The following document is the written memory of an engineering final thesis.
The aim of this project is to study and simulate the viability of introducing a 50 MW solar power plant in the locality of Barletta, Italy.
The thesis is divided in two main parts: The first theoretical one which talks about solar energy and explains the two main processes with which profit can be taken from the sun: photovoltaic energy and thermal energy. It concentrates on the CSP technology to provide the reader with a good background on the subject. In the second part, the 50 MW plant is studied and simulated to arrive to the final design.
During the simulation many variables and design parameters are taken into consideration to study their influence in the plant's performance and to be able to choose the best possible combination in order to take the maximum electric power output from the designed plant. This simulation study is made possible by the GateCycle software. GateCycle is a software of the General Electric company that gives assistance in the performance prediction of thermal power plants, such as, combined cycle plants, fossil boiler plants, combined heat-and-power plants, advanced gas turbines as well as other types of energy systems.
In order to obtain accurate results from which to draw coherent conclusions it will be necessary to take into consideration Barletta's annual weather conditions: Irradiation, wind, temperature and other factors. This information will be extracted from a database.


Background

- Demand in children's social care remains at historically high levels across the UK. The number of children in local authority care in Scotland increased every year between 1998 and 2013. This study explores a possible trans-generational influence of historical changes in family structure at birth.
Method

- Children who were accommodated by a typical Scottish local authority from 2000 to 2013 were identified. The parental marital status on birth registrations of the children and their parents was compared to all Scottish registrations in national birth cohorts and relative risk (RR) was calculated for different birth circumstances.
Results

 - The children who entered care were more likely to have been born to unmarried parents than their peers (RR 7.8, CI 6.3-9.6). Their mothers (RR 3.2, CI 2.7-3.9) and fathers (RR 1.5, CI 1.1-2) were also more likely than their peers to have been born to unmarried parents. The accumulated risk of young children entering care if their parents and maternal grandparents had been unmarried on birth registrations was very large (RR 23.3, CI 12.5-43.5).
Conclusion

- Parental marriage is protective against entering local authority care for children in Scotland. Historical changes in family structure at birth may influence demand in children's services.


For the first time, the possibility of the electrochemical synthesis and polymerization of some novel modified naphthoquinone compounds has been described. The correspondent mathematical model has been analyzed by means of linear stability theory and bifurcation analysis. It has been shown that the electro organic synthesis may serve as an interesting substitution for Suzuki reaction for the synthesis of ferrocenyl naphthoquinone and its polymer. The oscillatory and monotonic instability, in this case, will be more probable than in the general electropolymerization case.


Abstract Even in situations when welfare state budgets can be considered generous, many socially responsible, beneficial activities remain that cannot survive without the financial support of private individual or corporate donors. The article seeks an answer to questions of to what extent the willingness to donate one's own money depends on wealth and income, and what the role of other socio-cultural factors is. The data about the amount of private and corporate donations in particular regions of the Czech Republic in the period of the years 2011–2015 is compared with data about the regional economic prosperity and income. The regression analysis results show that it was only possible to explain to certain level the amount of donations by the rate of the wealth of firms and individuals in particular regions. In case of the companies, it is a medium-strong correlation, while the correlation is strong in terms of individuals. Particularly in terms of the corporate donation, the willingness to donate is significantly related also with other, non-economic factors in the region.


Based on B-spline factorization, a new category of architectures for the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is proposed. The B-spline factorization mainly consists of the B-spline part and the distributed part. The former is proposed to be constructed by use of a Pascal implementation. The latter is the only part requiring multipliers and can be implemented with type-I or type-II polyphase decomposition. Since the degree of the distributed part is usually designed as small as possible, the proposed architectures could need fewer multipliers than previous arts, but more adders would be required. However, many adders can be implemented with small area and low speed because only a few adders are on the critical path. Two cases of the JPEG2000 defaulted (9,7) filter and the (6,10) filter are given to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed architectures.


The problem of informal settlements in Egypt is one of the most serious problems due to its economic, social and security impacts which jeopardize the society safety and stability. This study investigates the present situation of informal settlements in the Egyptian governorates as well as the Islamic Waqf as a mechanism to develop informal settlements' areas in Egypt.


Abstract Introduction: Lamotrigine is one of several mood stabilizers and its effects for the treatment and prevention of depressive episodes, particularly in bipolar disorder, are generally accepted. Although the findings about a therapeutic window of lamotrigine are yet to be determined, it seems important to obtain information on individual pharmacokinetic peculiarities. This study was conducted to formulate the predictive model of plasma lamotrigine levels. Methods: Using the data of 47 patients whose lamotrigine levels, liver function, and renal function were measured, predictive models of lamotrigine levels were formulated by stepwise multiple regression analyses. The predictive power of the models was compared using another dataset of 25 patients. Results: Two models were created using stepwise multiple regression. The first model was: plasma lamotrigine level (μg/mL)=2.308+0.019×lamotrigine dose (mg/day). The second model was: plasma lamotrigine level (μg/mL)=0.08+0.024×lamotrigine dose (mg/day)+4.088×valproate combination (no=0, yes=1). The predictive power of the second model was better than that of the first model. Discussion: The present study proposes a prompt and relatively accurate equation to predict lamotrigine levels.


A simple prepartum and intrapartum scoring technic for the identification of high-risk patients was applied to 1,224 patients managed at the Charleston Area Medical Center, Memorial Division. The patients were classified as being at low, moderate, or high risk, according to the total risk score. Perinatal mortality worsened as the risk category increased. Seventy percent of all perinatal deaths occurred in 25% of patients who were identified as moderate- and high-risk patients. The simple one-page scoring form that we used seems to be practical and effective in identifying patients at risk. Such information can be very useful in providing appropriate levels of obstetric care.


Decreases in suitable habitat due to loss and fragmentation on the African non-breeding grounds are believed to be a driver of the declines in Palaearctic migrants. However, the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on individual migrants have rarely been investigated. The European Honey-buzzard Pernis apivorus, a migratory forest specialist, displays the characteristics of a species that would be sensitive to declines in suitable habitat. We assessed site fidelity, habitat selection and home range characteristics of 32 tracked European Honey-buzzards in Africa to understand how habitat transformation on the non-breeding grounds affects the movement behaviour (particularly habitat use and home range characteristics) of the species. Adults had greater site fidelity than juveniles, indicating that young birds were exploring to locate suitable habitat for future non-breeding territories. Besides site fidelity, there were few significant differences between the movements of adult and juvenile Honey-buzzards. Birds of all age classes strongly selected treed habitat, as expected. Treed largest patch index and edge density had a negative effect on home range size, demonstrating that Honey-buzzards rely on large tracts of continuous forest, but can tolerate some level of fragmentation. Individuals with larger home ranges due to greater levels of forest fragmentation moved greater daily distances. In addition, Honey-buzzards spent more time in home ranges with larger treed largest patch indices and lower edge density. This reveals that birds that do not have access to a large patch of unfragmented forest are both flying greater distances on a daily basis and moving to new home ranges more often. This likely results in greater energy expenditure over their non-breeding period, which may have adverse effects on their long-term survival. Furthermore, our analyses support the hypothesis that continuing forest loss in Africa will have a negative effect on the European Honey-buzzard population.


Neutrophils are the first cells recruited to the site of an infected sand fly bite and interact with Leishmania parasites. Here we investigate the effect of sand fly salivary proteins on neutrophil recruitment. We purified bone marrow neutrophils from C57BL/6 mice or from peripheral blood of healthy human or dog donors. Chemotaxis driven by sand fly saliva of vectors of visceral (Lutzomyia longipalpis) or cutaneous (Phlebotomus duboscqi) disease was measured by modified Boyden chamber assay and by imaging with the EZTAXIScan assay. Neutrophils migrated towards saliva glands of the vectors P. duboscqi and L. longipalpis, in a dose-dependent manner. Proteinase K treatment of saliva completely abrogated neutrophil recruitment, suggesting a protein as the chemotactic factor. To unearth the identity of the chemotactic protein, we generated plasmids coding for the 20 most abundant salivary proteins from P. duboscqi and injected them in the ears of C57BL/6 mice. Neutrophil recruitment was analyzed by flow cytometry staining. We identified 2 different salivary protein-coding plasmids with neutrophil recruitment activity. We produced these 2 recombinant proteins in the HEK293 cell line system and we observed that a family of 40kDa salivary proteins acts as chemokines for neutrophils both in our in vitro and in vivo assays. Moreover, the coinjection of Leishmania major parasites with the recombinant proteins in the ear of C57BL/6 mice exacerbated the infection. We plan to test if neutralization of the salivary chemotactic protein can alter Leishmania infection. We put forward the hypothesis that blockage of this protein will disrupt neutrophil migration early in the Leishmania infection possibly altering the disease outcome.


Changes in cold hardiness levels of annual bluegrass (Poa annua L.) and creeping bentgrass (Agrostis palustris Huds.) were monitored under field conditions during the dehardening period of late winter and early spring. During the course of two spring periods the cold hardiness levels of the two species were monitored in conjunction with the following hydration treatments: snow cover maintained to prolong dormancy, snow removal in March, and hydration of crown tissues in combination with snow removal. Cold hardiness levels, percent crown moisture, and soil temperatures were monitored throughout this period. Cold hardiness levels were significantly influenced by year, species, hydration treatment, and a number of interactions of these factors. Generally, plants dehardened 2 wk earlier in 1997 than in 1996. On 1 April, creeping bentgrass had cold hardiness levels averaging -20°C compared to -13°C for annual bluegrass. By 15 April, creeping bentgrass plants had lost their cold hardiness advantage. Increased soil temperature was the greatest contributor to the loss of hardiness in the spring. An increase in crown moisture of 4% for annual bluegrass and 6% for creeping bentgrass occurred during the period from 25 March to 22 April. Maintaining a snow cover on plots delayed the loss of cold hardiness by 6 to 9 d in 1996 but had no effect in 1997. Maintaining a snow cover also delayed the increase in crown hydration by a week. Plants were able to partially regain cold hardiness when soil temperatures dropped.


Optimization has been recognized as a powerful tool in teaching and research for a long time. In spite of its well known problem solving capacity, some methodological obstacles have persisted over the years. The main problem is that stochastic variables and their correlations cannot be adequately accounted for within traditional optimization procedures. In this paper, we develop a methodological mix of stochastic simulation and a heuristic optimization procedure which has become known as genetic algorithms. The simulation part of the mix allows for the consideration of complex information such as stochastic processes; the genetic algorithms-part ensures that the method remains manageable in terms of required time and resources. We demonstrate the decision support potential of the approach by optimizing the production program of a Brandenburg crop farm. We account for the risky environment by using existing stochastic information: on the one hand, we model man-days which are available in critical seasons (particularly harvesting) as triangular distributions according to expert estimations. On the other hand, we use empirical time series and estimate stochastic processes for the gross margins of different activities (wheat, barley etc.). Additionally, variant calculations are made in order to take into account different risk attitudes of decision-makers. Model results in terms of optimal production programs and expected total gross margins are highly sensitive both to the risk attitudes of decision-makers and the stochastic processes which are estimated for different activities.


Quality-Diversity (QD) algorithms, a subset of evolutionary algorithms, maintain an archive (i.e., a set of solutions) and simulate the natural evolution process through iterative selection and reproduction, with the goal of generating a set of high-quality and diverse solutions. Though having found many successful applications in reinforcement learning, QD algorithms often select the parent solutions uniformly at random, which lacks selection pressure and may limit the performance. Recent studies have treated each type of behavior of a solution as an objective, and selected the parent solutions based on Multi-objective Optimization (MO), which is a natural idea, but has not lead to satisfactory performance as expected. This paper gives the reason for the first time, and then proposes a new MO-based selection method by non-surrounded-dominated sorting (NSS), which considers all possible directions of the behaviors, and thus can generate diverse solutions over the whole behavior space. By combining NSS with the most widespread QD algorithm, MAP-Elites, we perform experiments on synthetic functions and several complex tasks (i.e., QDGym, robotic arm, and Mario environment generation), showing that NSS achieves better performance than not only other MO-based selection methods but also state-of-the-art selection methods in QD.


[Extract] Modem China is one of the main engines of global economic growth. A three-decade-long trend of annual GDP growth of around 9 per cent was maintained through the global financial crisis 2007-2012 and residents' average incomes, consumption and savings continue to improve (NBS 2011). Thus, China's per capita GDP increased from 379 yuan per annum in 1978 to 29,920 yuan in 2010. Per capita disposable income for urban households grew from 343 to 19,109 yuan over the same period and for rural households from 134 to 5,919 yuan. This is reflected in consumption, which rose from 405 yuan per annum in 1978 to 15.907 yuan in 2010 for urban Chinese and from 138 to 4,455 yuan for rural Chinese. Household savings over this period increased by a factor of 1,439. Living standards have risen and many Chinese, positively, have been lifted out of poverty (NBS 2011). However, questions remain as to the ecological and public health costs of such rapid and sustained economic growth. Even as growth has slowed slightly in coastal centres such as Beijing and Shanghai in response to government efforts to control inflation and unemployment, and achieve more balanced income distribution, etc., economic growth in the vast central and western regions of China has accelerated.


In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the foreign policy of the Bush administration was shifted radically in its pursuit of the war on terror. As part of this change, the administration announced a new strategic doctrine in 2002 in the form of the National Security Strategy of the United States which was to become known as the Bush doctrine. At its heart this document advocated the use of pre-emption and unilateralism in its pursuit of pre-eminence. This article traces the development of this thinking and subsequent application of this doctrine, and argues that policy failures in Iraq have nothing to contribute to American foreign policy in the second term. His argued that because of this failure, it is not a doctrine worthy of the name.


Objectives We evaluated the feasibility of using deep learning with a convolutional neural network for predicting bone mineral density (BMD) and bone microarchitecture from conventional computed tomography (CT) images acquired by multivendor scanners. Methods We enrolled 402 patients who underwent noncontrast CT examinations, including L1–L4 vertebrae, and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) examination. Among these, 280 patients (3360 sagittal vertebral images), 70 patients (280 sagittal vertebral images), and 52 patients (208 sagittal vertebral images) were assigned to the training data set for deep learning model development, the validation, and the test data set, respectively. Bone mineral density and the trabecular bone score (TBS), an index of bone microarchitecture, were assessed by DXA. BMDDL and TBSDL were predicted by deep learning with a convolutional neural network (ResNet50). Pearson correlation tests assessed the correlation between BMDDL and BMD, and TBSDL and TBS. The diagnostic performance of BMDDL for osteopenia/osteoporosis and that of TBSDL for bone microarchitecture impairment were evaluated using receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Results BMDDL and BMD correlated strongly (r = 0.81, P < 0.01), whereas TBSDL and TBS correlated moderately (r = 0.54, P < 0.01). The sensitivity and specificity of BMDDL for identifying osteopenia or osteoporosis were 93% and 90%, and 100% and 94%, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of TBSDL for identifying patients with bone microarchitecture impairment were 73% for all values. Conclusions The BMDDL and TBSDL derived from conventional CT images could identify patients who should undergo DXA, which could be a gatekeeper tool for detecting latent osteoporosis/osteopenia or bone microarchitecture impairment.


Today's communicative environment, including the rise of social media, makes journalists perform publicly as both professionals and private citizens. In these circumstances, practices of self-limitation and self-censorship may extend to online behaviour. In this article, we analyse what makes journalists in public affairs media limit themselves in expression, both in editorial production and in online posting. We ask whether their self-censoring is related to personal, editorial, or external factors; whether political threats triumph over personal self-branding and professional/commercial reasons and whether these factors work differently in editorial and online behaviour; and whether journalists behave differently on different social networks. To formulate the answers, we use the results of a survey of 95 journalists from 51 Russian regions and seven in-depth interviews. Our results show that, in an organisationally weak journalistic community that operates in a restrictive environment, understanding of self-censorship differs significantly from that in Western democracies. It includes both self-limiting under pressures and personal-level ethical decisions that substitute professional codes of conduct. Moreover, for online posting and editorial work, there are different dominant 'perceived censors'. Political threats remain the most significant of all external pressures both online and offline, but personal motives lead the decision-making in posting on social networks. Russia is characterised by platform-wide echo-chambering and high differentiation between users of Facebook and the Russia-based VK.com (formerly Vkontakte). We observe this difference in journalists' descriptions of self-limitation on these networks.


In previous work, the idea of designing for the life cycle (DFLC) was investigated through the improvement of product architectures with an emphasis on increasing modularity. In this paper, that work is extended by developing a method for suggesting changes to the product to improve the correspondence between modules from different life-cycle viewpoints. Based on an analogy to the determination of critical paths in network analysis, the identification of limiting factors in a candidate design is intended to assist the designer in recognizing design changes that have the greatest impact on improving recyclability. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the identification of limiting factors can be used to improve product recyclability during configuration design. A general method for identifying and prioritizing the limiting factors is presented and applied in the context of improving recyclability. This method is shown to be capable of efficiently determining effective design changes to improve product modularity and recyclability. It is argued that the concept of limiting factors and the developed method are applicable to many different configuration design issues and not limited to recycling or even other DFLC issues. A validation of the limiting factor identification method is presented using a Genetic Algorithm and an exhaustive search.


This research aims to analyze the work performance of elementary schools in Salatiga in achieving the target of MDGs. This research is done with descriptive quantitative method, and measured with the target achievement of 9 year compulsory learning. The analysis is based on the work performance in percentage. The data collection was done in documents studies of the report from the educational report of Salatiga City and Central Java Province, and also through FGD. The result showed that the government of Salatiga City had been successful in executing the 9 year compulsory learning for children of 7-12 years old. In 2015, the APM of the elementary schools was 99,58%,TheAPK was 115,89%. The APM in middle school was 94,22%, and the APK was 129,01%. The number of literate people in 2015 was 99,97%. The gender equity reached the balance point in every grade of education. In order to improve quality, the city has been doing the certification and qualification program for the teachers. The problems that need priority for solution are operational support increase from Revenue and Expenditure Budget, the need to increase the number and the quality of elementary teachers, and equal distribution of inclusive education. This research recommends the Salatiga City government to plan for a quality-based elementary education program, and support sustainable development goals( (SDGs).


A prerequisite for computing phase noise is finding the Perturbation Projection Vector (PPV), a periodic vector function that encapsulates the "transfer function" between individual noise sources and the phase noise of the oscillator. In this paper, we illustrate a novel technique for calculating the PPV that has several advantages over the monodromy matrix method currently used. The new method can be applied in the context of both frequency- and time-domain steady-state computations, and involves only a single linear solution of the appropriate Jacobian matrix. It also removes the need for applying heuristics in choosing the correct PPV from a potentially large set of choices, a feature particularly useful for high-Q oscillators. We compare PPVs obtained with the new method with those from the monodromy matrix method.


Pathological diagnostics is a mandatory and one of the most important methods for diagnosing animal diseases. Competent use of the methods of pathological and histological diagnostics allows in the shortest possible time to make the correct preliminary diagnosis, to carry out complicating diseases, and additional laboratory tests in a timely manner. At the same time, the pathological and morphological changes in the body of animals with a new zoonotic disease, COVID-19, have not been sufficiently studied or are not studied at all. This paper describes the pathological processes and histological changes in maine coon kittens with spontaneous SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection. The obtained research results are presented in the form of detailed pathological and histological diagnoses. It has been established that the leading structural changes in kittens' bodies are characterized by the development of congenital and postnatal malnutrition, the predominance of profound disorders of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems: alveolar emphysema of the anterior and middle lobes of the lungs with areas of atelectasis and small focal interstitial pneumonia in them, atelectasis of the caudal lobes of the lungs (in kittens 1–2 days of age); alveolar emphysema, edema ("carmine lungs") of the lungs, large-focal interstitial pneumonia, sclerotization of the lungs with localization in the diaphragmatic lobes (at 10–14 days of age); acute expansion of the heart; acute venous hyperemia and edema of internal organs; pronounced postmortem blood coagulation in the cavities of the heart, large arteries and veins. Complicating processes are granular and small-droplet fatty degeneration of parenchymal organs, the development of which, apparently, is due to a combination of hemodynamic disturbances, prolonged hypoxia and intoxication of the animal body. Considering the severity and depth of structural disorders, primarily in the lungs of newborn animals, it can be concluded that the kittens are infected vertically (transplacentally).


This review highlights the role of oxidative stress and imbalances in metal ion homeostasis in the neurodegenerative diseases Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease and in the progressive demyelinating disease multiple sclerosis. The chemistry and biochemistry of oxidative stress-induced protein damage are first described, followed by the evidence for a pathological role of oxidative stress in these disease states. It is tempting to speculate that free radical oxygen chemistry contributes to pathogenesis in all these conditions, though it is as yet undetermined what types of oxidative changes occur early in the disease, and what types are secondary manifestations of neuronal degeneration.


Background: Cardiac disease is an important life-threatening complication during pregnancy. It is frequently seen in pregnant women living in resource-limited areas and often results in premature death. Aim: The aim of this hospital-based longitudinal study was to identify factors related to adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes in pregnant women with cardiac disease in low-resource settings. Methods: The study enrolled 91 pregnant women with congenital or acquired cardiac disease over a period of 2 years in Kenya. Results: Maternal and early neonatal deaths occurred in 12.2% and 12.6% of cases, respectively. The risk of adverse outcomes was significantly increased in those with pulmonary oedema (OR 11, 95% CI [2.3.52]; p=0.002) and arrhythmias (OR 16.9, 95% CI [2.5.113]; p=0.004). Limited access to care was significantly associated with adverse maternal outcomes (p≤0.001). Conclusion: Many factors contribute to adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes in pregnant women with cardiac disease. Access to comprehensive specialised care may help reduce cardiac-related complications during pregnancy.


Alexander Wlodawer has been a member of the FEBS Open Bio Editorial Board since the journal's launch in 2011. Currently, he is Senior Investigator at the Center for Structural Biology, National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, USA. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1974, completed postdoctoral training at Stanford University and has also worked at the National Bureau of Standards, the ABL‐Basic Research Program at the NCI‐FCRDC and the University of Cambridge, UK. He is Doctor Honoris Causa of the Technical University of Lodz, Poland. Alexander Wlodawer is also a recipient of the 2006 NCI Mentor of Merit Award, was awarded the Heyrovsky Honorary Medal by the Czech Academy of Sciences in 2008, was elected Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2005, and has been member of the Editorial Board of The FEBS Journal since 2007. He is currently Editor‐in‐Chief of the journal Current Research in Structural Biology. In this compelling interview, he shares with us his experiences on solving the structures of IL‐4 and retroviral proteases, advice on how to deal with being scooped, and his thoughts on open data sharing and AlphaFold.


Rice is the staple food most consumed by Indonesians which is produced from milling dry unhusked rice grain. In the dry unhusked rice grain milling process, rice has different forms, namely whole and cracked rice. This is due to the poor quality of the paddy rice. The different in forms has led to a different selling value. Whole rice is more expensive than the other. Therefore, sorting was done to obtain the differences. This study was carried out to build rice sorting device with a system in the form of a launch crank mechanism as a vibration system. This device has several components consisting of two mesh and two turnbuckle eye & eye as the sieve tilt adjustment. In the tilt experiment, two variations of the angle were obtained, namely an angle of 10° and an angle of 15°. This device uses a single-phase electric motor as the driving force of the launching crankshaft. The transmission system uses a pulley and a v-belt from a single-phase electric motor that is passed to the pulley. From the test results that have been carried out two-angle variations with a capacity of 10 kg. At an angle of 15°, 69% pure rice is obtained with less optimal results because the slope of the angle is too steep. Whereas at an angle of 10°, the yield of pure rice is 85% which has a less angular slope so that the sorting of rice is maximized.


In recent years destructive deviant behavior in organizations has drawn increasing attention. However, surprisingly little work has been devoted to assessing when the economic value of deviant behavior is tolerable (i.e., the benefits from employing the deviant worker exceed the financial costs of his/her deviance) and when it becomes unbearable (i.e., the financial cost of the deviance exceeds the benefits accrued from his/her employment). The purpose of the present paper is to introduce a mathematical model which may resolve this lacuna. In addition, a simulation was conducted and its results were reported in order to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed mathematical model. In conclusion it is suggested that the present model be further examined empirically in the real workplace.


The self-broadening of the helium triplet lines 23S1-33P2,1,0, 23P2,1,0-n3S1 and 23P2,1,0-n3D3,2,1 for n=3 4, 5 at temperatures of 80 K and 300 K is calculated using a semi-classical impact model of pressure broadening. The collision between the excited helium emitter and ground state helium perturber is described in terms of adiabatic molecular potentials based upon model potential expressions for the interacting atoms. For the triplet lines for which experimental results are available, the calculated widths are too high by an average of 20%. However, imposition of a lower cutoff on impact parameters in order to exclude perturber paths entering classically forbidden regions of the interaction significantly improves the agreement with experiment.


In recent years much attention has been devoted to natural antioxidant and their association with health benefits. Plants are the potential source of natural antioxidants. The aim of this study was to assess the antioxidant activity (in vitro) of four extracts from stem bark of Zanthoxylum alatum Roxb. and to determine phenolic content of all extracts. The best antioxidant potential and phenolic content were found in Petroleum ether and ethyl acetate extract. Comparative antioxidant potential was evaluated using DPPH, Nitric Oxide scavenging assay and ferric reducing power assay. Estimation of the total phenolic content was performed using Folin-Ciocalteu's method. Petroleum ether and ethyl acetate extract gave an IC50 of 85.16±1.05, 72.39±1.53 and 99.25±2.53, 94.81±2.56 for DPPH and Nitric oxide scavenging activities respectively. The petroleum ether and ethyl acetate extracts showed good reducing power with increasing concentration. Both extracts also gave the maximum percentage of phenolic content (equivalent to that of gallic acid) when compared to other extracts. All the antioxidant assays and phenolic content estimation studies revealed that petroleum ether and ethyl acetate extracts were the most promising and significant extract among petroleum ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate and methanol extracts.


Large diameter (> 100 mm) planar Na-β″-Al2O3 solid electrolytes (BASE) with thickness from 1.0 to 1.5 mm have been prepared. Na-β″-Al2O3 was processed as a slurry and cast to give several meters of tape. One hundred and forty mm diameter discs were punched from the tape, stacked, and laminated with a large hydraulic press. Binder burnout and sintering were performed in 150 mm diameter MgO spinel encapsulations to mitigate the loss of Na2O vapor. Conductivity and flexural strength were measured on smaller Na-β″-Al2O3 samples produced via the same tape casting process followed by sintering and gave results consistent with BASE materials produced by uniaxial pressing of powders. Planar BASE membranes enable new cell designs, which are predicted to have higher power densities and better stacking efficiency compared to currently manufactured tubular cells.


Data since 1980 demonstrate that the DSM-III model requires revisions in its assumptions and format. Problems inherent in the DSM-III model are considered and a paradigm shift toward a mixed categorical–dimensional classification system for DSM-V is recommended. This will reduce comorbidity, allow symptom weighting, introduce noncriterion symptoms, eliminate NOS categories, and provide new directions to biological researchers. We suggest reevaluating the threshold concept and use of quality-of-life assessment. A framework for such a revision is presented. Drawbacks to change include retraining of clinicians, administrative and policy changes, and possible reinterpretation of data collected under the DSM-III model. Nevertheless, clinicians and clinical researchers are ready for a diagnostic system that more accurately reflects the patients that they treat and study.


Social studies of finance can be split in two types: studies that have paid attention to "market devices" (such as scorings and credit cards) enacted by financial firms and studies that analyze new practices and modes of "ordinary calculation" developed by consumers of financial services around the world. This article is part of a broader project that aims at opening a different path that locates social studies of domestic finances at the intersection where both kinds of calculation – the big data of market devices and the small data of ordinary financial practices- can be simultaneously observed. More specifically, this article discusses some of the methodological challenges faced from this new position, particularly, how we used some of the traces left by big data and how we dealt with an surprising "commercial circuit" founded in our material.


In our paper we addressed the research question: "Has machine translation achieved sufficiently high quality to translate PubMed titles for patients?". We analyzed statistical machine translation output for six foreign language - English translation pairs (bi-directionally). We built a high performing in-house system and evaluated its output for each translation pair on large scale both with automated BLEU scores and human judgment. In addition to the in-house system, we also evaluated Google Translate's performance specifically within the biomedical domain. We report high performance for German, French and Spanish -- English bi-directional translation pairs for both Google Translate and our system.


Using selectivity doped GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructures we provide conclusive evidence that correlation among the DX--d+ charged donors strongly enhances the mobility of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) residing 10 nm away from the charged donors. This is accomplished by changing the extent of correlation without affecting the total number of charged donors and density of electrons in the 2DEG. The experiments are used to prove that the DX donors are negatively charged in their ground state. A theory treating correlated DX--d+ charges can approximately account for these results.


We analyze and summarize the microeconomic theory of pass-through rates. We start by analyzing a monopolist firm in a standard Micro 101 frictionless market, then add more nuances to the model, including, but not limited to oligopolistic competition, menu costs, price points, endogenous quality and package size choices, and consumer search costs, and show how each of these factors affects pass-through rates.


In the present study we investigated the effect of γ‐irradiation (2.5 and 10 Gy) on cell‐cycle progression of a human melanoma cell line, M14, characterized by a moderate radiosensitivity (SF2 = 0.5). Flow cytometric analysis showed a dose‐dependent S‐phase accumulation, which was detectable 8 hr after treatment with 2 and 5 Gy and was still persistent at 12 hr after 10 Gy exposure. Such a delay in S‐phase was paralleled or followed by an accumulation of cells in G2M, which was transient at the lowest radiation doses and still persistent at 72 hr after 10 Gy. Such an accumulation was, at least in part, due to a block in G2‐M transition, as demonstrated by mitotic index analysis. Bivariate flow cytometric analysis of DNA content and cyclin B1 expression showed that, following 2 and 5 Gy, the fraction of cyclin B1‐expressing cells was superimposable upon that of G2M cells. Conversely, in cells treated with 10 Gy, the fraction of cyclin B1‐expressing cells was half the G2M cell fraction. Northern‐blot analysis indicated that the radiation‐induced decrease in cyclin B1 protein expression was accompanied by a reduced cyclin B mRNA level. On the whole, our results indicate a direct inhibitory effect of 10 Gy irradiation on cyclin B1 expression as a possible cause for the persistent G2 block in irradiated M14 cells. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Anal incontinence was investigated in 125 patients. Sphincter suture war suitable for only 52. Opening the anal canal was avoided. Perineal female and male anatomy is very different. Reconstruction of continence by sphincter suture is only to be recommended after traumatic lesions.


Purpose. Describe patterns of health care utilization among vulnerable subgroups of an underserved population and identify populations that could benefit from interventions to reduce health care costs and improve quality of care. Methods. Health Information Exchange data focused on underserved patients was used to estimate the risk of an emergency department (ED) or inpatient (IP) visit among vulnerable patients. Results. Approximately 20.9% of the population was vulnerable, with behavioral health being the most predominant. Homeless, disabled, and severe behavioral health patients had an increased risk of ED utilization. Behavioral health, disabled, and near elderly patients had an increased risk of IP utilization. Inpatient risk was even greater for patients with multiple vulnerabilities. Conclusions. Improved primary care services are needed to address both the mental and physical needs of vulnerable populations, particularly people with severe behavioral health conditions. Improved access to services may help reduce the costly burden of providing hospital-based care.


We report on the low-frequency electronic noise properties of individual multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs). We present experimental evidence of the key role played by the structural quality of the tube and its gaseous environment on the excess noise level. By tuning the Fermi energy location in the electronic band structure, we also demonstrate the energy dependence of the electronic fluctuations in CNTs. Large random telegraph noise can be activated under specific Fermi energy locations. The role of mobile atomic-sized defects in a coherent transport regime is discussed.


Introduction. Secondary upper-extremity lymphedema is most commonly caused by lymphadenectomy and radiotherapy (RT) of regional lymph nodes. Lymphatic edema differ in the fact that they lead to fibrotic changes in tissues, as the lymph contains up to 2–4% of protein, which causes a specific histopathological response. Proteins, as well as tissue protein-polysaccharide complexes, undergo transformations leading to pathological collagenization, and then to hyalinization and sclerosis. A vicious circle of pathological processes stemming from biophysical and chemical changes in proteins and polysaccharides with metabolic disorders occurs. Compression therapy is the most important component of the fight against both upper- and lower-extremity edema of various origins at any stage of the disease.The aim is to assess the postoperative stabilization of the upper-extremity edema state due to the patient's self-bandaging using inelastic bandages and the possibility of personalized adjustment of pressure to be applied at the required level. The article provides indications for the use of an adjustable inelastic compression bandage to stabilize edema, and reviews a clinical example of its postoperative use in a patient with grade 4 secondary right upper-extremity lymphedema. Particular emphasis is placed on the versatility of adjustable inelastic compression bandage and the expediency of its widespread use in clinical practice.Conclusion. Simplicity and ease of use with an option to self-adjust and maintain the stable level of therapeutic pressure throughout the entire period of medical rehabilitation, as well as minimization of doctor's involvement, allow us to recommend the adjustable inelastic compression bandage for effective use in wide clinical practice.


In this paper, an efficient residue to binary conversion algorithm is derived for a new four-moduli set {2/sup n/-1, 2/sup n/, 2/sup n/+1, 2/sup n-1/-1} with large dynamic range and well-balanced moduli. Our algorithm exploits the special periodicity properties of the proposed moduli set to obtain hardware efficacy. By using the most efficient residue to binary conversion of the three-moduli set {2/sup n/-1, 2/sup n/, 2/sup n/+1}, the proposed algorithm can be reduced to a simpler two moduli set RNS where fast mixed-radix conversion can be used to obtain the weighted binary number. Four different adder-based architectures are proposed, all are pipelinable to achieve very high throughput rate, and all are more efficient than the residue to binary converters for other four-moduli sets in terms of area and delay.


INTRODUCTION
Ganglioglioma is an uncommon type of primary brain tumors. In most of the cases the tumor demonstrates benign clinical behaviour with long-term patients' survival. We present two cases ofhistologically confirmed anaplastic ganglioglioma in which malignant progression into a glioblastoma multiforme was seen. CASE 1: A 36 year-old female with known Turner syndrome and recent history of single generalized seizure. The contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed an infiltrating lesion of the left frontal lobe. The tumor was excised partially and the histological result was anaplastic ganglioglioma (World Health Organization - WHO. gr. III). No additional neurological deterioration occurred after the procedure. A postoperative radiotherapy was performed with total dose of 60 Gy. The patient was symptom-free for one year taking her anticonvulsant medications. Control neuroimaging studies (computer tomography - CT, and MRI) were made because of progressive headache, right limbs weakness and speech disturbances. A local tumor recurrence was found and the patient underwent second operative intervention with gross total tumor resection. The histological result was glioblastoma multiforme (WHO gr. IV glioma). The patient improved after the procedure. An involvement of the contralateral cerebral hemisphere was found on control CT-scan ten months later. The patient died after one month, 23 months after her initial diagnosis. CASE 2: A 17 year-old female with recent history of progressive headache and three generalized seizures preceded by involuntary movements of the right limbs. MRI data for large, heterointense tumor lesion in the left frontal lobe was found. A subtotal tumor removal was made. The histological result was anaplastic ganglioglioma (WHO gr. ILL). The patients' headache and right side hemiparesis improved after the intervention. She was seizure-free taking her anticonvulsant medications. Thirty-day-long fractionated radiotherapy was performed with total dose of 60 Gy. The patient remained symptom-free for thirteen months after initial surgical procedure. During the next month the patients, partial motor seizures relapsed. Progressive headache, diplopia, and visual acuity impairment also developed. The ventriculoperitoneal shunt was implanted with neuroimaging data for internal hydrocephalus development. The patients' headache and visual disturbances improved after the procedure. Data for additional local tumor growth was found on control CT-scan one month later. The patient underwent subtotal excision of the lesion and the actual histological result was glioblastoma multiforme. The patient deteriorated after the intervention according to her right limbs paresis and died one month and half later. 20 months after the initial diagnosis.

CONCLUSION
The gangliogliomas are uncommon in clinical practice. The tumor behaviour may vary between the patients in spite of the similar histological characteristics which indicates the possible presence of different tumor subtypes.


This study addresses the potential of crowdfunding of scientific research as a complementary source of funding to competitive government-funded research grants. Although a growing number of academic researchers expect scientific crowdfunding to support academic research that is not funded through traditional grants, few studies have investigated the motives of crowdfunding contributors. This study develops hypotheses regarding the relationship between crowdfunding and its returns or emotional motivations. The hypotheses are tested using an internet survey of 3,443 Japanese citizens regarding their willingness to contribute to academic research. We controlled two biases, disinterest and acquiescence, in the responses by applying a randomized experiment method. Our results identify two influential determinants of both an interest in donating and the willingness to contribute, namely, research that increases empathy and research that contributes to global knowledge. We also find that returns from crowdfunding, such as increasing national scientific competitiveness, do not always drive donation behavior. The results confirm the usefulness of crowdfunding in supporting various types of academic research.


When designing a stabilization system for highly maneuverable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), one of the relevant tasks is to study the operation of the steering drive in the frequency band corresponding to the flexural vibrations of the UAV body. To ensure the stability of the UAV stabilization system, quite conflicting requirements may be imposed on the dynamic characteristics of the drive. In particular, the requirement for a sharp suppression of the amplitude-frequency characteristic at the frequency of UAV bending vibrations with minimal phase distortions in the control band of the longitudinal and lateral channels of the stabilization system can significantly complicate the task of researching the stability of the UAV motion control system. The article discusses an electric drive prototype with a digital microcontroller, designed for a highly maneuverable UAV. Adaptive algorithms of the digital controller make it possible to provide the necessary phase delays in the control frequency band and at the same time almost completely suppress the harmonic components of the control signals at the frequencies of the bending vibrations of the UAV body. The algorithms are essentially nonlinear in nature and are based on a change in the gain of the direct circuit of the drive depending on the frequency of the input signal, which greatly complicates the calculation of the transfer function of the steering drive for use in the frequency model of the stabilization system. Generally, the steering drive is described by a linear minimum-phase system, presented as a transfer function of one of the typical blocks of the first or second order, but for the specified steering drive with given dynamic characteristics, this approach is untenable. As a result of the study, a method for obtaining a frequency model of the steering drive is proposed, which is implemented as a non-minimum phase system, the main property of which is the independence of the amplitude-frequency and phase-frequency characteristics. In the process of research, the results obtained on the proposed model are compared with the results of experiments on a drive prototype and its complete non-linear time model. The main advantage of the proposed frequency model is a fairly simple description of the steering drive in the frequency domain, convenient for use as part of the frequency model of the stabilization system in the study of problems of ensuring the stability of UAV flight.


Cathodic electrodeposition of mixed-valent rhenium oxides at indium tin oxide, gold, rhenium, and glassy carbon electrodes from acidic perrhenate solutions (pH = 1.5 +/- 0.1) prepared from hydrogen peroxide and zerovalent rhenium metal is described. Cyclic voltammetry, variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry (VASE), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV-vis spectroelectrochemistry, and electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM) data indicate that the chemical nature of the electrodeposited rhenium species depends mainly upon the potential and supporting electrolyte. The presence of SO4(2-) as a supporting electrolyte inhibits the adsorption of perrhenate, ReO4-, at non-hydrogen adsorbing electrode materials. However, in acidic perrhenate solutions containing only protons and ReO4- anions, strong adsorption of ReO4- at potentials preceding hydrogen evolution occurs. This leads to the formation of an unstable ReIII2O3 intermediate which catalytically disproportionates to form mixed-valent rhenium films consisting of 72% ReIVO2 and 28% Re0. During the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), hydrogen polarization causes the principle deposit to be more reduced, consisting of roughly 64% ReIVO2 and 36% Re0. Conclusively, metallic rhenium can be deposited at potentials preceding the HER at non-hydrogen adsorbing electrode materials, especially in the absence of SO4(2-) anions.


This study examined the changes in sleeping and studying patterns of young students and their mothers after moving to foreign countries. This study analyzed the relational characteristics of Geese Family members which are summarized as follows: 1) Sleeping Pattern: At the early stages of settling into foreign countries, students begin to sleep in the same bedroom with their mothers, who had used to sleep in separate bedrooms back in Korea. This change in pattern may slightly vary according to the age and gender of the students, and type of residence. Relationships between young students and mothers become more tightly coupled. However, relationships between students and fathers become less tightened. 2) Studying Pattern: Students tend to study in the public space such as the living room and dining areas, rather than in their own private rooms. This is because mothers want to support and focus upon their children's study by sacrificing normal family activities. These patterns appear stronger as their period of study in the foreign country becomes shorter and the ages of the students become younger. These studying patterns also contribute to the coupling between mothers and young students. 3) Family Relationships: From the period as Geese Families, the relation between mothers and young students become closer both physically and emotionally. The relation between fathers and children become less close. The role of fathers is degraded to that of supporter or negotiator for the time period of the mothers and child students in the foreign country.


E.P.R. studies of the (S = 3/2) and (S = 5/2) ions in the high- (II) and low- (III) temperature phases of are reported. The structural phase transition close to has been demonstrated, using the temperature dependence of the spin-Hamiltonian parameters. The main mechanism of the phase transition is driven by the rotation of the octahedra around the c-axis.


An implementation of analog parallel network for solving image optimization problems is presented. The implementation is based on a multilayer cellular neural network (CNN). A general optimization procedure is divided into subfunctions each of which is realized by a network layer. The problem of multilevel halftoning of images is used as an example of the optimization procedure. The resulting network which consists of four layers is described in the paper. The network was simulated on a digital computer and its performance was evaluated using a set of test images. Results of the tests and other potential applications of the proposed network are discussed.


AIM
Ga-68 labeled somatostatin analogues such as 68Ga-DOTA0-Phe1-Tyr3-octrotide (DOTATOC) as PET tracers, have significantly improved the imaging of somatostatin receptors (SSTRs) expressing tumors. Due to unspecific parenchymal binding and the expression of SSTRs on leukocytes in the spleen this is the organ with the highest non-tumor uptake of DOTATOC. Therefore, we investigated the potential changes of normal tissue distribution and tumor concentration in patients with neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) with or without spleenectomy.

METHODS
Out of 420 patients with pancreatic NET undergoing 68GA-DOTATOC PET/CT eleven patients with and eleven patients without spleenectomy were derived and matched in regard to tumor histology, tumor load, age and gender. The SUV(max) of liver metastases as well as of the following normal tissues was determined: pituitary gland, thyroid gland, liver parenchyma, kidneys and suprarenal glands.

RESULTS
SUV(max) values with and without spleenectomy were: in the liver metastasis (19.17 ± 6.05 versus 37.67 ± 16.31), in the thyroid gland (2.56 ± 1.33 versus 2.66 ± 0.94), in the pituitary gland (4.08 ± 1.79 versus 4.92 ± 1.93) in suprarenal glands (7.18 ± 3.33 versus 9.73 ± 3.46 on the left side and 7.32 ± 3.03 versus 11.19 ± 5.72 on the right side), in the kidneys (8.1 3 ± 4.26 on the left side and 8.11 ± 4.16 on the right side versus 8.62 ± 2.17 on the left side and 9.79 ± 2.18 on the right side) and in normal liver tissue (5.74 ± 1.55 versus 6.22 ± 1.95). The difference was statistically significant (Wilcoxon test P<0.05) in tumor lesions, adrenal and kidney tissue.

CONCLUSION
Spleenectomy must be considered as a relevant factor when reporting the outcome of SSTR targeted diagnostics and therapies.


MicroRNAs (miRNAs) act as master regulators of gene expression in homeostasis and disease. Despite the rapidly growing body of evidence on the theranostic potential of restoring miRNA levels in pre-clinical models, the translation into clinics remains limited. Here, we review the current knowledge of miRNAs as T-cell targeting immunotherapeutic tools, and we offer an overview of the recent advances in miRNA delivery strategies, clinical trials and future perspectives in RNA interference technologies.


Australia and Canada are both lively, multicultural societies with British constitutional traditions. Historically, they have faced similar challenges in defining and sustaining citizenship that reach back into a common past. They also have similar approaches to address contemporary issues and anticipate the challenges of a 21st century future. New perspectives on the culture and politics of citizenship emerge in this timely text that is essential reading for those interested in the steadily expanding ties between Australia and Canada.


Accepting the idea that the mental representations of concepts, diagrams, relations, plans, etc., are thought-shapers, I suggest going a bit further. Any kind of representation, be it mental or public, i.e., accessible to others, bears thought-shaping potential, albeit not in the same manner. Just as the idea of embodied cognition takes into consideration environmental facilities and obstacles, I suggest investigating thought processes in a broader context, i.e., placing thought-shapers in the context of their formation. I propose that the elements of the above mentioned definition of thought-shapers are built upon a structure that consists of representational skills, means, and institutions. In accordance with the idea of embeddedness and enactment, the need for communication and the given cognitive and physical aptitudes result in different kinds of expression, i.e., different kinds of representations available to others. When an expressional mode solidifies, it opens up new possibilities and limitations. I propose that mundane, almost unnoticeable affordances and their accompanying limits do shape our thoughts thoroughly. In my argument for the thought-shaper potential of the generative technique of public representations, I will delineate a historical overview of representational means in tandem with the main characteristics of different eras' crucial ideals and patterns of reasoning. I will close the historical overview with a terminological excursion exploring how publicly available representation and mental representation relate to each other and the kinds of ambiguities that accompany the latter term's use. Accordingly, embedding thought-shapers, I will outline the evolution of different representational techniques and skills. Then, because language is a decisive representational means, I will investigate its orientating and distortive potential. I will rely on some of Bergson's lesser-known remarks. I will illuminate how ocular-centrism was able to be a decisive metaphor in science and philosophy for long centuries, until recently even. In conclusion, as a case study, I will illuminate how the term "mental representation" as a highly abstract term facilitates and at the same time hinders philosophical and scientific inquiry.


Increased deposition of reactive atmospheric N has resulted in the nitrogen saturation of many forested catchments worldwide. Isotope‐based studies from multiple forest sites report low proportions (mean = ∼10%) of unprocessed atmospheric nitrate in streams during baseflow, regardless of N deposition or nitrate export rates. Given similar proportions of atmospheric nitrate in baseflow across a variety of sites and forest types, it is important to address the postdepositional drivers and processes that affect atmospheric nitrate transport and fate within catchments. In a meta‐analysis of stable isotope‐based studies, we examined the influence of methodological, biological, and hydrologic drivers on the export of atmospheric nitrate from forests. The δ18O‐ NO3− values in stream waters may increase, decrease, or not change with increasing discharge during stormflow conditions, and δ18O‐ NO3− values are generally higher in stormflow than baseflow. However, δ18O‐ NO3− values tended to increase with increasing baseflow discharge at all sites examined. To explain these differences, we present a conceptual model of hydrologic flowpath characteristics (e.g., saturation overland flow versus subsurface stormflow) that considers the influence of topography on landscape‐stream hydrologic connectivity and delivery of unprocessed atmospheric nitrate to streams. Methodological biases resulting from differences in sampling frequency and stable isotope analytical techniques may further influence the perceived degree of unprocessed atmospheric nitrate export. Synthesis of results from numerous isotope‐based studies shows that small proportions of unprocessed atmospheric nitrate are common in baseflow. However, hydrologic, topographic, and methodological factors are important drivers of actual or perceived elevated contributions of unprocessed atmospheric nitrate to streams.


The role of T cell immunity against nuclear antigens recognized by autoantibodies in human and murine systemic lupus is unclear. We have studied the T cell proliferative response to purified Sm nuclear antigen by measuring in vitro 3H-thymidine incorporation by MRL/Mp- +/+ lymph node cells primed with Sm in Freund's adjuvant. Sm-primed cells responded in a dose-dependent fashion when cultured in vitro with purified Sm. Absorption of the Sm with solid-phase anti-Sm IgG from either of two lupus patients ablated the response, whereas control absorptions with normal IgG had no effect. Furthermore, cells from mice primed with physicochemically purified Sm responded in vitro to affinity-purified antigen, and vice versa. Treatment of cells with either anti-Thy-1 or anti-Lyt-1 and C eliminated Sm-induced proliferation, whereas anti-Lyt-2 treatment resulted in enhanced responses. MRL/Mp- +/+ mice, which made no detectable anti-Sm antibodies in vivo, were nonetheless capable of generating Sm-reactive T cells. These results indicate that T cells can specifically recognize the Sm nuclear antigen. Such recognition may be of importance in the generation of antibodies to Sm and other nuclear antigens in vivo.


Temporal Inferences in Conversation Within this article, I explore how coproductions (expansions made by a second speaker upon a previous utterance) and questions regarding prior utterances work to verbalize inferences regarding the temporal information in spoken German conversation. While questions regarding prior utterances and coproductions are traditionally understood to have different communicative functions (signaling understanding/ misunderstanding; turn taking) to coproductions, empirical data shows how these expression types enable the speaker to gradually verbalize different strengths of assumption about details of the previous turn. These two expression types are not a dichotomy, but a continuum.


To overcome common problems in traditional EMC receiver an innovative approach to the receiver design has been tried. The results of this design effort-that allowed to launch on the market a new class of receivers-are here briefly reported.


Bioherms are common in the St George Group, a sequence of shallow-water carbonate rocks deposited on the western continental shelf of Iapetus Ocean. They range from small heads and metre-sized mounds to extensive banks and complexes many metres thick and hundreds of metres in lateral extent. The cores of these bioherms are principally composed of thrombolites (unlaminated, branching, columnar stromatolites), structures quite distinct from laminated stromatolites which are common in intertidal beds. Associated with thrombolites is a diverse fauna of burrowing invertebrates, trilobites, nautiloids, pelmatozoans, brachiopods, gastropods, rostroconchs and archaeoscyphiid sponges.

On the basis of framework-building components, three main bioherm types are distinguished: (1) thrombolite mounds, (2) thrombolite-Lichenaria or -sponge mounds and (3) thrombolite-Lichenaria-Renalcis reef complexes. The framework of the last is the most complex, with abundant cavities and a demonstrably uneven growth surface of thrombolites, corals and free-standing Renalcis heads, walls and roofs. Some cavities were active sediment conduits while others were protected, their roofs draped with Renalcis and their walls coated by cryptalgal laminites.

These bioherms possess the attributes of shallow-water ecologic reefs. They span a critical time gap in the development of reefs, the transition period from algal-dominated bioherms of the Precambrian and Cambrian to the metazoan-dominated bioherms of the Middle Ordovician and remaining Phanerozoic.


This paper studies false vacuum lumps surrounded by the true vacuum in a real scalar field potential in flat spacetime. Fermions reside in the core of the lump, which are coupled with the scalar field via Yukawa interaction. Such lumps are stable against spherical collapse and deformation from spherical shape based on energetics considerations. The fermions inside the lump are treated as a uniform Fermi gas. We consider the Fermi gas in both ultrarelativistic and nonrelativistic limits. The mass and size of these lumps depend on the scale characterizing the scalar field potential as well as the mass density of the fermions.


Natural conversations often involve disfluencies in the form of revisions, repetitions, interjections, filled pauses and such. This paper focuses on word/phrase repetitions and revisions that are lexically well formed. These are generally captured by an ASR but pose problems to downstream processing such as spoken language translation (SLT). We describe a system to identify such word level disfluencies with a goal towards removing them in real time from the automatic recognition (ASR) system output. We use a span based training system to utilize the contextual information while tagging disfluencies. We design our system on the oracle transcripts and test them on both reference and ASR transcripts. We achieve an area under the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve for word level disfluency detection of .93 and .87 for the reference and the ASR transcripts respectively.


Examining the spontaneous activity to understand the neural mechanism of brain disorder is a focus in recent resting-state fMRI. In the current study, to investigate the alteration of brain functional connectivity in partial epilepsy in a systematical way, two levels of analyses (functional connectivity analysis within resting state networks (RSNs) and functional network connectivity (FNC) analysis) were carried out on resting-state fMRI data acquired from the 30 participants including 14 healthy controls(HC) and 16 partial epilepsy patients. According to the etiology, all patients are subdivided into temporal lobe epilepsy group (TLE, included 7 patients) and mixed partial epilepsy group (MPE, 9 patients). Using group independent component analysis, eight RSNs were identified, and selected to evaluate functional connectivity and FNC between groups. Compared with the controls, decreased functional connectivity within all RSNs was found in both TLE and MPE. However, dissociating patterns were observed within the 8 RSNs between two patient groups, i.e, compared with TLE, we found decreased functional connectivity in 5 RSNs increased functional connectivity in 1 RSN, and no difference in the other 2 RSNs in MPE. Furthermore, the hierarchical disconnections of FNC was found in two patient groups, in which the intra-system connections were preserved for all three subsystems while the lost connections were confined to intersystem connections in patients with partial epilepsy. These findings may suggest that decreased resting state functional connectivity and disconnection of FNC are two remarkable characteristics of partial epilepsy. The selective impairment of FNC implicated that it is unsuitable to understand the partial epilepsy only from global or local perspective. We presumed that studying epilepsy in the multi-perspective based on RSNs may be a valuable means to assess the functional changes corresponding to specific RSN and may contribute to the understanding of the neuro-pathophysiological mechanism of epilepsy.


Voltage sags originated at the transmission level can have a very adverse effect on distributed generators running at distribution levels. A fault current limiter (FCL) can be an effective means to limit the voltage sag impact. This paper presents the main results of a research based on digital simulation and aimed at studying the effectiveness of a FCL to limit the impact of voltage sag on the shaft torque of distributed generators. The sensitivity of the shaft torque to parameters of the FCL, the power system and the fault is analyzed.


Assessing progress and stability in rapid, highly iterative and agile object-oriented software development processes is difficult because program evolution appears somewhat disorderly. With agile software development methods, the expected time to reach software stability is obscured by the dynamic nature of the agile process itself. The System Design Instability (SDI) metric was developed to help analyze object-oriented software evolution under these conditions. In this paper we examine a new version of SDI, called SDIe, based on the maximum entropy in a system. We believe our new measure is easier to calculate than the original version of SDI since it is based on data that are more commonly available than those used by SDI; also, SDIe gives a more accurate indication of software stability and maturity since it suffers less from data spikes. To validate the new metric, we use maintenance data from a commercial software project, developed using an agile process; these are the same data that were collected and analyzed in the original SDI study. In addition, we apply the refined SDI metric to the evolution of a well-established, open-source, iteratively-developed software product. The results of our case study indicate our new SDIe metric is a viable measure of system design stability. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The climatic and hydrological systems are tightly related and any
induced changes cause chained interactions. In an attempt to adequately manage
water resources in Greece,
a series of experiments were conducted with different GCMs in selected study
areas to understand this interplay. This paper is an overview of the studies
carried out in the Aliakmon, the Upper Acheloos,
the Portaikos, and the Pinios basins, where the regional hydrological cycle was
evaluated on river basin spatial scale to assess regional impacts and
variability. The impacts of climate change on the water resources are presented
in a synthetic quantitative way, in order to draw general conclusions
concerning the trends of the hydrological indicators. A good agreement was
observed between the different climatic experiments, and the trends on the
selected hydrological indicators demonstrate an increase in temperature and
PET, reduction in the mean annual precipitation and runoff, and a shifting of
the snowmelt period towards the winter, while the snowpack storage was proved
to be a controlling factor. It is accentuated that relatively small decreases
in the mean annual precipitation cause dramatic increase of reservoir risk
levels of annual firm water supply and energy production. As a result, radical
increases of reservoir storage volume are required to maintain firm water and
energy yields at tolerable risk levels. The adaptive capacity of the country is
not that high, and a series of serious actions need to be taken in order to
mitigate the effects of climate change and assess its impacts.


The wildland-urban interface (WUI) of the conterminous United States is becoming increasingly important for both private and government land managers due to the increased wildfire risk. Private landowners within the WUI are responsible for wildfire mitigation on their own property, but not all landowners adopt or conduct sufficient measures. This study attempts to clarify factors that influence wildfire mitigation, using the WUI of El Paso County, CO as a case study. Social determinants, such as age, retirement status, and political affiliation were not found to be related to more frequent mitigation. Place dependency variables, such as local employment and duration of residence, were also found to have no association with mitigation, contrary results in preexisting literature. How residents perceived the wildfire risk was found to be an important determinant of more frequent mitigation, suggesting the need for education programs that help WUI residents more accurately evaluate the risk to lower the need for additional government firefighting resources in the event of a wildfire. Insurance policies requiring mitigation were sparse across the study area, and the requirements varied between companies. This study highlights the need for more comprehensive collaboration between private and public land managers, and an increased effort from federal agencies to educate landowners about wildfires in the abutting WUI.


The thermal expansion of pure water having natural isotopic abundance was determined by the dilatometric method in a temperature range from 0 to 85 °C and under a pressure of 101 325 Pa. The following equation was obtained: ρ(t)/ρmax = 1 - [(t - 3,98152)2 (t + 396,18534) (t + 32,28853)/609 628,6(t + 83,12333) (t + 30,24455)] where ρ(t) is the density of water at temperature t, which is expressed in terms of the ITS-90, and ρmax the maximum density. The density ratio which the above equation gives is estimated to have an uncertainty of approximately 1 × 10-6.


The halogen-free flame retardant (HFFR) ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer (EVM)/ATH/SiO2 composites have been prepared by melting compounding method, and the flame retardant, thermal stability, rheological, electrical, and mechanical properties have been investigated by cone calorimeter, LOI, UL-94, TG, FE-SEM, rotational rheometer, dielectric breakdown, and ultimate tensile. The results indicate that the flame retardant of EVM vulcanizates is improved and the fire jeopardizing is dramatically reduced due to the addition of ATH. It is necessary that sufficient loading of ATH (≥120 phr) is needed to reach essential level (LOI > 30; V-0 rating) of flame retardant for HFFR EVM/ATH/SiO2 composites used as cable in industry. The rheological characteristics show that at all the measurement frequencies, the storage and loss modulus of the composites increase monotonously as the concentration of ATH filler increases, while the complex viscosity and tan delta present reverse trend. And also, it has been found that the HFFR composites at high filler concentrations still keep good mechanical and electrical properties, which is very important for practical applications as cable. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010


ABSTRACT We evaluated whether four recombinant antigens previously used for vaccination against experimental infection with Leishmania (Leishmania) major could also induce protective immunity against a challenge with Leishmania (Viannia) braziliensis, the species responsible for 90% of the 28,712 annual cases of cutaneous and mucocutaneous leishmaniasis recorded in Brazil during the year of 2004. Initially, we isolated the homolog genes encoding four L. (V.) braziliensis antigens: (i) homologue of receptor for activated C kinase, (ii) thiol-specific antioxidant, (iii) Leishmania elongation and initiation factor, and (iv) L. (L.) major stress-inducible protein 1. At the deduced amino acid level, all four open reading frames had a high degree of identity with the previously described genes of L. (L.) major being expressed on promastigotes and amastigotes of L. (V.) braziliensis. These genes were inserted into the vector pcDNA3 or expressed as bacterial recombinant proteins. After immunization with recombinant plasmids or proteins, BALB/c mice generated specific antibody or cell-mediated immune responses (gamma interferon production). After an intradermal challenge with L. (V.) braziliensis infective promastigotes, no significant reduction on the lesions was detected. We conclude that the protective immunity afforded by these four vaccine candidates against experimental cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by L. (L.) major could not be reproduced against a challenge with L. (V.) braziliensis. Although negative, we consider our results important since they suggest that studies aimed at the development of an effective vaccine against L. (V.) braziliensis, the main causative agent of cutaneous leishmaniasis in the New World, should be redirected toward distinct antigens or different vaccination strategies.


Electrospinning using biocompatible polymer scaffolds, seeded with or without stem cells, is considered a promising technique for producing fibrous scaffolds with therapeutic possibilities for ischemic heart disease. However, no optimal scaffolds for treating ischemic heart disease have been identified thus far. In the present study, it was evaluated whether electrospun silk fibroin (SF)-blended poly(L-lactic acid-co-ε-caprolactone) [P(LLA-CL)] scaffolds that were seeded with cluster of differentiation 117 (c-kit)+ bone marrow (BM) cells may serve a protective role in cardiac remodeling following myocardial infarction (MI). Mechanical characteristics and cytocompatibility were compared between SF/P(LLA-CL) and P(LLA-CL) electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds in vitro. It was observed that MI led to a significant increase of the c-kit+ BM cell subpopulation in mice. Magnetic activated cell sorting was performed to harvest the c-kit+ cell population from the BM of mice following MI. c-kit+ BM cells were seeded on SF/P(LLA-CL) and P(LLA-CL) electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds. Results indicated that SF/P(LLA-CL) electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds were superior to P(LLA-CL) electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds in improving c-kit+ BM cell proliferation. Additionally, compared with pure SF/P(LLA-CL) electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds, SF/P(LLA-CL) scaffolds seeded with c-kit+ BM cells resulted in lower levels of MI markers and reduced infarct size, leading to greater global heart function improvement in vivo. The findings of the present study indicated that SF/P(LLA-CL) electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds seeded with c-kit+ BM cells exert a protective effect against MI and may be a promising approach for cardiac regeneration after ischemic heart disease.


The author has made a study regarding the place and the role of the jewel at the contemporary stage. The study is mostly based on the results of the first survey in the domain of jewellery art, carried out in the Republic of Moldova in March-April 2011, and compared to similar surveys from European countries and the USA. On the pages of the text, an analysis is made of the priorities and preferences in the way contemporary jewellery is worn, the main focus being placed on the study of the trends from the jewellery design domain, the developing conditions of the decorative art and the possibilities of affirmation of the jewellery autochthon school. According to our opinion, the description and analysis of the art of jewellery at the contemporary stage is very difficult, due to several reasons, though it is achievable. The new models elaborated by the young jewellers from the country, which go hand in hand with the fashion of the clothes and stylish accessories, the appearance of new names in the decorative autochthon art allows to conclude that in the Republic of Moldova, there are artistic and economic perspectives to rehabilitate the jewellery production domain. The author comes with certain recommendations and solutions, capable of restructuring and reviving the jewellery domain. These masterpieces, based on century-old traditions from the domain of artistic processing of the metal, need an analysis and appreciation now, in order to become in time a true history of the jewellery from Moldova.


CO2 is a promising refrigerant compared to traditional HFCs due to its insignificant global warming potential and nonthreatening to the ozone layer. It has been used as refrigerant in industrial and commercial refrigeration in recent years. With high compactness and the ability to recover heat, CO2 booster systems have been widely installed in newly constructed supermarkets in the Netherlands. One remarkable advantage of this system is that great amount of heat can be recovered from the gas cooler for heating use due to high temperature driving force from CO2. Sometimes the COP is sacrificed to fully satisfy the heating demand. Within the present work, a quasi-steady-state computer model has been developed to study the performance of the system based on a typical Dutch supermarket. The model has been validated using experimental data. By altering condensing pressure and gas cooler capacity using different methods, various control strategies to satisfy both cooling and heating demand have been proposed and compared. The results from the simulation illustrate that some control strategies have lower energy consumption and easier operation compared to the others. The study also shows that CO2 booster refrigeration system has a good potential for heat recovery. It has the potential to save 13% primary energy compared to conventional heating method in supermarkets.


Brushless DC (BLDC) motors are one of the most widely used motors, not only because of their efficiency, and torque characteristics, but also because they have the advantages of being a direct current (DC) supplied, eliminating the disadvantages of using Brushes. BLDC motors have a very wide range of speed, so speed control is a very important issue for it. Sliding mode control (SMC) is one of the popular strategies to deal with uncertain control systems. The Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller (FSMC) combines the intelligence of a fuzzy inference system with the sliding mode controller. In this paper, an intelligent Fuzzy Sliding Mode controller for the speed control of BLDC motor is proposed. The mathematical model of the BLDC motor is developed and it is used to examine the performance of this controller. Conventionally PI controllers are used for the speed control of the BLDC motor. When Fuzzy SMC is used for the speed control of BLDC motor, the peak overshoot is completely eliminated which is 3% with PI controller. Also the rise time is reduced from 23 ms to 4 ms and the settling time is reduced from 46 ms to 4 ms by applying FMSMC. This paper emphasizes on the effectiveness of speed control of BLDC motor with Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller and its merit over conventional PI controller.


A family of proposed miniature sources of power would exploit the direct conversion of the kinetic energy of a particles into electricity in diamond semiconductor diodes. These power sources would function over a wide range of temperatures encountered in terrestrial and outer-space environments. These sources are expected to have operational lifetimes of 10 to 20 years and energy conversion efficiencies >35 percent. A power source according to the proposal would include a pair of devices like that shown in the figure. Each device would contain Schottky and p/n diode devices made from high-band-gap, radiation-hard diamond substrates. The n and p layers in the diode portion would be doped sparsely (<1014 cm-3) in order to maximize the volume of the depletion region and thereby maximize efficiency. The diode layers would be supported by an undoped diamond substrate. The source of a particles would be a thin film of 244Cm (half-life 18 years) sandwiched between the two paired devices. The sandwich arrangement would force almost every a particle to go through the active volume of at least one of the devices. Typical a particle track lengths in the devices would range from 20 to 30 microns. The a particles would be made to stop only in the undoped substrates to prevent damage to the crystalline structures of the diode portions. The overall dimensions of a typical source are expected to be about 2 by 2 by 1 mm. Assuming an initial 244Cm mass of 20 mg, the estimated initial output of the source is 20 mW (a current of 20 mA at a potential of 1 V).


We show that there is a computably enumerable function f (that is, computably approximable from below) that dominates almost all functions, and f ⊕ W is incomplete for all incomplete computably enumerable sets W. Our main methodology is the LR equivalence relation on reals: A ≡LRB if and only if the notions of A-randomness and B-randomness coincide. We also show that there are c.e. sets that cannot be split into two c.e. sets of the same LR degree. Moreover, a c.e. set is low for random if and only if it computes no c.e. set with this property.


Most mathematical methods commonly used to estimate the parameters of a probability density function are based on the assumption of independent identically distributed (iid) data. However, the analysis of the reflectivity values of polarimetric ground clutter has shown that there may be a considerable amount of correlation depending on the type of clutter. For this analysis the estimated autocorrelation function, the Bartels test, and the runs up and down test for randomness are used.


Background: Periodontal diseases are regarded as the most common diseases of mankind. The prevalence rate of periodontal disease assumes the obvious growth tendency in the whole world, increased by 57.3% from 1990 to 2010. Thereby, effective periodontal therapy is still a long-term task and tricky problem. The goals of periodontal therapy are to eliminate the infectious and inflammatory processes. Root planning, in order to eliminate the "infected cementum", is an important step in treatment of periodontitis since 1970s. Along with the understanding of endotoxin's feature on root surface, the necessity of manual root planing has been gradually queried. Ultrasonic instruments wouldn't remove the cementum excessively, which are more time-saving and labor-saving compared to hand instruments as well. Hence, an increasing number of dentists prefer to scaling with ultrasonic instruments only. However, the necessity of root planing has still been emphasized in the international mainstream views of periodontal mechanical treatment. Therefore, this study is devoted to compare the clinical effect of ultrasonic subgingival debridement and ultrasonic subgingival scaling combined with manual root planing, which taking the implementation of root planing as the only variable and more in line with the clinical situation, hoping to provide some reference to dentists.
Methods/design: Forty adult patients who fit the inclusion criteria are being recruited from the Peking University Hospital of Stomatology (Beijing, China). By means of randomization tables, one quadrant of the upper and lower teeth is the test group and the other is the control group. Test group: ultrasonic subgingival scaling combined with manual root planing. Control group: ultrasonic subgingival debridement. In a 24-weeks follow-up period, plaque index, probing depth, clinical attachment loss, bleeding index, furcation involvement, mobility, and patient-reported outcome (visual analog scale for pain and sensitivity) will be observed and documented.
Discussion: This study evaluates the effectiveness of ultrasonic subgingival scaling combined with manual root planing and ultrasonic subgingival debridement alone in nonsurgical treatment of periodontitis with a split-mouth design after 1, 3 and 6 months. The result of the trial will potentially contribute to an advanced treatment strategy of periodontitis with ideal clinical outcome.
Trial registration: The study has been registered in International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) under the identifier number ChiCTR1800017122. Registered on 12 July 2018.
Keywords: Peridontitis, Non-surgical periodontal therapy, Ultrasonic subgingival debridement, Root planing


In this paper, we propose a novel primal-dual proximal splitting algorithm (PD-PSA), named BALPA, for the composite optimization problem with equality constraints, where the loss function consists of a smooth term and a nonsmooth term composed with a linear mapping. In BALPA, the dual update is designed as a proximal point for a time-varying quadratic function, which balances the implementation of primal and dual update and retains the proximity-induced feature of classic PD-PSAs. In addition, by this balance, BALPA eliminates the inefficiency of classic PD-PSAs for composite optimization problems in which the Euclidean norm of the linear mapping or the equality constraint mapping is large. Therefore, BALPA not only inherits the advantages of simple structure and easy implementation of classic PD-PSAs but also ensures a fast convergence when these norms are large. Moreover, we propose a stochastic version of BALPA (S-BALPA) and apply the developed BALPA to distributed optimization to devise a new distributed optimization algorithm. Furthermore, a comprehensive convergence analysis for BALPA and S-BALPA is conducted, respectively. Finally, numerical experiments demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithms.


Objective To determine whether apoptosis contributes to hepatocyte loss in tunicamycin poisoning.

Design Groups of four guinea pigs were given 400 μg/kg of tunicamycin subcutaneously and killed at 24 h intervals up to 72 h post-injection. Livers were examined by routine histological methods and ancillary techniques (TUNEL staining, endonu-clease activation, caspase activity, and electron microscopy) to ascertain whether any hepatocyte injury was apoptotic.

Results Many hepatocytes exposed to tunicamycin showed evidence of apoptosis in the form of nuclear karyorrhexis with chromatin margination and crescent formation, TUNEL-posi-tivity, DNA laddering, elevated caspase activity and apoptotic body formation.

Conclusion Tunicamycin caused the death of many hepatocytes in the livers of guinea pigs by apoptosis.


Three water soluble surfactants based on nonyl phenol were prepared, namely: ethoxylated nonyl phenol (e.o = 9), E(9)NP, ethoxylated nonyl phenol sodium phosphate, E(9)NPSP, and ethoxylated nonyl phenol phosphate diamide, E(9)NPPA. The inhibition efficiency of these surfactants on H-11 carbon steel in 1 M HCL was investigated using the weight loss technique. The surface active and thermodynamic properties of the investigated inhibitors have been studied. The surface morphology of carbon steel in absence and presence of different concentrations of E(9)NPPA was examined by environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM). The maximum inhibition efficiency (93.21%) was obtained by E(9)NPPA at 300 ppm and 298°K.


Quasi-multipliers for a Hilbert C*-bimodule V were introduced by L. G. Brown, J. A. Mingo, and N.-T. Shen as a certain subset of the Banach bidual module V**. We give another (equivalent) definition of quasi-multipliers for Hilbert C*-bimodules using the centralizer approach and then show that quasi-multipliers are, in fact, universal (maximal) objects of a certain category. We also introduce quasi-multipliers for bimodules in Kasparov's sense and even for Banach bimodules over C*-algebras, provided these C*-algebras act non-degenerately. A topological picture of quasi-multipliers via the quasi-strict topology is given. Finally, we describe quasi-multipliers in two main situations: for the standard Hilbert bimodule and for bimodules of sections of Hilbert C*-bimodule bundles over locally compact spaces.


The next generation Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS) has been developed recently in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to accelerate the improvement of tropical cyclone (TC) forecasts within the Unified Forecast System (UFS) framework. The finite-volume cubed sphere (FV3) based convection-allowing HAFS Stand-Alone Regional model (HAFS-SAR) was successfully implemented during Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP) real-time experiments for the 2019 Atlantic TC season. HAFS-SAR has a single large 3-km horizontal resolution regional domain covering the North Atlantic basin. A total of 273 cases during the 2019 TC season are systematically evaluated against the best track and compared with three operational forecasting systems: Global Forecast System (GFS), Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting model (HWRF), and Hurricanes in a Multi-scale Ocean-coupled Non-hydrostatic model (HMON). HAFS-SAR has the best performance in track forecasts among the models presented in this study. The intensity forecasts are improved over GFS, but show less skill compared to HWRF and HMON. The radius of gale force wind is over-predicted in HAFS-SAR, while the hurricane force wind radius has lower error than other models.


Background: The aim of this study was to compare the outcome of splenic hilum ligation (SHL) and splenectomy in spleen trauma in rat model. Methods: This interventional study was performed on 38 rats with spleen injuries. Rats were randomly divided into SHL and splenectomy groups. After 7 days of surgery, IgG, IgA, IgM, and IgE were measured. At this time, blood smear was prepared to evaluate Howell–Jolly bodies, target cells, schistocyte, poikilocyte, and anisocyte. Three months after the surgery, the spleen viability was evaluated by relaparotomy. Results: After 7 days, white blood count was significantly lower in SHL group as compared to control group (P = 0.024). All variables in peripheral blood smear were significantly lower in SHL group as compared to control group, except Howell–Jolly bodies (P = 0.461). In the SHL group, all spleens were viable in second operations. Conclusions: SHL can be used safely in the management of traumatic splenic injuries in rats.


To forecast the wind speed and the angle of its direction, it is suggested to use autoregression based on the concept of fuzzy system, which is recognized as a fairly convenient modeling tool. The main goal of fuzzy regression analysis is to find a regression model that satisfies all the observed fuzzy data within specified optimality criterion. According to this method, the regression coefficient is fuzzy numbers, which can't be expressed as a number of the interval with membership values. In this work, the wind speed and direction are predicted for the Far Eastern coast. It is shown that on this basis the power and generation of a wind power plant with the possibility of covering its load schedule, and the function of energy storage can be determined. High introduction of wind power plants into system leads to some inconveniences in the operation of operator systems, primarily due to unpredictable and volatile nature of wind speed, and wind power generated, respectively. Despite fact that the power generated at the wind form is not regulated by the system operator, accurate prediction of wind speed and the angle of its direction could solve this problem, thereby making a significant contribution to improving the reliability of power supply systems


We have constructed four different types of designs for computer experiments. The design types are based on latin hypercube sampling (LHS), orthogonal arrays (OA), ran- dom sampling and the recently proposed multi-level binary replacement (MBR) design. For each type of design we have attempted to find the best possible design out of a certain number of constructed designs using three different optimizing criteria: the alias sum of square criterion (ASSC), the L-criterion and a modified A-criterion. The chosen design has then been tested by fitting an approximate model and calculating maximum error (MAX) and root mean squared error (RMSE) values. We observed that out of the three criteria applied the ASSC performed the best. In addition to comparing criteria for optimizing the design choice, we have also constructed non-optimized designs for comparing the different design types and the different ways of constructing MBR designs. In this setting we observed that OA designs performed well in general, whereas the MBR designs performed well when restricted to a small number of factors.


The effects of the opioid fentanyl and low doses of alcohol on neuropsychological functions in healthy volunteers were measured. Twenty-four healthy male volunteers participated in this study. Two randomised placebo-controlled cross-over trials were conducted. In group 1, 6 subjects received fentanyl (0.2 µg/kg body weight) in the order of fentanyl/placebo and 6 subjects in the order of placebo/fentanyl. Group 2 received alcohol in a similar procedure by continuous intravenous infusion, leading to a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.03%. Impairment was measured via different neuropsychological tests. The results indicate that fentanyl in concentrations commonly used in out-patient surgical procedures produces pronounced cognitive impairment (auditory reaction time, signal detection, sustained attention, recognition) in comparison to placebo. After application of low doses of alcohol (BAC 0.03%) only visual reaction time was impaired in comparison to placebo.