In this study, the influence of some inorganic nanoparticles on the properties of bitumen binder was investigated. Three types of particles at nanometer level, calcium carbonate powder, graphite and carbon black, were introduced to modify bitumen respectively. The modified binders were prepared using a laboratory high-shear mixer. A dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) was adopted to characterize the properties of modified binders, including their rheological parameters and dynamic viscosity, over a certain range sweeps of temperatures, frequencies and shear rates. It was found that the addition of the nanoparticles increased the binder's elasticity at low temperature which might negatively influence its resistance to crack. However the decrease of phase angle at high temperature might improve its deformation resistance. The shear rate dependence of dynamic viscosity for the binders depended on the type of nanoparticle. The research results indicated that the addition of nanoparticles to bitumen binder can change its physical properties to some extent and its potential should be researched further.


Mobile technology is increasingly being used to support blended learning beyond computer centres. It has been considered as a potential solution to the problem of a shortage of computers for accessing online learning materials (courseware) in a blended learning course. The purpose of the study was to establish how the use of mobile technology could enhance accessibility and communication in a blended learning course. Data were solicited from a purposive convenience sample of 36 students engaged in the blended learning course. The case study utilized a mixedmethods approach. An unstructured interview was conducted with the course lecturer and these data informed the design of the students' semi-structured questionnaire. It was found that students with access to mobile technology had an increased opportunity to access the courseware of the blended learning course. Mobile technology further enhanced student-to-student and student-to-lecturer communication by means of social networks. The study concludes that mobile technology has the potential to increase accessibility and communication in a blended learning course. Recommendations, limitations of the present study, and suggestions for future research were made. Keywords: blended learning course, collaboration, communication, computer access, mobile technology, social networks


This is an area in which many organizations are struggling, and the approaches to improving reporting are as unique as the organizations themselves. Creating a culture of safety requires a multifaceted approach. In my experience, increased reporting is one of the last indicators that you've achieved a strong safety culture on your team. When reporting goes up, it's an indicator that there's a significant amount of trust and respect—the foundational elements of a safe, team-oriented, and highly reliable practice environment. Building trust on your team begins with you. As a leader, it's imperative to foster a culture of open, honest, direct, and transparent communication and role model these behaviors. Trust also requires a substantial investment in acknowledging the positive attributes of your employees in at least a 5:1 ratio to the negative. In other words, you should be telling staff members what they're doing right five times more than pointing out what they're doing wrong. Trust can be complex and mean different things to different people, but the key features are competence, integrity, honesty, and reliability. In general, this includes possessing the right skill set, having each other's backs, and always doing the right thing, especially when no one is looking. Establishing psychological safety is another main component of increasing event reporting. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson describes a psychologically safe workplace culture as "one where people are not full of fear, and not trying to cover their tracks to avoid being embarrassed or pushed." This is a particularly poignant definition when you consider the complex and ever-evolving environment in which care takes place. Interventions to enhance psychological safety include having leaders who admit to and own their own mistakes, as well as forgive team members' mistakes. Although this isn't always easy to do, it's essential for a team focused on safe and reliable practices. Encouraging questions and responding favorably to even the most seemingly impossible suggestions and ideas also helps inspire psychological safety. When staff members feel like their voices are heard, they're far more likely to speak up in the spirit of safe patient care. Implementing highly reliable processes also contributes to an environment that supports reporting. When processes are reliable, they're consistent, well understood, enculturated, and executed consistently regardless of who's performing the task. This makes it easier to identify deviations from accepted practices, as well as hold employees accountable for performance expectations. Although it's important to focus on processes, you must also balance this with a significant focus on people. Leaders and organizations who try to divorce the two are almost certain to never achieve positive safety outcomes. When people and/or processes fail, using a just culture framework to evaluate the root cause of problems and to take appropriate corrective actions is the most appropriate approach. Finally, celebrate the opportunities and ideas that encourage reporting and identifying potential process failure points. A strong "good catch" program provides a forum for generating ideas, reporting events, and recognizing employees who bring these issues forward. For example, my current organization has a committee that reviews monthly submissions and chooses the "best catch," rewarding the employee and/or team with recognition at the monthly leadership team meeting, a certificate, and a write-up in employee-facing communications. Increasing event reporting can be a challenge on many levels. Creating a culture that promotes reporting intensifies the reliability of your processes and reduces the risk associated with errors. At the end of the day, the most important piece of a strong reporting program is your responsibility as the leader to follow through on the events and ideas that are shared with you. NM


Early school leaving, despite being quite common in Italy, has not been studied much. There is a lack of data and quantitative research concerning its pattern over time, and its relation to social stratification and inequality. The paper contributes to this topic using the first two waves of the ILFI data (1997, 1999), which contain detailed informations on both educational and occupational careers of a representative sample of Italians. This makes it possible to describe the pattern over time of early school leaving in Italy for each level of schooling. The main aim of the paper is, however, to integrate early leaving in the typical research questions concerning the association between social class of origin, education and occupational attainment. The general problem is: what happens if education is measured taking early leaving into account? More in detail, two research questions are asked: a) does the association among class of origin and education found measuring education according to the highest title achieved still hold when early leaving are considered? in other words: is school leaving class-biased? b) does the picture of the transition from school to work change when early leaving is taken into account? how do early leavers perform in the labour market, with respect to both those who do not even start and those who complete a given educational level?


In this paper we draw upon important distinctions suggested by classics of anthropology in order to develop a theoretical approach to the phenomenon of debt. Building on the opposition between the logic of the gift and that of the market, we elucidate moral tensions that call debt relations into being. However, instead of reducing debt to either of these rival principles, we interpret it as a combination of both that allows for mediating between them in a highly ambiguous moral context. Using evidence from a small Russian town, we analyse how interest-free debt functions within face-to-face interactions in local shops and how it structures the ordinary lives of shopkeepers, salespeople and consumers in the community. We discuss a moral situation that turns the framing of everyday purchases into a problem and demonstrate how a material device – a debt book – enters into a transaction in order to resolve it. A debt book turns out to be a specific graphic technology, a destructive device that subverts both marketization and communitarian aid by suspending the framing of interaction. In the resulting atmosphere of ambiguity, debts become an object of strategic manipulation for the members of community that demands good negotiation skills and use of moral arguments. Although the constitution of debt economy is highly dependent on the dynamics of marketization and economization, it can in fact accommodate very different moral regimes.


Tea (Camellia sinensis L.) contain high phenolic compounds and antioxidant elements, while spent teas originating as the main byproduct of beverage tea manufacturestill contain some level of antioxidant elements. The purpose of the present study is to compare the effect of different extraction condition and to determine the chemical compound present in black tea (BT), oolong tea (OT), green tea (GT), spent black tea (SBT), spent oolong tea (SOT) and spent green tea (SGT). Theextraction experiment were carried out by the conventional solid-liquid method, using boiling water (100oC) and 50% ethanol concentration, with extraction period of 5 minutes. The influence of these extraction methods on the content of total phenolic compounds and antioxidant activities of the extracts were evaluated. Flavanoid, gallic acid, caffeine and four catechins (catechin (C), gallocatechin (GCG), epicatechin (EC) and epigallocatechin (EGC)) were found in all of the extracts and were quantified by utilizing High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) analysis tool. GT extraction using 50% ethanol concentration was found to be the most suitable method to produce an extract with high content of phenolic compounds ( 186.83 mg GAE/100 g tea) and high antioxidant activities (FRAP of 3814.29 μmol Fe(II)/g), simultaneously. The results shown that GT had higher total flavanoids value at 347.67 mg CEQ/g followed by OT (295.00 mg CEQ/g) and than the BT (187.33 mg CEQ/g). The analytical HPLC results obtained also indicated that GT contained higher amount of catechins than OT, BT, SGT, SOT and SBT due to fermentation process during the tea manufacturing, which reduces the levels of catechin significantly. All four catechins were detected in GT. However, epicatechin, and gallocatecin gallate are the major catechin present in SGT.


A method is presented for high-range resolution measurement of the backscatter from a scattering medium located in one arm of an interferometer. The technique is interferometric in nature and relies on the availability of a cw laser with a significant linewidth. The measurement is based on observing coherent interference (equivalent to white-light fringes) between the return from the two arms of the interferometer for the portion of the backscatter that makes the path lengths equal. Experimental results are presented for backscatter from a turbid medium and from a stack of glass plates.


Grain hardness is an important quality trait of cereal crops. In wheat, it is mainly determined by the Hardness locus that harbors genes encoding puroindoline A (PINA) and puroindoline B (PINB). Any deletion or mutation of these genes leading to the absence of PINA or to single amino acid changes in PINB leads to hard endosperms. Although it is generally acknowledged that hardness is controlled by adhesion strength between the protein matrix and starch granules, the physicochemical mechanisms connecting puroindolines and the starch-protein interactions are unknown as of this time. To explore these mechanisms, we focused on PINA. The overexpression in a hard wheat cultivar (cv. Courtot with the Pina-D1a and Pinb-D1d alleles) decreased grain hardness in a dose-related effect, suggesting an interactive process. When PINA was added to gliadins in solution, large aggregates of up to 13 µm in diameter were formed. Turbidimetry measurements showed that the PINA-gliadin interaction displayed a high cooperativity that increased with a decrease in pH from neutral to acid (pH 4) media, mimicking the pH change during endosperm development. No turbidity was observed in the presence of isolated α– and γ-gliadins, but non-cooperative interactions of PINA with these proteins could be confirmed by surface plasmon resonance. A significant higher interaction of PINA with γ-gliadins than with α–gliadins was observed. Similar binding behavior was observed with a recombinant repeated polypeptide that mimics the repeat domain of gliadins, i.e., (Pro-Gln-Gln-Pro-Tyr)8. Taken together, these results suggest that the interaction of PINA with a monomeric gliadin creates a nucleation point leading to the aggregation of other gliadins, a phenomenon that could prevent further interaction of the storage prolamins with starch granules. Consequently, the role of puroindoline-prolamin interactions on grain hardness should be addressed on the basis of previous observations that highlight the similar subcellular routing of storage prolamins and puroindolines.


Canalization is the suppression of phenotypic variation. Depending on the causes of phenotypic variation, one speaks either of genetic or environmental canalization. Genetic canalization describes insensitivity of a character to mutations, and the insensitivity to environmental factors is called environmental canalization. Genetic canalization is of interest because it influences the availability of heritable phenotypic variation to natural selection, and is thus potentially important in determining the pattern of phenotypic evolution. In this paper a number of population genetic models are considered of a quantitative character under stabilizing selection. The main purpose of this study is to define the population genetic conditions and constraints for the evolution of canalization. Environmental canalization is modeled as genotype specific environmental variance. It is shown that stabilizing selection favors genes that decrease environmental variance of quantitative characters. However, the theoretical limit of zero environmental variance has never been observed. Of the many ways to explain this fact, two are addressed by our model. It is shown that a "canalization limit" is reached if canalizing effects of mutations are correlated with direct effects on the same character. This canalization limit is predicted to be independent of the strength of stabilizing selection, which is inconsistent with recent experimental data (Sterns et al. 1995). The second model assumes that the canalizing genes have deleterious pleiotropic effects. If these deleterious effects are of the same magnitude as all the other mutations affecting fitness very strong stabilizing selection is required to allow the evolution of environmental canalization. Genetic canalization is modeled as an influence on the average effect of mutations at a locus of other genes. It is found that the selection for genetic canalization critically depends on the amount of genetic variation present in the population. The more genetic variation, the stronger the selection for canalizing effects. All factors that increase genetic variation favor the evolution of genetic canalization (large population size, high mutation rate, large number of genes). If genetic variation is maintained by mutation‐selection balance, strong stabilizing selection can inhibit the evolution of genetic canalization. Strong stabilizing selection eliminates genetic variation to a level where selection for canalization does not work anymore. It is predicted that the most important characters (in terms of fitness) are not necessarily the most canalized ones, if they are under very strong stabilizing selection (k > 0.2Ve). The rate of decrease of mutational variance Vm is found to be less than 10% of the initial Vm. From this result it is concluded that characters with typical mutational variances of about 10–3 Ve are in a metastable state where further evolution of genetic canalization is too slow to be of importance at a microevolutionary time scale. The implications for the explanation of macroevolutionary patterns are discussed.


This paper models the global financial crisis as a combination of shocks to global housing markets and sharp increases in risk premia of firms, households, and international investors in an intertemporal (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium or DSGE) global model. The model has six sectors of production and trade in 15 major economies and regions. The paper shows that a 'switching' of expectations about risk premia shocks in financial markets can easily generate the severe economic contraction in global trade and production currently being experienced in 2009 and subsequent events. The results show that the future of the global economy depends critically on whether the shocks to risk are expected to be permanent or temporary. The best representation of the crisis may be one where initial long-lasting pessimism about risk is unexpectedly revised to a more moderate scenario. This suggests a rapid recovery in countries not experiencing a balance sheet adjustment problem. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.


Background
The importance of creating customer value propositions, when an organization enters a new market is
stressed by the literature concerning this topic. There is an agreement among the authors on two critical
dimensions of knowledge for organizations to create competitive advantage through customer value
propositions: customers knowledge and industry knowledge (Woodruff, 1997: Anderson et al, 2006).
Lead by this theory a practical case of Librix was put to a test. Librix is a complete library management
system which is developed by Nedap N.V. and is very successful in the Dutch market. This success is
recognized by Arsis Grup, a Turkish security company that decided to offer Librix in the Turkish library
market. Connecting theory with practice in this case, gave an answer to the following research question
in this report: "To what extent is the customer value proposition of Nedap in the Netherlands applicable
for the Turkish market?''
Methodology
The methods used to obtain information concerning customer value proposition were selected to collect
customers and industry knowledge. The first step in the data collection phase started at Nedap and
current customers of Librix in the Netherlands, where qualitative interviews were held. Hereafter an
intake interview at Arsis and desk research was conducted with the aim of collecting global information
to feed the Five Forces Model (FFM) of Porter (2008) and the DESTEP model (Kotler, 2009). These
models were the base of obtaining the industry knowledge in order gain competitive advantage through
value propositions. The next and final step in the data collection phase was to obtain customers
knowledge at the potential customers in Turkey, this was also realized by qualitative interviews.
This gathered knowledge then needed to be translated to concrete results usable results for Arsis, which
was realized by making use of the marketing mix (Borden, 1964). The four p's of the marketing mix gave
information concerning the price, promotion, place and product of Librix in Turkey and the adaptations
that must be made within these dimensions in order to fit the Turkish market.
Results
There are lot of solutions present in the Turkish library management systems market. The switching
costs for customers are relatively high, which make it more difficult for suppliers to get a foothold in this
market. There is also a lot of resistance from potential customers if a product is brought on the Turkish
market without having references (current users of the product within Turkey) or business connections
(external firms which support the offered product). The macro environmental analyses revealed a lot of
opportunities in Turkey, most caused by the economic development of the country. With the economic
development also socio-cultural changes are occurring in the country. These changes could make Turkey
an interesting country from the foreign direct investment point of view. However the qualitative
interviews revealed several key determinants for Arsis to succeed with Librix in Turkey. The most
important findings also reflected by the micro and macro environmental analyses. These key
determinants for organizations to succeed with their offering in Turkey are: the price of an offering,
after sales service level and the presence of references. Furthermore Turkey as an emerging economy is
lagging behind in general knowledge, which is reflected by the knowledge of potential customers
concerning the technology Librix uses. The potential customers do not recognize the added value which
Librix can bring to their organization. The tightness of the potential customers is reflected by the ANKOS
organizations, which is an organization in which all the bigger public libraries and university libraries
collaborate with the goal of bringing knowledge and science databases within the Turkish libraries
together. Several annual meetings are arranged in which debates such as the HF/UHF issue and the
possible library management system solutions are discussed. The agreement among interviewees
concerning the added value of Librix, also reflects the tightness of the potential customers.
Conclusions and recommendations
The Library management system market in Turkey could be typed as saturated as it is right now. The
focus on the complete product such as Librix is stressed too much by Arsis, the findings demonstrate
that the Turkish potential customers are more interested in products that are offered in modules.
Importing products to Turkey such as Librix could pose a problem with regards to the price, because this
is the most important attribute in getting customers interested. This is because the prices of foreign
products are sold in foreign currencies, which are negatively correlated to the currency used in Turkey:
the Turkish Lira. The whole promotional concept of product efficiency is not applicable in Turkey. In
order to be successful Arsis must first of all consider educating the potential customers to take away
some of the resistance against new library management systems, and obtain references, which are
libraries that already use the product within Turkey which will support the product.
The development of Turkey as a country could provide a lot of opportunities in the future, but for now it
seems that Arsis should focus on demonstrating the added value of Librix compared to traditional
systems. The whole concept of customer value propositions, which is used in the Netherlands is not
applicable in the Turkish market. Arsis could increase the probability of succeeding with Librix in Turkey
by taking away the resistance and slowly introducing the product. Following the recommendations as
stated below in this specific order, could help Arsis in successfully introducing Librix in the Turkish
market.
 Hiring a student which represents the RFID technology in general and elaborates/promotes the
technology Librix uses by visiting potential customers.
 Elaborating and focusing on the modularity of Librix instead of promoting it as a complete
solution.
 Using the ANKOS meeting to generate publicity and convincing the potential customers of the
technology used by Librix.
 Obtaining references by offering Librix to a limited amount of potential customers for a special
price.
 Selling Librix with personal sales after the resistance is weakened and references are obtained as
specified above.


We accepted six papers for this year's Methods and Tools for IS Development minitrack. These papers provide an excellent overview of the current research being done in this field. Submissions to the minitrack covered a number of emerging research areas in information systems development, including system survivability, enterprise application development, and the Unified Modeling Language. Three external reviewers and both minitrack chairs refereed each of the submitted papers. The six accepted papers are organized into two sessions:


Purpose: The economic crisis highlights the importance of education as a driving force for change. Learning skills that provide the ability to access jobs that allow a good quality of life has taken a decisive role in the educational development of people. Therefore, schools must adapt to the needs of today's informational society in line with the objectives of Europe 2020. This article examines whether these needs are best answered on democratic management schools. Design/methodology/approach: It is analyzed three educative experiences from the compulsory and permanent education. To do it, it has been done eleventh communicative life stories to teachers and volunteers at these three schools managed democratically. Findings and Originality/value: Schools with democratic management are more permeable to the needs of citizens, as they include their voice in the process of teaching - learning . Therefore, there is a greater adaptation to future labor market needs, as currently contemplated in the European strategy. Social implications: The results of this study contribute to the open scientific debate centered in the relation between the model of school management and its impact on the future employment of people and therefore increasing democracy in the school management could generate greater possibilities to get better jobs. Originality/value: Putting the issue of democratic school management at the centre of the employability debate could make possible to move from partial solutions that do not improve the capabilities to find work, to global solutions that take into account the educational needs of the people involved.


In BattleAnimals from dung beetles to chimpanzees fight each other, but the ability to reconcile differences after a spat was once considered a uniquely human trait. Then in the 1970s while observing chimpanzees at a zoo in the Netherlands, ethologist Frans de Waal witnessed a male attacking a female. Immediately, other males came to her rescue, and soon afterward, amid hooting by the troop, the male and female embraced. In 1979, he published a paper documenting that after a fight, a whole lot of kissing, embracing, and holding hands went on between chimp opponents. De Waal called this behavior reconciliation, and researchers have since observed it in more than 30 primate species.


Stone and geology have proved themselves appealing to twentiethand twentyfirst-century authors concerned with place-writing and the development of placeconsciousness more widely. The austere presence of materials which have emerged from a scale of time difficult to relate to our own has offered a humbling corrective to our modern experience. Such encounters have also been resistant to a particular intersection of environmental and Romantic traditions of thought that searches for a 'reunion' with nature. In so doing they may present a useful way forward for thinking through place in a modern context. Stone and geology are explored in the work of three authors here – Kenneth White, Tim Robinson and Alastair McIntosh. In texts by each of these authors we can read a consistent effort to reimagine the cultural geography of place by turning toward a deeper understanding of the stone beneath their feet. Far from regarding stone as a source of stability and reliability, these three find themselves accommodating unstable, vertiginous, precarious and plural truths that can be drawn upon as a source for, what White calls, 'cultural renewal'. Realising the impossibility of being fully reconciled to such a non-human scale of presence also leads to the opening of what Heidegger calls a 'clearing' (Lichtung), both in terms of an aesthetic space in the poetics of topographical writing but also in terms of a lived place and the dynamic creativity at the heart of place identity.


Jack Ganssle has been forming the careers of embedded engineers for 20+ years. He has done this with four books, over 500 articles, a weekly column, and continuous lecturing. Technology moves fast and since the first edition of this best-selling classic much has changed. The new edition will reflect the author's new and ever evolving philosophy in the face of new technology and realities. Now more than ever an overarching philosophy of development is needed before just sitting down to build an application. Practicing embedded engineers will find that Jack provides a high-level strategic plan of attack to the often times chaotic and ad hoc design and development process. He helps frame and solve the issues an engineer confronts with real-time code and applications, hardware and software coexistences, and streamlines detail management. CONTENTS: Chapter 1 - IntroductionChapter 2 – The ProjectChapter 3 – The CodeChapter 4 – Real TimeChapter 5 – The Real WorldChapter 6 – Disciplined DevelopmentAppendix A – A Firmware StandardAppendix B - A Simple Drawing SystemAppendix C – A Boss's Guide to Process*Authored by Jack Ganssle, Tech Editor of Embedded Systems Programming and weekly column on embedded.com*Keep schedules in check as projects and codes grow by taking time to understand the project beforehand*Understand how cost/benefit coexists with design and development


Abstract. High-impact floods have become a virtually annual experience in Malaysia, yet flood insurance has remained a grossly neglected part of comprehensive integrated flood risk management. Using discriminant analysis, this study seeks to identify the demand-side variables that best predict flood insurance purchase and risk aversion between two groups of residential homeowners in three districts of Johor State, Malaysia: those who purchased flood insurance and those who did not. Our results revealed an overall 34% purchase rate, with Kota Tinggi district having the highest (44%) and thus the highest degree of flood risk aversion. The Wilks' lambda F test for equality of group means, standardised discriminant function coefficients, structure correlation, and canonical correlation has clearly shown that there are strong significant attribute differences between the two groups of homeowners, based on the measures of objective flood risk exposure, subjective risk perception, and socio-economic cum demographic variables. However, the measures of subjective risk perception were found to be more predictive of flood insurance purchase and flood risk aversion.


To determine if a circadian rhythm known to be functionally related to the reproductive axis varies on a circannual basis, we monitored the circadian secretion of melatonin at monthly intervals for 2 years in four ovariectomized, estradiol-implanted ewes held in a constant short-day photoperiod. Prior to the study, ewes had been housed in a short-day (8L:16D) photoperiod for 4 years and were exhibiting circannual reproductive rhythms as assessed by serum luteinizing hormone (LH) levels. Three of the four sheep showed unambiguous deviations from the expected nocturnal melatonin secretion at two different times approximately 1 year apart. Nocturnal rises in melatonin, which usually last the duration of the dark phase, were delayed by 3-14 h or were missing. Altogether, five of the seven melatonin alterations observed in these three ewes occurred during the nadir of the circannual LH cycle. In the remaining ewe, we did not observe an altered melatonin secretory pattern during this period, and this ewe also failed to show a high amplitude circannual cycle of LH. The results provide evidence for a circannual change in the circadian rhythm of melatonin secretion. This alteration in melatonin secretion may serve as a "functional" change in daylength, and thereby may influence the expression of the circannual reproductive rhythm of sheep held in a fixed photoperiod for an extended time.


Between the late sixteenth century and early nineteenth century, the British imagination—poetic, political, intellectual, spiritual and religious—displayed a pronounced fascination with images of ascent and flight to the heavens. This book explores how British literature and art during that period exploited classical representations of these soaring themes—through philosophical, scientific and poetic flights of the mind; the ascension of the disembodied soul; and the celestial glorification of the ruler. From textual reachings for the heavens in Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne and Cowley, to the ceiling paintings of Rubens, Verrio and Thornhill, the book focuses on the ways that the history, ideologies and aesthetics of the postclassical world received and transformed the ideas of antiquity. In England, narratives of ascent appear on the grandest scale in Milton's Paradise Lost, an epic built around a Christian plot of falling and rising, and one of the most intensely classicizing works of English poetry. Examining the reception of flight up to the Romanticism of Wordsworth and Tennyson, the book considers the Whig sublime, as well as the works of Alexander Pope and Edward Young. Throughout, the book looks at motivations both public and private for aspiring to the heavens—as a reward for political and military achievement on the one hand, and as a goal of individual intellectual and spiritual exertion on the other.


Bi-directional relaying (BDR) in which two users wish to exchange independent information in presence of a relay is one of the fundamental wireless network coding applications that attracted intense interests recently. In this paper, maximum likelihood (ML), cooperative maximal ratio combining (CMRC) and soft information relaying (SIR) schemes proposed to combat error propagation in wireless relay systems are applied to the BDR scenario with demodulate-and-forward protocol, which decreases system complexity and cost by removing the decoding process at the relay terminal. Simulation results for Rayleigh fading channels show that detection schemes using ML and CMRC techniques outperform the noncooperative system that involves direct transmissions between user terminals and overcome the diversity gain reduction due to error propagation for different levels of channel state information (CSI). In case of SIR based communication scenario, the diversity gain is contingent on the availability of a coefficient depending on instantaneous CSI.


Twenty-three consecutive patients with duodenal ulceration complicated by pyloric stenosis who came under the care of one surgeon were treated by highly selective vagotomy (HSV) combined with digital dilatation of the stenosis through a gastrotomy. No form of drainage procedure was used. Thus the antral "mill" and the pyloric sphineter were left intact. Since the stenosis is usually distal to the pylorus rather than truly pyloric such dilatation does not damage the pyloric ring, although it may on occasion lead to perforation of the first part of the duodenum. The subsequent progress of these patients was compared with that of a similar, consecutive series of 23 patients with pyloric stenosis who were treated by truncal vagotomy with a drainage procedure by other surgeons on the same surgical unit. Patients were followed up for between four months and five years. The clinical assessment was carried out in "blind" fashion at a special gastric follow-up clinic. No evidence of recurrent ulceration was found in either group of patients. Two patients from each group subsequently came to reoperation for the relief of gastric stasis. Twenty-two of the 23 patients (96%) who had undergone HSV plus dilatation eventually achieved a good-to-excellent clinical result (Visick grades 1+2), wheras only 17 of the 23 patients (74%) who had undergone truncal vagotomy with drainage achieved such a result. The main clinical difference between the two groups was that side effects such as diarrhoea and abdominal pain or discomfort were more common after vagotomy with drainage than after HSV. These results bear witness to the remarkable propulsive powers of the gastric antrum after HSV, which were evidently sufficient to overcome any tendency to re-stenosis in more than 90% of patients. The 9% incidence of failure due to re-stenosis could perhaps be avoided if a small duodenoplasty were performed instead of simple digital dilatation. The results support the hypothesis that damage to the antral mill and pyloric sphincter can be avoided in the course of operations for "pyloric" stenosis secondary to duodenal ulceration. Avoidance of the drainage procedure is of benefit to the patient, just as it is in patients who have duodenal ulceration without stenosis.


An investigation was made of low voltage TiO2 varistors doped with Ta2O5 and La2O3. TiO2 ceramics doped with 0.7 mol% La2O3 and 0.1 mol% Ta2O5 were sintered at different temperature ranging from 1350 to 1450°С . The influence of sintering temperature on microstructure and nonlinear properties of the (La, Ta)-doped TiO2 ceramics was studied. The varistor of 99.2 mol%-0.7 mol%La2O3-0.1 mol% Ta2O5 composite sintered at 1380°С has a maximal nonlinear coefficient of α =5.2 and a low breakdown voltage of 7.6 V/mm, which is consistent with its highest grain-boundary barriers. According to these results, it is suggested that the sample sintered at 1380°С forms the most efficient boundary barrier layer. Therefore, the sintering temperature is a very important varible which should not be despised in the project of TiO2 based varistors production.


Attorneys are frequently asked to represent more than one client in the same or related matters. The request can arise in nearly every practice setting, from criminal defense, to civil litigation, to complex transactions. Regardless of the setting, attorneys face the same challenge in deciding whether the conflict of interest posed by the joint representation can be waived by the clients. Under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the conflict of interest can be waived if (1) the clients provide knowing, informed consent to the joint representation, and (2) the attorney's representation of the multiple clients will be competent and diligent (these latter elements referred to collectively as "competent" or "competence"). In assessing whether the joint representation will be competent, however, the attorney encounters the enigma that has bedeviled practitioners, courts and commentators since the adoption of the Model Rules. A joint representation hampered by a conflict of interest materially limits the services that the attorney can perform for one client because of her competing duties to the other client. Thus, the challenge: how can we know which joint representations are competent (and therefore "consentable") when nearly all suffer from material limits on the services that counsel can undertake for the clients? Courts cannot fashion a principled standard to assess conflict waivers if they cannot reconcile the consent and competence elements of Model Rule 1.7(b). Without the guidance of a clear standard, attorneys risk discipline and malpractice claims for proceeding under a conflict waiver that a tribunal may later deem invalid. Clients, in turn, may be deprived of their choice of counsel by courts that strike down waiver consents under a standard that is more visceral than reasoned. This article searches for principles to explain and unify our seemingly contradictory commitments to client choice and client protection. Drawing on the distinction between ends and means that grounds a limited form of paternalism and the emphasis of the Model Rules on client control over the objectives of the representation, this article proposes a new test by which courts and practitioners can honor both the consent and competence elements of Model Rule 1.7(b). An informed conflict waiver must be rejected as incompetent if limitations on the means or procedures by which the attorney pursues the matter caused by the conflict of interest are likely to defeat the client's objectives for the representation.Under this approach, we defer to the client's objectives, long understood as the sole province of the client; we intervene when the client makes decisions about means that are likely to undermine those objectives. The test of competency is not whether the representation has a material deficiency — the very reason why client consent was necessary in the first place. Moreover, the question is not whether the client would have been better off without the consent, a decision that belongs to the client. By identifying what the client hopes to accomplish with the representation, the proposed test provides a baseline against which to measure the significance of the limitations caused by the joint representation. Not just any limits on means — even material ones — will invalidate a client's consent. When a client consents to limitations that are likely to undermine her own objectives for the representation, the representation is incompetent — by dint of the client's own more fundamental commitment. The proposed test accommodates both elements of Model Rule 1.7(b): competency and consent in tandem determine whether a client's consent to a joint representation should be upheld or disregarded. In application, the proposed test calls for a rethinking of: the Supreme Court's approach to conflict waiver in the criminal-defense setting; the analysis of courts that have considered conflict waivers in civil litigation and transaction matters; and the approach of attorneys who are charged with determining in the first instance whether to accede to client requests for a joint representation. Given the stakes for clients and counsel, it is time we understood why and when a conflict can be waived.


Diversely polarized antenna arrays are widely used in RF applications. The diversity of response provided by diversely polarized antenna arrays can greatly improve direction-finding performance over arrays sensitive to only one polarization component. For d emitters, directly implementing a multidimensional estimation algorithm would require a search for 3d parameters: d directions of arrival (DOAs), and 2d polarization parameters. A more efficient solution is presented based on the noise subspace fitting (NSF) algorithm. It is shown how to decouple the NSF search into a two-step procedure, where the DOAs are estimated separately. The polarization parameters are then obtained by solving a linear system of equations. The advantage of this approach is that the search dimension is reduced by a factor of three, and no initial polarization estimate is required. The algorithm can be shown to yield asymptotically minimum variance estimates: provided no perfectly coherent signals are present. Simulation examples are included. >


In our fast-paced world, consumers are increasingly exposed to transformation, for instance, in the form of divorce or emigration. These transformations are associated with a willingness to embrace changes in personal consumption. From a temporal perspective, contemporary consumer research on transformations has favoured one point of view – past or future – such as the research done on possible future selves or on feelings of nostalgia.

However, a more integrated perspective, in which both past and future become dynamically involved in ensuring individual life continuity, still seems to be lacking. It is our belief that the philosophical concepts of existential hermeneutics and narrative identity can stimulate researchers into closing this research gap.

According to existential hermeneutics, human beings are essentially self-interpreters. They deal with the nature of their own existence by disclosing their personal possibilities and updating former experiences in new life contexts. This self-interpreter condition is articulated in the multiple self-narratives that an individual can construct. The narrative acts as a form of support in the process of constructing a personal identity, by offering stability and continuity to the fragmented life experiences of a rapidly mutating world.

Based on these philosophical concepts, the specific goal of this paper is to propose two major implications for research on consumer life transformations: the autobiographical-concern – the existential pre-occupation of making a personal life-narrative coherent by interpreting simultaneously one's own personal past and future – and the understanding of desire as being a constructivist exercise – desire-assemblage – that may accompany this phenomenon.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Problem gambling is a severe mental health issue. Both New Zealand and International evidence agree that some groups within populations are more vulnerable to developing problematic gambling behaviours than others. Within New Zealand, Pacific people have been identified as the most at-risk ethnic group of becoming problem gamblers. There currently exists a paucity of research relating to problem gambling among Pacific women. This is extremely worrying, as studies have noted that when compared to other ethnic groups, they have a significantly increased risk of problem gambling. These problem gambling behaviours are negatively associated and influenced by certain mental health risk factors such as poor education, low-income attainment, smoking, low acculturation, inadequate physical activity and unemployment. Unfortunately, the predictable outcome of these mental health risk factors is an increased likelihood of problem gambling for Pacific women. Utilising a quantitative research methodology with data obtained from the Pacific Island Families Study (PIFS) 2014 Phase, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of problem gambling with mental health risk factors and how they impacted on the mental well-being of Pacific women. The findings from this study indicated that statistically significant associations were found with education, weekly income and employment. The three mental health risk factors observed; unemployment, poor education and low income were identified as increasing the likelihood of problem gambling among Pacific women. The mental health risk factors found to have associations with problem gambling are all defined as modifiable risk factors. It was also noted that education had a substantial influencing impact on transitioning employment and income into protective factors of mental health. With this crucial concept in mind, the study developed recommended strategies aimed at improving education so that flow on effect may be observed with the other two risk factors, thus helping to reduce problem gambling and improving mental health among Pacific women.


The study presents Space Based Solar Power (SBSP), an emerging technology which is under a heavy research phase. Here geosynchronous satellites are used for collecting sunlight, domesticate it to produce solar power and transmitting the generated power back to Earth using Wireless power transmission (WPT), safely and reliably. The advantage of using solar cells in space is the 24 hour availability of sunlight. Also the urgency of finding an alternative energy source due to the depleting energy resources on earth calls for SBSP. Here we study the concept of Solar Power Satellites (SPS), investigate the feasibility of implementation, the overall architecture & the underlying components. The results highlight the performance of this system as an environment friendly, low-loss and large-scale method of energy transfer.


We have developed a technique to study how good computers can be at diagnosing gastrointestinal lesions from regular (white light and narrow banded) colonoscopic videos compared to two levels of clinical knowledge (expert and beginner). Our technique includes a novel tissue classification approach which may save clinician's time by avoiding chromoendoscopy, a time-consuming staining procedure using indigo carmine. Our technique also discriminates the severity of individual lesions in patients with many polyps, so that the gastroenterologist can directly focus on those requiring polypectomy. Technically, we have designed and developed a framework combining machine learning and computer vision algorithms, which performs a virtual biopsy of hyperplastic lesions, serrated adenomas and adenomas. Serrated adenomas are very difficult to classify due to their mixed/hybrid nature and recent studies indicate that they can lead to colorectal cancer through the alternate serrated pathway. Our approach is the first step to avoid systematic biopsy for suspected hyperplastic tissues. We also propose a database of colonoscopic videos showing gastrointestinal lesions with ground truth collected from both expert image inspection and histology. We not only compare our system with the expert predictions, but we also study if the use of 3D shape features improves classification accuracy, and compare our technique's performance with three competitor methods.


Historian and clergyman William Robertson never completed his history of British America. His initial project, that of glorifying the power of the British Empire, no longer made sense when the Thirteen Colonies became independent. This paper analyses the reasons why Robertson nevertheless preserved his manuscript, giving his son the opportunity to publish it posthumously. It explores the other designs of this narrative of the foundation of the first two English colonies in North America. It argues that the Scottish historian developed a unionist approach of the empire and that he gave his History of America other meanings than just promoting colonization. Firstly Robertson explored the past of Virginia and New England in search for the roots of the eighteenth-century conflict between the Thirteen Colonies and the metropole. Secondly his study of New England society echoed the eighteenth-century controversy over the anti-Catholic laws in Scotland and supported his plea in favor of toleration.


This paper focuses on the potential of machine learning tools in micro-level reserving by using individual claim data, which is more and more available nowadays. This is especially relevant for non-life insurance, but it could also be useful for some specific life business branches. After a brief introduction to the problem of reserve estimation in non-life, we will describe the algorithms behind some of the fundamental machine learning tools such as regression methods, naive Bayes, k-nearest neighbors, CARTs, and neural networks. All of them will be used to estimate closing delay and payment amount for individual claims of a specific automobile bodily injury claim dataset. Theoretically, these estimations represent the foundation for a triangle-free, machine-learning-based approach to non-life reserving.


Since the 1980s, areas of public rental housing in South Korea have emerged as one of the targets of housing policy. The Korean government has developed public rental housing policy with the goal of contributing to social integration through providing the poor with decent and affordable accommodations. However, since the 2000s, there has been a growing concern that public rental housing estates have become stigmatised and isolated from the outside at a local level. The phenomenon of 'conflict' between public rental housing estates and local people not living on public rental housing estates has been debated under the term 'social exclusion' not only by Korean academia but also the government. This research maintains that a specific type of public rental housing estate is labelled as the neighbourhood for the undeserving poor by non-residents of the estates, who refuse to socialise with the estate residents. Drawing on available models to explain the social downgrading of neighbourhoods, this study concludes that social exclusion on public rental housing estates in South Korea is caused by a combination of the 'concentration effect' on the estates and the Korean welfare state oriented towards the principle of selectivity through 'targeting' in social provisioning.


Results: The 30-day mortality was 2·6% in AAD and 7·5% in CAD. The 30-day stroke and paraplegia rates were 5·3% and 0% in AAD and zero in patients with CAD. At 30 months, the cumulative re-intervention rate was 62% and 55% in AAD and CAD, respectively. In AAD, at 12 months, the false lumen thrombosis rate was 85% at the stent and 60% below it. In CAD, thrombosis rates were 68% above the stent and 33% below it. Conclusion: Aortic remodelling is greater in AAD. In AAD and in the segment, for both dissection types, false lumen thrombosis rates are higher. In AAD and CAD there is a significant re-intervention rate. The length of aorta covered with the stent should be greater, particularly in CAD.


Background and Objectives Impairment in financial management abilities, which we label "Acreemagnosia", is an early symptom of older people experiencing cognitive decline. This article describes the development and psychometric evaluation of The Acreemagnosia Measurement (TAM) which assesses everyday financial abilities and could be applied to older people who are healthy, experiencing MCI, or affected by dementia. TAM is a multi-item scale combining subjective, objective and performance-based measures that assess abilities and awareness across a wide range of financial functions and tasks. Methods Item Response theory (IRT) was applied to examine the structure and item performance, as well as to determine scale reliability. Results Analysis suggests that TAM is measuring most reliably at low to average levels of financial ability which is appropriate for testing elderly retired people, experiencing MCI, or affected by dementia. All the items in TAM show a good discrimination capacity. Differential Item Functioning (DIF) analysis did not show any gender or age bias. Discussion TAM is a useful tool for the measurement of everyday financial abilities in older people.


Voluntary exercise permanently elevates body weight in adult hamsters (Borer, K.T. Physiol. Behav. 12:589, 1974). Possible effects of such exercise on skeletal growth were examined in female hamsters in the asymptotic phase of growth, 14 of which had a 34-day access to horizontal disc exercisers, while 14 others remained sedentary. Skeletal measurements were taken from radiographs obtained at the start and at the end of exercise and on day 29 of retirement. Exercise was associated with more pronounced growth of axial than appendicular skeleton. Vertebral column, skull, humerous and femur of excercising hamsters grew 5.61 +/- 0.75 (p less than .001), 1.26 +/- 0.49 (p less than .05), 1.96 +/- 0.81 (p less than .02) and 2.80+/-1.34 (p less than .05) percent more, respectively, than the corresponding bones of sedentary hamsters. Appendicular skeleton continued to grow during retirement. Humerus and femur grew 1.96+/-0.65 (p less than .02) and 1.67+/-0.59 (p less than .02)% more, respectively, during retirement in exercised than in sedentary hamsters. Significantly greater weight gain was seen in active than in sedentary hamsters during both exercise (25.62 + 2.68%, p less than .001) and retirement (6.43 + 2.23, p less than .02). These data indicate that disc exercise accelerates skeletal and ponderal growth in adult hamsters and that axial and appendicular skeleton respond to this stimulus differently.


We study the formation mechanism of nanoparticles in thin films of the superconductor YBa2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO). We form the films by metal-organic deposition (MOD) on buffered, textured metal substrates. Through the addition of Dy or Zr salts to the precursor solution we precipitate (Y,Dy)2O3 and BaZrO3 nanoparticles, uniformly distributed through the film thickness. By quenching samples during the film growth, we show the nanoparticles form in the precursor layer before YBCO growth. The size of the nanoparticles was quantitatively analysed by TEM. We found that Zr doping produces smaller nanoparticles than Dy doping.


Contractors may be faced with the problem of deciding the
bidding price of a construction project, when the likelihood
 of the occurrence of risk events and the risk-associated
consequences(monetary loss and gain) are uncertain. If the
 monetary loss resulting from risk events is not considered
 or is underestimated due to associated uncertainties, a
construction enterprise may suffer a tremendous loss and
 eventually fail. In this paper, a risk-pricing method is
 proposed for analyzing and pricing construction project
risk. The method consists of identifying risk elements and
 quantifying risk-associated consequenes. The uncertainty
 in the values of the quantified consequences are represented
 by using a fuzzy set approach and incorporated directly into
 the bidding price decision process. The proposed risk-pricing
 method will assist contractors in the process of estimation
under uncertainty. A real construction project is selected
to illustrate how the proposed method can be put into
practice.


Plasmonic oxide nanocrystals hold great promise in a wide range of applications, for which the availability of scalable and "green" synthesis methods is prerequisite, whereas until recently an excellent response has been demonstrated only for samples prepared through intricate synthesis paths. We report here a simple ethanol solvothermal synthesis route of Al doped ZnO plasmonic nanocrystals (Zn1−xAlxO) at doping levels of x up to 0.15. The obtained Al doped ZnO samples consisted of nanoparticles and short nanorods with a diameter of around 10 nm at x = 0.15 doping level while reaching aspect ratio levels of 50 for lower doping levels. Detailed structural studies using powder X-ray diffraction Rietveld refinement, X-ray absorption and photoelectron spectroscopies show that all samples maintain the structure of the phase-pure zincite with the space group P63mc. The resulting powders exhibit strong infrared absorption while remaining largely transparent for visible light, enabling the preparation of transparent colloidal dispersions. Furthermore, as a test of applicability in a practical device, the nanocrystals were used to prepare transparent piezoresistive Zn0.925Al0.075O–polydimethylsiloxane composites. The prepared sensor material exhibits excellent repeatable and reproducible piezoresistive behaviour.


Public administration has, for some time now, been undergoing a digital transformation. Part of this change is the replacement of human public officials with automated decision-making systems. Beyond its immediate social and political significance, the EU Settlement Scheme—the mechanism established to allow EU citizens to remain resident in the UK after Brexit—represents the coming of age of a new template for automated administration. Understood in its context, this template raises foundational questions about the nature of administrative justice in the emerging digital state. This template, while it has various potential advantages, is essentially half-baked, contains significant risks without sufficient safeguards and requires revision before its suggested wider future application becomes a reality. Amendments to the template ought to be framed by reference to the precautionary principle, as this would continue to make for efficient implementation of policy while better protecting individuals in this experimental phase of automated administration.


A panel of eight neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) against the fusion (F) protein of Newcastle disease virus (NDV) has been shown to locate a major antigenic site on the basis of competitive binding assay and additivity index studies. Five epitopes (A1 to A5) have been located within this site on the F protein of the Beaudette C strain of NDV on the basis of cross-resistance plaque assays of MAb-resistant mutants raised against these MAbs. Epitopes A1, A4 and A5 are distinct; epitope A2 partially overlaps epitope A3. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the F genes of MAb-resistant mutants showed that each predicted single amino acid substitutions ranging from amino acid residues 157 to 171 for epitope A4 and at residues 72, 78, 79 and 343 for epitopes A1, A2, A3 and A5 respectively. These locations indicate that both the F1 and F2 fragments are involved in the formation of a single antigenic site and suggest the involvement of extensive protein folding in the active form of this F protein.


Peninsula Valdes (PV) in Argentina is an important calving ground for southern right whales (SRWs, Eubalaena australis). Since 2005, right whale mortality has increased at PV, with most of the deaths (~90%) being calves <3 mo old. We investigated the potential involvement of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in these deaths by examining data that include: timing of the SRW deaths, biotoxins in samples from dead SRWs, abundances of the diatom, Pseudo-nitzschia spp., and the dinoflagellate, Alexandrium tamarense, shellfish harvesting closure dates, seasonal availability of whale prey at PV and satellite chlorophyll data. Evidence of the whales' exposure to HAB toxins includes trace levels of paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs) and domoic acid (DA) in tissues of some dead whales, and fragments of Pseudo-nitzschia spp. frustules in whale feces. Additionally, whales are present at PV during both closures of the shellfish industry (due to high levels of PSTs) and periods with high levels of Pseudo-nitzschia spp. and A. tamarense. There is a positive statistical relationship between monthly Pseudo-nitzschia densities (but not A. tamarense) and calf deaths in both gulfs of PV.


This study was made on the wooden structural and decorative elements of the 19th century traditional timber buildings in Süleymaniye and Zeyrek Districts, to analyze the structural deteriorations and to identify the woods used. Istanbul was the capital city of the Ottoman Empire. As in most areas of Istanbul, Süleymaniye and Zeyrek have a lot of beautiful timber structures bearing the memories of past life styles and examples of historical construction techniques. These structures, which are in the World Heritage List, are at risk of disappearing because of lack of care. Most of them are still waiting for restoration. The spectrum of woods used in these structures is quite large as shown by taxa recognized: Pinus slyvestris, Abies bornmuelleriana, Picea orientalis, Quercus petraea, Tilia tomentosa and Castanea sativa. All species used are being grown naturally in the forests of West Black Sea Region in Turkey. The works were realized through direct observations, photographing and laboratory analysis methods. The photographs present observations and examples showing the mechanical condition of these timber structures, which have been damaged over time. The main reasons for deterioration of these structures were natural reasons such as earthquake, water and humidity, atmospheric conditions, and man-made reasons including abandonment, fire, incorrect attempts at restoration, economic insufficiency, air pollution, lack of laws to protect these structures and municipal indifference. For laboratory analysis, a total of 380 wood samples have been taken from 30 structures, which twenty of them were timber and ten of them were masonry buildings. These samples consist of the parts of facings, posts, window profiles, laths, ceilings, floor coverings, floor beams, stairs, handrails, skirting boards, exterior and interior doors. Following the sampling, macroscopic and microscopic diagnoses were conducted to finalize the research. The main objective for producing this study is based on hope to preserve these structures for future generations. For this purpose, the reasons for deterioration of these structures were analyzed, photographs to illustrate their present conditions were taken and the woods used in these traditional timber structures were identified.


ABSTRACT Lipid Peroxidation by Paracetamol and Hot Water Extract of Green Tea (Camellia sinensis ) in Yeast Candida tropicalis preserved in Low Temperature. The use of C. tropicalis cell as a tool to evaluate antioxidant property of green tea to protect oxidative stress caused by paracetamol in cell level was investigated in our laboratory. Immediate availability of cell culture will significantly reduce the time of cell preparation. Low temperature preservation of cell culture is one of methods to produce cell cultures. However, low temperature might affect physiological state of the cell. In this study, effect of low temperature preservation (4 oC, 10 days) on the oxidative response of yeast cell treated with paracetamol and hot water extract of green tea had been investigated. Cells incubation with paracetamol 0.3 % for 2 h caused oxidative stress in both fresh and preserved culture since the content of a marker of oxidative stress, peroxyd lipids increased significantly. Whereas, concentration of peroxidised lipids in preserved cultures was lower than that of fresh culture. Increasing of peroxydized lipids followed with decreasing of cell viability in fresh culture but not in preserved culture. Green tea with concentration of 0.1 % decreased peroxyd lipids in fresh cultures treated with paracetamol but not in preserved cultures. Green tea with concentration of 0.2 % or 0.4 % in increased peroxyd lipids in fresh cultures treated with paracetamol but not in preserved cultures. The data indicated that green tea did not show anti- or pro-oxidative effect in cultures preserved in low temperature treated with paracetamol. However, induction of super oxide dismutase (SOD), an antioxidant defense enzyme, was not observed in cell preserved in low temperature. The study revealed that low temperature might make the cell more resistant against prooxidative properties of paracetamol. Keywords: C. tropicalis, oxidative stress, low temperature, paracetamol, green tea


Laparoscopic simple nephrectomy (LSN) is an accepted treatment modality for nonfunctioning kidneys. Besides decreased postoperative morbidity, LSN is an advantage with decreased analgesic requirements and convalescence. LSN is a highly stressful operation, and the procedure requires high concentration level and experience. Emotions recognized from Electroencephalogram (EEG) may lead to detect the real emotions of the human. In this study, we proposed a subject-dependent stress level detection from EEG using the (Fpz beta/alpha) ratio to recognize high and low dominance levels of feelings based on the 2D Valence-Arousal model. The stress level of the surgeon is monitored via EEG during the operation. The most stressful phase of LSN and its change over time are determined using wireless EEG headset with real-time measurements. The aim here is to monitor and utilize objective information on the mental effort and stress demanded.


International Commissions of Inquiry (COIs) have become important components of the human rights fact-finding, accountability and transitional justice architecture. The core task of COIs is to investigate international crises and construe what happened on the ground. The increasing tendency of states under scrutiny to refuse territorial access frustrates COI performance. It leaves COIs with no option but to operate from outside the state. COIs have developed various strategies to overcome the impediment of the uncooperative state, including the use of satellite imagery, conducting extraterritorial public hearings, interviewing individuals in the territory through Skype and other media as well as collecting accounts from individuals in the diaspora. This article focuses on the engagement of COIs with the diaspora. It presents diasporas as actors that may have considerable significance for COIs in a variety of ways, beyond sharing information. The article unveils the distinct roles that diasporic actors may entertain vis-à-vis international inquiries, as subjects in need of protection, information providers, and audience and mobilization forces. Looking at the COI for Eritrea, the article tests how these different roles play out in practice and how they interrelate. It thus sheds light on the capacity of COIs to make a difference extraterritorially for individuals in the diaspora, and on the capacity of diasporic actors to influence COI findings and shape follow up. The Eritrean COI experience illustrates that a purely instrumental approach towards diasporas – one which only regards diasporas as sources of information and which fails to protect extraterritorially or tap into the greater potential of diaspora mobilization – lessens COI effectivity for broader human rights and transitional justice purposes.


DNA helicases unwind the duplex DNA in an ATP dependent manner and thus play an essential role in DNA replication, repair, recombination and transcription. Any DNA-interacting ligand which will modulate DNA helicase activity may interrupt practically all kinds of DNA transactions. There are no studies on the effect of various cytotoxic DNA-interacting ligands on organelle helicases. We have determined the effect of camptothecin, VP-16 (etoposide), ellipticine, genistein, novobiocin, m-AMSA, actinomycin C1, ethidium bromide, daunorubicin and nogalamycin on unwinding and ATPase activities of purified chloroplast DNA helicase from pea (Pisum sativum). Our study has shown that DNA-intercalating ligands actinomycin C1, ethidium bromide, daunorubicin and nogalamycin were inhibiting the DNA unwinding activity with an apparent Ki of 2.9 microM, 3.0 microM, 1.4 microM and 1.0 microM, respectively. These four inhibitors also inhibited the ATPase activity of pea chloroplast DNA helicase. These results indicate that the intercalation of the inhibitors into DNA generates a complex that impedes the translocation of chloroplast DNA helicase, resulting in both inhibition of unwinding activity and ATP hydrolysis. This study would be useful for understanding the mechanism of organelle DNA helicase unwinding and the mechanism by which these DNA-interacting ligands inhibit cellular function.


Influence of the preparation "Polyen" has been studied on indexes of lipid acids contents in blood plasma, erythrocyte membrane and serum albumin of high-qualified volleyball-players. It was shown that "Polyen" has favourable effect on different metabolic pathways of lipid acids, that allow to recommend this preparation as additional component in food ration for training sportsmen.


This paper presents a new optimisation approach for variance within a supply chain management process. The approach is presented by the variance cube of purchasing (VCP) that involves a lean method for variance optimisation, namely the cost and variance driver analysis. The approach focuses on the optimisation and the control of existing process variance within the supply chain. The application of the cube is presented by a case study involving a globally acting Tier 1 supplier, who produces steering systems for passenger cars and commercial vehicles. In this case, the sourcing process of this Tier 1 supplier will be analysed, evaluated and optimised regarding variance. The variance is presented in the form of the number of suppliers who are involved in the sourcing process. Unnecessary existing process variance, like an unnecessary huge number of suppliers within the sourcing process, is a type of waste. Time, money, quality and technology can be saved through a greater understanding of the optimal number of suppliers within a sourcing process. The results of the case study led to a generalised method to optimise the existing process variance, present cost improvements as well as optimising the key performance indicator to manage the number of suppliers in the sourcing process. The general approach can be used for other company departments like logistics and for different industries other than automotive. The insights of this article support the operative user and the strategic company management in order to reduce and improve unnecessary variance in different sections. The structured analysis of supply chain process variance via the VCP and the key performance indicator "optimal supplier number per sourcing process" are new to company management.


The purpose of the study was to identify the particularities of psychomotor abilities in 8-9 years old sambo athletes in the process of initial sport selection. Material and methods. The research presents an algorithm of the leading factors of the step-by-step selection of 165 8-9-year-old pupils for sambo wrestling. The first stage of selection was a thorough checkup, which determined that more than 50 % of the total number of pupils had disturbance of morphology and functionality of different body systems, there remained 68 examinees. At the third stage of selection the identification of intellectual abilities showed that only 73.53 % of pupils out of 68 (i.e. 50 pupils) had an average level of attention stability. According to the appreciation of psychomotor abilities of pupils we identified a decrease on the examinees number with 20 % out of 50 pupils. At the special stage of selection 17.5 % of 8-9 years old pupils, in 70 % of cases (i.e. for the majority of tests) failed to execute the requirements for motor abilities and coordination capacity. The basic experiment was elaborated and realized on the basis of an yearlong pedagogical experiment for which we organized two experimental study groups of sambo wrestlers in their first year of sport training: control group, that included 15 pupils that did not undergo any special selection, and the experimental group, consisting of 15 8-9 years old pupils that were specially selected. We created identical conditions for the learning and training process throughout a year for both groups. However, only in the experimental group we included the experimental methodology of sport diagnostics that contained a complex of scientifically based criteria and conditions. Results and discussion. During the experiment we identified the indices of "timely" reaction of the sambo wrestlers in the control group which improved only by 6 %, compared to the experimental group (57% more compared to the indices at the beginning of the experiment). It presented the dynamics of the tapping test of the sambo wrestlers in the control and experimental groups, from the first to the fourth period. The dynamics showed the local tiredness of the nervous and muscular system of the body, caused by the depression of their brain motor centers, which increased in both groups, but had a visible tendency of aggravation to the fourth period in the control group (from the first to the fourth period – within the limits of 62.80 %) compared to the experimental group, where the speed of elementary movements of children in the tapping test decreased inconclusively in every time period. Thus, at the end of the second period the results of the experimental group decreased by 11.25 %, to the end of the third period they lowered by 36.62 %, to the end of the fourth period they decreased by 15.55 % of the data of the previous period, which in conclusion comprised the decrease from the first to the fourth period up to 63.42 %. Conclusion. Thus, the veridically relevant situation of psychomotor development in the experimental group of sambo wrestlers, in our opinion, became possible due to their preliminary readiness (selection results) and the active experimental training action on them


A novel open antimony sulfide framework of composition [Sb3S5]– has been synthesized hydrothermally, in the presence of tetramethyl ammonium ions. Determination of the crystal structure demonstrates that the (Me4N)+ molecules (Me, methyl) occlude a system of intersecting channels at 90� to one another. The three-dimensional framework is assembled from a new building unit, flat s-shaped buckled sheets of edge-linked 4-rings containing Sb2S2 moieties. These are cross-linked in two directions to form the system of channels.


The objective of this paper is to examine the resilience of households to food insecurity and to identify the determinants of this resilience in two study areas: Kairouan and Zaghouan. The study relied on a cross-sectional database collected from 671 smallholder farmers. Multivariate techniques including factor analysis and linear regression models were used to measure resilience and identify its determinants. The results indicate that the levels of vulnerability and resilience are different depending on the specificity of the region. In Zaghouan, 63% of agricultural households are vulnerable and 28% of households are very resilient. On the other hand, 51% of households surveyed are vulnerable in Kairouan and 42% of households are very resilient. The results reveal that the most important determinants of household resilience to food insecurity are income and access to food, ownership of assets, and access to basic services. The "climate change" negatively affect household resilience and should be further investigated in the long term. Interventions must target strategies that address the different levels of resilience reflected by the resilience estimators.


Human granzyme B (hGB) is a serine protease involved in immune‐mediated apoptosis. Its cytotoxicity makes it potentially applicable in cancer therapy. However, the effectiveness of hGB can be hampered by the cytosolic expression of a natural protein inhibitor, human Serpin B9 (hSB9). Here, we used computational approaches to identify hGB mutations that can affect its binding to hSB9 without significantly decreasing its catalytic efficiency. Alanine‐scanning calculations allowed us to identify residues of hGB important for the interaction with hSB9. Some variants were selected, and molecular dynamic simulations on the mutated hGB in complex with hSB9 in aqueous solution were carried out to investigate the effect of these variants on the stability of the complex. The R28K, R201A, and R201K mutants significantly destabilized the interaction of the protein with hSB9. Consistently, all of these variants also retained their activity in the presence of the Serpin B9 inhibitor in subsequent in vitro assays of wild‐type and mutated hGB. In particular, the activity of R201K hGB with and without Serpin B9 is very similar to that of the wild‐type protein. Hence, R201K hGB emerges as a promising species for antitumoral therapy applications. Proteins 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


An IDI diesel engine used to agricultural tractors was fueled with 20% biodiesel fuel(BDF 20) in excess of 300 hours. Engine dynamometer testing was completed at regularly scheduled intervals to monitor the engine performance and exhaust emissions. The engine performance and exhaust emissions were sampled at 1 hour interval for analysis. The combustion variation such as the combustion maximum pressure and the crank angle at this maximum pressure was not appeared during long-time dynamometer testing. Also, BSFC with BDF 20 resulted in lower than with diesel fuel. Since the biodiesel fuel used in this study includes oxygen of about 11%, it could influence the combustion process strongly. So, BDF 20 resulted in lower emissions of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and smoke emissions without special increase of oxides of nitrogen than diesel fuel. It was concluded that there was no unusual deterioration of the engine, or any unusual change in exhaust emissions from using the BDF 20.


Abstract We sequenced and annotated the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of Bactrocera diaphora (Diptera: Tephtitidae), which is an economically important pest in the southwest area of China, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Malaysia. This mitogenome is 15 890 bp in length with an A + T content of 74.103%, and contains 37 typical animal mitochondrial genes that are arranged in the same order as that of the inferred ancestral insects. All protein-coding genes (PCGs) start with a typical ATN codon, except cox1 that begins with TCG. Ten PCGs stop with termination codon TAA or TAG, whereas cox1, nad1 and nad5 have single T–– as the incomplete stop codon. All of the transfer RNA genes present the typical clover leaf secondary structure except trnS1 (AGN) with a looping D-arm. The A + T-rich region is located between rrnS and trnI with a length of 946 bp, and contains a 20 bp poly-T stretch and 22 bp poly-A stretch. Except the control region, the longest intergenic spacer is located between trnR and trnN that is 94 bp long with an excessive high A + T content (95.74%) and a microsatellite-like region (TA)13.


We use the Drell-Yan differential distribution dN_{DY}^{AB}/dE_T in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions to obtain a relation between the transverse energy E_T and the impact parameter b. Such a relation is then utilized to study the transverse-energy dependence of J/psi production in Pb-Pb collisions, using the J/psi absorption model presented previously. The anomalous Pb-Pb suppression data at 158A GeV can be explained if one assumes the occurrence of a new phase of strong J/psi absorption when the energy density exceeds 4.2 GeV/fm^3. The results are extended to make predictions for J/psi production at higher collision energies. It is found that J/psi survival probabilities reach the lowest survival limit when the nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies is greater than about 35 GeV.


Human pose is typically represented by a coordinate vector of body joints or their heatmap embeddings. While easy for data processing, unrealistic pose estimates are admitted due to the lack of dependency modeling between the body joints. In this paper, we present a structured representation, named Pose as Compositional Tokens (PCT), to explore the joint dependency. It represents a pose by M discrete tokens with each characterizing a sub-structure with several interdependent joints (see Figure 1). The compositional design enables it to achieve a small reconstruction error at a low cost. Then we cast pose estimation as a classification task. In particular, we learn a classifier to predict the categories of the M tokens from an image. A pre-learned decoder network is used to recover the pose from the tokens without further post-processing. We show that it achieves better or comparable pose estimation results as the existing methods in general scenarios, yet continues to work well when occlusion occurs, which is ubiquitous in practice. The code and models are publicly available at https://github.com/Gengzigang/PCT.


Background The influence of the anteromedial and posterolateral bundles of the anterior cruciate ligament on tibiofemoral rotation might be of great value to detect anterior cruciate ligament injuries and investigate the postoperative restoration of rotational stability. Hypothesis The anterior cruciate ligament and especially the posterolateral bundle will have a significant influence on isolated tibiofemoral rotation. Study Design Controlled laboratory study. Methods Tibiofemoral rotation was measured in 20 human cadaveric knees using a noninvasive external measurement device (Rotameter) and a knee navigation system. The measurements of the knees with the intact anterior cruciate ligament were compared with the measurements after isolated resection of the posterolateral bundle and after a complete resection of the anterior cruciate ligament at an applied torque of 5,10, and 15 N·m. Statistical analysis was made using analysis of variance and the post hoc Scheffé test. The Pearson coefficient was used to compare both measurement techniques. Results In comparison with knees with an intact anterior cruciate ligament, the knees after isolated resection of the posterolateral bundle showed significant increase of tibiofemoral rotation at almost all applied torques (P < .05). Total resection of the anterior cruciate ligament also produced significant increases compared with the intact anterior cruciate ligament at torques of 5, 10, and 15 N·m as measured by the Rotameter (P < .05). Total resection of the anterior cruciate ligament yielded increases in rotation compared with posterolateral bundle resection alone, but these differences were not significant. The results of the knee navigation system confirmed the measured results of the Rotameter. Comparison of the 2 measurement methods revealed a high correlation at all applied torques, with Pearson correlation coefficients ranging from .85 to .95. Conclusion The anterior cruciate ligament and especially the posterolateral bundle of the anterior cruciate ligament have a significant effect on isolated tibiofemoral rotation. Therefore, the developed noninvasive device might be of great importance to investigate the status and the postoperative reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament in the clinical setting. Clinical Relevance Noninvasive measurement of tibiofemoral rotation might be useful to detect anterior cruciate ligament tears and to evaluate the restoration of rotational stability after anterior cruciate ligament surgery.


The single methionine (Met/M) residue of amyloid-beta (Aβ) peptide, at position 35 of the 42-mer, has important relevance for Aβ-induced oxidative stress and neurotoxicity. Recent in vivo brain studies in a transgenic (Tg) Alzheimer disease (AD) mouse model with Swedish and Indiana familial AD mutations in human amyloid precursor protein (APP) (referred to as the J20 Tg mouse) demonstrated increased levels of oxidative stress. However, the substitution of the Met631 residue of APP to leucine (Leu/L) (M631L in human APP numbering, referred to as M631L Tg and corresponding to residue 35 of Aβ1-42) resulted in no significant in vivo oxidative stress levels, thereby supporting the hypothesis that Met-35 of Aβ contributes to oxidative insult in the AD brain. It is conceivable that oxidative stress mediated by Met-35 of Aβ is important in regulating numerous downstream effects, leading to differential levels of relevant biochemical pathways in AD. Therefore, in the current study using proteomics, we tested the hypothesis that several brain proteins involved in pathways such as energy and metabolism, antioxidant activity, proteasome degradation, and pH regulation are altered in J20Tg versus M631L Tg AD mice.


Cell division times in microbial populations display significant fluctuations. These fluctuations impact the population growth rate in a non-trivial way. If fluctuations are uncorrelated among different cells, the population growth rate is predicted by the Euler-Lotka equation, which is a classic result in mathematical biology. However, cell division times can present significant correlations, due to physical properties of cells that are passed from mothers to daughters. In this paper, we derive an equation remarkably similar to the Euler-Lotka equation which is valid in the presence of correlations. Our exact result is based on large deviation theory and does not require particularly strong assumptions on the underlying dynamics. We apply our theory to a phenomenological model of bacterial cell division. We find that the discrepancy between the growth rate predicted by the Euler-Lotka equation and our generalized version is relatively small, but large enough to be measurable in experiments.


Drawing upon a variety of different criteria, many nations have introduced proposals to differentiate the reductions in carbon emissions that would be required of industrialized nations in the short to medium term. This paper considers the relationship of these proposals to their underlying conceptions of equity, and to the self-interest of the nations proposing them. The MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Assessment (EPPA) model is used to analyze the welfare implications of several prominent proposals, considering both cases where nations must carry out all emissions reductions domestically, and situations where trading in emissions permits is allowed. The consequences of applying two prominent differentiation measures to a global regime using a zero-based allocation of emissions rights is also explored. One conclusion is that a trading regime can yield important benefits in reducing potential conflict within developed nations, and help avoid complicated and divisive negotiations over burdensharing formulas.


There are two Syriac versions of the commentary of Athanasius on the
Psalms, a longer and a shorter one. This study deals with the headings of
the Psalms in the two Syriac versions, in comparison with the headings in
the original Greek commentary and in the Syro-Hexapla. The summaries at
the beginning of the different Psalms are related in a linear fashion. The
shorter commentary depends on the longer one and the longer one on a
Greek original. The headings in the Greek commentary are those of the
Septuagint, with a few variants. Most of these variants agree with variants
given in the edition of Rahlfs. The Syriac headings of the shorter
commentary are usually in agreement with that of the Syro-Hexapla. Many
of the differences between the longer commentary on the one hand and the
other two are related to the fact that the longer commentary ascribes all
twenty-eight Psalms discussed in this article to David. The headings in the
longer commentary are not just translations from a Greek original, but are
the work of the translator.


Chinese medicine has a rich history that has only been made more complex by its integration with Western biomedicine. Legitimization of Chinese medicine in biomedicine-dominated health systems, such as that in Hong Kong, has posed significant issues. This anthology of articles explores relevant social issues related to various Chinese medicine treatments, including acupuncture and medicinal oils, as well as insight into practitioner licensing and public perception. Each chapter tackles a topic related to the complicated process of legitimizing knowledge and power within a specific social and historical context.

Written by professors and researchers with extensive knowledge of Chinese medicine, government regulation, and sociology, this collection provides an overview of the challenges and current social context of Chinese medicine that affect students and practitioners of Chinese medicine, health and para-health biomedical professionals, and patients alike.

Traditional Chinese Medicine: Professionalization and Integration in Hong Kong is the first book in the Mediated Health Series, which focuses on the effects of media, lifestyle, doctor-patient communication, and the economy on health and aims to help inform medical decisions and enhance the wellbeing of individuals.


In this paper we investigate the distance properties of orthogonal codes and evaluate its error control properties. We examine this by noting that an n-bit orthogonal code has n/2 1's and n/2 0's; i.e., there are n/2 positions where 1's and 0's differ. Therefore, the distance between two orthogonal codes is also n/2. By exploiting this distance property, we show that a code rate r=k/n, where n is the code length and k is the data length, is available out of orthogonal codes with error control capabilities. We then develop a method of coded modulation with bandwidth efficiency. The proposed technique offers a simpler solution to error control coding with bandwidth efficiency. Finally, the construction of an orthogonal coded modulation scheme is presented to illustrate the concept.


The paper describes development of a feedback position controller for a new type of monolithic "hybrid" ultrasonic motor. The goal of the controller design was to demonstrate the main advantage of this piezoelectric motor -high speed and high accuracy at the same time. Tracking of 1 mm steps with 30 nm error in down to 100 ms has been achieved


As the Internet continues to play an important role in many business applications, it becomes vital to increase the competitive edge by offering geographically tailored contents that reflect the common interests of the geographical region of the web visitors. In this paper, we define the problem of mining geographical-specific interests patterns. We utilize the quadtree to model the influence distributions of different features, and design an algorithm called Flex-iPROBER to mine geographical-specific interests patterns that are significant in a local region. We further examine how these patterns can change over time and develop an algorithm called MineGIC to efficiently discover pattern changes. Experiment results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms are scalable and efficient. Patterns discovered from real world web click datasets reveal interesting patterns and show the evolution of the interests of people in those regions.


Earth observation through remote sensing images allows the accurate characterization and identification of materials on the surface from space and airborne platforms. Multiple and heterogeneous image sources can be available for the same geographical region: multispectral, hyperspectral, radar, multitemporal, and multiangular images can today be acquired over a given scene. These sources can be combined/fused to improve classification of the materials on the surface. Even if this type of systems is generally accurate, the field is about to face new challenges: the upcoming constellations of satellite sensors will acquire large amounts of images of different spatial, spectral, angular, and temporal resolutions. In this scenario, multimodal image fusion stands out as the appropriate framework to address these problems. In this paper, we provide a taxonomical view of the field and review the current methodologies for multimodal classification of remote sensing images. We also highlight the most recent advances, which exploit synergies with machine learning and signal processing: sparse methods, kernel-based fusion, Markov modeling, and manifold alignment. Then, we illustrate the different approaches in seven challenging remote sensing applications: 1) multiresolution fusion for multispectral image classification; 2) image downscaling as a form of multitemporal image fusion and multidimensional interpolation among sensors of different spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions; 3) multiangular image classification; 4) multisensor image fusion exploiting physically-based feature extractions; 5) multitemporal image classification of land covers in incomplete, inconsistent, and vague image sources; 6) spatiospectral multisensor fusion of optical and radar images for change detection; and 7) cross-sensor adaptation of classifiers. The adoption of these techniques in operational settings will help to monitor our planet from space in the very near future.


Abstract Segment videos were produced at different peaks to reflect different sampling criteria like land use characteristics, trails, Ciclocarrils and Ciclovia. Each segment was filmed for 20–40 seconds during bicycle rides at a speed of about 5km/h with a camera strapped, at an angle of 45 degrees, on the head. Curb lane variables such as bicycle pathway widths, curb lane motorised volume (veh/h) and vehicle speed (km/h), bicycle volume on segment, and median width were recorded in addition to secondary data. About 1,360 ratings were acquired from study participants and used in the estimation process. Ordered probability models were used to estimate random parameters of cyclists LOS perception to account for unobserved heterogeneity for all respondents. The deviance (1.085) and Pearson Chi-Square (2.309) with 1,635 degree of freedom at 0.05 level of significance shows that our model provides a better fit of the data. The study observed that BLOS was strongly influenced by side path separation, vehicle speed, motorised traffic volume and conflicts with pedestrians. However, many other factors were found to have high probabilities to influence level of service with unit change. They include bicycle lane width, wide outside lane, pavement conditions, trees and benches, daylight, gender and experience of cyclist. The impact of the variety of observed factors affecting bicyclists reveal the nature and character of urban transportation in Bogota which suggests a range of important trade-offs in further planning and management of the Cicloruta bicycle paths.


Garcinia mangostana is a tropical plant found commonly in South East Asia. This plant possesses anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiulcer, antiseptic and also showed prevention against oxidative damage of low density lipoprotein (LDL). The present study aimed to evaluate the antihyperlipidemic activity of the methanolic and aqueous extracts of various parts of G. mangostana in poloxamer 407induced hyperlipidemic rats. The aqueous extracts exhibited larger reduction in total cholesterol, triglycerides, and LDL and high density lipoprotein (HDL) levels compared to methanolic extracts. Aqueous extract of leaves showed significant reduction of 62.95% and 82.08% in total cholesterol (p<0.001) and triglycerides (p<0.001) levels, respectively compared to hyperlipidemic control at 58 hour after hyperlipidemia induction. Likewise, aqueous extract of stem exhibited significant reduction of 74.97% and 78.50% in total cholesterol (p<0.001) and triglycerides (p<0.001) levels, respectively at 58 hour after hyperlipidemia induction. In conclusion, aqueous extract of stem showed highest reduction of total cholesterol while aqueous extract of leaves showed highest reduction of triglycerides compared to hyperlipidemic control group. These results warrant further investigation on lipids lowering capacity of these extracts in the high fat diet-induced chronic hyperlipidemic rat model.


ABSTRACT Mass transfer within microbial films is described using Monod type biological kinetics in terms of the properties of packing material and feed solution. A second-order partial differantial equation describing the dispersion phomena inside the liquid layer is solved using an approximation for the concentration gradient. Computer techniques have been developed for the numerical evaluation of the normalized biofilm mathematical model.