Background Proton pump inhibitor (PPI) use is widespread. There have been increasing concerns about overuse of high-dose PPIs for durations longer than clinically necessary. Objective To evaluate the impact of national education initiatives on reducing PPI use in Australia. Design Population-based, controlled interrupted time series analysis of PPI dispensing claims data for Australian adults from July 2012 to June 2018; we used statin dispensing as a control. Interventions A year-long educational initiative led by NPS MedicineWise (previously the National Prescribing Service) from April 2015. Simultaneously, Choosing Wisely released recommendations in April 2015 and May 2016. Both promoted review of prolonged PPI use and encouraged stepping down or ceasing treatment, where appropriate. Measurements We examined monthly changes in PPI (and statin) dispensing (stratified by high, standard and low tablet strength), rates of switching from higher to lower strength PPIs and rates of PPI (and statin) discontinuation. Results We observed 12 040 021 PPI dispensings to 579 594 people. We observed a sustained −1.7% (95% CI: −2.7 to −0.7%) decline in monthly dispensing of standard strength PPIs following the initiatives until the end of the study period. There were no significant changes in high or low strength PPI (or statin) dispensings, switching to lower strength PPIs, or PPI (and statin) treatment discontinuation. Conclusion Our findings suggest that these educational initiatives alone were insufficient in curbing overuse of PPIs on a national level. Concerted efforts with policy levers such as imposing tighter restrictions on subsidised use of PPIs may be more effective. Noting low strength esomeprazole is not publicly subsidised in Australia, availability of these preparations may also facilitate more appropriate practice


The objective of this study is to present our experience with robotic surgeries in general surgery, urology, gynecology, and ear-nose-throat (ENT) departments. Robotic surgery performed in cases from the Erzurum Regional Training and Research Hospital from February 2015 to July 2018 were retrospectively included in the study. Patient data, including age, gender, ASA score, underlying disease, smoking habits, type of surgery, invasive procedures (arterial cannulation, or central venous catheter), laparotomy requirement, anesthesia, surgery, discharge times, amount of bleeding, and intraand post-operative complications were recorded from the digital database system and anesthesia hospital records during monitoring. A total of two hundred twenty-one patients were included. Of these 112 (50.6%) from urology, 53 (23.9%) from general surgery, 46 (20.8%) from gynecology, and 10 (4.5%) from ENT departments. The median age of the patients was 61 (17-91) years, and the male/ female ratio was 1.9 (145/76). Most patients (63.3%) had ASA-II scores. Ten patients (4.7%) needed conversion to laparotomy. Mean duration of anesthesia and surgery was longest in general surgery procedures. Urology department patients had the longest time to discharge. The Trendelenburg position was used only during urology and gynecology operations. Hypotension was the most frequent intraoperative complication, and nausea was the most common postoperative complication. In general, both intraand post-operative complications were mostly seen in the urology department. No intraor post-operative complications were observed in ENT operations. Robotic surgeries are continuing to develop and evolve and be used in several disciplines. Presented properties and complications of robotic surgery reported in this study, may be helpful for anesthesiologists and surgeons.


Doxylamine succinate was administered as an admixture in the feed to male and female Fischer 344 rats for either 14 or 90 days. The 14-day study included dose levels of 0, 100, 250, 500, 1000, or 2000 ppm doxylamine. Except for a 7% decrease in final body weight in female rats in the 2000 ppm group, there were no significant clinical observations made in the 14-day study. Microscopic lesions judged to be treatment-related were limited to cytoplasmic vacuolization in the livers. The lesions were more numerous in the higher dose groups of males and present only in the 2000 ppm group of females. Dose levels of 0, 162, 405, 1012, 2530, and 6325 ppm doxylamine were administered in the 90-day study. There were no deaths during the study. Final body weights were decreased 13.3% in males of the 6325 ppm group and 5.2, 10.1, and 14.4% in females in the 1012, 2530, and 6325 ppm groups, respectively. Liver/brain weight ratios were increased in all treated male groups and in the two highest dose groups of females. Other organ weight changes were decreases and believed to result from general reduction in weight gain in those groups where the decreases occurred. Treatment-related histological changes were identified in the liver and parotid salivary gland. Cytoplasmic vacuolization or fatty change of the liver was found in all groups of males but was more severe in the higher dose groups. In females, these liver lesions were observed only in the two highest dose groups. A dose-related change in the parotid salivary gland, consisting of cytomegaly with basophilic and coarsely granular or vacuolated cytoplasm, was observed.


Multispectral image fusion is a computer vision process that is essential to remote sensing. For applications such as dehazing and object detection, there is a need to offer solutions that can perform in real-time on any type of scene. Unfortunately, current state-of-the-art approaches do not meet these criteria as they need to be trained on domain-specific data and have high computational complexity. This paper focuses on the task of fusing color (RGB) and near-infrared (NIR) images as this the typical RGBT sensors, as in multispectral cameras for detection, fusion, and dehazing. Indeed, the NIR channel has the ability to capture details not visible in RGB and see beyond haze, fog, and clouds. To combine this information, a novel approach based on superpixel segmentation is designed so that multispectral image fusion is performed according to the specific local content of the images to be fused. There-fore, the proposed method produces a fusion that contains the most relevant content of each spectrum. The experiments re-ported in this manuscript show that the novel approach better preserves details than alternative fusion methods.


The industry engaged in prostheses production is dominated by companies that offer products using their own propriety standards. This results in either impossible or significantly impeded cooperation between modules from different manufacturers within one device. Looking for solutions to this problem in 2005 engineers started working on standardization of communication interface. Outcome of the University of New Brunswick (UNB) Hand Project, founded by Atlantic Innovation Fund (AIF), is still improved interface Prosthetic Device Communication Protocol for internal communication of prosthesis hand modules. This paper has been devoted to the matter of design and implementation of the lower layers of PDCP on AVR Platform, hugely popular in systems of prostheses. An important aspect was to maximize software portability between different models of AVR family microcontrollers and as far as possible between microcontrollers from different manufactures. Software should be well documented and understandable for engineers enabling further development. Hardware layer used in this project was based on AT90USB1287 Atmel microcontroller, external CAN controller MCP2515 and CAN transceiver MCP2551 (both manufactured by Microchip). A part of the project was to design Printed Circuit Board giving a visualization of the software portability. The software was designed in close cooperation with the student responsible for the higher layers of the interface, therefore corresponding interface had to be designed. Lower layers of PDCP are based on interrupt generated by the CAN controller chip. Thanks to this solution maximum capacity was ensured while providing CPU time for upper layers of interface and application-specific tasks.


Abstract Purpose Convolutional neural networks (CNN) have greatly improved medical image segmentation. A robust model requires training data can represent the entire dataset. One of the differing characteristics comes from variability in patient positioning (prone or supine) for radiotherapy. In this study, we investigated the effect of position orientation on segmentation using CNN. Methods Data of 100 patients (50 in supine and 50 in prone) with rectal cancer were collected for this study. We designed three sets of experiments for comparison: (a) segmentation using the model trained with data from the same orientation; (b) segmentation using the model trained with data from the opposite orientation; (c) segmentation using the model trained with data from both orientations. We performed fivefold cross‐validation. The performance was evaluated on segmentation of the clinical target volume (CTV), bladder, and femurs with Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and Hausdorff distance (HD). Results Compared with models trained on cases positioned in the same orientation, the models trained with cases positioned in the opposite orientation performed significantly worse (P < 0.05) on CTV and bladder segmentation, but had comparable accuracy for femurs (P > 0.05). The average DSC values were 0.74 vs 0.84, 0.85 vs 0.88, and 0.91 vs 0.91 for CTV, bladder, and femurs, respectively. The corresponding HD values (mm) were 16.6 vs 14.6, 8.4 vs 8.1, and 6.3 vs 6.3, respectively. The models trained with data from both orientations have comparable accuracy (P > 0.05), with average DSC of 0.84, 0.88, and 0.91 and HD of 14.4, 8.1, and 6.3, respectively. Conclusions Orientation affects the accuracy for CTV and bladder, but has negligible effect on the femurs. The model trained from data combining both orientations performs as well as a model trained with data from the same orientation for all the organs. These observations can offer guidance on the choice of training data for accurate segmentation.


As readers and critics around the country agree, any new book by the renowned garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence is like finding a buried treasure. A Rock Garden in the South will not disappoint. Released posthumously, this book is not only a welcome addition to the Lawrence canon, but fills an important gap in the garden literature on the middle South.

Lawrence, in her usual exquisite prose, deals with the full range of rock gardening topics in this work. She addresses the unique problem of cultivating rock gardens in the South, where the growing season is prolonged and humidity and heat are not conducive to such planting. She describes her own experiences in making a rock garden, with excellent advice on placing stones, constructing steps, ordering plants, and making cuttings.

At the same time, what she writes about here is in large part of interest to gardeners everywhere and for gardens with or without rocks. As always, she thoroughly discusses the plants she has tried—recommending bulbs and other perennials of all sorts, annuals, and woody plants—with poetic descriptions of the plants themselves as well as specific and useful cultural advice. A Rock Garden in the South includes an encyclopedia of plants alphabetized by genus and species and divided into two parts: wood and non-woody plants.


SUMMARY In December 1995 we carried out a comprehensive controlled-source electromagnetic survey of the Valu Fa Ridge at 22u25k Si n the Lau Basin. The Valu Fa Ridge is ab ack-arc spreading centre of intermediate spreading rate and is a site of extensive hydrothermal activity. Seismic studies have imaged a melt lens at an average depth of 3.2 km below the seafloor, surrounded by a zone of lowered seismic velocity, interpreted as a region of partial melt in the crust. The electromagnetic experiment was part of a multidisciplinary study which included wide-angle and reflection seismics, bathymetry and potential field measurements. Electromagnetic signals at frequencies between 0.25 and 40 Hz were transmitted from a horizontal electric dipole towed close to the seafloor and were recorded by an array of 11 sea-bottom receivers at ranges of up to 20 km from the source. Over 80 hr of data, consisting of the magnitude of the horizontal electric field at the seafloor, were collected. These data have extremely low scatter compared to similar data from previous surveys. The data were interpreted using a combination of 1- and 2-D forward modelling and inversion. The vertical resistivity gradient in the upper crust at the Valu Fa Ridge is abnormally low, with resistivities of less than 10 V m observed throughout layer 2 of the crust to a depth of 3 km. This is significantly more conductive at depth than the axis of the slow-spreading Reykjanes Ridge at 57u45kN, and the fastspreading East Pacific Rise at 13uN, where similar data sets have been collected in the past. Although the structure of layer 2 is well constrained by the electromagnetic data, its extremely low resistivity causes rapid attenuation of electromagnetic signals diffusing through it, and hence the data are not sensitive to the structure in layer 3, in particular the structure of the melt lens or surrounding low-velocity zone. The seismic velocity structure of the Valu Fa Ridge, determined from the coincident wide-angle seismic study, is similar to that observed at other mid-ocean ridges, with a steep seismic velocity gradient through layer 2 (although overall velocities are slightly lower). The seismic velocity anomaly calculated relative to an average off-axis structure is also small. This suggests that the very low resistivities observed at the axis are not caused by an upper crust of abnormally high porosity. However, hot and/or saline fluids permeating the crust can explain the low resistivities without affecting the seismic velocity. Since the conductive region extends unbroken from 3 km depth to the seafloor, it is probable that these fluids circulate to (or close to) the magma chamber itself.


Using theoretical and numerical results, we document the accuracy of commonly applied variational Bayes methods across a range of state space models. The results demonstrate that, in terms of accuracy on fixed parameters, there is a clear hierarchy in terms of the methods, with approaches that do not approximate the states yielding superior accuracy over methods that do. We also document numerically that the inferential discrepancies between the various methods often yield only small discrepancies in predictive accuracy over small out-of-sample evaluation periods. Nevertheless, in certain settings, these predictive discrepancies can become marked over longer out-of-sample periods. This finding indicates that the invariance of predictive results to inferential inaccuracy, which has been an oft-touted point made by practitioners seeking to justify the use of variational inference, is not ubiquitous and must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.


The paper explores empirically the links between the WTO-driven liberalization of trade in financial services and the stability of national financial systems. Econometric testing of indicators intended to proxy financial sector stability - subdivided into exchange rate and banking sector stability - suggests that opening of the financial sector is an efficient policy instrument at the disposal of the authorities for achieving a variety of macroeconomic goals. While liberalization is found to be broadly conducive to stability, the outcome of liberalization on exchange rate stability is less predictable than on banking sector stability.


Endothelial nitric-oxide synthase (eNOS) is a constitutively expressed gene in endothelium that produces NO and is critical for vascular integrity. Previously, we reported that the 27-nucleotide (nt) repeat polymorphism in eNOS intron 4, a source of 27-nt small RNA, which inhibits eNOS expression, were associated with cardiovascular risk and expression of the eNOS gene. In the current study, we investigated the biogenesis of the intron 4-derived 27-nt small RNA. Using Northern blot, we showed that the eNOS-derived 27-nt short intronic repeat RNA (sir-RNA) expressed only in the eNOS expressing endothelial cells. Cells containing 10 × 27- or 5 × 27-nt repeats produced higher levels of 27nt sir-RNA and lower levels of eNOS mRNA than the cells with 4 × 27-nt repeats. The 27nt sir-RNA was mostly present within the endothelial nuclei. When the splicing junctions of the 27-nt repeat containing intron 4 in the full-length eNOS cDNA vector were mutated, 27nt sir-RNA biogenesis was abolished. Suppression of Drosha or Dicer diminished the biogenesis of the 27nt sir-RNA. Our study suggests that the 27nt sir-RNA derived through eNOS pre-mRNA splicing may represent a new class of small RNA. The more eNOS is transcribed or higher number of the 27-nt repeats, the more 27nt sir-RNA is produced, which functions as a negative feedback self-regulator by specifically inhibiting the host gene eNOS expression. This novel molecular model may be responsible for quantitative differences between individuals carrying different numbers of the polymorphic repeats hence the cardiovascular risk.


A high-energy, extended-cavity femtosecond BiBO optical parametric oscillator synchronously pumped by a 1.0-ps, 1030-nm Yb:YAG, thin-disk pump laser is presented. The oscillator operated near degeneracy in a noncollinear interaction geometry, producing signal wavelength tunability from 1.99 to 2.20 μm. The signal pulses have an average power exceeding 2 W, producing 455-fs pulses at 7.08 MHz with energies up to 350 nJ, showing increased potential for tunable sources of scalable ultrafast pulses in the infrared.


Abstract The dynamics of choice and self-selection are central features of politics but absent from most experimental designs. We show how designs that incorporate choice, by allowing some subjects the option to receive or avoid treatment, can be extended by randomizing conditional on subjects' treatment choices to answer further questions of interest while preserving statistical power. We apply this design to study how the gender of messengers for the #MeToo social movement conditions who receives the movement's message and how they respond. Our results, from both convenience and nationally representative samples, suggest that #MeToo movement's message reaches a wide audience with the intended effect. The potential for backlash in response to the message appears limited but more likely when this message is delivered by a woman.


Automatic adaptation has the potential to enhance the performance of a wide variety of assistive technologies. This paper describes two adaptive assistive technologies: (1) a "smart wheelchair" that selects its operating mode based on current task requirements and (2) a row-colunm scanning keyboard that changes its scanning rate to conform to the capabilities of the user. The reasoning method underlying each system's adaptation decisions, a probabilistic reasoning construct known as Bayesian networks, is also discussed.


Skin lesions affect millions of people worldwide. They can be easily recognized based on their typically abnormal texture and color but are difficult to diagnose due to similar symptoms among certain types of lesions. The motivation for this study is to collate and analyze machine learning (ML) applications in skin lesion research, with the goal of encouraging the development of automated systems for skin disease diagnosis. To assist dermatologists in their clinical diagnosis, several skin image datasets have been developed and published online. Such efforts have motivated researchers and medical staff to develop automatic skin diagnosis systems using image segmentation and classification processes. This paper summarizes the fundamental steps in skin lesion diagnosis based on papers mainly published since 2013. The applications of ML methods (including traditional ML and deep learning (DL)) in skin disease recognition are reviewed based on their contributions, methods, and achieved results. Such technical analysis is beneficial to the continuing development of reliable and effective computer-aided skin disease diagnosis systems. We believe that more research efforts will lead to the current automatic skin diagnosis studies being used in real clinical settings in the near future.


A guide created to help UNC Charlotte faculty and staff manage data, including info for NEH, NIH, and NSF grants. Contacts


Nickel sorption in illite suspensions was studied as a function of pH (4.5–8.0), reaction time (3 h, 24 h, and 1 wk) and ionic strength (I = 0.1 and 0.003 M) using x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to characterize the Ni sorption complexes formed. The formation of Ni-Al layered double hydroxide (LDH) phases was observed at pH values >6.25, with increasing formation of these phases with time, and a faster formation rate with increasing pH. Comparison among samples with the same Ni loading, but different reaction times and pH values, showed larger second neighbor scattering for the samples reacted at higher pH, which had a faster Ni sorption rate. Most likely this was due to a greater importance of Ni-Al LDH precipitation relative to other (mononuclear) Ni sorption mechanisms at higher pH, and/or a higher Al content in the Ni-Al LDH phase formed at lower pH (slower Ni sorption rate). Lowering the ionic strength resulted in increased Ni sorption for the entire pH range studied. Our extended x-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (EXAFS) data indicated that this was due to significant outer-sphere Ni sorption occurring at the planar sites at low I, leading to a reduced importance of Ni-Al LDH formation in the overall Ni sorption process at pH > 6.50.


The focus of this paper is on the choice of the unemployed between becoming an entrepreneur or not. It contributes to the literature by empirically investigating two hitherto neglected issues: What is the impact of risk aversion and personal contact with a role model in shaping the decision to become an entrepreneur (controlling for standard demographic variables, i.e. sex, age, and education)? And given the personal characteristics and attitudes, how does the regional 'entrepreneurial milieu' affect the decision to start a new business out of unemployment? The econometric study is based on data from a recent representative survey of the population in ten German planning regions. We use a version of the probit model that takes care of the regional stratification of the data, and the results of the nonlinear models are carefully interpreted and illustrated. We show that a high degree of risk aversion, and lack of personal contact with a young entrepreneur, both reduce the probability of starting one's own business. A favourable 'regional entrepreneurial milieu' (proxied by higher levels of current start-up activity and larger shares of unemployed among the starters in a region) has a positive effect on the individual propensity to step into self-employment. All these impacts are not only statistically significant, but economically important, too.


ABSTRACT Municipal wastewater (WW), if not properly remediated, poses a threat to the environment and human health by carrying significant loads of nutrients and pathogens. These contaminants pollute rivers, lakes, and natural reservoirs where they cause eutrophication and pathogen-mediated diseases. However, the high nutrient content of WW makes it an ideal environment for remediation with microalgae that require high nutrient concentrations for growth and are not susceptible to toxins and pathogens. Given that an appropriate algal strain is used for remediation, the incurred biomass can be refined for the production of biofuel. Four microalgal species (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Chlorella sp., Parachlorella kessleri-I, and Nannochloropsis gaditana) were screened for efficient phycoremediation of municipal WW and potential use for biodiesel production. Among the four strains tested, P. kessleri-I showed the highest growth rate and biomass production in 100% WW. It efficiently removed all major nutrients with a removal rate of up to 98% for phosphate after 10 days of growth in 100% municipal WW collected from Delhi. The growth of P. kessleri-I in WW resulted in a 50% increase of biomass and a 115% increase of lipid yield in comparison to growth in control media. The Fatty acid methyl ester (FAME), and fuel properties of lipids isolated from cells grown in WW complied with international standards. The present study provides evidence that the green alga P. kessleri-I effectively remediates municipal WW and can be used to produce biodiesel.


This paper studies the derivation of kinematic and dynamic models of a newly developed active ankle foot orthosis (AFO) that was designated for testing gait-assistive compliance control algorithms. The AFO is characterized with a closed-loop chain structure and powered by a linear ServoTube motor making it very fast and responsive. The paper first derives kinematic and dynamic models for the AFO. Then, a torque controller is developed based on the dynamic model of the AFO and it is shown that the AFO is able to track the position and velocity of the desired trajectory with a satisfactory accuracy.


— A climate dependent model is proposed to simulate the population of Aedes aegypti mosquito. In developing the model, average temperature of Shah Alam, Malaysia was used to determine the development rate of each stage of the life cycle of mosquito. Rainfall dependent function was proposed to simulate the hatching rate of the eggs under several assumptions. The proposed transition matrix was obtained and used to simulate the population of eggs, larvae, pupae and adults mosquito. It was found that the peak of mosquito abundance comes during a relatively dry period following a heavy rainfall. In addition, lag time between the peaks of mosquito abundance and dengue fever cases in Shah Alam was estimated.


After a study on the characteristic of ECG data, we propose here in this paper a lossless compression method of ECG data, which is based on JPEG2000. It integrates both 1D and 2D compression. The method has been verified through all forty-eight records in MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database. And the result shows that the method has a better compression rate and a good computational efficiency.


In recent years, machine learning models have rapidly become better at generating clinical consultation notes; yet, there is little work on how to properly evaluate the generated consultation notes to understand the impact they may have on both the clinician using them and the patient's clinical safety.To address this we present an extensive human evaluation study of consultation notes where 5 clinicians (i) listen to 57 mock consultations, (ii) write their own notes, (iii) post-edit a number of automatically generated notes, and (iv) extract all the errors, both quantitative and qualitative. We then carry out a correlation study with 18 automatic quality metrics and the human judgements. We find that a simple, character-based Levenshtein distance metric performs on par if not better than common model-based metrics like BertScore. All our findings and annotations are open-sourced.


Soil moisture is a key geophysical variable in hydrological and meteorological processes. Accurate and current observations of soil moisture over meso to global scales used as inputs to hydrological, weather and climate modelling will benefit the predictability and understanding of these processes. At present, satellite platforms are active in mapping global surface soil moisture jointly at sub-daily intervals and mesoscale resolutions. However to correctly interpret observed variations and assimilate them in hydrological and weather models, the error structures of the retrieved soil moisture data need to be better understood and characterised. In this paper we investigate the utility of a recently proposed method to quantify the variance of stochastic noise in passive and active satellite soil moisture products. While it is typical to analyse the difference between satellite retrievals and ground truth in the time domain, this method is based on quantifying the differences between retrieved soil moisture and a standard water-balance equation in the conjugate Fourier domain. The method, which referred to as Spectral Fitting (SF), is applied to estimate the errors in passive and active retrievals over Australia (10-44 o South, 112-154 o East). In particular we consider the AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System) LPRM (Land Parameter Retrieval Method), CATDS (Centre Aval de Traitement des Donnees SMOS) SMOS (Soil Salinity and Ocean Salinity), and TU-WIEN (Vienna University of Technology) ASCAT (Advanced Scatterometer) soil moisture products. The results are compared against the errors estimated using the standard method of triple collocation (TC) with AMSR-E, SMOS and ASCAT as the data triplet. Our analyses show that the SF method is able to recover similar and reasonable error maps that reflect sensitivity of retrieval errors to land surface and climate characteristics over Australia. As expected, more vegetated and wetter areas are usually associated with higher errors. Additionally for SMOS and ASCAT, the dry cooler desert areas of southern Australia also show higher errors, in contrast to lower errors over the hotter dry desert of central Australia. The reverse is the case for AMSR-E. These patterns are also reflected in the spatial error maps of TC analysis and the direct comparisons of SF and TC estimates show moderate-to- good correlations: 0.64 for AMSR-E, 0.68 for SMOS, and 0.68 for ASCAT. However the SF yields lower estimates than TC at the high end of the range. On one hand, this is perhaps expected given rationale of the SF method to estimate only the stochastic/high-frequency components of the total errors. On the other hand, the simple error model and implementation of TC with non-coincident overpass times can also over-estimate the errors. This work therefore presents an additional perspective on satellite soil moisture observation errors (in the Fourier domain) that may complement other error estimation approaches (in the time domain), thereby improving our understanding of the sources and types of errors.


This note concerns the recent paper by Hu [2] dealing with doubly-chained trees of the type introduced by Sussenguth [9]. In the second part of the paper, Hu deals with the problem of constructing an optimum weighted doubly-chained tree, under the standard assumption that no key is allowed to prefix another, as found, for example, in Patt [6]. He states that for the weights and elements of Figure 1, the optimum doubly-chained tree with all nodes reachable in less than five steps is the one shown in Figure 2. This tree is obtained from the optimal binary tree constructed in Hu and Tan [3], using the technique found in Knuth [5]. But the doubly-chained tree constructed by this method comes from an artificially restricted class of doubly-chained trees, and is thus not optimal in the sense usually defined in the literature [6-9] and described below. This fact is recognized by Hu [1], but was not explicitly stated in the paper in question.


Geo-processes might have been divided into several phases and detailed processes in governments and concerned authorities. These multi-level steps have carefully controlled map-making processes and checked its accuracies. A great number of national mapping centers are striving to rationalize geo-business processes through certain methodologies or business modeling. Two different research concerns and methodologies between geo-process and business process would lead to less mutual research and cooperation. In addition, many process models and workflow data models are based on concept of business and manufacturing process that could not fully expound geo-activities and their changes coming from humans, natural factors, machines, physical features, etc. We focus on geo-activity that can be characterized as a set of subclass of process by introducing salient six dimensions of who (the individual and collective actor) are doing what (activity objective), where (activity place), when (temporal validity of activity), why (activity reasons) and how (the process and effect of putting activity into actions). The principal idea of the mapping of activity model onto object-oriented analysis is the representation of the activity associated with actor, time and space, and all components of the context of six dimensions. In this paper, the Hexad model is proposed to describe incidence of geo-activity and event. The Hexad matrix enables to portray different variants of activity and depict actor's behavior through action, time and the history in the context of the Hexad object activity model.


In yeasts, the ABC-type transporters are involved in vacuolar sequestration of cadmium. In plants, transport experiments with isolated vacuoles indicate that this is also true. In order to know more about the response of AtMRPs, a subclass of Arabidopsis ABC transporters, to cadmium, their expression pattern was analysed using the microchip technology and semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. From 15 putative sequences coding for AtMRPs, transcript levels were detected for 14. All were expressed in the roots as well as in the shoots, although at a different level. In 4-week-old Arabidopsis, transcript levels of four AtMRPs were up-regulated after cadmium treatment. In all cases up-regulation was exclusively observed in the roots. The increase of transcript levels was most pronounced for AtMRP3. A more detailed analysis revealed that induction of AtMRP3 could also be observed in the shoot when leaves were cut and cadmium allowed to be taken up in the shoot. In young plantlets, a far higher portion of Cd2+ was translocated in the aerial part compared with adult plants. Consequently, AtMRP3 transcript levels increased in both root and shoot of young plants. This suggests that 7-day-old seedlings do not exhibit such a strict root–shoot barrier as 4-week-old plants. Expression analysis with mutant plants for glutathione and phytochelatin synthesis as well as with compounds producing oxidative stress indicate that induction of AtMRP3 is likely due to the heavy metal itself.


Highly competitive markets justify the use of advanced technologies and methods to improve product's quality and sales, which are the survival of any organization involved in business to be adaptive, proactive, and responsive to changes and has the capability to provide customer expectations. The success of products depends on how well they meet customer requirements. In order to achieve competition in Iraqi market, and to get high quality performance, Six Sigma has been applied in the "State Company for Electrical Industries" on motor of (1/4) HP. It is important to evaluate product strengths and weaknesses among competitive products available in Iraqi market to get the needed specifications to implement it in QFD (HOQ). The calculations were carried out by using "sigma xl version 6.2" program. Six sigma methodology: DMADV was adopted. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) was applied to improve motor performance. Thirty questionnaires were distributed and collected back to build QFD Matrix which determines four problematic issues with high scores: starting current, losses, coil winding, and rotor dimensions which indicates the need to resolve. Referring to QFD results which indicate the starting current is one of the main problems of motor performance, the researchers suggest motor redesign by adding "Soft Starting Circuit" to resolve this problem. Starting current for motor was measured and found to be 5.2 amp, while it decreased to 3.2 amp after redesign. Motor performance will be improved, cause the reduction of losses from 312 to 128 watt.


The global energy matrix is going to embrace more and more renewable-based combined energy systems. Therefore, multi-generation energy systems, like CHPs (combined heat and power) could be extremely beneficial for such integrated energy systems. Also, the trend is toward 100% sustainable production where both renewable and waste energy sources are of special value. Especially, in Europe, waste incineration has received special attention over the past decades, as not only it is a smart method of waste disposal, but also a measure of cheap and environmentally friendly energy production. This study proposes a municipal waste-driven tri-generation (cold, heat, and power) system and assesses how this solution helps for easier integration of energy sectors and having a more sustainable chain of energy supply. Then, the solution is comprehensively analyzed over thorough thermodynamic, thermoeconomic, and thermoenvironmental investigations. The results of the assessments show that the proposed trigeneration system may effectively operate in any energy systems with simultaneous cold, heat, and power demands. Thermal, exergetic, fuel-to-power, fuel-to-heat, and fuel-to-cold efficiencies are found to be 83.28, 25.69, 23.49, 47.41, and 12.38%, respectively, while the payback period of 6 years is obtained based on the net present method.


We present a central extension of the (m,n) super-Poincare algebra in two dimensions. Besides the usual Poincare generators and the (m,n) supersymmetry generators we have (m,n) Grassmann generators, a bosonic internal symmetry generator and a central charge. We then build up the topological gauge theory associated to this algebra. We can solve the classical field equations for the fields which do not belong to the supergravity multiplet and to a Lagrange multiplier multiplet. The resulting topological supergravity theory turns out to be non-local in the fermionic sector.


OBJECTIVE
To study the clinical symptoms and the condition of skin barrier of different facial dermatitis.

METHODS
The patients with facial dermatitis were divided into 4 groups based on their diagnosis: hormone-dependent dermatitis (HDD) group, sensitive skin (SS) group, cosmetic intolerance (CI) group and normal control group. All patients received the evaluation on clinical symptoms with measuring scale, measurements of stratum corneum water content (SCWC), sebum, pH, trans-epidermal water loss (TEWL) and blood flow. The skin scales were collected for the measurements of the ratio of immature cornified envelope (CE) via immunofluorescence and the concentration of kallikrein 5 (KLK5) via enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

RESULTS
There were total 146 patients included (HDD 38, SS 53, CI 15, control group 30), most of them had their symptoms evaluated as moderate to severe. Compared with the control, the disease groups had lower SCWC and sebum (P < 0.05), higher pH, TEWL and blood flow (P < 0.05), higher ratio of immature CE (P = 0.011) and lower concentration of KLK5 (P = 0.000); while these parameters among the disease groups did not show statistical significant difference.

CONCLUSION
There is no difference in the clinical symptoms and the condition of skin barrier between facial dermatitis with different inducements. The growth of CE may be inhibited and the concentration of KLK5 decreases in facial dermatitis.