NFC – Near Field Communication – is a very short range wireless communication technology that supports the use of mobile handsets by touch-based interaction. This is an intuitive and user-friendly way of establishing connections and exchanging information between mobile handsets and other devices by just setting them side by side. The SmartTouch project (ITEA No 05024) has been the largest effort on piloting NFC technology in the European Union. The project started in 2006 and extended to the end of year 2008, examining in the role of NFC in City Life, Home, Wellness and Health, and its Technological Building Blocks, Security and Privacy, and Business Building Blocks. The extraordinary combination of partners in SmartTouch, including technology and service producers, researchers, and organizations setting up first pilots, has been pushing the NFC technology forward on many fronts. This book collects those developments by starting with NFC and its basics and continuing through genuine pilot cases towards an understanding of NFC enabled business areas. This book is a valuable source of information for those who want to study NFC as a technology for their business, as a technology primer, or learning from others experiences of NFC use.


Experimental results of turbulent flows in the sea surface near the coastline have been performed using both Lagrangian and Eulerian methods, field tests are presented using video recordings and velocity sensors. The spatial and temporal resolution is limited by the measuring instruments, which results in "filtering" out the very small scales. The experimental field-results obtained during the large-scale surf zone experiments carried out in the Ebro Delta, (Spain), under spilling/plunging breaking waves are compared with experiments performed at the Barcelona harbour. The field-measurements include several tests across the surf zone with high vertical resolution. The measured turbulent properties are compared with macroturbulence characteristics and length parameterisations. Diffusion is measured and related to the local velocity spectra so that a generalized Richardson law may be used.


The carbon binding in nickel-based alloy with 3d, 4d and 5d transition metal solutes is investigated by using first-principles methods. The first nearest neighbor carbon exhibits repulsive behaviors with most metals except Cr element, which are analyzed from both mechanical and chemical aspects. It shows that the size factor from metal solute is one of the main reasons affecting 1NN carbon-metal binding. Further electronic structures analysis shows that the hybridization of C 2p(z)-M 3d(z)(2) states plays an important role in C-M bonding. The introduced vacancy enhances carbon bonding to most metal solutes through local strain change and charge redistribution. Among all the metal solutes, Cr shows its affinity to carbon which coincides with the previous experimental observation that chromium carbides are commonly precipitated in nickel-based alloys. The present study helps to understand the carbon-metal solute interaction in nickel-based alloys.


After two consecutive years of slowing global activity, there was a rise in world GDP growth in 2017 which was widespread across advanced and emerging market economies and was higher than expected at the start of the year. Inflation rose moderately in 2017, largely due to increases in commodity prices, but core inflation remained more stable and far from central bank targets. The outlook for 2018 indicates that these global trends will continue. Some of the factors that will influence these developments are analysed in detail in this article. First, several factors (the cyclical recovery, progress in deleveraging, fiscal changes and higher wages) indicate that the momentum of investment recorded in advanced economies in 2017 will continue in the short term, however, over a longer time frame, whether this strength is maintained will hinge on real interest rate developments, technological factors and resistance to the threat of protectionism. Second, the expected change in the macroeconomic policy mix in the United States and other advanced economies towards a more expansionary fiscal policy and a less loose monetary policy may raise short-term growth but, if they are not gauged properly, bouts of instability in international financial markets could ensue. Lastly, global financial conditions remain favourable. However, the turmoil on US equity markets early in 2018 which spread swiftly and vigorously to other stock markets seems to indicate less favourable global financial conditions in the future and, at the same time, warns against the risks associated with a sharp adjustment in international financial markets.


Recently, several approaches of content based-image retrieval (CBIR), based on the characteristics of discrete cosine transform (DCT), such as decorrelation and concentration of energy in only a few coefficients, have been proposed. To reduce the semantic gap between high level search and low level patterns, a new concept based on region based search region-based image retrieval (RBIR) has been proposed. Recently, we proposed to use shape-adaptive (SA) DCT in a new RBIR system. In this paper, we propose an efficient histogram optimization suited to our region-based concept. This histogram takes into account the pattern's from the SA-DCT of the border blocks as well as the DCT coefficients of the internal blocks. Our proposed scheme has greatly improved the results compared to region-based reference methods. Regionbased search is limited to the object of interest only, i.e. a region of the query image can only match a region of another image in the database.


The evidence from four cloud-chamber experiments is consistent with a single value of the mean lifetime of all charged V-particles and S-particles. This value is between 4 x 10-9 and 10-8 s. If the V-particles are a mixture of different types of particle, it is unlikely that more than 20 % of them have a lifetime outside these limits.


Digital images of fatigue crack behaviour have been acquired in real time at high cycle fatigue rates (77 Hz) using a high-speed camera at 1000 frames/s. Digital image correlation has then been used to determine the crack-tip position and stress intensity variations (KI and KII) within selected cycles. This has been achieved for a pre-cracked aluminium compact tension (CT) specimen subjected to constant load amplitude fatigue crack cycling. The crack-tip displacement field has been determined at 14 points within each cycle. In this proof of concept study, despite noise in the inferred displacement fields, by least squares fitting the displacement field rather than the strain field to the Muskhelishvili's form crack-tip stress field, the crack-tip stress intensity inferred from the measured crack-tip displacement field was found to good accuracy (around 0.2 MPa m1/2). Furthermore, the observed sinusoidal variation was in excellent agreement with the nominal ΔK obtained from the applied fatigue amplitude confirming the accuracy of the method; a drift of around 0.42 MPa m1/2 was observed in Kmean from cycle to cycle. No evidence of closure was observed at low K. In principle this method permits the identification of crack-tip closure and crack growth, as well as the application of constant ΔKeff cycling, through intermittent monitoring throughout the duration of a fatigue test. The current method is well suited to more complex cases where crack closure, residual stresses, or more complex geometries mean that it is difficult to predict ΔKeffa priori and a number of potential applications of the method are identified.


There were variations between different insulating papers, but all contained significant amounts of sulfur. The sulfur showed little migration and it is therefore less likely that transformer paper will contribute, in a significant degree, to the amount of sulfur found in transformer oil in service. Thermally upgraded qualities of transformer paper are treated with different nitrogen-containing compounds. Therefore, the clear increase of nitrogen content in oil exposed to thermally upgraded paper suggests that migration from transformer paper can contribute considerably to the amount of nitrogen-containing substances found in transformer oil in service.


The non-renewable fossil resources currently exploited by the oil and gas industries are the objects of growing concern owing to their finite supply and contribution to global warming. Lignocellulosic biomass is a sustainable alternative to fossil resources, and has the added advantage of not competing with human and animal nutrition. Indeed, lignocellulosic biomass, in particular its main polymer component cellulose, is a potential carbon source for the production of fuels and commodity chemicals in microbes.


Acute appendicitis is a common cause for pediatric surgery, with an increasing incidence as this population ages. Pseudomembranous colitis (PMC) from Clostridum difficle is being seen more frequently in pediatric patients, especially after treatment with antibiotics and in those with Hirschsprung's disease. Only three prior cases of appendicitis associated with PMC have been described in the literature, and all of them occurred in adult patients. Here, we describe the first documented pediatric case: a 16-year-old female who developed acute appendicitis while concomitantly being treated for suspected pseudomembranous colitis. We concur with previous authors that there may be an association between these two pathologies; furthermore, this association may not always be clinically apparent and may be both under-diagnosed and under-reported.


We calculate the equation of state of a gas of strings at high density in a large toroidal universe and use it to determine the cosmological evolution of background metric and dilaton fields in the entire large radius Hagedorn regime, (ln?S)1/d«R«S1/d (with S the total entropy). The pressure in this regime is not vanishing but of O(1), while the equation of state is proportional to volume, which makes our solutions significantly different from previously published approximate solutions. For example, we are able to calculate the duration of the high-density Hagedorn phase, which increases exponentially with increasing entropy, S. We go on to discuss the difficulties of the scenario, quantifying the problems of establishing thermal equilibrium and producing a large but not too weakly coupled universe.


The Sisters in Science Program (SIS), a 2 year intervention, was designed to impact the lives of 4th and 5th grade girls in a variety of ways. The overall goal of the program was to increase girls' attitudes, perceptions, and achievement in science and mathematics. Considered a multi-leveled intervention, SIS sought to create female-friendly learning environments for girls in school classrooms, after school, on Saturdays, during the summer, and with families. To affect the lives of female students in school, preservice teachers and in-service teachers were trained in how to deliver effective science and mathematics instruction. Girls also participated in after school workshops, Saturday Academics, and summer camp experiences. The girls and their families joined in quarterly family events with science and mathematics themes. A process evaluation of SIS conducted for the two year intervention found that over 1,000 girls, 30 teachers, and 200 preservice teachers participated in the program over a 3-year period. An outcome evaluation revealed that: (1) girls' attitudes and achievement increased in the areas of science and mathematics; (2) teachers developed effective pedagogical habits through reflective dialogue concerning their conception of equitable practice; (3) preservice teachers became aware of effective instructional strategies in science and mathematics; and (4) families increased their awareness of science and mathematics. (Contains 1 figure, 14 tables, and 39 references.) (Author/BT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.


Homophone characters are common in tonal syllable-based languages, such as Mandarin and Cantonese. The data-intensive end-to-end Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems are more likely to mis-recognize homophone characters and rare words under low-resource settings. For the problem of low-resource Cantonese speech recognition, this paper presents a novel homophone extension method to integrate human knowledge of the homophone lexicon into the beam search decoding process with language model re-scoring. Besides, we propose an automatic unified writing method to merge the variants of Cantonese characters and standardize speech annotation guidelines, which enables more efficient utilization of labeled utterances by providing more samples for the merged characters. We empirically show that both homophone extension and unified writing improve the recognition performance significantly on both in-domain and out-of-domain test sets, with an absolute Character Error Rate (CER) decrease of around 5% and 18%.


Background: Arthralgia in children for many years continues to maintain the status of the most common symptom of rheumatic diseases. However this symptom should not always be interpreted as a manifestation of arthritis. Well known that arthralgia in growing children is a frequent problem which can be caused by pathological or innocuous process. Objectives: The goal of this study was to analyze the structure of childhood arthralgia. Methods: We carried out a retrospective review of 600 children who applied to the outpatient department of the institute with a complaint of pain lasting longer than two months in one or more joints. The clinical, instrumental and laboratory pictures were studied. Special attention was paid to certain aspect of joint pain by the child or his parents. The data obtained made it possible to systematize and detail the nature of the articular pathology in children of various age groups. Results: All children were divided into several groups based on their anatomical and physiological characteristics of osteoarticular system: the first group consisted of 240 children under 6-7 years old, the second group – 220 children 7-12 years old, the third group – 140 children over 12 years old. Research suggests that more preschool children were experience bilateral lower extremity pain by "post-walk genesis" due to natural hypermobility, immaturity of sensory innervation of the joints and imbalance of the leg muscles (e.g. growing pains). The second most common cause was joints pain associated with infectious factor (post-infectious genesis or chronic foci of infection). The frequency of juvenile arthritis and other rheumatic diseases in children of this age group did not exceed 10%. Special attention was paid to nightpain with fever and changes in blood tests to exclude malignancies manifestation and other tumors (less 5%). The most common causes of joint pain of school-age children were hypermobility syndrome and enthesopathy (primary, secondary). Secondary enthesopathy were result of changes in nutrition, rapid growth and excessive exercise. Also enthesopathy were manifestation of endocrine, gastrointestinal or infectious diseases. The proportion of children with the onset of chronic inflammatory arthropathy also did not exceed 10%. Hypermobility child's syndrome was characterized by harmless pain, linked to physical activity (less morning stiffness). Over the past decade, we've seen a gradual increase in the number of children with diagnosed patellofemoral pain (non-traumatic) and mediopatellar plica syndromes (95% were girls). In most cases children was complicated by syndrome of increased anxiety. Cases of apophysitis as cause of chronic arthralgia were over 15%. The share of true chronic inflammatory arthropathies, including spondylitis, in children of this age group did not exceed 10%. Fibromyalgia were diagnosed less 5%. Conclusion: Despite continuous improvements in examination technique and image quality there is no universal test to diagnose cause of childhood arthralgia. Age features, individual nature of pain perception, the high frequency of incomplete and transient forms of arthropathy, cases atypical joint diseases have been intriguing problems for diagnostic pathology. Integrated assessment modelling framework of the clinical and instrumental pictures with understanding of the anatomical and physiological characteristics of childhood will help identify the true cause of chronic musculoskeletal pain. there is no single test to diagnose CA Disclosure of Interests: None declared


Background Actinic proctitis is the rectal mucosa's inflammation after treatment with radiotherapy of different pelvic region's tumours. The most frequent clinic includes tenesmus, defective urgency and rectal bleeding. Several studies have suggested that sucralfate enemas may improve proctitis's symptoms by inducing a macroscopic improvement of the injured area. Purpose To evaluate the effectiveness of sucralfate enemas in proctitis. Material and methods An observational, descriptive and retrospective study was performed in patients who received enemas (October 2014 to April 2016) prepared by the pharmacy service. Variables collected: age, sex, diagnosis of prostatitis, type of cancer, symptoms, duration and dosage of sucralfate treatments in enemas and rate of bleeding episodes. Results Ten patients, diagnosed with proctitis as a side effect of radiotherapy, required the preparation of enemas (70% male; median age 80 (68–82) years). Six of them had prostate adenocarcinoma, three had rectal neoplasia and one endometrial neoplasia. The symptoms presented by proctitis were mainly rectal bleeding, iron deficiency anaemia, tenesmus and diarrhoea. The dosage was one or two enemas per day depending on the severity of the symptoms. The duration of treatment was variable: three patients used enemas only during rectal bleeding episodes (15–30 days), two patients used them for periods between 1 to 3 months, two patients for 4 to 6 months and one patient used them continuously. Two patients currently continue on active treatment. An improvement in symptoms was observed in 100% of patients with a reduction in rectal bleeding episodes. The recurrences occurred more frequently in the group of patients who used the enemas intermittently, needing to restart the treatment in a period of less than 6 months. One of the patients whose treatment duration was 6 months, had to restart after 1 year after the end of treatment. A high degree of satisfaction was observed by both the patients and the professionals who prescribed the treatment. Conclusion The magistral preparation of sucralfate enemas in 10% suspension significantly improves bleeding episodes in these patients, allowing significant symptomatic relief. Reference and/or acknowledgements McElvanna K. Sucralfate paste enema: a new method of topical treatment for haemorrhagic radiation proctitis. Colorectal Dis 2014;16:281–4. No conflict of interest.


All inorganic perovskite quantum dots (QDs) have attracted much attention in optoelectronic devices due to their fascinating properties such as high photoluminescence quantum yields (PLQYs), narrow emission peaks, and facile synthesis processes. Herein, we report a synergistic strategy of interfacial engineering and passivation. We construct an inverted device structure with zinc magnesium oxide (Zn0.95Mg0.05O) as an electron transport layer and the p–n charge generation junction of (N,N′-bis(naphthalen-1-yl)-N,N′-bis(phenyl) benzidine/1,4,5,8,9,11-hexaazatriphenylene-hexacarbonitrile) as a hole transport layer to facilitate and balance the charge injection/transport. Meanwhile, a facile post-passivation technique is employed to passivate cesium lead bromide (CsPbBr3) QDs via supplementing Br anions. The treated QDs exhibit improved PLQY due to decreased surface defect sites and enhanced radiative recombination. As a result, our perovskite quantum dot light-emitting diodes (PVQDLEDs) achieve a maximum luminance of 75 792 cd m−2, an extremely low turn-on voltage of 1.9 V, and a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 5.95%, leading to an increase in EQE by 100% compared with those of the control device. Our work offers an effective approach to improve the performance of PVQDLEDs via multiple effects for their application in displays and solid-state lighting.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Functional correlates of microstructural damage of the brain affected by MS are incompletely understood. The purpose of this study was to evaluate correlations of visual-evoked potentials with microstructural brain changes as determined by DTI in patients with demyelinating central nervous disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixty-one patients with clinically isolated syndrome or MS were prospectively recruited. The mean P100 visual-evoked potential latencies of the right and left eyes of each patient were calculated and used for the analysis. For DTI acquisition, a single-shot echo-planar imaging pulse sequence with 80 diffusion directions was performed at 3T. Fractional anisotropy, radial diffusivity, and axial diffusivity were calculated and correlated with mean P100 visual-evoked potentials by tract-based spatial statistics. RESULTS: Significant negative correlations between mean P100 visual-evoked potentials and fractional anisotropy and significant positive correlations between mean P100 visual-evoked potentials and radial diffusivity were found widespread over the whole brain. The highest significance was found in the optic radiation, frontoparietal white matter, and corpus callosum. Significant positive correlations between mean P100 visual-evoked potentials and axial diffusivity were less widespread, notably sparing the optic radiation. CONCLUSIONS: Microstructural changes of the whole brain correlated significantly with mean P100 visual-evoked potentials. The distribution of the correlations showed clear differences among axial diffusivity, fractional anisotropy, and radial diffusivity, notably in the optic radiation. This finding suggests a stronger correlation of mean P100 visual-evoked potentials to demyelination than to axonal damage.


At the meeting of the American Gynecological Society in 1926, one of us 1 presented a paper on this subject, and as the discussion indicated considerable interest, we felt that it would be of value to elucidate the topic further before an audience representative of the general practitioner, who is the man most deeply concerned, rather than a group of specialists. In this paper we have followed our results for the five years from 1922 through 1926, during which time we have had 11,491 deliveries. These patients were directly under our control, and those with relatively contracted pelves were given a trial labor under one plan of treatment. Throughout the country the rates for the incidence of cesarean section and the mortality accompanying it are too high. The primary indication for cesarean section is pelvic contraction or disproportion between the size of the child and the mother's pelvis. The mortality


Summary

Fermentation temperature (34–40 °C), total inoculum level (1%–3%, v/v) and peeled-fruit-to-water ratio (12.5%–37.5%, w/v) were combined to study their effects on the fermentation of banana media by free and Ca-alginate or κ-carrageenan-immobilised Lactobacillus acidophilus. A three-variable and three-level design method, analysed by response surface methodology (RSM), was used. These factors, except peeled-fruit-to-water ratio, were found to be significantly effective on viable cell numbers and 1-kestose (GF2) concentrations. Contour plots were generated using a graphing software package (Surfer Mapping System, Version 5.0; Golden Software Inc., Golden, CO, USA, 1994) based on fitted quadratic regression equations. Optimum conditions for the highest viable cell number and higher GF2 concentration were found to be around 35 °C fermentation temperature, 1.2% inoculum level and 25.0% peeled-fruit-to-water ratio for Ca-alginate immobilised cell fermentation, and around 39 °C fermentation temperature, 1.8% inoculum level and 25.0% peeled-fruit-to-water ratio for κ-carrageenan immobilised cell fermentation. For free cell fermentation, conditions for the highest viable cell number and higher GF2 concentration could not be obtained. The predicted optimum conditions of immobilised cell fermentation and the experimental values were consistent. This verified the adequacy of these predicted models. It was concluded that RSM was appropriate for the optimisation of banana puree fermentation using cell immobilised L. acidophilus, and products with better synbiotic effects could be obtained. The consumer palatability of the immobilised cell-fermented banana puree was found to be acceptable.


Climate change is a serious international issue, and nations must move to carbon reduction to mitigate this problem. Therefore, Qatar is building strategies, towards energy transitions and decarbonization. Whereas, energy transitions from hydrocarbons to renewable energy is challenging, since Qatar is a gas producing country. Thus, decarbonization in energy-based countries is challenging, due to their economic development dependence on fossil-fuel by exporting oil and gas, and generating energy and electricity. However, most of the global carbon emissions are caused by buildings. Hence, the challenge of energy demand reduction in buildings in hot climate regions such as Qatar, is due to using air conditioning systems. Therefore, the research aims to investigate the decarbonization strategies implemented in the building sector in oil and gas countries, where electricity bills are subsidised by the government. In order to tailor decarbonization strategies for Qatar, according to the country's context and social status.


Abstract This paper describes an improved stochastic model designed to simulate systems, such as green timbers, that cannot be analyzed as a unit but as a collection of a large number of similar components. The stochastic model provides a piecewise green moisture content frequency distribution curve by using nondestructive measurements such as of timber weight. A new, relatively simple two-parameter function was designed to describe the log-normal moisture concentration distribution above the fiber saturation point, and the parameters of this function were determined by fitting the experimental timber weights with the results of the stochastic model. The simulated green moisture content distributions showed good agreement with the experimental data for Pacific coast hemlock (hemfir) timbers, thus providing a piece of information that is indispensable for applying stochastic simulation to industrial drying of timbers.


Very high tropical alpine ice cores provide a distinct paleoclimate record for climate changes in the middle and upper troposphere. However, the climatic interpretation of a key proxy, the stable water oxygen isotopic ratio in ice cores (δ18Oice), remains an outstanding problem. Here, combining proxy records with climate models, modern satellite measurements, and radiative-convective equilibrium theory, we show that the tropical δ18Oice is an indicator of the temperature of the middle and upper troposphere, with a glacial cooling of −7.35° ± 1.1°C (66% CI). Moreover, it severs as a "Goldilocks-type" indicator of global mean surface temperature change, providing the first estimate of glacial stage cooling that is independent of marine proxies as −5.9° ± 1.2°C. Combined with all estimations available gives the maximum likelihood estimate of glacial cooling as −5.85° ± 0.51°C.


Each Concentrate revision guide is packed with essential information, key cases, revision tips, exam Q&As, and more. Concentrates show you what to expect in a law exam, what examiners are looking for, and how to achieve extra marks. This chapter examines the defences of age, insanity, automatism, intoxication, and mistake. If D is under the age of ten, he is deemed incapable of criminal liability. Insanity is where D proves he had a disease of mind which caused a defect of reason so that D did not know the nature and quality of his act or that it was wrong. Non-insane automatism is an assertion by D that the prosecution cannot prove the actus reus of the offence because D was not in control of his muscular movements. Intoxication rarely succeeds as a defence. Involuntary intoxication is a defence if D does not form mens rea. Voluntary intoxication is a defence only if D is charged with a specific intent crime and D did not form mens rea. Mistake is a defence provided the mistake prevents D forming mens rea.


We report on the demonstration of silver halide (AgClxBr1−x) microstructured optical fibers (MOFs) based on the antiresonant reflecting optical waveguide (ARROW) model, for the mid-infrared. MOFs with low index core surrounded by an octagonal structure of high index rods were designed and fabricated. The fibers exhibited transmission spectra with narrow stopband frequencies in the 9–11 μm range. The location of the transmission minima matched the theoretical predictions by the ARROW model. The measured propagation losses in the maximum transmission range were ∼60 dB/m. Imaging the output of the MOFs at the passband wavelengths revealed single mode guidance in the core.


Summary Isolated, innervated guinea pig preparations have been used to study the effects of dimethylsulfoxide on skeletal, smooth, and cardiac muscles. DMSO depressed the response of the diaphragm to both muscle and nerve stimulation. In addition, it caused spontaneous skeletal muscle fasciculations. DMSO increased the response of the smooth muscle of the stomach to both muscle and nerve stimulation. The amplitude of atrial contraction is augmented considerably by DMSO, although the rate of contraction appears unaffected. Vagal threshold was lowered approximately 50% by a bath concentration of 6% DMSO. Although other explanations are possible, the observed fasciculations of the skeletal muscle, the increased tone of the stomach muscle, and the lowering of the vagal threshold by DMSO could all be due to cholinesterase inhibition.


In this study, we investigated phosphate removal efficiency according to pretreatment (pyrolysis temperature, pyrolysis time, particle size) of oyster shells as a basic study for their recycling. And XAFS analysis and isothermal adsorption experiments were performed to investigate the phosphate removal characteristics of oyster shells. As a result, the removal efficiency was good at 600°C pyrolysis temperature with 6 hour pyrolysis time and 0.355 ~ 0.075 mm particle size. Isothermal adsorption experiments showed that the Langmuir model is suitable for adsorption of oyster shells. XAFS analysis showed that calcium phosphate formed on the oyster shell pyrolyzed at 600°C. In other words, it was confirmed that the formation of calcium phosphate by the calcium ion elution of the oyster shell contributes to the decrease of phosphate concentration.


We report on a comparison of spectroscopic analyses for hydrogen (DA) and helium atmosphere (DB) white dwarfs with Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) parallaxes and photometry. We assume a reddening law and a mass–radius relation to connect the effective temperatures (Teff) and surface gravities (log g) to masses and radii. This allows the comparison of two largely independent sets of fundamental parameters for 7039 DA and 521 DB stars with high-quality observations. This subset of the Gaia white dwarf sample is large enough to detect systematic trends in the derived parameters. We find that spectroscopic and photometric parameters generally agree within uncertainties when the expectation of a single star is verified. Gaia allows the identification of a small systematic offset in the temperature scale between the two techniques, as well as confirming a small residual high-mass bump in the DA mass distribution around 11 000–13 000 K. This assessment of the accuracy of white dwarf fundamental parameters derived from Gaia is a first step in understanding systematic effects in related astrophysical applications such as the derivation of the local stellar formation history, initial-to-final mass relation, and statistics of evolved planetary systems.


A 3.3 V PLL (phase locked loop) is designed for a high frequency, low voltage, and low power applications. This paper proposes a new PLL architecture to improve voltage-to-frequency linearity of VCO (Voltage controlled oscillator) with new delay cell. The proposed VCO operates at a wide frequency range of 30 MHz-1 GHz with a good linearity. The DC-DC voltage up/down converter is newly, designed to regulate the control voltage of the two-stage VCO. The designed PLL architecture is implemented on a 0.6 /spl mu/m n-well CMOS process. The simulation results show a locking time of 2.6 /spl mu/sec at 1 GHz, lock in range of 100 MHz-1 GHz, and a power dissipation of 112 mW.


research Abstract: Radiocarbon was measured in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and living organisms collected off the west coast of Baja California in October 1980. Samples from three locations were examined. O14C of DIC at the southernmost station was higher than those further north, which reflects reduced upwelling in the southern region. Crabs and anchovies had a14C values significantly lower than surface DIC L14C, indicating the incorporation of `older', sediment-derived carbon sources from their diets. Comparisons are made between our DIC L 4C measurements and those obtained during other cruises and at a coastal site, from 1959 through 1987. Two distinct time histories of DIC i14C are apparent for the post-bomb period; 1) a lower L14C curve for sites close to the coast influenced by enhanced coastal upwelling; and 2) a higher &4C curve for sites further offshore within the California Current. ABSTRACT. Radiocarbon was measured in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and living organisms collected off the west coast of Baja California in October 1980. Samples from three locations were examined. O14C of DIC at the southernmost station was higher than those further north, which reflects reduced upwelling in the southern region. Crabs and anchovies had a14C values significantly lower than surface DIC L14C, indicating the incorporation of `older', sediment-derived carbon sources from their diets. Comparisons are made between our DIC L 4C measurements and those obtained during other cruises and at a coastal site, from 1959 through 1987. Two distinct time histories of DIC i14C are apparent for the post-bomb period; 1) a lower L14C curve for sites close to the coast influenced by enhanced coastal upwelling; and 2) a higher &4C curve for sites further offshore within the California Current.


My research involves observing, analyzing, and working with teachers to document children's interactions with each other, the teacher and the written language in their classroom. These settings provide many opportunities to document the influence of printed texts on children's literacy learning especially with teachers who are effective at observing and analyzing what their children do with print. I call this process of teacher researchers' documentations and reflections kidwatching (an observational and analytical stance of children's learning) (Y. Goodman, 1985; Owocki & Goodman, 2002). Kidwatching is integral to teacher research; teachers use their learning from kidwatching to understand how their practice influences children's development and as a result to rethink their pedagogy and the environments they organize. As I participate with these teachers, I discover their expertise and document their learning as well as the learning of enthusiastic and engaged young children who often become co-researchers in the process. As teachers evaluate or assess the growth of their students and reflect on the impact of their teaching, they provide data that is an important aspect of interpretive research (Erickson, 1986) to be used as evidence for the educational community.


The aim of the present experimental study was to determine and to compare the effects of vitamin E and of selenium on the blood flow to a wound region in rats, using the xenon-133 ( 133Xe) clearance technique. Burn wounds were made on the right thighs of rats followed by oral administration of vitamin E or selenium for a period of 10 days. The effect of vitamin E and of selenium individually on blood flow in the wound region was assessed before and after oral administration using the 133Xe clearance technique. Both vitamin E and selenium significantly increased the blood flow in the wound region (P<0.05). Our results in rats suggest that both vitamin E and selenium have beneficial effects on the skin wound healing process by increasing the skin blood flow .


Plasma levels of asymmetric dimethylarginine or markers of reactive oxygen species are increased in subjects with risk factors for cardiovascular disease or chronic kidney disease. We tested the hypothesis that reactive oxygen species generate cellular asymmetric dimethylarginine that together cause endothelial dysfunction that underlies the risk of subsequent disease. Rat preglomerular vascular smooth muscle cells transfected with p22phox had increased NADPH oxidase activity, enhanced activity and expression of protein arginine methyltransferase, and reduced activity and protein expression of dimethylarginine dimethylaminotransferase and of cationic amino acid transferase 1 resulting in increased cellular levels of asymmetric dimethylarginine. Rats infused with angiotensin II had oxidative stress. The endothelial function of their mesenteric arterioles was changed from vasodilatation to vasoconstriction, accompanied by increased vascular asymmetric dimethylarginine. All of these changes were prevented by Tempol. In vivo silencing of dimethylarginine dimethylaminotransferase 1 increased plasma levels of asymmetric dimethylarginine, whereas silencing of dimethylarginine dimethylaminotransferase 2 impaired endothelial function. We suggest that initiation factors, such as angiotensin II, expressed in blood vessels or tissues of subjects with cardiovascular and kidney disease risk factors generate reactive oxygen species from NADPH oxidase that enhances cellular asymmetric dimethylarginine in an amplification loop. This leads to adverse changes in vascular and organ functions, as a consequence of reduced tissue levels of NO and increased reactive oxygen species. Thus, we conclude that reactive oxygen species and asymmetric dimethylarginine form a tightly coupled amplification system that translates cardiovascular/kidney risk into overt disease.


The current research aimed to explore the relationship of Teaching Effectiveness (TE) and personal variables i.e. age, gender, marital status, the type of school (coeducation, boys" or girls" school) and sector of school (government or private) of secondary school teachers and to adapt and validate the Students" Evaluations of Teaching Effectiveness Rating Scale (SETERS) for teachers and their students. For this correlation survey based research the data was conveniently collected from secondary school teachers (N=303) and three students per teacher (N= 909). The results of factor validation have shown that Teaching Effectiveness Self Rating Scale (TESRS) and Teaching Effectiveness Students" Rating Scale (TEStRS) are the valid instruments for the evaluation of TE. It has also been found that TE has a negative relationship with age and positive with gender (both ratings), marital status of the teachers, the type of school (students" ratings) and sector of school (self-ratings) and same results were shown in the prediction analysis except for type of school as it has come out as a non-significant predictor of TE. Furthermore, female and young adults (in both ratings), single and girls" school (students" ratings) and private school (self-ratings) teachers are more effective. The results have important implications education sector.


AIMS
Classical genetic studies consistently reveal substantial heritability for addictions. However, the genes that harbour the variations providing these genetic influences remain largely unknown. We have focused attention on 'reproducible substance abuse vulnerability' (rSA) genomic regions, where linkage and association studies performed in several population provide evidence for such variations.

DESIGN
We nominated rSA1 on human chromosome 3p23 within a 5 Mb region. We sought to replicate this finding and identify variations within this region.

SETTING
We examine the role of allelic variations in the SLC4A7 gene, a member of the bicarbonate co-transporter family that is expressed in tissues including brain and kidney.

PARTICIPANTS
A total of 1158 unrelated individuals with informed consent about the genetic study were recruited from three independent populations.

MEASUREMENTS
The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers in the SLC4A7 gene were analysed by case-control study.

FINDINGS
The rs3278 is associated reliably with substance abuse vulnerability in (1) a European American sample selected from pedigrees within the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA; nominal P = 0.03); (2) an African American sample recruited by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA; nominal P = 0.008); and (3) a NIDA European American sample (P = 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
While the current results do not exclude additional roles for allelic variants in nearby genes, they do suggest that SLC4A7 allelic variants might alter dispositions and/or excretion of drugs and neurotransmitters in brain and periphery in ways that could contribute to differential vulnerabilities to addictions. SLC4A7 is thus a novel candidate in the contribution to vulnerability to addictions.


In recent years, flexible hazard regression models based on penalized splines have been developed that allow us to extend the classical Cox model via the inclusion of time-varying and nonparametric effects. Despite their immediate appeal in terms of flexibility, these models introduce additional difficulties when a subset of covariates and the corresponding modelling alternatives have to be chosen. We present an analysis of data from a specific patient population with 90-day survival as the response variable. The aim is to determine a sensible prognostic model where some variables have to be included due to subject-matter knowledge while other variables are subject to model selection. Motivated by this application, we propose a two-stage stepwise model building strategy to choose both the relevant covariates and the corresponding modelling alternatives within the choice set of possible covariates simultaneously. For categorical covariates, competing modelling approaches are linear effects and time-varying effects, whereas nonparametric modelling provides a further alternative in case of continuous covariates. In our data analysis, we identified a prognostic model containing both smooth and time-varying effects.


We report an experimental study of the gain recovery of an InAs-InGaAsP-InP columnar-quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifier around 1550 nm. We find a three-step recovery process that gives around 85% gain recovery in only 10 ps and 100% in around 30 ps in case of a quite complete gain saturation. We also give a possible physical explanation for the peculiar gain dynamics.


An ionizing radiation-tolerant CMOS active pixel sensor (APS) image sensor test chip was designed employing the physical design techniques of enclosed geometry and P-channel guard rings. The test chip was fabricated in a standard 0.35-/spl mu/m CMOS process that has a gate-oxide thickness of 7.0 nm. It was irradiated by a /spl gamma/-ray source up to a total ionizing radiation dose level of approximately 30 Mrd (Si) and was still functional. The most pronounced effect was the increase of dark current, which was linear with total dose level. The rate of dark current increase was about 1 to 2 pA/cm/sup 2//Krd (Si), depending on the design of the pixel. The results demonstrate that CMOS APS image sensors can be designed to be ionizing radiation tolerant to total dose levels up to 30 Mrd (Si). The fabrication process is standard CMOS, yielding a significant cost advantage over specialized radiation hard processes.

http://ericfossum.com/Publications/Papers/2001 Design and Char of Rad Tolerant.pdf


Agents situated in dynamic and unpredictable environments require several capabilities, including synthesizing and executing plans while continuing to be responsive to the world. The Cypress system is a domain-independent framework for defining persistent agents with this full range of behavior. Cypress has been used for several applications, including military operations and fault diagnosis on the Space Shuttle.


Background Rugby Union scrums which collapse possess a higher injury risk than completed scrums. A mechanically stable scrum should limit the motions which generate uncontrolled and hazardous (non-axial) loading on front row players and minimise the risk of scrum collapse. Objective To compare scrum stability during live contested rugby scrums using two different scrum engagement processes. Design A cross-sectional design, where teams from different playing levels performed live scrums under two engagement processes: CTS (Crouch-Touch-Set, 2012–2013); and PreBind (Crouch-Bind-Set, 2013–2014), with measurements made via video analysis. Setting Outdoors, natural turf rugby pitches. Participants 27 Rugby teams (i.e. 54 forward packs, n=432 players) from five playing levels – International, Elite, Community, Women and University. Risk factor assessment Scrum engagement process. PreBind differs from CTS for a legal bind that is taken at the "Bind" call and is maintained through the "Set" action. Main outcome measurements Vertical motion of the (i) shoulder and (ii) centre of mass (COM), and (iii) COM variability in the sagittal plane of prop forwards during initial engagement. Results The extent of props' vertical shoulder motion were reduced (P<.05, Cohen's d=0.3–0.5) during engagement in the PreBind process compared with the CTS process. The COM vertical motion tended to be reduced in PreBind process (Cohen's d=0.45).There were also reductions in the variability (P<.05, Cohen's d=0.5–1.0) of the props' COM vertical motion, meaning vertical movements were more controlled during PreBind engagement. The International level had reduced vertical motion characteristics with respect to the Community level. Conclusions Scrum stability improved (moderate effects) in the PreBind engagement process, with props making less extreme postural adjustments during initial engagement. Combined with attenuated peak forces during the engagement process, the PreBind improves the stability of the scrum and should minimise the risk of scrum collapse and subsequent injury.


Ido Geiger's paper 'What it is the Use of the Universal Law Formula of the Categorical Imperative?' is part of a growing trend in Kant scholarship, which stresses the significance of the rational competence of ordinary human beings. I argue that this approach needs to take into account that the common agent is an active reasoner who has the means to find out what she ought to do. The purpose of my paper is to show how universality already figures in the active reasoning of pre-theoretical agents in the form of a common universalization test. I present textual evidence for this test, and argue that this conception does not present pre-theoretical moral cognition in an overly intellectualistic or mechanistic way. Finally, I discuss how, on the pre-theoretical level, universalization relates to humanity or a rational agent's special status. Universalization is present to common agents in the form of procedures or questions that we ask ourselves, humanity as an awareness of certain particularly blatant violations of duty. These two different modes of cognition of duty are reflected in two different formulae of the Categorical Imperative.


Mandatory Child Abuse Reporting Statutes date back as early as the 1960s. These statutes require certain individuals to report any instance of suspected child abuse that is made known to them. Individuals who are mandated reporters include, but are not limited to, physicians, therapists, and schoolteachers. Over the past decade, with the eruption of sexual abuse in the Catholic, Jewish, and Mormon communities, special attention has been given to reporting statutes in determining who qualifies as mandated reporters. The clergy-penitent privilege, which exempts clergy members from having to report instances of abuse made known to them in their religious or otherwise professional capacity, remains one of the last reporting statutory exemptions today. This Note advocates for the abrogation of the clergy-penitent privilege in cases of child sexual abuse. In religious communities, where religious personnel are often the first to be made aware of child abuse, clergy members should be required to report instances of child sexual abuse in an effort to better protect children.

Keypoints for the Family Court Community
Currently every state in the United States has enacted some form of child abuse reporting statutes.
There is a lack of uniformity among state reporting statutes over who is required to be a mandated reporter of abuse. Nearly half of the states in the U.S. carve out a religious exemption for clergy-members from having to report instances of child abuse.
This exemption creates a discrepancy between religious personnel and other individuals who are mandated reporters.


Western indexing tools have a documented English-language bias, which contributes to the challenges facing researchers publishing in their native language. There are actions that librarians can take to mitigate this bias such as including information on library guides about indexes that highlight resources not covered by traditional sci-tech indexing tools. This article introduces three academic journal databases from China that are available for North American and other institutions. With a focus on sci-tech journals, basic descriptions of coverage and functionality of these resources is presented. Significant quantities of Chinese sci-tech information are not indexed by Western sci-tech abstract and indexing tools but are available via the databases discussed.


This paper studies proper inference and asymptotically accurate structural break tests for parameters in Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models in a maximum likelihood framework. Two empirically relevant issues may invalidate the conventional inference procedures and structural break tests for parameters in DSGE models: (i) weak identification and (ii) moderate parameter instability. DSGE literatures focus on dealing with weak identification issue, but ignore the impact of moderate parameter instability. This paper contributes to the literature via considering the joint impact of two issues in DSGE framework. The main results are: in a weakly identified DSGE model, (i) moderate instability from weakly identified parameters would not affect the validity of standard inference procedures or structural break tests; (ii) however, if strongly identified parameters are featured with moderate time-variation, the asymptotic distributions of test statistics would deviate from standard ones and would no longer be nuisance parameter free, which renders standard inference procedures and structural break tests invalid and provides practitioners misleading inference results; (iii) as long as I concentrate out strongly identified parameters, the instability impact of them would disappear as the sample size goes to infinity, which recovers the power of conventional inference procedure and structural break tests for weakly identified parameters. To illustrate my results, I simulate and estimate a modified version of the Hansen (1985) Real Business Cycle model and find that my theoretical results provide reasonable guidance for finite sample inference of the parameters in the model. I show that confidence intervals that incorporate weak identification and moderate parameter instability reduce the biases of confidence intervals that ignore those effects. While I focus on DSGE models in this paper, all of my theoretical results could be applied to any linear dynamic models or nonlinear GMM models.


Epidemiological evaluation of the most frequent human parasitoses in the group of children at age of seven years, in adult patients and in group of Polish citizens coming back from tropics between 1999-2003 was performed. All examined people were Silesian region inhabitants. The biggest average infection prevalence in children from all examined years concerned Enterobius vermicularis, in adult--Giardia intestinalis, while in group of population coming back from tropics--Entamoeba histolytica-like. High percentage of anti-Toxocara canis and Toxoplasma gondii antibodies presence can result from non randomly study group recruitment.


Rising inequalities in the society are indeed becoming an important concern of all. Among inequalities in different spheres, inequalities in education, and inequalities in higher education in particular are seen as too serious to ignore any more. The available studies on inequality to access higher education in India have largely examined the issue from gender and social category of the students; too little is done by examining income as a determining factor. Using NSSO surveys, conducted in 2007-08 and 2013-14, an attempt is made here to examine the income inequality and access to higher education in India. The analysis shows that the inequality in access to higher education has increased substantially by household's economic status in the last seven years. Though the overall gender inequality has come down significantly, this is very high between the rich and the poor. The inequality in access to HE also varies considerably between rural and urban regions. The logit results lead us to conclude that rich income groups have a higher probability of attending higher education institutions than others. The difference in the probability of participation between men and women narrows down as one move from poorest to richest quintiles. Recent debates on higher education in India have raised a variety of interesting policy related issues and through this empirical study the author has highlighted a few of them, particularly the interaction between income inequality and access to higher education, with the aim to facilitate a more informed policy discourse on this.


The authors have studied the possibility of using ion-selective electrodes Kritus (Czecho-Slovakia) for analysis of whole blood and serum without preliminary labor-consuming sample preparation. Chloride ions were found to be detectable in the blood serum by potentiometric titration with Ag nitrate solution making use of a pAg-CE-pF-CE pair in ethanol, acetone, or acetic acid medium. Active concentrations of whole blood and serum bromide- and iodide ions may be measured by direct potentiometry with pBr-CE-pF-CE and pI-CE-pF-CE pairs, respectively, against the background of 1 M potassium (or sodium) nitrate solution providing the constancy of solution ionic strength.


Due to the high occurrence rate of musculoskeletal disorders(MSDs), many Korean companies adopted various assessment tools to evaluate workers' musculoskeletal stress. Using the results of this evaluation, tasks were selected for improvements. However, there are still many workers who complained of musculoskeletal stress of their tasks. Their tasks usually consist of repetitive activities and a short rest cycle. This prompts a concern of reliability of the evaluation tools and especially RULA. Thus in this study, OCRA(The Occupational Repetitive Action tool) was used to check whether RULA(Rapid Upper Limb Assessment) evaluates workers' musculoskeletal stress reasonably well since OCRA has been known to be a good evaluation tool for repetitive tasks and tasks with short recovery periods. The evaluation was conducted on 142 tasks. It was found that 65 tasks showed higher action levels by OCRA than by RULA. However, 13 tasks showed the reversed result and 64 tasks showed the same level regardless of the evaluation tool. It was concluded that either RULA or OCRA alone cannot evaluate all types of tasks very well. It is suggested that OCRA needs to be used with RULA together for the evaluations of musculoskeletal stress at workplaces where repetitive activities and short recovery periods exist.


In order to realize high-speed automatic detection of various button switches, this paper develops a dual horizontal switch detection system based on PLC and touch screen. The dual horizontal switch detection system takes PLC as the control center, and realizes the automatic detection of the on-off performance and lifetime experiments for various push button switches through electric actuators. At the same time, the touch screen is used as the human machine interface (HMI) to communicate with PLC and electric actuator in real time through RS485 field-bus. The HMI realizes real-time monitoring the reproduction state of detection system through 3D graphical simulation and effectively realizes centralized control of on-site detection, and greatly improves the detection efficiency and automation. Practice has proved that the system runs reliably and stably, and has strong anti-interference ability.


In the unprecedented disruption and social isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, families around the world are faced with questions of how their children can thrive in these conditions. On top of the ubiquitous challenges for all children, this public health crisis imparts unique difficulties for children with special health needs. We identify children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as being particularly vulnerable to negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we examine why children with ASD are uniquely vulnerable, recommend strategies to mitigate these stressors for children with ASD and their parents, explore the potential challenges of reintegration into society as conditions improve, and examine the obligations of healthcare and community stakeholders to support these families.


Density functional theory (DFT) and correlated molecular orbital electronic structure calculations were used to study the Al + CO2 → AlO + CO reaction on the electronic ground-state potential-energy surface (PES). Geometries were optimized using DFT (M11/jun-cc-pV(Q+d)Z) and more accurate energies were obtained using the composite Weizmann-1 theory with Brueckner doubles (W1BD). The results comprise the most complete, most systematic characterization of the Al + CO2 reaction surface to date and are based on consistent application of high-level methods for all stationary points identified. The pathways from Al + CO2 to AlO + CO on the electronic ground-state PES all involve formation of one or more stable AlCO2 complexes denoted η-AlCO2, trans-AlCO2, and C2v-AlCO2, among which η-AlCO2 and C2v-AlCO2 are the least and most stable, respectively. We report a new minimum-energy pathway for the overall reaction, namely formation of η-AlCO2 from reactants and dissociation of that same complex to products via a bond-insertion reaction that passes through a fourth (weakly metastable) AlCO2 complex denoted cis-OAlCO. Natural Bond Orbital analysis was applied to study trends in charge distribution and the degree of charge transfer in key structures along the minimum-energy pathway. The process of aluminum insertion into CO2 is discussed in the context of analogous processes for boron and first-row transition metals.


Evidence abound that some transitioning and developing countries are attracting large inflows of foreign capital that could engender economic growth or have destabilizing effects on their economies if not well managed. This has undoubtedly aroused anxiety over its potential effects on economic growth, the competitiveness of the export and external sectors viability. The study examines the impact of capital flow on economic growth in Ethiopia as well as the causal shortrun and long-run relationship among the variables, using time series data from 1980 – 2010. Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach, the result reveals that all the variables are statistically significant; which implies that the capital flow has an impact on economic growth in both short- and long-run dynamic equilibrium models. Additionally, Vector Autoregressive (VAR) and Innovative Accounting Techniques approach to Granger causality analysis shows that there exists bidirectional causality between gross capital flow, and economic growth. Consequently, these findings suggest that policy makers should critically understand, the nature, what drives the capital flows, and the impact of its sudden surge or reversal on economy. Moreover, it is also recommended that government should continue to pursue trade and foreign exchange policies that would ensure competitiveness of the export sector viability and economic growth.


We present the validation of a recent fractional mathematical model for erythrocyte sedimentation proposed by Sharma et al. \cite{GMR}. The model uses a Caputo fractional derivative to build a time fractional diffusion equation suitable to predict blood sedimentation rates. This validation was carried out by means of erythrocyte sedimentation tests in laboratory. Data on sedimentation rates (percentages) were analyzed and compared with the analytical solution of the time fractional diffusion equation. The behavior of the analytical solution related to each blood sample sedimentation data was described and analyzed.


This contribution deals with the question of mysticism in ancient Greek-speaking Judaism, in particular with the interpretation of some Jewish prayers in Greek. I discuss recent tendencies in the study of the origins of Jewish mysticism. In my opinion these tendencies go back to two fundamental and opposite trends: that of Erwin Goodenough and that of Gershom Scholem. The scholars following the first tendency analyse the mystical traditions of Ancient Judaism (namely the traditions appearing in Jewish writings in Greek) because they are interested in the milieu in which Christian communities arose. The second tendency explores the antecedents of the Hekhaloth literature consciously neglecting Jewish literature in Greek. These different perspectives however both raise the following question: what is – if it exists – the common denominator between the different texts labelled as 'mystical' by modern scholars? In other words, which are the criteria for establishing whether a text is mystical or not? With this question in mind I analyse two case studies: a prayer containing the quedusha included in the Apostolic Constitutions VII,35 and the 'Prayer of Jacob' found in P. gr. 13 895 Staatl. Mus. Berlin. The study of these prayers shows that in order to establish the mystical character of a text, we need to know not only its wording and its content, but also the context in which it was created and used.


This paper presents a method for complexity reduction in reachability analysis and safety-preserving controller synthesis via Schur-based decomposition. The decomposition results in either decoupled or weaklycoupled (lower dimensional) subsystems. Reachable sets, computed independently for each subsystem, are back-projected and intersected to yield an overapproximation of the actual reachable set. Moreover, applying this technique to a class of unstable LTI systems we show that when certain eigenvalue and state-constraint conditions are satised, further reduction of complexity is possible. Evaluating our method for a variety of examples we demonstrate that signicant reduction in the computational costs can be achieved. This technique has considerable potential utility for use in conjunction with computationally intensive reachability tools.


As China's rapid economic growth continues to slow, the Chinese Communist Party now seeks to promote innovation as the engine of future development. With this new economic agenda, reforms to China's intellectual property rights (IPR) regime have emerged as a key policy domain as China attempts to build market-supporting institutions and improve law enforcement capabilities. By reviewing the legal frameworks supporting specific judicial reforms and through non-randomized, semistructured field interviews with lawyers, IP officials, and industry representatives, this article analyzes how China's evolving legal institutions are increasing central control in the IP adjudication process, building judicial professionalism, and ensuring uniformity in case outcomes in line with the demands of its economic transition. The question of how IP rights are enforced in China is of interest not only to those who want to understand how IP protections have developed in China, but also to those who wish to analyze the role that law and the courts play in structuring central-local relations and implementing institutional reform in a historically fragmented authoritarian system. Although China's IPR regime is far from perfect, these reforms are indicative of a major initiative to improve IP protections, nurture domestic innovation, and increase the role of China's judicial system in efficiently resolving disputes.


Objective
Several studies of sex differences in lung cancer survival have been reported. However, large-size population-based studies based on long-term observation are scarce. We investigated long-term trends in sex differences in lung cancer survival using population-based cancer registry data from Osaka, Japan.

Methods
We analyzed 79 330 cases from the Osaka Cancer Registry (OCR) diagnosed between 1975 and 2007. We calculated 5-year relative survival in the six periods (1975-1980, 1981-1986, 1987-1992, 1993-1997, 1998-2002 and 2003-2007). To estimate the trends in sex differences in lung cancer survival throughout the study period, we applied a multivariate excess hazard model to control for confounders.

Results
The proportion of adenocarcinoma (ADC) and 5-year relative relative survival have increased for both sexes. Sex differences in lung cancer survival have widened over the period, especially in ADC and since the late 1990s. The excess hazard ratio of death within 5 years for males was 1.19 (95% CI: 1.16-1.21), adjusting for period at diagnosis, histologic type, stage, age group and treatment.

Conclusion
We reported that females have better prognosis in lung cancer than males and the sex differences in lung cancer survival have become wider in Osaka, Japan. This can be partly explained by the sex differences in the proportions of histologic type and stage. Further studies considering other factors that influence sex differences in lung cancer survival are needed.


In this paper, we describe ROOT 18, a classifier using the scores of several unsupervised distributional measures as features to discriminate between semantically related and unrelated words, and then to classify the related pairs according to their semantic relation (i.e. synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy, part-whole meronymy). Our classifier participated in the CogALex-V Shared Task, showing a solid performance on the first subtask, but a poor performance on the second subtask. The low scores reported on the second subtask suggest that distributional measures are not sufficient to discriminate between multiple semantic relations at once.


INTRODUCTION
The prevalence of cardiovascular disease and associated risk factors are increasing globally, particularly in the developing world. Those in the South Asian region are especially at risk of cardiovascular disease due to an increasing prevalence of its risk factors. This study was undertaken to investigate the association of social class with location of residence in the distribution of cardiovascular risk factors (mainly hypertension and diabetes mellitus) in Pakistan.

METHODS
A cross-sectional study of 2495 subjects aged between 30-75 years was conducted in Punjab Province, which includes urban and rural areas. Subjects completed a detailed questionnaire, and anthropometric measurements and blood samples were taken after a written informed consent. Participants were categorized as urban or rural and assigned a social class according to their occupation. A logistic regression model was used to explore the association between social class and location of residence.

RESULTS
The overall prevalence of hypertension and diabetes was 24.2% and 16.6%, respectively. Of the total number of participants, 56.8% (n=1417) were rural residents and 43.2% (n=1078) were urban. Urban individuals were significantly more likely (p<0.001) to be hypertensive (OR=3.03, 95% CI 2.14-4.30) and more likely (p<0.001) to be diabetic (OR=1.77, 95% CI 1.29-2.42) than rural dwellers, after multivariate adjustments for age, sex, BMI and social class. Social class was not significantly associated with the prevalence of either hypertension or diabetes.

CONCLUSIONS
In the Pakistani population, rural or urban location of residence is a more powerful determinant of cardiovascular risk factors than social class.


To improve a product you will need most likely developers, managers and user feedback. Besides the basic software qualities other important properties are usability and user experience for developing a good product. Usability is well known and can be tested with e.g. a usability test or an expert review. In contrast user experience describes the whole impact a product has on the end-user. The timeline goes from before, while and after the use of a product. We present a tool that allows to evaluate the user experience of a product with little effort. We show in addition how this tool can be used for a continuous user experience assessment.


The West Indies is largely a migrant society of African, Indian and European origin. This boxing-in of people of different racial backgrounds has engendered hybrids and multiple complexes among the Caribbeans. This condition, complicated by the claustrophobic littleness of the islands and the economic and political insignificance of the whole region, combined to generate centrifugal forces that drive many of the educated and business elite to flee the islands and migrate to Europe and America. Derek Walcott, a mulatto and foremost poet of the Caribbeans, has all the reasons to follow the migration trend, but decided to stay back to find a solution to his tensions of hybrids, and formulate a theory of history which will nullify the linear history that he finds inapplicable to the Caribbean situation. Walcott loves his native island of St. Lucia. He views all the hurts of Caribbean history, including his divided condition with compassion which apportions neither condemnation nor exoneration to the hurts of history. In his Another Life, the poet evokes his childhood experiences through which he celebrates the enchanting beauty of St. Lucian landscape. The thrust of this study is to highlight Walcott's positive conception of the Caribbean landscape and people and re-formulation, re-orientation and myth of history in contradiction of the conventional linear theory which he is convinced, can only create a crippled hate-and-revenge literature of the Caribbeans.


People often think that their special relationships with family, friends, comrades and compatriots, can ground moral reasons. Among these reasons, they understand some to be duties – pro tanto requirements that have genuine weight when they conflict with other considerations. In this paper I ask: what is the underlying moral structure of associative duties? I first consider and reject the orthodox Teleological Welfarist account, which first observes that special relationships are fundamental for human well-being, then claims that we cannot have these relationships, if we do not recognise associative duties, before concluding that we should therefore recognise associative duties. I then introduce a nonteleological alternative, grounded in the Appropriate Response approach to ethical theory.


Introduction Statistical interactions are a common component of data analysis across a broad range of scientific disciplines. However, the statistical power to detect interactions is often undesirably low. One solution is to elevate the Type 1 error rate so that important interactions are not missed in a low power situation. To date, no study has quantified the effects of this practice on power in a linear regression model. Methods A Monte Carlo simulation study was performed. A continuous dependent variable was specified, along with three types of interactions: continuous variable by continuous variable; continuous by dichotomous; and dichotomous by dichotomous. For each of the three scenarios, the interaction effect sizes, sample sizes, and Type 1 error rate were varied, resulting in a total of 240 unique simulations. Results In general, power to detect the interaction effect was either so low or so high at α = 0.05 that raising the Type 1 error rate only served to increase the probability of including a spurious interaction in the model. A small number of scenarios were identified in which an elevated Type 1 error rate may be justified. Conclusions Routinely elevating Type 1 error rate when testing interaction effects is not an advisable practice. Researchers are best served by positing interaction effects a priori and accounting for them when conducting sample size calculations.


Effect of iron content on electrodeposited Fe-MnOx catalysts for water oxidation by Elizabeth Selinger Faculty of Science (Materials Science) University of Ontario Institute of Technology 2018 MnOx materials are earth-abundant and known to be efficient catalysts for the water oxidation reaction (WOR). I present the exploration of an optimal method of cathodically electrodepositing MnOx catalysts on an FTO substrate, allowing for quick synthesis and a homogeneous coverage of the substrate. I then study WOR activity of the MnOx catalyst with varying amounts of Fe in the structure. The catalyst structure was probed using XPS for elemental analysis, FESEM to study the morphology, and a Kelvin probe for exploration of the work function, and observations are discussed.


Occurrence of a spring ascomycete, Sarcosoma globosum has increased in Finland during the last three decades. River banks and old spruce forests are its typical habitats. Some of its habitats are damaged or even destroyed, however, because of forestry and building of roads and houses. It is a care-demanding fungus on the Finnish Red List, according to the IUCN criteria, but its present status is being discussed.


Many concrete notions of function application, suitable for interpreting typed lambda calculi with recursive types, have been introduced in the literature. These arise in different fields such as set theory, multiset theory, type theory and functor theory and are apparently unrelated. In this paper we introduce the general concept of applicative exponential structure and show that it subsumes all these notions. Our approach is based on a generalization of the notion of intersection type. We construe all these structures in a finitary way, so as to be able to utilize uniformly a general form of type assignment system for defining the interpretation function. Applicative exponential structures are just combinatory algebras, in general. Our approach suggests a wide variety of entirely new concrete notions of function application; e.g. in connection with boolean sets. Applicative exponential structures can be used for modeling various forms of non-deterministic operators.


Abstract Microvascular endothelial cells were isolated from rabbit cardiac tissue, and cultivated by standard tissue culture techniques. The conversion of [U-14C]glucose to CO2 and lipids was significantly enhanced by insulin treatment. Insulin stimulated uptake of 2-[3H]deoxyglucose and enhanced the transport of 3-O[3H]methyl-D-glucose. Specific binding of [125I]insulin to RCME cells, displaceable by cold insulin, was also observed. These data demonstrate that insulin is capable of regulating metabolic activities in coronary microvascular endothelium.


Nitrous oxide (N2O) emission and methane (CH4) uptake were measured in an experimental long‐term tillage field (Andosol) in Hokkaido, northern Japan, to assess their contributions to net global warming, associated with arable crop production. From May 2001 to August 2002, the field was cultivated with winter wheat, adzuki bean, sugar beet, potato, and cabbage, where the total N applied was 110, 40, 150, 60, and 220 kg N ha−1 yr−1, respectively. Under conventional tillage (CT) cropping systems, basal N fertilization and plowing for residue incorporation had little effect on N2O fluxes, but vigorous N2O emission was observed when rotary harrowing was used for incorporating N‐rich cabbage residues into soil in summer. Also, high N2O emissions occurred when there was heavy rainfall after a large amount of N fertilizer had been applied to sugar beet and also when there was thawing of frozen soil and snow in the winter wheat treatment. Despite the differing N2O flux patterns among the crops, the annual N2O emissions from each crop were positively correlated with the total N applied as fertilizer. Under CT systems, across all five crops, the mean N2O emission factor (the percent ratio of N2O‐N emitted out of total N applied as fertilizer) was 0.36%. Under reduced tillage (RT) cropping systems, where crop residues were left on the ground over winter, large quantities of N2O were emitted from adzuki bean and sugar beet residues when the frozen soil and snow thawed. Therefore, total N2O emissions from adzuki bean and sugar beet cultivated under RT systems were much greater than under CT systems. The rates of CH4 uptake by arable soils were less sensitive to crop type, field management practices, and fertilizer application rates, but the rates were strongly influenced by long‐term tillage management. For fallow, winter wheat, adzuki bean, and sugar beet treatments, the CH4 uptake rates in the CT soils (1.36 kg CH4 ha−1 yr−1), which had a 20‐year history of intensive plowing, were lower than those in the RT soils (2.40 kg CH4 ha−1 yr−1). Thus RT production systems improved CH4 uptake by arable soils, although they adversely affected N2O emissions for adzuki bean and sugar beet production.


This paper describes a novel group-based programming abstraction called a "Bundle" for cyber-physical systems (CPS). Similar to other programming abstractions, a Bundle creates logical collections of sensing devices. However, previous abstractions were focused on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and did not address key aspects of CPS. Bundles elevate the programming domain from a single WSN to complex systems of systems by allowing the programming of applications involving multiple CPSs that are controlled by different administrative domains and support mobility both within and across CPSs. Bundles can seamlessly group not only sensors, but also actuators which constitute an important part of CPS. They enable programming in a multiuser environment with fine grained access right control and conflict resolution mechanism. Bundles support heterogeneous devices, such as motes, PDAs, laptops, and actuators according to the applications' requirements. They allow different applications to simultaneously use the same sensors and actuators. Bundles facilitate feedback control mechanisms by dynamic membership update and requirements reconfiguration based on feedback from the current members. The Bundle abstraction is implemented in Java which ensures ease and conciseness of programming. We present the design and implementation details of Bundles as well as a performance evaluation using 32 applications written with Bundles. This set includes across-network applications that have sophisticated sensing and actuation logic, mobile nodes that are heterogeneous, and feedback control mechanisms. Each of these applications is programmed in less than 60 lines of code.


The last two decades have witnessed the emergence of the Chicana voice, a voice that has struggled to rewrite her story in order to reinterpret the atrophied archetypes manifest in the male stories and Literature. Retelling her true story, the Chicana heals the wound that has kept her voiceless and paralyzed. Storytelling, thus, becomes powerful medicine for her, and an appropriate means of shaping an identity that has been silent and transparent throughout the ages. Denise Chavez's Face of an Angel, published in 1994, chronicles the story of Soveida Dosamantes, a woman who chooses the tell her life-story in order to assert herself in her roots and identity, which has been strongly influenced by the constant, powerful presence of women around her. The novel pays homage to the women in the author's and the main protagonist's families, who, even though denied the right to speak publicly, have perfectly fulfilled the role of cultural bearers for the community and have, at the same time, understood and transmitted the need to raise their voice and fight for an active feminine role within their group, in a bid to demystify the colonized image of the Chicana.


Learning outcomes
Learning objectives of this case is to understand the hairdressing industry and develop the sub-branding strategy. After reading this case and practicing in class, students should be able to understand this business and marketing terminology and apply them in the real world. Students will learn the branding strategies: brand extension, brand architecture and brand portfolio. Students will design (DS) the brand name for the new store.

Case overview/synopsis
Case synopsis Mr. Tai-Hua Teng (aka TR) was a hair artist and opened his first hair salon, vis-à-vis (VS), in 1989 using a high-end positioning strategy. VS focused on offering superb and diverse services to keep ahead of the competition rather than trying to undercut prices. VS hair salon had a solid foundation based mainly on the elite, celebrities and high-salary customers. In 2017, TR owned 16 stores (including one in Canada and two intern salons), 1 academy, 265 employees and 3 brand names. The three brand names were VS, DS and concept (CC). DS and CC were less known to the public, so now these two brands had been carried the parent name and were known as VS DS and VS CC. Quick cut hairdressing businesses were thriving because customers needed quick and cheap hairdressing services. Acknowledging the benefits of entering the highly competitive quick haircut market, TR began to contemplate the new brand name and services to offer. VS had adopted the brand house strategy but TR wondered if it was better to have an individual brand name when entering the quick haircut market. The sub-branding strategy carried the established quality assurance of VS but there was possible brand overlap. An individual new brand name might lack the well-established values from VS but it also showed the potential to reach different segments of customers. TR's decision to make: a branded house or hybrid? This case showed a high-end hair salon facing the need for simplicity in the market and considered how to expand its business to the lower-end market. Keywords: hairdressing, brand extension and sub-branding strategy.

Complexity academic level
Level of difficulty: easy/middle level to undergraduate courses specific prerequisites: it is not necessary for students to prepare or read any marketing theory or chapters of the textbook. However, it would help a more in-depth discussion if students know the CCs of brand architecture, brand portfolio, brand extension and line extension.

Supplementary materials
Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

Subject code
CSS 8: Marketing.


Department of Natural Resources Environmental Engineering, School of Environment and Energy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Department of Environmental Engineering, School of Environment and Energy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Department of Environmental Management, School of Environment and Energy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran Department of Biology, School of Basic Sciences, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran


This paper presents the knowledge representation schemes adopted in MICKEY, a knowledge based system for designing microprocessor based systems. MICKEY is essentially a hybrid expert system, using rules and procedures for achieving the different design tasks. We briefly describe the hierarchy of tasks in this problem domain, and emphasize on the refinement paradigm, constraint propagation, conflict resolution and task management strategies adopted in MICKEY. Next, we dwell upon the different knowledge sources and their functions, with respect to the particular design domain. Finally, we present an industrial design, achieved by MICKEY, to demonstrate its applicability.


Supervisory Committee Dr. Colette Smart (Department of Psychology) Supervisor Dr. Mauricio Garcia-Barrera (Department of Psychology) Departmental Member Prevailing theories of emotion regulation (ER) focus on the role of various aspects of cognition for successful regulation of one's emotions. In particular, research suggests that executive functions (EF) may play an important role in contributing to successful ER. Emerging adulthood can be a time of high levels of perceived stress associated with changing developmental roles, which can be a risk factor for psychopathology (e.g., depression, anxiety). Emerging adulthood is also a time during which EF comes to maturation both behaviorally and biologically. This prolonged period of development associated with EF and ER maturity may represent an increased period of vulnerability in young adults, and deficits in EF may pose a significant risk for emotion dysregulation and future psychopathology. This study aimed to investigate whether EFs played a role in ER for emerging adults. More specifically, this study examined whether EFs (including, working memory, attentional control, and inhibitory control) moderated the indirect effect of ER in the relationship between stress and psychopathology in the context of emerging adulthood. A sample of 75 undergraduate students at the University of Victoria was recruited. Participants self reported perceived levels of stress and psychopathology symptoms. Participants also completed a computerized ER task where they viewed aversive pictures and sentences on a computer screen and explicitly applied an ER strategy to reduce their negative emotions when viewing the stimuli. Tests of EF including the Go/No-Go, Number-Letter and N-Back task were also completed. Results iv revealed that moderated mediation did not hold for this sample. However, working memory, attentional control, and inhibitory control moderated the relationship between ER and psychopathology. Specifically, low working memory and attentional control, and high inhibitory control moderated the relationship between cognitive reappraisal and psychopathology. For this same relationship of cognitive reappraisal to psychopathology, faster engagement in response inhibition (i.e., faster reaction times) was trending toward significant levels of psychopathology symptoms. For expressive suppression, the relationship to psychopathology was moderated by inhibitory control. ER did not mediate the relationship between stress and psychopathology symptoms across the entire sample. The results illuminate the ways in which EFs contribute to ER in the context of emerging adulthood. Implications for promoting successful ER and informing therapeutic techniques used with this critical population are discussed.


This research study is a pragmatic analysis which focuses on context of situation in English Textbook. The objective of the study is to describe the four components of context of situation in the dialogues contains in the textbook. This research applies descriptive qualitative type. By applying this method, the researcher uses the dialogues in one unit of textbook as the data source, while the data of the research are the elaboration of each component of the dialogues. The result of the research show that although there are some components of context of situation that is stated implicitly or even unclear, the ideas of the dialogue are still can be understood.


Ours arrived under mysterious circumstances in Wuhan, China sometime in the last quarter of 2019. In the memorable words of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Covid-19 virus then "got on a plane" and became a super-spreading global pandemic in a matter of months. The human toll is devastating — over 80 million infected and over 1.7 million deaths as I write this. Over a century ago and during World War I no less, the world witnessed the devastating "Spanish flu" pandemic, which according to the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention infected 500 million people and killed over 50 million, with an estimated 20 million in Asia alone, although precise numbers are hard to come by. Pandemics are named pandemics because their human toll is on a global scale and devastating.


As adaptive gradient methods are typically used for training over-parameterized models capable of exactly fitting the data, we study their convergence in this interpolation setting. Under this assumption, we prove that constant step-size, zero-momentum variants of Adam and AMSGrad can converge to the minimizer at the O(1/T) rate for smooth, convex functions. When this assumption is only approximately satisfied, we show that these methods converge to a neighbourhood of the solution. On the other hand, we show that Adagrad is robust to the violation of interpolation and converges to the minimizer at the optimal rate. However, we demonstrate that even for simple, convex problems satisfying interpolation, the empirical performance of these methods heavily depends on the step-size and requires tuning. We alleviate this problem by making use of stochastic line-search methods (SLS) and Polyak's step-sizes (SPS) to help these methods adapt to the function's local smoothness. We prove that adaptive methods used in conjunction with these techniques do not require knowledge of problem-dependent constants and retain the convergence guarantees of their constant step-size counterparts. Experimentally, we show that using SLS or SPS consistently improves the convergence of adaptive methods across tasks; from binary classification with kernel mappings to classification with deep neural networks. Furthermore, our empirical results show that Adagrad equipped with SLS generalizes better than SGD.


This paper presents the application of SMART Layer® Technology for in-situ assessment of the health of ceramic/composite panels used in protective systems. The work builds on previous studies to integrate sensors into the plate manufacturing process, and addresses issues such as ingress/egress of wiring and sensor survivability. An embeddable structural health monitoring system that could be seamlessly integrated into a semi-automated manufacturing process for protective systems was developed. Multiple sensor types and monitoring modes were integrated, including passive impact monitoring, electro-mechanical impedance measurements for sensor self-diagnostics, active ultrasonic scans for damage detection, and static strain measurements. Both low velocity and high velocity ballistic impact tests were conducted, and results are presented and discussed.


Introduction Following the recent COVID-19 lockdown, a reduction in emergency healthcare visits was reported. Infectious diseases were less often diagnosed, while it was not clear if this was due to a decrease in prevalence or a decrease in emergency healthcare visits due to fear of COVID-19. Methods This study comprises a follow-up from a recently finished randomised controlled trial, to gain insight into the prevalence of asthma exacerbation and fear of COVID-19 in patients with moderate-severe asthma and controls in the Netherlands. Participants, patients with asthma and controls, were invited to fill out a short survey by email or post. Exacerbation frequencies until 1 July 2020 were verified with the hospitals' and general practitioners' medical records, pharmacies and patient interviews. Results In quarter 2 of 2020, mean exacerbation frequency per patient was significantly lower (χ2(3)=9.91, p=0.019) compared with quarter 2 in previous years. Patients with asthma were more likely to avoid (38.8%; controls, 0.0%, p<0.01) or delay (24.5%; controls, 0.0%, p=0.02) essential medical visits due to fear of SARS-CoV-2 infection at medical facilities. Conclusion In conclusion, we found a significantly reduced asthma exacerbation frequency during COVID-19 social distancing measures compared with previous years. Patients with asthma also showed more anxiety towards (acquiring) COVID-19 infection. Trial registration number NL8576.


3,5-bis((E)-(2-hydroxybenzylidene)amino)benzoic acid (H2BAB) was synthesized via the condensation of two moles of 2-hydroxybenzaldehyde and one mole of 3,5-diaminobenzoic acid in methanol. The Co (II) and Ni(II) complexes were crystallized as neutral square planar chelates from an equimolar reaction mixture of the ligand and metal ions. H2BAB and its Co(II) and Ni(II) complexes were characterized based on IR,  C-NMR and UV spectroscopy. The complexes were further analysed via conductivity and stoichiometry determinations. The results indicate that the ligand ligated to the metals through the two azomethine N atom and the two hydroxy O atom in an ONON fashion leading to deprotonation of the phenolic groups. Solvent extraction of the complexes NiBAB and CoBAB were carried out using CHCl3 as organic solvent in 5% dimethylformamide. .Co(II) was quantitatively extracted between pH 5-7, while Ni(II) was quantitatively extracted at pH 6-8. Nickel(II) was successfully separated from cobalt(II) from 10-3 mol dm-3 HNO3 using 5% H2BAB/DMF, 0.05 mol dm-3 CN- as masking agent and CHCl3 as organic solvent in four-cycle extraction.  Key Words: Solvent Extraction, Complex Formation, Characterization, Spectroscopy.


The recent achievements in studying of structure of tRNA are considered in the present paper. A brief analysis of the new methods for sequencing tRNA was carried out. Due to the development of these methods about 300 tRNA primary structures have been determined. Comparison of the primary tRNA structures gives us the possibility to divide them into seven classes: prokaryotic initiator tRNAs and eukaryotic initiator tRNAs; prokaryotic elongator tRNAs and eukaryotic elongator tRNAs; archaebacterial tRNAs; and mitochondrial tRNAs of lower and higher eukaryotes. Structural properties of the tRNAs of each of these classes are discussed. The second part of the paper is devoted to the three-dimensional structure of tRNA. Recent data in this field obtained by X-ray crystallographic technique as well as by high-resolution NMR and chemical modification methods are reviewed.


As the technology matures, we face new lessons in frustration. One serious dilemma facing tool design is that, to be profitable, a tool must support the broadest possible diversity of users. This mindset has largely yielded dumb, monolithic, use-one-at-a-time tools. However, we are about to witness a profusion of complex tool systems wherein several autonomous tools simultaneously cooperate to assist you-in fact, they will probably compete ferociously among themselves for the privilege. The tools of the future will be intelligent, dynamically adaptive, customizable, and personalizable to a staggering degree. With experience, they will learn and grow and wear to fit the specific craftsman's hand. Their complex functionality will be deeply couched in metaphor or story, and their internal operations will be hidden from view, until demanded. The emergence of complex, semi-autonomous tools underscores the importance of building good model of the user into the box.


This study measures the impact of both on-board and user-side lossy image compression (CCSDS-IDC and JPEG 2000) on image quality and classification. The Sentinel-2 Image Performance Simulator was modified to include these compression algorithms in order to produce Sentinel-2 simulated images with on-board lossy compression. A multitemporal set of Landsat images was used for the user-side compression scenario in order to study a crop area. The performance of several compressors was evaluated by computing the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of the compressed images. The overall accuracy of land-cover classifications of these images was also evaluated. The results show that on-board CCSDS performs better than JPEG 2000 in terms of compression fidelity, especially at lower compression ratios (from CR 2:1 up to CR 4:1, i.e., 8 to 4 bpppb). The effect of compression on land cover classification follows the same trends, but compression fidelity may not be enough to assess the impact of compression on end-user applications. If compression is applied by end-users, the results show that 3D-JPEG 2000 obtains higher compression fidelity than CCSDS and JPEG 2000 with other parameterizations. This is due to the high dynamic range of the images (representing reflectances * 10000), which JPEG 2000 is able to exploit better.


People dislike giving bad news, and one strategy they use to ease the process is to pair bad news with some good news, a phenomenon called blended news delivery. Often, blended news arrives from people in power positions such as physicians, managers, or teachers. But followers also find themselves needing to give bad news to those in higher power positions. Similarly, people can choose how they deliver bad news, such as in person or over email. The current study brings much needed empirical attention to this phenomenon and the way power imbalance and physical distance may influence blended news delivery. Participants completed the study alongside one confederate whom they believed would receive personality test results at the end of the session. Participants completed personality measures and then participated in an origami task in which they were randomly assigned to either a leader or follower role (the confederate played the other role). After the origami task, participants were randomly assigned to deliver the confederate's test results in person or through email. In person interactions were video-recorded. Participants then completed one final questionnaire about the experience. Trained research assistants provided ratings of the news-delivery videos and emails. Although power did not influence how people delivered blended news, physical distance affected the news people began and ended with, whether they sandwiched bad news, and the relative emphasis placed on bad news compared to good news. The way people delivered blended news also influenced ratings of warmth, social skills, directness and bluntness. These findings suggest a number of considerations and recommendations for people who deliver bad news.