra-orthodox Jewish (Haredi) school in Flanders (Belgium), where "controversial issues" are excluded from the curriculum and where education is not fully in line with the core principles of "liberal education". Subsequently, we explore the legal educational context in liberal democracies, with a particular focus on the freedom of religion and education. Then, we scrutinize several arguments for or against ultra-orthodox faith-based schools. We conclude that there are no convincing arguments for state support for these kinds of schools and that the recent Flemish policy of homeschooling might be a reasonable alternative, wherein a balance is found between children's rights and parental rights.


The 4-quadrant energy transducer (4QT) is a solution to realize both the torque and speed control of the internal combustion engine (ICE) for hybrid electric vehicles. Since the base frequency of the prototype 4QT is much higher than the industrial one, the effect of eddy current on winding current distribution is considered in this paper. A two-dimensional (2-D) eddy-current FEM model is established and used for analysis. Current density and strand current distribution are given. It is pointed out that owing to the effect of eddy current, the conductor currents are unevenly distributed within the strands of the same turn. According to the 2-D FEM analysis, when the uneven current distribution is considered, the average rms turn current is increased by 1.05 times for the stator and 1.65 times for the inner rotor, and the copper loss is increased by 1.1 times for the stator and 3.16 times for the inner rotor. Since the inner rotor slots are much deeper than the stator slots, the inner rotor current distribution is more uneven than the stator. It means that for high-frequency deep-slot machine the eddy current effect should be considered seriously. Because of the increased current and copper loss, more ventilation will be needed for the 4QT, especially for the inner rotor. The average torques of stator machine and double rotor machine meet the requirements, and the torque ripples are small owing to the skewed slots.


Recent progress in printed optoelectronics and their integration in wearable sensors have created new avenues for research in reflectance photoplethysmography (PPG) and oximetry. The reflection-mode sensor, which consists of light emitters and detectors, is a vital component of reflectance oximeters. Here, we report a systematic study of the reflectance oximeter sensor design in terms of component geometry, light emitter and detector spacing, and the use of an optical barrier between the emitter and the detector to maximize sensor performance. Printed red and near-infrared (NIR) organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic photodiodes (OPDs) are used to design three sensor geometries: (1) Rectangular geometry, where square OLEDs are placed at each side of the OPD; (2) Bracket geometry, where the OLEDs are shaped as brackets and placed around the square OPD; (3) Circular geometry, where the OLEDs are shaped as block arcs and placed around the circular OPD. Utilizing the bracket geometry, we observe 39.7% and 18.2% improvement in PPG signal magnitude in the red and NIR channels compared to the rectangular geometry, respectively. Using the circular geometry, we observe 48.6% and 9.2% improvements in the red and NIR channels compared to the rectangular geometry. Furthermore, a wearable two-channel PPG sensor is utilized to add redundancy to the measurement. Finally, inverse-variance weighting and template matching algorithms are implemented to improve the detection of heart rate from the multi-channel PPG signals.


Our problems seemingly develop faster than our ability to cope with those problems. The blessing of longer life has brought with it a host of new issues faced by the elderly, their families, and their caregivers. "Ethical Issues in the Care of the Dying and Bereaved Aged", twenty-three essays by some of the most eminent thinkers in the field of death and bereavement, addresses some of these problems. Victor Marshall, Miriam and Sidney Moss, Colin M. Parkes, Dennis Klass, Margaret Somerville and Elizabeth Latimer, as well as other clinicians, have written new material for this book.


In this contribution, I outline the promise of a relational approach for understanding a variety of emergent political categories. Identity lines emerge relationally, through a series of interactions that can produce categories of oppositions. Democratic party systems are inherently relational fields, as the emergence of a new party takes place in relation to the positions of others, and has a direct effect on the viability of other parties. States cannot be assumed to be static entities; rather, there must be a way for us to relate to them as emergent properties and contested fields, reflecting empirical realities. Social movements, which pursue goals outside of the bounds of formal institutions, rise and fall in a relational context. For an understanding of emergent entities, it is crucial to have an understanding of change. For an understanding of change, it is crucial to understand relational dynamics, as these dynamics are constitutive of change itself. In the discussion that follows, I will first outline the primary premises of emergent entities in World Politics. I will then illustrate why a focus on essences or entities, as reflected in the perspective of methodological individualism, runs aground in addressing emergent phenomena. I will sketch how an understanding of time relates to a relational approach to change, and then discuss the discursive content of relational transactions. I will conclude with an illustration of how these aspects of a relational approach might be applied.


Documentary prose with a direct description of the author's contemporaneous epoch-making problems, historical-political events or the development of public thought is always the subject of the reader's interest. Although for works of the documentary genre, to some extent, the subjectivism of the narrator is not foreign, at least its main dignity is the real beginnings.The book of memoirs "From Prison to Prison" by Ramaz Kobidze, one of the victims of the "Stalinist cohort" is very interesting.The author of the book pays special attention to the necessity of documentary prose before recollection. He considered it obligatory not only for writers, but also for state figures, to keep the last few years for the production of documentary-type works, namely memoirs. In his view, if a statesman did not leave a documentary-type work to his descendants, it would always be a cause of unrest, strife, and sometimes even civil war.From the title, a very interesting documentary based on Ramaz Kobidze's "From Prison to Prison" memoirs prepares the reader to get acquainted with and understand the work of the "Stalinist cohort", the victim of which was the author of the work as a member of the "Secret Anti-Soviet Youth Organization".In addition to the specific facts of political persecution in the Book of Memoirs, which not infrequently took place not only in the life of the writer, but also in the lives of his friends and relatives, they also provide you with inspiring images of cruelty and disorder typical of the Stalinist regime.Ramaz Kobidze's book of memoirs "From Prison to Prison" is an extremely interesting source for studying not a single important event of Soviet existence. It contains a number of cases of ideological pressure typical of the Stalinist regime, which zombified a large part of the intellectual community at the time, made them worthy representatives of the "Stalinist cohort." And they destroyed a large part of the Georgian intelligentsia, but the "Soviet generation intelligentsia" was trained, raised and handed over the future of the country.


Parapagus dicephalus conjoined twins are rare but severe complication of multigestational pregnancies. Many conjoined twin pregnancies are diagnosed before reaching viability. We present a case report of conjoined twins reached term. A 35-year-old pregnant woman, who had no prenatal follow up, delivered conjoined twins at Van Maternity Hospital. The total weight of the fetuses was 4750 g. and they could be alive without advance support. Conjoined fetuses can be detected on prenatal screening and ultrasound. This case reinforces the importance of prenatal follow up.


Electron holography and Lorentz microscopy, using coherent electron waves emitted from cold fieldemission sources, provides opportunities for directly detecting and visualizing, in real space, the phase shifts of the electron waves due to the electromagnetic fields [1]. In 1992, vortices in a Nb superconducting thin film were observed by using a "coherent electron wave" Lorentz microscopy, simultaneously revealing their static lattice patterns and their dynamics in real time [2]. In 2009, neutron-scattering studies have shown the existence of skyrmion crystals in bulk helimagnet MnSi, by which 6-fold intensity patterns with a short lattice parameter (~17.5 nm) were detected [3]. Two of the most important areas of study in research on the skyrmion lattice are its topological magnetic configuration and nucleation/annihilation process during magnetic phase transition. Recent Lorentz microscopy studies (2010) have revealed the magnetic configuration of skyrimon lattices and the magnetic phase diagrams for Fe0.5Co0.5 Si thin samples in which the skyrmion lattice constant is 90 nm [4]. In 2012, the skyrmion lattices with a short lattice parameter (18 nm) in MnSi thin samples were observed by in situ observation using Lorentz microscopy [5].


The railroad industry is being challenged by recent state regulations requiring the disclosure of routing information of trains carrying hazardous materials (hazmat) to the general public. While there is a need to know, the dissemination of such information is contrary to both industry practice and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) rules. The conundrum is that there needs to be disclosure to first responders, law enforcement, fusion centers and the like to ensure the security and safety of the public.This paper addresses the rules regulating the movement and handling of hazmat, to include toxic inhalation hazard (TIH) material; government demands, particularly those at the state level to release the routes, commodities, and quantities to the general public; and the operational impacts and risks that could result. It then explores the security of how hazmat train routing information can be safeguarded while ensuring that first responders and affected communities have what is needed to address the risks and be able to effectively respond to incidents. The overlaps and conflicts found in the rules and regulations of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) are also addressed.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


Antiphospholipid antibodies (APLA) are strongly associated with thrombosis seen in patients with antiphospholipid syndrome. In COVID-19, thrombosis has been observed as one of the main comorbidities. In patients hospitalised for COVID-19, we want to check whether APLA positivity is associated with COVID-19-related thrombosis, inflammation, severity of disease, or long COVID-19. We enrolled 92 hospitalised patients with COVID-19 between March and April 2020 who were tested for 18 different APLAs (IgG and IgM) with a single line-immunoassay test. A total of 30 healthy blood donors were used to set the cut-off for each APLA positivity. Of the 92 COVID-19 inpatients, 30 (32.61%; 95% CI [23.41–43.29]) tested positive for APLA, of whom 10 (33.3%; 95% CI [17.94–52.86]) had more than one APLA positivity. Anti-phosphatidylserine IgM positivity was described in 5.4% of inpatients (n = 5) and was associated with the occurrence of COVID-19-related thrombosis (p = 0.046). Anti-cardiolipin IgM positivity was the most prevalent among the inpatients (n = 12, 13.0%) and was associated with a recorded thrombosis in their clinical history (p = 0.044); however, its positivity was not associated with the occurrence of thrombosis during their hospitalisation for COVID-19. Anti-phosphatidylinositol IgM positivity, with a prevalence of 5.4% (n = 5), was associated with higher levels of interleukin (IL)-6 (p = 0.007) and ferritin (p = 0.034). Neither of these APLA positivities was a risk factor for COVID-19 severity or a predictive marker for long COVID-19. In conclusion, almost a third of COVID-19 inpatients tested positive for at least one APLA. Anti-phosphatidylserine positivity in IgM class was associated with thrombosis, and anti-phosphatidylinositol positivity in IgM class was associated with inflammation, as noticed by elevated levels of IL-6. Thus, testing for non-criteria APLA to assess the risk of clinical complications in hospitalised COVID-19 patients might be beneficial. However, they were not related to disease severity or long COVID-19.


The problem discussed is that of coupling cuts for magnetic scalar potentials to cuts for stream functions describing currents on the orientable boundary of a good conductor or on thin, possibly nonorientable, conducting sheets. The solution of this problem is of interest both for its own sake and for the insight it gives into the general case of volume distributions of current. It is shown how the topological formalism clearly articulates the lumped parameter aspects. It is also shown that cuts for stream functions can be made on a nonorientable surface and that the discontinuities in the magnetic scalar potential can be systematically related to discontinuities in stream functions by a suitable choice of cuts. >


Abstract The interest of this paper is the determination of the optical properties of oxygenated (saturation above 97 %) hemoglobin in clinical relevant concentrations (ranging from 5 to 15 g/dl), dependent on the layer thickness. Furthermore the generation of a high rate data set for training with machine learning approaches was intended. With a double integrating sphere setup (laser diodes from 780 to 1310 nm) - as a well referenced method - and flow through optical cuvettes ranging from 1 to 3 mm layer thickness, the transmission (𝑀𝑇) and reflection (𝑀𝑅) values of the samples were acquired. From those the layer thickness independent absorption (𝜇𝑎) and reduced scattering coefficients (𝜇𝑠') were calculated by the means of the Inverse Adding Doubling (IAD) algorithm. For each sample the same coefficients should result correspondingly for all cuvette thicknesses in test. This relationship serves as an internal standard in the evaluation of the collected data sets. In parallel a spectrophotometer in the range from 690 to 1000 nm recorded transmission spectra for all samples as a second reference. First, the IAD algorithm provided optical coefficients (𝜇𝑎, 𝜇𝑠') in all measurements, with few exceptions at low hemoglobin concentrations. The resulting coefficients match independently of the layer thickness. As a main second result, a high rate data set was generated which serves for further analysis - for example with machine learning approaches.


Aim The aim of the study was to investigate whether human megakaryocytic cells have an adaptive response to aspirin treatment, leading to an enhancement of multidrug resistance protein-4 (MRP4) expression in circulating platelets responsible for a reduced aspirin action. We recently found that platelet MRP4 overexpression has a role in reducing aspirin action in patients after by-pass surgery. Aspirin enhances MRP4-mRNA levels in rat liver and drug administration transcriptionally regulates MRP4 gene expression through peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-α (PPARα). Methods The effects induced by aspirin or PPARα agonist (WY14643) on MRP4 modulation were evaluated in vitro in a human megakaryoblastic DAMI cell line, in megakaryocytes (MKs) and in platelets obtained from human haematopoietic progenitor cell (HPC) cultures, and in vivo platelets obtained from aspirin treated healthy volunteers (HV). Results In DAMI cells, aspirin and WY14643 treatment induced a significant increase in MRP4 and PPARα expression. In human MKs grown in the presence of either aspirin or WY14643, MRP4 and PPARα-mRNA were higher than in control cultures and derived platelets showed an enhancement in MRP4 protein expression. The ability of aspirin to modulate MRP4 expression in MKs and to transfer it to platelets was also confirmed in vivo. In fact, we found the highest MRP4 mRNA and protein expression in platelets obtained from HV after 15 days' aspirin treatment. Conclusions The present study provides evidence, for the first time, that aspirin treatment affects the platelet protein pattern through MK genomic modulation. This work represents an innovative and attractive approach, useful both to identify patients less sensitive to aspirin and to improve pharmacological treatment in cardiovascular high-risk patients.


We combine statistical and phylogenetic approaches to test the hypothesis that adaptive radiation and key innovation have contributed to the diversity of the order Araneae. The number of unbalanced araneid clades (those whose species numbers differ by 90% or more) exceeds the number predicted by a null Markovian model. The current phylogeny of spider families contains 74 bifurcating nodes, of which 31 are unbalanced. As this is significantly more than the 14.8 expected unbalanced nodes, some of the diversity within the Araneae can be attributed to some deterministic cause (e.g., adaptive radiation). One of the more highly unbalanced (97%) bifurcations divides the orb‐weaving spiders into the Deinopoidea and the larger Araneoidea. A simple statistical model shows that the inequality in diversity between the Deinopoidea and the Araneoidea is significant, and that it is associated with the replacement of primitive cribellar capture thread by viscous adhesive thread and a change from a horizontal to a vertical orb‐web orientation. These changes improve an orb‐web's ability to intercept and retain prey and expand the adaptive zone that orb‐weaving spiders can occupy and are, therefore, considered to be "key innovations."


Since the first Surgeon General's report documented the health impact of smoking 50 years ago, North Carolina has made much progress in reducing tobacco use. This article focuses on tobacco-related policies and legislation that have contributed to this progress and discusses measures that could be taken to further reduce tobacco use.


A selective, sensitive, and fast high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with mass spectrometric (MS) detection mode has been developed and validated completely in human plasma. Atorvastatin (ATO), p-hydroxy atorvastatin (p-HATO), o-hydroxy atorvastatin (o-HATO) and internal standard (IS) are extracted from human plasma via solid phase extraction (SPE) technique. After elution, the solution is evaporated, then reconstituted with 250 µL of Mobile Phase and analyzed using HPLC/MS/MS system. An isocratic mode is used to separate interference peaks using a Symmetry C-18, 75 × 4.6 mm ID, 3.5 µ, column. The m/z of ATO, o-HATO and p-HATO are 559.2/440.2, 575.3/440.4 and 575.0/440.4 respectively. Linearity ranges are 0.05 to 252.92 ng/mL for ATO, p-HATO and o-HATO respectively. Calibration functions, lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ), stability, intra- and inter-day reproducibility, accuracy, and recovery are estimated. This method is free from matrix effects and any abnormal ionization. This method was successfully applied to a single dose 80 mg tablet bioequivalence (BE) study of Atorvastatin. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Between April 1972 and March 1976, 70 patients were found to have an isolated stenosis of the left anterior descending artery at coronary angiography which could have been treated by coronary angioplasty, had the technique been available at that time. A questionnaire was sent to these patients and 65 (93 p. 100) replies were received 9 to 13 years after initial coronary angiography. They provided information about 61 men and 4 women with an average age of 48.1 +/- 8.4 years. Thirty eight patients had undergone surgery and 27 were treated medically, each group having distinct clinical characteristics. The 10 year survival rate was excellent (91 p. 100) and was high in both groups. The quality of life was good: 56 p. 100 claimed to be in good or very good health and 67 p. 100 were improved with respect to their functional state at the time of coronary angiography; only one quarter of these patients had been readmitted to hospital for cardiac problems during the follow up period, and 76 p. 100 of patients in work before the coronary angiography had returned to work. This date illustrates the excellent results of classical medical and surgical management of potential candidates for coronary angioplasty for isolated left anterior descending artery stenosis.


The term "sanitary engineering," like "preventive medicine" and others which pertain to both scientific fields of activity and professional practice, may be employed either in a strictly professional sense or in a generic sense. As a determinant of the metes and bounds of this article, "sanitary engineering" is interpreted as encompassing both the professional and the generic aspects, without attempting to draw any fine lines of distinction between the problems, interests and activities of professional engineers on the one hand and non-engineers on the other. In the large, difficult and complex task of controlling the tropical environment in the interest of man's health and welfare, there is obvious room for contributions by many arts and skills. Appraisal of these problems and of their indicated solutions can only be confused by efforts to subdivide them into respective professional packages.
There is one important exception. Sanitation is thought of as a basic part of or within public health.


In 1863 the Museum of Mediterranean Archaeology opened its doors in Marseilles, France. From 1863 to 1889 one of its employees, Hippolyte Augier, conceived of and constructed 79 scale models representing ancient monuments and archaeological sites. This collection was exhibited in the museum with didactical and educational purposes. During the early 20th century these models were removed from the showcases and put into storage. In the last twenty years archaeologists have rediscovered Augier's works, and his models have become archaeological archives. These documents constitute a very relevant source of information for the history of archaeology. The series of 79 models that he made can be considered as a coherent set. Studied in connection with other documents such as archives, collections and publications, the series expresses a particular conception of archaeology at the end of the 19th century.


Faults applied during the March 1993 commissioning tests for the California-Oregon Transmission Project produced 14 Hz transient oscillations that were conspicuous in BPB's enhanced transducers at Malin, and in PG&E's Dynamic System Monitor at Table Mountain. Prony analysis of high speed fault data provided a detailed model for the underlying network resonance signal, and a basis for validating transient performance of a macrodyne phasor measurement unit (PMU) at the test site. This instrument, which is closely associated with EPRI's FACTS project, provides useful insight into emerging technology for high speed digital transducers. The phasor calculations are found to be of very high quality, but filtering enhancements are recommended for broadband applications.


Extensive work has been undertaken to validate the Speech Transmission Index by comparing the results with measured intelligibility scores. The validation of the relationship between the subjective and objective aspects the STI for the English language that are included in the current STI standard (IEC60268-16:2011) was taken from Anderson and Kalb in which the subjects listened to a monaural speech program through headphones.


Information on the link between market performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities provides an indication of the extent of acceptance by investors of these types of activities. The nature of this relationship is of critical importance for management trying to reconcile the demands of the company's shareholders with those of a much wider group of stakeholders and for investors pursuing a socially responsible investing strategy. Using an international database we investigate the extent to which expenditures on CSR activities are valued across market in six countries/regions. We find that CSR activities are highly valued by the investors in the European markets, where our findings clearly indicate that such activities lead to higher market valuations. In the US, Japan and Australia expenditures on CSR activities have a neutral impact on company valuation, which is still a good outcome for management who wish to incorporate into their decision process the objectives of a wide spectrum of stakeholders and for investors wishing to tilt their investments towards the more socially responsible companies.


Novel push-pull systems comprised of triphenylamine-tetracyanobutadiene, a high-energy CT species is linked to a near-IR sensitizer, azaBODIPY, for promoting excited state CS. These new systems revealed panchromatic absorption due to combined effect of intramolecular CT, and near-IR absorbing azaBODIPY. Using electrochemical and computational studies, energy levels were established to visualize excited state events. Fs-TA studies were performed to monitor excited state CT events. From target analysis, the effect of solvent polarity, number of linked CT entities, and excitation wavelength dependence in governing the lifetime of CS states was established. Electron exchange between two TPA-TCBD entities in 3 seem to prolong lifetime of the CS state. Importantly, we have been successful in demonstrating efficient CS upon both high-energy CT and low-energy near-IR excitations, signifying importance of these push-pull systems for optoelectronic applications operating in the wide optical window.


Cerebral angiostrongyliasis is an acute inflammation caused by the infection of the nematode Angiostrongylus cantonensis that results in eosinophilic meningitis. The current immunological assay of choice is an immunoblot that detects antibodies to a 31 kDa protein present in crude extracts of the female worm. Recently we have identified diagnostic targets from excretion and secretion products and determined the composition of the 31 kDa antigen after 2-D gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry. Here we cloned and expressed five proteins in prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems. Recombinant proteins were purified and analysed by Western blot assays and among them 14-3-3, Lec5 and ES7 were recognized by Angiostrongylus-specific serum, although the signal was weak.


With development of Chinese economy and encouragement of nation's public fitness several polices, as well as the increasingly improvement of people's living standards, people's demands on living quality and style are getting higher and higher, people's desire for health also becomes more and more intensified, government cannot fully provide good entertainment venues for people in some regions, which needs to make proper distribution on their entertainment and rest time. The paper mainly carries out statistical analysis and corresponding organization according to current investigation results and relevant documents literature, clearly presents current community square dance development status and "nonedancing group" choices on fields and time to proceed with game analysis, gets that when both of them entertain and rest should consider each other then they can harmonious develop. So that meet different groups of people choices on different way of entertainment and better implement public fitness.


Zinc dithiophosphate, or ZDP, for over 60 years has been used as an additive in engine oils to provide wear protection and oxidation stability in an efficient and cost effective manner. Unfortunately, ZDP contains phosphorus, and phosphorus is a widely known and accepted poison of automotive catalysts and other emissions system components. Because of this, phosphorus (and ZDP) levels in automotive engine oils have been gradually reduced by about 35% over the last 10-15 years, and further reductions are likely in the future. This paper traces the history of ZDP use in automotive engine oils, and addresses the issue of how much (if any) ZDP is actually required to provide wear protection in todays, as well as yesterday's, engines. The focus in the paper is on wear (including scuffing) protection, and not on the other aspects of ZDP performance, such as providing oxidation stability of the oil. It is assumed that these other functions of ZDP can be provided by other ashless and phosphorus-free additives which do not negatively affect emissions system performance.


Acoustic sensing from a multi-rotor drone is heavily degraded by the strong ego-noise produced by the rotating motors and propellers. To address this problem, we propose a blind source separation (BSS) framework that extracts a target sound from noisy multi-channel signals captured by a microphone array mounted on a drone. The proposed method addresses the challenging problem of permutation alignment, in extremely low signal-to-noise-ratio scenarios (e.g. SNR $< $ −15 dB), by performing clustering on the time activities of the separated signals across frequencies. Since initialization plays an important role to the success of clustering, we propose a pre-processing algorithm which uses time-frequency spatial filtering (TFS) to generate a reference to pre-align the permutation. The pre-alignment not only improves the performance of clustering and permutation alignment, but also solves the target-channel selection problem for BSS. The proposed method integrates the advantages of both TFS and BSS. Experimental results with real-recorded data show that the proposed method is capable of processing the audio stream continuously in a blockwise manner and also remarkably outperforms the state-of-the-art.