Abstract This paper studies the stability and optimality of a distributed consensus protocol for n -player repeated non cooperative games under incomplete information. At each stage, the players choose binary strategies and incur in a payoff monotonically decreasing with the number of active players. The game is specialized to an inventory application, where fixed costs are shared among all retailers, interested in whether reordering or not from a common warehouse. The authors focus on Pareto optimality as a measure of coordination of reordering strategies, proving that there exists a unique Pareto optimal Nash equilibrium that verifies certain stability conditions.


A Boolean perceptron is a linear threshold function over the discrete Boolean domain {0,1}n. That is, it maps any binary vector to 0 or 1, depending on whether the vector's components satisfy some linear inequality. In 1961, Chow showed that any Boolean perceptron is determined by the average or "center of gravity" of its "true" vectors (those that are mapped to 1), together with the total number of true vectors. Moreover, these quantities distinguish the function from any other Boolean function, not just from other Boolean perceptrons.

In this paper we go further, by identifying a lower bound on the Euclidean distance between the average satisfying assignment of a Boolean perceptron and the average satisfying assignment of a Boolean function that disagrees with that Boolean perceptron on a fraction $\epsilon$ of the input vectors. The distance between the two means is shown to be at least $(\epsilon/n)^{O(\log(n/\epsilon)\log(1/\epsilon))}$. This is motivated by the statistical question of whether an empirical estimate of this average allows us to recover a good approximation to the perceptron. Our result provides a mildly superpolynomial upper bound on the growth rate of the sample size required to learn Boolean perceptrons in the "restricted focus of attention" setting. In the process we also find some interesting geometrical properties of the vertices of the unit hypercube.


Introduction: The physician-intern relationship can be difficult to develop. A new chiropractic intern in a teaching clinic undergoes a major transition from classroom to clinical practice and must learn to turn classroom knowledge into clinical application. The ability to start formulating clinical techniques and apply them on a patient is daunting. Developing a mentor relationship is difficult to do in a patient-care setting, but it can be done. Mentoring is a process of exchanging skills and values between 2 individuals with the goal of increasing the knowledge base and clinical skills of the intern. With this in mind, our group created short-duration small-group mentoring classes offered at different times on multiple days, permitting interns to have numerous opportunities to view procedure and ask questions about the topic of that day's presentation. Methods: This project spanned a period of 3 months, during which time 6 clinicians were in charge of educating approximately 50 students. The mentorship model was developed so that in addition to the clinicians' regular duties of supervising patient care with interns, there would also be 3 15-minute sessions per week presenting a topic of a clinician's choice pertinent to the intern learning experience. Results: 209 evaluations were turned in, with 5 students not completing the evaluation. Students overwhelmingly believed that these sessions were beneficial to their learning and provided them with the opportunity to ask questions in regard to the topics. Conclusion: Students agreed that these small group mentoring sessions provided them with more information than they previously had learned in the classroom. They thought that the sessions gave them enough information to be motivated to use the knowledge they learned from the session to make decisions on the topic when faced with a patient with a similar problem. This is a small survey sample that will need further review and trials to determine if it will provide the necessary feedback to help improve small group presentations. It will also need to be spread to other clinical settings to determine if it is beneficial for this style of small groups to aid other learners and to evaluate its helpfulness to interns in putting clinical information and evaluations together for practice. Follow-up studies could also include evaluating students at a later date to determine if the students are using the information that they are learning from the sessions.


The 1Σ u ← XΣ g transition of linear HC5H (A) has been observed in a neon matrix and gas phase. The assignment is based on mass-selective experiments, extrapolation of previous results of the longer HC2n+1H homologues, and density functional and multi-state CASPT2 theoretical methods. Another band system starting at 303nm in neon is assigned as the 1A1 ← X̃ A1 transition of the cumulene carbene pentatetraenylidene H2C5 (B). (published in J. Chem. Phys. 142 (2015) 244311 )


ATLAS has developed and deployed event-level selection services based upon event metadata records ("TAGS") and supporting file and database technology. These services allow physicists to extract events that satisfy their selection predicates from any stage of data processing and use them as input to later analyses. One component of these services is a web-based Event-Level Selection Service Interface (ELSSI). ELSSI supports event selection by integrating run-level metadata, luminosity-block-level metadata (e.g., detector status and quality information), and event-by-event information (e.g., triggers passed and physics content). The list of events that survive after some selection criterion is returned in a form that can be used directly as input to local or distributed analysis; indeed, it is possible to submit a skimming job directly from the ELSSI interface using grid proxy credential delegation. ELSSI allows physicists to explore ATLAS event metadata as a means to understand, qualitatively and quantitatively, the distributional characteristics of ATLAS data. In fact, the ELSSI service provides an easy interface to see the highest missing ET events or the events with the most leptons, to count how many events passed a given set of triggers, or to find events that failed a given trigger but nonetheless look relevant to an analysis based upon the results of offline reconstruction, and more. This work provides an overview of ATLAS event-level selection services, with an emphasis upon the interactive Event-Level Selection Service Interface.


Winery wastewater typically has a pH of 3-4, with COD (chemical oxygen demand) of 800-12800 mg/L, and Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) 1500-6000 mg/L depending on the vintage cycle. To date, there has been no general agreement on the most suitable method for the treatment of winery wastewater. On the other hand, Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) based on various techniques offer a promising alternative method for its treatment. The principal mechanism of AOPs function is the production of highly reactive free radicals. Ultraviolet (UV)-A radiation as one of the UV-driven AOPs was applied in the present work. The photodegradation of winery wastewater was studied by using UV-A radiation at different initial solution pH values using different number of UV lamps. The highest conversion of the pollutants removal was found under alkaline conditions. The average reaction rate increases with increasing number of lamps.


Estimations of human joint torques can provide quantitative, clinically valuable information to inform patient care, plan therapy, and assess the design of wearable robotic devices. Standard methods for estimating joint torques are limited to laboratory or clinical settings since they require expensive equipment to measure joint kinematics and ground reaction forces. Wearable sensor data combined with neural networks may offer a less expensive and obtrusive estimation method. We present a method of mapping joint torque estimates obtained from motion capture and ground reaction forces to wearable sensor data. We use several different neural networks to learn the torque mapping for the ankle joints during standing, walking, running, and sprinting. Our results show that neural networks that consider time (recurrent and long short-term memory networks) outperform feedforward network architectures, producing results in the range of 0. 005-0.008N. m/kg mean squared error (MSE) when compared to the inverse dynamics model on which it was trained. As a point of reference, the typical measurement errors from inverse dynamics models are in the range of 0.0004-0.0064 N. m/kg MSE. Errors tended to increase with locomotion speed, with the highest errors during sprinting and the lowest during standing or walking. Future work may investigate model generalizability across sensor placements, subjects, locomotion variants, and usage duration. The proposed method relies on learning from a motion capture dataset, but once the model is built, the method uses wearable sensors that enable torque estimation without the motion capture data. These methods also have potential uses for the design and testing of wearable robotic systems outside of a laboratory environment.


[1] The tropical Pacific and Atlantic Oceans have similar mean states - easterly winds and a zonally sloping thermocline which shoals in the east - but strikingly different sea surface temperature variability. Seasonal and interannual variations have comparable amplitudes, and correspond to different modes of oscillation in the Pacific. In the Atlantic, the seasonal cycle is dominant and has properties of both those modes. The Bjerknes feedback between the wind and SST, and its associated delayed, negative feedback constitute a free (interannual) mode of the Pacific, but in the Atlantic influence the seasonal cycle. This difference between the two oceans is attributable to the smaller dimensions of the Atlantic. An energetic analysis shows a circular relationship between available potential energy and the work done by the wind from April until September in the Atlantic. This energetics perspective suggests that a seasonally excited thermocline mode of coupled variability plays an active role in the seasonal cycle during these months, after which point seasonal forcing regains control.


The High Energy Particle Detector (HEPD) is one of the scientific payloads of the China SeismoElectromagnetic Satellite (CSES). The first satellite of the constellation was launched in February 2018 and has been operational in nominal conditions since then. With the launch of the CSES02 scheduled for mid 2022, the realization of the HEPD-02 detector is ongoing. The Limadou collaboration, in charge of the payload, updated the HEPD design to improve its performance. A Monte Carlo simulation has been developed using the GEANT4 tool, in order to study the response of the new detector to protons, electrons and light nuclei and validate the new design. The comparison between simulation results and data collected during tests will also allow to calibrate the detector response and to train a specifically designed neural network for event reconstruction. We report preliminary results from the simulation and show that the updated HEPD meets the scientific requirements of the CSES-02 mission


The potential usefulness of scientific know-how for both beneficial and malevolent purposes has raised increasingly apparent public concerns that could challenge the tradition of openness in the scientific community. Insight from the national security community could alleviate this tension by helping scientists ensure that any steps taken are proportionate to existing and emerging threats. The authors of this
 Policy Forum
 recommend closer interaction between appropriate representatives from the scientific and national security communities because of its potential to enhance national biodefense capabilities without compromising scientific discovery.


Unsymmetrically substituted carbohydrazides, containing chelating o-hydroxyaryl and non-chelating pyridyl subunits were synthesized via two-step functionalization of carbohydrazide. Anion binding and coordinative propensities of the compounds were tested in reactions with appropriate Mo(VI) species. Such procedures yielded four types of products: monomeric dioxomolybdenum(VI) complexes, dimeric and oligomeric/polymeric dioxomolybdenum(VI)-containing ensembles, hybrid hexamolybdate systems where the protonated ligand acts as cation and the hybrid hexamolybdate salts where the cation is the protonated form of the monomeric dioxomolybdenum(VI) complex. The solid-state structures of the compounds were elucidated by X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy, while their thermal stability was inspected via thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry experiments. The behaviour of the ligands, monomeric, dimeric, and oligomeric/polymeric ensembles in DMSO solution was investigated by nuclear magnetic resonance. In the isolated materials, carbohydrazide ligands adopt altogether four distinctive protonation forms: neutral, monoprotonated in the corresponding hexamolybdate salt, doubly deprotonated while forming {MoO2}2+ complexes, and neutral zwitterionic when shaping the hybrid salt. In all these structures the unsymmetrical carbohydrazide framework retains robust conformation and geometry.


I have designed the Brewcast project, a communication interface that attempts to combine
coffee drinking, social networking technology and telecommunication interface design. By
making a functioning prototype, I attempt to problematize current design conventions and
motivations, placing value on the narrative of the design, a design fiction. The design fiction I
create in my work takes place in a near-future where post smartphone culture, ubiquitous
computing and wide spread internet or network access has replaced the need for individualized
smart-phones and social networking apps. Through this widespread access to wi-fi hotspots that
provide city-wide internet access people may be less inclined to carry around a personal
communication device because of access to internet based connection almost anywhere. Social
networking may revert back to traditional social collective interaction styles with the obsolescing
of individualized mobile communication technologies. Durational interactions, like coffee
drinking, could become a model for these social interaction technologies.


Motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) are a leading cause of injuries and injury-related fatalities in the United States. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported over 21,250 vehicle occupant fatalities in 2011, with 1,240,000 injuries sustained by passenger car occupants alone. MVCs are a common cause of blunt abdominal injuries. It has been reported that approximately 9,000 front seat occupants sustain moderate to severe abdominal injuries in frontal MVCs in the United States each year. A detailed understanding of the occurrence and mechanisms of abdominal injuries, as well as knowledge of the biomechanical response and tolerance of the abdomen in crash-specific loading modes, could benefit the reduction of abdominal organ injury incidence in MVCs. Therefore, the objective of the research presented in this dissertation was to characterize abdominal injury mechanisms, tissue failure thresholds, and internal organ response to blunt impacts of the abdomen. Field accident data from the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN) database were analyzed to determine the occupant and crash characteristics associated with crash-induced hollow abdominal organ injuries. Dynamic equibiaxial tension tests were conducted on tissue samples obtained from the human postmortem stomach, small intestine, and colon to characterize the material properties and failure tolerance of these tissues. The effects of cadaver orientation on the relative position of the abdominal organs of two cadavers were quantified, and high-speed biplane x-ray imaging was used to investigate the relative kinematics of the thoracic and abdominal organs of four cadavers in response to crash-specific loading modes. Test configurations included blunt abdominal and thoracic impacts and driver-shoulder seatbelt loading. The motivation for this research was to advance efforts toward abdominal organ injury mitigation in MVCs, with each aspect of this research generating novel injury biomechanics data with applications for future experimental testing and finite element modeling.


The major objective of the paper is to examine the economic conditions of the in-migrant workers in Kerala. This has been done by analysing their savings, income and consumption pattern and nature of work before and after migration. The analysis is based on data from a sample of 166 in-migrants workers in the Trivandrum district, which has been collected through a primary survey during September-October, 2008. While existing studies provide evidences for short distance migration from nearby states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to Kerala, our study observed that long distance migration from states like West Bengal and Assam dominated the inflow of migrant workers in recent years. Informal information networks through acquaintances that have already migrated plays important role in migration of workers to Kerala. Poor economic conditions along with several other overlapping factors have been identified as the reason of migration. There has not been any change in the nature of employment of the migrants even after migration. However, there has been a shift from the low-income brackets before migration to high-income brackets after migration. We observed positive relationship of skill level and instance of migration with income level. Notwithstanding the improved income level the living condition for most of them is deplorable, most of them live together in either poor rented houses or work sites with one room shared by many and no provision of hygienic sanitation. The amount and pattern of food expenditure is found to be more or less same for all the migrants, whereas that of non-food expenditure varies from person to person. The savings and investment habit among the migrants is found to be very poor.


The use of blended learning environments in higher education has rapidly increased in the 21st century. Tools and techniques that initially were used in experimental distance education courses are today part of mainstream education with blended learning as a continuum between traditional face-to-face teaching and pure online courses. In this wide variety of course design there are success stories, but at the same time examples with low pass rates and poor learning outcomes. The research question for the study is: Which aspects have to be considered in the design and implementation of blended learning in higher education? To answer this question, 15 selected publications were analysed in a I iterature review with the aim to identify important and critical factors when implementing blended learning in higher education. As a result of the inductive analysis around 50 found factors have been grouped into 10 Categories of critical factors and 4 Blended learning perspectives in a strive to identify critical aspects of contemporary blended learning in a comprehensive structure. One conclusion is that blended learning today can be seen as a mature educational concept still in need of redesign. Problems that were reported two decades ago are now combined with other more recently identified critical factors. The presented categories and perspectives might be valuable as a checklist for implementations of blended learning and hopefully a useful base for further research in the field of blended learning.


Rationale: Driven by developing technology and an ageing population, radiology has witnessed an unprecedented rise in workload. One response to this in the United Kingdom has been to train radiographers to undertake clinical reporting. Accurate interpretation of imaging is crucial to allow clinicians' to correctly manage and treat patients.

Methods: A random sample of cases (n=100) was selected from a consecutive series of 1,000 chest x-ray reports produced by a radiographer in clinical practice using a simple computer generated algorithm. Due to the high level of observer variation which is apparent when interpreting chest x-rays, three consultant radiologists were also included to establish the rate of inter-observer variation between radiologists, which was then used as the baseline. Fifty images were interpreted by each radiologist who examined the radiographer report for accuracy and agreement, with 50% duplication of cases between radiologists to determine inter-radiologist variation. The radiologists performed their evaluation independently and blinded to the proportion of cases receiving multiple radiologist opinions. Inter-observer agreement analysis using Kappa was performed to determine consistency among observers.

Results: Disagreement was found between the radiologist and radiographer in 7 cases, which in three instances showed agreement between one radiologist and the radiographer. Inter-observer agreement (Kappa statistic) between the three radiologists and the reporting radiographer was found to be almost perfect, K=0.91, 95% confidence interval (0.79,1.0), K=0.91 (0.78,1.0) and K=0.83 (0.68,0.99) respectively. Inter-radiologist agreement was also almost perfect, K=0.82 (0.57,1.0) and K=0.91 (0.75,1.0).

Conclusion: The level of inter-observer agreement between radiologist and reporting radiographer chest x-ray interpretation compares favourably with inter-radiologist variation.


Partial discharge (PD) measurement in a needle to plane gap is suggested by IEC used for ranking dielectric liquids. This paper investigates PD behavior in eight liquids using a 20 mm ac stressed needle to plane gap. Parameters varied were tip radius, frequency and voltage. Both discharge phase distributions and pulse sequences were studied. PD occurrence was highly correlated to the frequency of the applied voltage. A higher frequency of 600 Hz gave a higher PD rate than the lower frequencies, like 60 Hz. The tip radius does also affect the PD pattern. The influences from tip radius and frequency indicate a strong correlation between space charges and PD initiation. It was observed that large positive PDs almost always was preceded and followed by a smaller negative PD in the neighboring half cycles, indicating an influence from charges of opposite polarity created in the previous half cycle. Exposing the gap to X-rays gave a PD burst for both polarities. This indicates that electrons are needed for initiation of PDs and that lack of electrons is the reason for low occurrence rate of positive PDs.


Clay brick facades often include bed joint reinforcement, especially over windows and other openings in the facade, which may corrode due to degradation from climatic exposure. Removal of corroded bed joint reinforcement from such facades is an invasive and costly measure. Heavily damaged reinforcement must be removed for either structural, durability or aesthetic reasons. Parts of the bed joint reinforcement can however be left in the facade, if it can be shown that the risk for future damage is acceptably low. This will significantly reduce the amount of work needed and the retrofitting costs. A dose-response model for prediction of corrosion induced cracking in reinforced brick masonry is presented, with relative humidity, temperature and oxygen supply in the vicinity of the reinforcement as influencing parameters. Corrosion depth, constituting the dose, is modelled by integration of the effect of corrosion rate with respect to time. To describe the dependence of corrosion rate on the influencing parameters, models from the field of concrete research are used. The response, which can be seen as a limit state, is the corrosion depth required to create a crack due to tensile stresses generated by corrosion products. Due to scarcity of experimental data from the field of reinforced brick masonry, the critical corrosion depth is established using empirical data from the field of concrete research. To address this lack of a well-defined limit state, tests will be performed on clay brick specimens in a later part of the research project. The model's ability to predict time-to-cracking is demonstrated by comparison with data from field observations. (Less)


Cherry laurel (dark purple or black when mature) is a popular summer fruit in the Black Sea region of Turkey. It has been gaining popularity as a valuable source of healthy fruit over the last two decades and is a good source of nutrients and polyphenols together with high antioxidant activity. This contribution discusses nutritional characteristics, antioxidants, polyphenols, and health benefits of cherry laurel. Where available, comparisons are made with other cherry fruits (Cornelian, sweat, and sour) and blueberry. Although several health benefits of this fruit and its seeds have been known as home-made and traditional medicine, in vivo and well-designed human clinical trials are scarce. Therefore, additional carefully-designed human clinical trials are needed to validate the health benefits of this fruit.


The differences in the skeleton of the forepaw and hindpaw of the domestic cat are an expression of a highly specialized, functional adaption: The mesaxonic forepaw with abducable first digit is used for running as well as for catching and climbing. The paraxonic hindpaw becomes, particularly through the arched construction of the metacarpus, a long and strong caulking tool both in sprinting and climbing up. The discussion focuses on evolutionary considerations. Moreover, common points and differences in the skeleton of the forepaw and hindpaw of the domestic cat and their importance are summarized and briefly compared with the situation in the dog.


It describes directives of EU/EC about public procurement. It
also analyzes the Czech legal regulation about tenders. In
relation to the complex issue it explains moot points.


In recent years, foreign direct investment (FDI) in natural resource industries by Chinese firms in Africa has increased rapidly. The strategic importance of the natural resource sector to host country governments produces considerable bargaining over entry and operating terms, with attendant political risks. Using case studies in Tanzania, we find that the Chinese government and firms engage in a bargaining model different from the traditional models. Specifically, they engage in a modified one-tier bargaining model in which the Chinese government represents the collective interests of Chinese natural resource firms to negotiate with the host country government. In exchange for investment deals in the natural resource sector, the Chinese government offers a package with loans that support multiple-purpose development projects in various sectors, with a focus on infrastructure. Chinese firms act as a group to fulfill the Chinese government's commitments to the host country government. We discuss the boundary conditions for this Chinese-style bargaining model and its relationship to political risk. We conclude that the Chinese model has unique elements, although they are likely limited to resource investments in developing countries.


A limit on the absolute value of the running digital sum of a sequence is known as the charge constraint. Such a limit imposes a spectral null at DC. The maximum-entropy distribution of a charge-constrained sequence is presented. A closed-form expression for the power spectral density of maximum-entropy charge-constrained sequences is given and plotted. >


We present an introduction to the equivariant slice filtration. After reviewing the definitions and basic properties, we determine the slice-connectivity of various families of naturally arising spectra. This leads to an analysis of pullbacks of slices defined on quotient groups, producing new collections of slices. Building on this, we determine the slice tower for the EilenbergMac Lane spectrum associated to a Mackey functor for a cyclic p-group. We then relate the Postnikov tower to the slice tower for various spectra. Finally, we pose a few conjectures about the nature of slices and pullbacks.


A combination of two analytical methods, time-resolved X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy, is presented as a novel tool for crystallization studies. An acoustic levitator was employed as sample environment. This setup enables the acquisition of XRD and Raman data in situ simultaneously within a 20 s period and hence permits investigation of polymorphic phase transitions during the crystallization process in different solvents (methanol, ethanol, acetone, dichloromethane, acetonitrile). These real time measurements allow the determination of the phase content from the onset of the first crystalline molecular assemblies to the stable system. To evaluate the capability of this approach, the setup was applied to elucidate the crystallization process of the polymorphic compound nifedipine. The results indicate the existence of solvent-dependent transient phases during the crystallization process. The quality of the data allowed the assignment of the lattice constants of the hitherto unknown crystal structure of the beta-polymorph.


Upon infection, Mycobacterium leprae, an obligate intracellular bacillus, induces accumulation of cholesterol-enriched lipid droplets (LDs) in Schwann cells (SCs). LDs are promptly recruited to M. leprae-containing phagosomes, and inhibition of this process decreases bacterial survival, suggesting that LD recruitment constitutes a mechanism by which host-derived lipids are delivered to intracellular M. leprae. We previously demonstrated that M. leprae has preserved only the capacity to oxidize cholesterol to cholestenone, the first step of the normal cholesterol catabolic pathway. In this study we investigated the biochemical relevance of cholesterol oxidation on bacterial pathogenesis in SCs. Firstly, we showed that M. leprae increases the uptake of LDL-cholesterol by infected SCs. Moreover, fluorescence microscopy analysis revealed a close association between M. leprae and the internalized LDL-cholesterol within the host cell. By using Mycobacterium smegmatis mutant strains complemented with M. leprae genes, we demonstrated that ml1942 coding for 3β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (3β-HSD), but not ml0389 originally annotated as cholesterol oxidase (ChoD), was responsible for the cholesterol oxidation activity detected in M. leprae. The 3β-HSD activity generates the electron donors NADH and NADPH that, respectively, fuel the M. leprae respiratory chain and provide reductive power for the biosynthesis of the dominant bacterial cell wall lipids phthiocerol dimycocerosate (PDIM) and phenolic glycolipid (PGL)-I. Inhibition of M. leprae 3β-HSD activity with the 17β-[N-(2,5-di-t-butylphenyl)carbamoyl]-6-azaandrost-4-en-3one (compound 1), decreased bacterial intracellular survival in SCs. In conclusion, our findings confirm the accumulation of cholesterol in infected SCs and its potential delivery to the intracellular bacterium. Furthermore, we provide strong evidence that cholesterol oxidation is an essential catabolic pathway for M. leprae pathogenicity and point to 3β-HSD as a prime drug target that may be used in combination with current multidrug regimens to shorten leprosy treatment and ameliorate nerve damage.


The degradation of a plastic film containing polymer synthetic polystyrene (PS) and biopolymer poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) [P(3HB)] in soil has been carried out based on soil burial test. Result showed that the amount of P(3HB) in plastic film containing PS and P(3HB) influence the degradation rate of plastic film. Rate degradation measured use linear regression equality and parameter is indicated by the slope (k), degradation time 50% (t 50%), and degradation time 95% (t 95%). Degradation plastic film which occurred in soil with ratio PS/P(3HB) 85:15 was k = 0.90 %/week, t 50% = 55.13 weeks and t 95% = 105.29 weeks, followed by PS/P(3HB) 90:10 and PS/P(3HB) 95:15. In contrast, plastic film which made from pure PS (100:0) occurred slow with slope value (k) = 0.14 %/week, t 50% = 345.07 weeks, and t 95% = 655.63 weeks. Result of SEM test showed that damage occurred and erosion at surface of plastic film as long as observation time in various environment condition.


Health/Medical tourism is a booming niche tourism market in the tourism industry. The main reason for the increasing trend is the high cost of treatment, long waiting time, less insurance coverage in developed countries and the attitude of people to spend holidays in a quality manner with the aim of improving health. In India, Kerala is emerging as a prime health tourism hub for its Ayurveda packages. The state attracts millions of foreign and domestic tourists to visit the state's incredible heritage and experience the traditional nature based treatment therapies. The volume of tourist arrivals in Kerala had experienced a stupendous growth of 7.7 per cent in 2014 from 4.3 per cent in 2001 (Annual report of Tourism Statistics, Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala). This study aims to profile the tourists visiting Kerala for Ayurvedic treatment and to identify the destination image factors making Kerala an attractive place for Ayurveda health tourism. For this purpose, 150 domestic tourists availing Ayurvedic treatment in Kerala were selected on the convenience of the researcher. In order to analyse the objectives, the Descriptive Statistics, Factor Analysis and One-way ANOVA were employed and the results revealed that service quality, attraction, opportunity, benefits and promotion were the destination image factors making Kerala an attractive place for Ayurvedic Health Tourism. The present study identifies the strength of Kerala for Ayurveda health tourism which helps the destination managers and the service providers witha better understanding of the market for elevating Kerala and its Ayurveda in this niche market. Int. J. Soc. Sci. Manage. Vol-2, issue-3: 222-227 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijssm.v2i3.12755


Abstract Community phylogenetic analysis is an effective approach to understanding the process of community formation. The phylogenetic tree of the species pool is reconstructed in the first step, and the phylogenetic tree obtained in the second step is used to analyze phylogenetic diversity. Sythetic trees have often been used in the construction of phylogenentic trees; however, in tropical rainforests with many closely related species, synthetic trees contain many unresolved nodes, which may affect the results of phylogenetic structure analysis. Here, we constructed a phylogenetic tree using DNA barcode sequences (rbcL, matK, trnH‐psbA) for 737 tree species from the rainforests of Borneo, which have a high‐species diversity and many closely related species. The phylogenetic tree had fewer polytomies and more branch length variations than the Phylocom synthetic trees. Comparison of community phylogenetic analyses indicated that values of the standardized effect size of mean pairwise distance (SES–MPD) were highly correlated between Phylocom and DNA barcode trees, but less so for the standardized effect size of mean nearest taxon distance (SES–MNTD), suggesting that caution is needed when using synthetic trees for communities containing many congeneric species, especially when using SES–MNTD. Simulation analysis suggested that spatial dependence on phylogenetic diversity is related to the phylogenetic signal of the species' habitat niche and the spatial structure of habitat, indicating the importance of detailed phylogeny in understanding community assembly processes.


Massive open online courses (MOOCs) pose a challenge for instructors when trying to provide personalised support to learners, due to large numbers of registered participants. Conversational agents can be of help to support learners when working with MOOCs. This article presents an adaptive learning module for JavaPAL, a conversational agent that complements a MOOC on Java programming, helping learners review the key concepts of the MOOC. This adaptive learning module adapts the difficulty of the questions provided to learners considering their level of knowledge using item response theory (IRT) and also provides recommendations of video fragments extracted from the MOOC for when learners fail questions. The adaptive learning module for JavaPAL has been evaluated showing good usability and learnability through the system usability scale (SUS), reasonably suitable video fragments recommendations for learners, and useful visualisations generated as part of the IRT-based adaptation of questions for instructors to better understand what is happening in the course, to design exams, and to redesign the course content.


Sound is an important, but often neglected, component for creating a self-motion illusion (vection) in Virtual Reality applications, for example, motion simulators. Apart from auditory motion cues, sound can provide contextual information representing self-motion in a virtual environment. In two experiments we investigated the benefits of hearing an engine sound when presenting auditory (Experiment 1) or auditory-vibrotactile (Experiment 2) virtual environments inducing linear vection. The addition of the engine sound to the auditory scene significantly enhanced subjective ratings of vection intensity in Experiment 1 and vection onset times but not subjective ratings in Experiment 2. Further analysis using individual imagery vividness scores showed that this disparity between vection measures was created by participants with higher kinesthetic imagery. On the other hand, for participants with lower kinesthetic imagery scores, the engine sound enhanced vection sensation in both experiments. A high correlation with participants' kinesthetic imagery vividness scores suggests the influence of a first person perspective in the perception of the engine sound. We hypothesize that self-motion sounds (e.g., the sound of footsteps, engine sound) represent a specific type of acoustic body-centered feedback in virtual environments. Therefore, the results may contribute to a better understanding of the role of self-representation sounds (sonic self-avatars), in virtual and augmented environments.


Growth medium simulating the phagolysosomal environment in which Yersinia pestis resides during its intracellular growth in vivo was made by acidification of Ca2+-deficient medium. When used for cultivation of Y. pestis EV-76 (pLCR+;pPst+;pFra+) and its isogenic derivatives--KM-217 (pLCR+;pPst-;pFra-) and KM-218 (pLCR-;Ppst-; pFra-)--this medium permitted survival and proliferation of viable bacteria without any growth restriction. Moreover, a correlation between the pH of growth medium and bacterial yield was established. Acidification completely inhibited fibrinolytic (pla protease) activity (PAA) of Y. pestis carrying pPst and allowed synthesis of specific outer-membrane proteins (Yops) without any degradation by the pla protease. Comparison of whole-cell lysates of the strains tested in PAAG-SDS showed that, in addition to previously described Yops, Y. pestis synthesised new acidic proteins which appeared only under acidic conditions and were encoded by pLCR or chromosomally. Some changes in O-specific polysaccharide chains of Y. pestis LPS that were dependent on cultivation temperature and pH of the medium were also demonstrated.


Twenty-nine schizophrenic patients showing therapeutic resistance to the conventional methods of treatment with psychotropic agents were subjected to the therapy with ketamine, a drug used as an anesthetic in surgery. The choice of the drug for treating mentally ill patients was determined by its capacity to bring about therapeutically expedient transient manifestations of drug-induced psychosis, therapy activating the central nervous system. Schizophrenics exhibiting manifestations of depressive inhibition and apathoabulic states benefited from ketamine treatment. The proposed method is technically simple and free of any side effects or complications.


The recent 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence in southern California jostled the seismological community by revealing a complex and cascading foreshock series that culminated in a Mw 7.1 mainshock. But the central Garlock fault, despite being located immediately south of this sequence, did not coseismically fail. Instead, the Garlock fault underwent postseismic creep and exhibited a sizeable earthquake swarm. The dynamic details of the rupture process during the mainshock are largely unknown, as is the amount of stress needed to bring the Garlock fault to failure. We present an integrated view of how stresses changed on the Garlock fault during and after the mainshock using a combination of tools including kinematic slip inversion, Coulomb stress change (ΔCFS), and dynamic rupture modeling. We show that positive ΔCFSs cannot easily explain observed aftershock patterns on the Garlock fault but are consistent with where creep was documented on the central Garlock fault section. Our dynamic model is able to reproduce the main slip asperities and kinematically estimated rupture speeds (≤2  km/s) during the mainshock, and suggests the temporal changes in normal and shear stress on the Garlock fault were the greatest near the end of rupture. The largest static and dynamic stress changes on the Garlock fault we observe from our models coincide with the creeping region, suggesting that positive stress perturbations could have caused this during or after the mainshock rupture. This analysis of near-field stress-change evolution gives insight into how the Ridgecrest sequence influenced the local stress field of the northernmost eastern California shear zone.


This volume deals with the rhetoric, the formal and thematic framework, of Psalms 90-150 (the Fourth and Fifth Book of the Psalter). It is the conclusion of the Psalms Project started with Psalms 1-41, OTS 53 (2006) , and continued with Psalms 42-89, OTS 57 (2010). Formal and thematic devices demonstrate that the psalms are composed of a consistent pattern of cantos (stanzas) and strophes. The formal devices especially include quantitative balance on the level of the cantos in terms of verselines, verbal repetitions, and (on the level of the strophes) transition markers. The quantitative approach to a psalm in terms of verselines, cola and/or words in most cases clearly discloses a focal message. This massive study is rounded off by an updated introduction to the canto design of biblical poetry (including the book of Job, Lamentations, the Songs of Songs, Deutero-Isaiah and other major poems of the Hebrew Bible).


As the population of the Earth is constantly growing it generates an unmet demand for protein, which is an urgent problem. The protein extraction process is a potential solution, which offers high-quality plant protein suitable for animal and human nutrition at a favorable price. The process used within our project produces green juice from the green alfalfa biomass through pressing. After the coagulation of protein from this green juice, the by-product is called DPJ (Deproteinized Plant Juices) or brown juice. Our preliminary results match the international literature, namely that brown juice take up as much as 50% of the fresh biomass in weight. To utilize this by-product is a crucial part of the process to make it environmental-friendly and financially viable as well. The examined brown juice samples came from a small-scale experiment of alfalfa varieties carried out in the experimental farm at the University of Debrecen. According to our preliminary results, brown juice has high macro- and micronutrient values, furthermore, it has a potentially high amount of antioxidant compounds. The study highlights that brown juice is suitable as an ingredient in microbiological media, in plant nutrition as a supplementary solution, for feedstock and for preparing human food supplements or functional foods. The potential utilization of all biorefinery products makes it a very appropriate technology for today's challenges.


During glacial-interglacial cycles, atmospheric CO 2 concentration varied by about 100 ppmv in amplitude. While testing mechanisms that have led to the low glacial CO 2 level could be done in equilibrium model experiments, an ultimate goal is to explain CO 2 changes in transient simulations through the complete glacial-interglacial cycle. The computationally efficient Earth System model of intermediate complexity CLIMBER-2 is used to simulate global biogeochemistry over the last glacial cycle (126 kyr). The physical core of the model (atmosphere, ocean, land and ice sheets) is driven by orbital changes and reconstructed radiative forcing from greenhouses gases, ice, and aeolian dust. The carbon cycle model is able to reproduce the main features of the CO 2 changes: a 50 ppmv CO 2 drop during glacial inception, a minimum concentration at the last glacial maximum 80 ppmv lower than the Holocene value, and an abrupt 60 ppmv CO 2 rise during the deglaciation. The model deep ocean δ 13 C also resembles reconstructions from deep-sea cores. The main drivers of atmospheric CO 2 evolve in time: changes in sea surface temperatures and in the volume of bottom water of southern origin control atmospheric CO 2 during the glacial inception and deglaciation; changes in carbonate chemistry and marine biology are dominant during the first and second parts of the glacial cycle, respectively. These feedback mechanisms could also significantly impact the ultimate climate response to the anthropogenic perturbation.


We ask whether ethnic residential segregation influences the future educational careers of children of immigrants in Sweden. We use a dataset comprising a cohort of children who finished compulsory school in 1995 (n = 6,560). We follow these children retrospectively to 1990 to measure neighborhood characteristics during late childhood, and prospectively through 2003 to measure the number of years of education attained thus far. The largest immigrant groups came from Finland, Turkey, former Yugoslavia, Iran and Chile. Our empirical analysis reveals that immigrant children who grow up in neighborhoods with many young coethnics who have limited educational resources, obtain relatively low average grades from compulsory school, and on average, do not attain the same levels of education as do immigrant children who grow up elsewhere. For a minority of immigrant children who lived in neighborhoods with educationally successful young coethnics, we find a positive effect of growing up in an ethnic enclave. Also in this case, the effect of the ethnic environment on future educational attainment is mediated by school results in compulsory school.


A fused/closed basilar suture is usually treated as an indication of old age in great apes. A sample, drawn from a variety of sources, of known-aged captive great ape skeletons was analyzed to test the usefulness of using the basilar suture to categorize adult skeletons as either "adult" or "old adult". The state of closure of the basilar suture was examined in 30 chimpanzees, 19 gorillas, and 15 orangutans, all of known age. The results show that the basilar suture demonstrates a high level of uniformity in rate of closure and is closed at an early age in virtually all known-aged individuals. Thus, an old adult category most likely includes individuals who are, in fact, relatively young. This indicates that using the basilar suture as a means to classify individual skeletons as adult or old adult is very imprecise. The homogenous nature of basilar suture closure appears to prevent meaningful application of suture status for categorizing adult ape skeletons by age groups.


Photon pairs produced by parametric down-conversion or four-wave mixing can interfere with each other in multiport interferometers or carry entanglement between distant nodes for use in entanglement swapping. This requires the photons to be spectrally pure to ensure good interference and have high heralding efficiency to know accurately the number of photons involved and to maintain high rates as the number of photons grows. Spectral filtering is often used to remove noise and define spectral properties. For heralded single photons high purity and heralding efficiency are possible by filtering the heralding arm, but when both photons in typical pair sources are filtered, we show that the heralding efficiency of one or both of the photons is strongly reduced even by ideal spectral filters with 100% transmission in the passband: any improvement in reduced-state spectral purity from filtering comes at the cost of lowered heralding efficiency. We consider the fidelity to a pure, lossless single photon, symmetrize it to include both photons of the pair, and show this quantity is intrinsically limited for sources with spectral correlation. We then provide a framework for this effect for benchmarking common photon-pair sources and present an experiment where we vary the photon filter bandwidths and measure the increase in purity and corresponding reduction in heralding efficiency.


Rapid increase in volume and types of solid and hazardous waste due to continuous economic growth, urbanization and industrialization, is becoming a burgeoning problem for national and local governments to ensure effective and sustainable management of waste. It is estimated that in 2006 the total amount of municipal solid waste generated globally reached 2.02 billion tones, representing a 7% annual increase since 2003 (Global Waste Management Market Report 2007). The segregation, handling, transport, and disposal of waste needs to be properly managed to minimize the risk to the health and safety of patients, the public, and the environment. The economic value of waste is best realized when it is segregated. Currently, there is no such system of segregation of dry, wet and metallic wastes at the household level. This paper proposes an Automated Waste Segregator (AWS) which is a cheap, easy to use solution for a segregation system for household use, so that it can be sent directly for processing. It is designed to sort the refuse into metallic waste, wet waste and dry waste. The AWS employs parallel resonant impedance sensing mechanism to identify metallic items, and capacitive sensors to distinguish between wet and dry waste. Experimental results show that the segregation of waste into metallic, wet and dry waste has been successfully implemented


Programmable logic is becoming usual in Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) emulation due to its acceleration capabilities. HIL technique is specifically useful for verifying power electronics. But even using programmable logic, if integration steps below 100 ns are required and floating-point is the chosen representation, it has not been possible to reach real time simulations. With the release of devices with HFP (Hardened Floating-Point) cores -dedicated floating-point blocks implemented in silicon-, the minimum achievable simulation step decreases significantly. This work shows an implementation of a full-bridge converter model using HFP cores. Results show that the HFP-based model achieve a simulation step around 10 ns in this case. However, when decreasing the integration step, numerical resolution can become an issue. Thus, designers face a trade-off before selecting 32-bit floating-point representation for a model: better integration steps vs. accuracy limits. In this way, resolution and accuracy are also studied.


OBJECTIVES To investigate outcome, management, and prevention in Munchausen syndrome by proxy, non-accidental poisoning, and non-accidental suffocation. DESIGN Ascertainment through British Paediatric Surveillance Unit and questionnaires to responding paediatricians. SETTING The UK and Republic of Ireland, September 1992 to August 1994. SUBJECTS Children under 14 years diagnosed with the above. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Placement and child protection measures for victims and siblings; morbidity and reabuse rates for victims; abuse of siblings; prosecution of perpetrators. RESULTS Outcome data for 119 with median follow up of 24 months (range 12 to 44 months). No previously diagnosed factitious disease was found to have been caused by genuine disease. Forty six children were allowed home without conditions at follow up. Children who had suffered from suffocation, non-accidental poisoning, direct harm, and those under 5 years were less likely to go home.  Twenty seven (24%) children still had symptoms or signs as a result of the abuse at follow up; 108/120 were originally on a child protection register and 35/111 at follow up. Twenty nine per cent (34/118) of the perpetrators had been prosecuted and most convicted; 17% of the milder cases of Munchausen syndrome by proxy allowed home were reabused. Evidence in siblings suggests that in 50% of families with a suffocated child and 40% with non-accidental poisoning there would be further abuse, some fatal. CONCLUSIONS This type of abuse is severe with high mortality, morbidity, family disruption, reabuse, and harm to siblings. A very cautious approach for child protection with reintroduction to home only if circumstances are especially favourable is advised. Paediatric follow up by an expert in child protection should also occur. Key messages None of the cases originally reported as Munchausen syndrome by proxy were found to have had genuine illness Evidence from abuse in siblings suggests that in half the families with a child with suffocation there would be further abuse, some fatal Evidence from abuse in siblings suggests that in 40% of the families with a child with non-accidental poisoning there would be further abuse, some fatal Even in the cases of Munchausen syndrome by proxy without physical harm allowed home, 17% were reabused in a two year follow up period Cases involving direct harm (including suffocation or poisoning) and younger victims were less likely to have been rehabilitated with their families A quarter of all victims had ongoing morbidity as a result of their abuse Follow up of victims and their families by a paediatrician is essential


Walking reveals how urban infrastructure lends identity to the urban landscape. This article focuses on the oldest water pipeline in the city of Bengaluru, India. A series of vignettes trace the linear trajectory of the walk both in terms of the spatial orientation of the pipeline, and its trajectory through time. Through space, the pipeline connects the centre of the city with its suburbs, tracking differential and sometimes invisible patterns of urbanization that follow the city's sprawl. Through time, the pipeline connects water narratives, from nostalgic notions of precolonial management to the contemporary construction of scarcity. The use of walking as a methodological tool draws attention to the subsumed and often invisible experiences of inequity in various parts of the city. The pipeline is a maker of urban stories alongside routine practices and larger strategic projects of urban development. While the pipeline enables the provision of water, the neighbourhoods it passes through are sometimes excluded from the service it provides. Strategic projects have attempted to control water resources following different ways of imagining the city. Still, such urban imaginations coexist with a more extensive set of everyday practices that engage with the pipeline in the urban landscape. cross-continental senses of place; shaped cities, parks; generated maps, guidebooks, gear, and, further afield, a vast library of walking stories and poems, of pilgrimages, mountaineering expeditions, meanders, and summer picnics. The landscapes, urban and rural, gestate the stories, and the stories bring us back to the sites of this history.'


To determine seropositivity for human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I), we attempted to improve the detection system that uses antibody to HTLV-I Env in Western immunoblotting (WB) by adding an envelope glycoprotein (gp46) purified from the culture fluid of HTLV-I-producing cells by immunoaffinity chromatography and gel chromatography. In this WB, 177 of 179 serum samples showing seropositivity in an indirect immunofluorescence assay showed positive reactions to the gp46 envelope antigen as well as to p19, p24, and p53 Gag antigens. The remaining two samples showed negative reactions to p24. False-positive results were not found for 533 indirect immunofluorescence assay-negative serum samples, although one band to p19 or p24 was observed in 46 of the 533 samples. These 46 samples did not react to p53 and gp46, suggesting that these samples belonged to the indeterminate group in accordance with the criteria proposed by the World Health Organization. Therefore, this improved WB can be used for the confirmation of seropositivity.


We present a syntax-infused variational autoencoder (SIVAE), that integrates sentences with their syntactic trees to improve the grammar of generated sentences. Distinct from existing VAE-based text generative models, SIVAE contains two separate latent spaces, for sentences and syntactic trees. The evidence lower bound objective is redesigned correspondingly, by optimizing a joint distribution that accommodates two encoders and two decoders. SIVAE works with long short-term memory architectures to simultaneously generate sentences and syntactic trees. Two versions of SIVAE are proposed: one captures the dependencies between the latent variables through a conditional prior network, and the other treats the latent variables independently such that syntactically-controlled sentence generation can be performed. Experimental results demonstrate the generative superiority of SIVAE on both reconstruction and targeted syntactic evaluations. Finally, we show that the proposed models can be used for unsupervised paraphrasing given different syntactic tree templates.


Gaze following and the ability to understand that another individual sees something different from oneself are considered important components of human and animal social cognition. In animals, gaze following has been documented in various species, however, the underlying cognitive mechanisms and the evolution of this skill remain to be investigated. Therefore, in this thesis I addressed the cognitive mechanisms in a non-human primate and moreover I extended the range of investigated species to one that is phylogenetically more remote from humans, namely fish, in order to study the evolutionary history of this capacity. First, I demonstrated that long-tailed macaques follow the looking direction of a human experimenter. Subjects also 'check-looked', i.e. looked back and forth between the experimenter's face and their gaze direction, which has been proposed to indicate that a subject understands that another individual is looking at a specific stimulus. Moreover, I found that gaze-shifts accompanied by a socially meaningful facial expression (mimicking a social event) elicited stronger gaze-following responses than neutral gaze-shifts. This modulation of gaze following may be due to a specific arousal- or attention-based mechanism or may be based on the subject understanding that the demonstrator is attending to something the subject cannot see. To further address these possibilities I investigated whether monkeys follow a conspecific's gaze to a hidden location which would indicate a capacity to extrapolate the other's line of sight to locations outside the field of vision. When a conspecific demonstrator gazed at a mirror hidden behind a barrier, subjects relocated to a position where they could see the mirror location and directed significantly more focussed looks behind the barrier than in a situation where there was no conspicuous gaze cue by the demonstrator. Taken together, these studies suggest that monkeys' gaze following behaviour is a more flexible and accurate ability than has previously been shown. This capacity may thus be based on an appreciation of the fact that another's gaze and attention can be directed at something specific. These results resemble findings in chimpanzees that have been associated with the ability to attribute perceptual states to others, which may be generically labelled 'Theory of Mind'. Addressing the evolution of this ability, I extended the study of gaze following and a related capacity, visual perspective taking, to guppy fish. Research on social cognition has tended to focus on a restricted range of species, principally primates and, more recently, birds and some domesticated animals. However, remarkable similarities on a behavioural level have been documented for non-human primates and fish, behaviours that in primates have been used to assess advanced cognitive capacities. I found some evidence that guppies responded to the body orientation of others (potentially equivalent to gaze direction), but guppies failed to pass a visual perspective taking task. Further studies are required to confirm the present results and to address potential underlying mechanisms in this species. Altogether, this thesis is an example how evolutionary and mechanistic approaches to behaviour can be integrated and can shed new light on non-human animals' cognitive capacities.


Abstract Pancreatic cancer still has one of the worst prognoses of all solid malignancies, despite developments in cancer knowledge and care. Research into pancreatic cancer has not fully translated into clinical improvements and as a result, fewer than 1% of patients survive 10 years post-diagnosis. This bleak outlook for patients could be improved by earlier diagnosis. The human erythrocyte phosphatidylinositol glycan class A (PIG-A) assay monitors the mutation status of the X-linked PIG-A gene by measuring glycosyl phosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored proteins on the extracellular surface. We have previously identified an elevated PIG-A mutant frequency in oesophageal adenocarcinoma patients and here investigate whether this could be seen in a pancreatic cancer cohort, given the urgent need for novel pancreatic cancer biomarkers. In our pilot study, an elevated PIG-A mutant frequency (5.775 × 10−6 (95% CI 4.777–10) mutants per million) was seen in pancreatic cancer patients (n = 30) when compared to the non-cancer control group (n = 14) who had an erythrocyte mutant frequency of 4.211 × 10−6 (95% CI 1.39–5.16) mutants per million (p = 0.0052). A cut-off value of 4.7 mutants per million provided an AUROC of 0.7595 with a sensitivity of 70% and specificity of 78.57%. A secondary measure of DNA damage in an alternative blood cell population also showed an increase in peripheral lymphocytes using the cytokinesis-block micronucleus assay (p = 0.0164) (AUROC = 0.77, sensitivity = 72.22%, specificity = 72.73%). The micronucleus frequency and PIG-A status show some potential as blood-based biomarkers of pancreatic cancer, but further investigations of these DNA damage tests are required to assess their utility in pancreatic cancer diagnosis.


The International Campaign to Ban Landmines production and use estimates that there are more than 80 billion landmines in the ground in more than 80 countries. Despite the scale of the problem and large investments by OECD countries to clear mines in low income countries, the economic consequences of landmine contamination have been so far unexamined by economists working on the economics of wars, perhaps due to the lack of data thus far. Using unique data from Cambodia, this paper estimates the effect of landmine contamination on human capital. These effects are identified using difference-in-differences (DD) and instrumental variables (IV) estimators. In the DD framework I exploit two sources of variation in an individual's exposure to the conflict: her age in 1970 due to the spread of landmines over time and landmine contamination intensity in her district of birth. The IV specification uses the distance to the Thai border as an exogenous source of variation in landmine contamination intensity. The IV estimate indicates a education loss of 0.4 years at the mean and no visible effect on earnings. I discuss three factors that probably drive down the returns to education in post-war Cambodia: (1) The downgrading of educated people during the Khmer rouge regime (2) Direct Effects of landmines on the returns to education (3) the destruction of physical capital and technological delay through capital-skill complementarity.


The Stata package ebalance implements entropy balancing, a multivariate reweighting method described in Hainmueller (2012) that allows users to reweight a dataset such that the covariate distributions in the reweighted data satisfy a set of specified moment conditions. This can be useful to create balanced samples in observational studies with a binary treatment where the control group data can be reweighted to match the covariate moments in the treatment group. Entropy balancing can also be used to reweight a survey sample to known characteristics from a target population.


As we all know, different people hold different views about politeness. To be polite, Leech thinks you should follow "Politeness Principle" while Levinson suggests paying attention to others' "Face Wants" Sometimes what the Chinese people considered to be polite may not be true according to western culture. In order to adequately provide an educated answer to this heartfelt question, this paper attempts to shed light on some of the important differences on politeness between Chinese and western culture.


Examination of the rat corpus luteum (CL) provided quantitative data supporting adaptation of the developing vasculature to maximise efficient acceptance of steroids secreted from the luteal cells. Numbers of endothelial cells (ECs) significantly increased during the initial formation of the CL, followed by a further significant proliferation from day 10 to day 16 when there was maximal growth of the CL. As a consequence, there was significant growth of the vascular compartment during this time interval. The final phase of expanding endothelium (days 10 to 16) was a result of increased ECs volume with elongation of the EC in the direction of growth. Continued increase in capillary surface area and a corresponding marked reduction in diffusion distance between LC and ECs evidenced adaptation of the developing microvasculature to enable efficient endocrine function by day 16, when steroid secretion is maximal. Furthermore, from day 1 to day 3 there was close apposition of pericytes to the endothelium, suggesting the important role of pericytes in the initiation of angiogenesis. However, this degree of association was reduced from day 10 to day 16 and was a consequence of expansion of the EC cytoplasm to provide a greater surface area for transport of steroids.


This paper presents a technique to select subsets of the test cases, reducing the time consumed during the evaluation of a new software version and maintaining the ability to detect defects introduced. Our technique is based on a model to classify test case suites by using an ART-2A self-organizing neural network architecture. Each test case is summarized in a feature vector, which contains all the relevant information about the software behavior. The neural network classifies feature vectors into clusters, which are labeled according to software behavior. The source code of a new software version is analyzed to determine the most adequate clusters from which the test case subset will be selected. Experiments compared feature vectors obtained from all-uses code coverage information to a random selection approach. Results confirm the new technique has improved the precision and recall metrics adopted


OBJECTIVE
To determine the relation between early bacteriologic eradication and clinical outcome of acute otitis media (AOM) in infants and young children treated with various antibiotics.

STUDY DESIGN
The study group consisted of patients ages 3 to 24 months seen at the Pediatric Emergency Room with: (1) symptoms and physical findings consistent with AOM of < or = 7 days duration; (2) no spontaneous perforation or tympanostomy tubes; (3) positive initial middle ear fluid culture; and (4) a follow-up to at least Day 10+/-2 of the study with a second culture performed 72 to 96 h after initiation of antibiotic treatment. Any patient with a positive middle ear fluid culture 72 to 96 h after initiation of antibiotic treatment was considered to have bacteriologic failure. Otologic evaluation was done by an otolaryngologist unaware of the culture results and of the study drug allocation. A clinical score based on body temperature, report of irritability and ear tugging observed by the parents and the appearance and redness of the ear drum as observed by the otolaryngologist was also used for clinical evaluation.

RESULTS
The study group consisted of 123 patients, of whom 57 (46%) had positive middle ear fluid 72 to 96 h after initiation of antibiotic treatment. Clinical failure was observed in 21 of 57 (37%) patients in whom bacteriologic eradication did not occur vs. only 2 of 66 (3%) patients with bacteriologic eradication after 3 to 4 days of treatment (P < 0.001). Clinical score for both moderate and severe disease decreased significantly faster in those with bacteriologic eradication than in those in whom middle ear fluid was still culture-positive 72 to 96 h after initiation of treatment.

CONCLUSION
Clinical failures in our population were associated with inability to eradicate the causative organisms of AOM from the middle ear fluid within 3 to 4 days after initiation of antibiotic therapy. Most patients (including those without bacteriologic eradication) improved after 3 to 4 days of treatment, but patients with sterile middle ear fluid felt better after 3 to 4 days of treatment than patients in whom middle ear fluid was still culture-positive.


Antidepressant drugs such as serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and tricyclic depressants should be prescribed as the first treatment only in cases of severe depression, says new guidance from the Dutch College of General Practitioners.

It recommends that drug treatment should not be "the first step" for patients exhibiting only "depressive symptoms," a new category distinct from depression—a move that professional associations believe could substantially reduce the Netherlands' one million users of antidepressants.

The revised "evidence based professional guidance" recommends that antidepressant treatment should be prescribed from the outset only if the patient's depression "is accompanied by severe suffering or social dysfunctioning …


Chronic tonsillitis has been attracted attention as a source of abnormal immune responses and a possible trigger of autoimmune diseases such as IgA nephritis, IgA vasculitis, palmoplantar pustulosis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, Behçet's disease, and myositis. Here we present the first report of anti–signal recognition particle antibody–associated necrotizing myopathy (anti-SRP myopathy) with IgA nephropathy and chronic tonsillitis in which the therapeutic response to intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) treatment was dramatically improved after tonsillectomy and accompanied by a rapid increase in ΔIgG, defined as the change in serum IgG levels 2 weeks after the start of IVIG treatment relative to pre-treatment levels. Moreover, serum anti-SRP antibody titers became undetectable after tonsillectomy even though the resected tonsils did not produce anti-SRP antibodies. Tonsillectomy should be considered when chronic tonsillitis is observed in patients with autoimmune diseases showing poor response to treatment, including anti-SRP myopathy.


In this paper, absorbing Markov chain models are developed to determine the optimum process mean levels for both a single-stage and a serial two-stage production system in which items are inspected for conformity with their specification limits. When the value of the quality characteristic of an item falls below a lower limit, the item is scrapped. If it falls above an upper limit, the item is reworked.Otherwise, the item passes the inspection. This flow of material through the production system can be modeled in an absorbing Markov chain characterizing the uncertainty due to scrapping and reworking. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the application of the proposed model.


The explosive recent growth in Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) deployment has generated considerable interest among network designers. Previous design approaches have mostly focused on coverage based optimization or the application of trial and error strategies. These only ensure that adequate signal strength is maintained in the intended service area. WLAN service environments, however, require a network designed to provide not only radio coverage but also adequate capacity (data rate) across the service area so that it can carry traffic load from a large number of users with certain Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Thus, current design techniques are insufficient to provide data communication services to WLAN users.
In this dissertation, a novel approach to the WLAN design problem is proposed that takes into account user population density in the service area, traffic demand characteristics and the structure of the service area. The resulting demand-based WLAN design results in a network that provides adequate radio signal coverage and the required data rate capacity to serve expected user traffic demand in the service region. The demand-based WLAN design model is formulated as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP). An efficient heuristic solution technique is developed to solve the CSP network design problem in reasonable computational time. The solution provides the number of access points required and the parameters of each access point, including location, frequency channel, and power level.
Extensive numerical studies have been reported for various service scenarios ranging from a single floor with small and large service areas to a multiple floor design to a design that includes outside areas. The results of these studies illustrate that the demand-based WLAN design approach is more appropriate for the design of the WLAN systems than are existing coverage based design approaches. Additionally, extensive sensitivity analysis was conducted to study the effects of user activity level (traffic load), shadow fading, and the use of different path loss models in network design.


We study a QED extension that is unitary, CPT invariant, and super-renormalizable, but violates Lorentz symmetry at high energies, and contains higher-dimension operators (LVQED). Divergent diagrams are only one- and two-loop. We compute the one-loop renormalizations at high and low energies and analyze the relation between them. It emerges that the powerlike divergences of the low-energy theory are multiplied by arbitrary constants, inherited by the high-energy theory, and therefore can be set to zero at no cost, bypassing the hierarchy problem.


Degenerative diseases of the spine are one of the main social problems having important economical aspect since this pathology is mostly peculiar to people of young and middle age making the major part of able-bodied citizens. Diagnostics of lumbar vertebras displacement is one of the less studied problems of radiology. Instability - displacement of vertebras as one of the forms of dysfunction of motor segment becomes a cause of pain syndrome and following neurological disturbances.


Evaluation of Bayesian deep learning (BDL) methods is challenging. We often seek to evaluate the methods' robustness and scalability, assessing whether new tools give `better' uncertainty estimates than old ones. These evaluations are paramount for practitioners when choosing BDL tools on-top of which they build their applications. Current popular evaluations of BDL methods, such as the UCI experiments, are lacking: Methods that excel with these experiments often fail when used in application such as medical or automotive, suggesting a pertinent need for new benchmarks in the field. We propose a new BDL benchmark with a diverse set of tasks, inspired by a real-world medical imaging application on \emph{diabetic retinopathy diagnosis}. Visual inputs (512x512 RGB images of retinas) are considered, where model uncertainty is used for medical pre-screening---i.e. to refer patients to an expert when model diagnosis is uncertain. Methods are then ranked according to metrics derived from expert-domain to reflect real-world use of model uncertainty in automated diagnosis. We develop multiple tasks that fall under this application, including out-of-distribution detection and robustness to distribution shift. We then perform a systematic comparison of well-tuned BDL techniques on the various tasks. From our comparison we conclude that some current techniques which solve benchmarks such as UCI `overfit' their uncertainty to the dataset---when evaluated on our benchmark these underperform in comparison to simpler baselines. The code for the benchmark, its baselines, and a simple API for evaluating new BDL tools are made available at this https URL.


The hemoglobins from a lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris) were analysed and the complete primary structure is described. The globin chains were separated on CM cellulose column in 8M urea and the amino-acid sequences were determined in the liquid phase sequenator. The results show that globin consists of two alpha chains (alpha I and alpha II) and beta major and beta minor components. The alpha chains differ only at one position: alpha I contains aspartic acid and alpha II glycine. The beta chains are heterogeneous: aspartic and glutamic acid were found at position beta 21 and beta 73 of the beta major components and asparagine and serine at position beta 139. In the beta minor components four positions were found with more than one amino acid, namely beta 2, beta 4, beta 6 and beta 56. The sequences are compared with those of man, horse and rhinoceros. Four residues of horse methemoglobin, which are involved in the alpha 1 beta 1 contacts are substituted in tapir hemoglobins. In the alpha chains: alpha 107(G14)Ser----Val, alpha 111-(G18) Val----Leu, alpha 115(GH3) Asn----Asp or Gly; in the beta chains: beta 116(G18) Arg----Gln. The amino acid at beta 2 of the major components is glutamic acid while glutamine and histidine are found in the minor components. Although glutamic acid, a binding site for ATP, does not interact with 2,3-bisphosphoglycerate, glutamine and histidine in the minor components are responsible for the slight effect of 2,3-bisphosphoglycerate on tapir hemoglobin.


The acute gastroenteritis is a population health problem, frequently met everywhere in the world. In Romania, for certain etiologies the reporting is compulsory. Also, these infections are reported in the TESSy system, too (The European Surveillance System). In this context, antibiotics therapy and antibiotics resistance have a particular importance. The study aim was to assess the prevalence of bacterial pathogens involved in the etiology of acute gastroenteritis (AGE) on the Iaşi County, Romania and the surrounding areas and the determination of the profile of resistance to the antibiotics for the identified agents. Material and methods: 72 strains of isolated and identified bacterial agents involved in the acute gastroenteritis (AGE) in the case of children (0-14 years), with the exception of the Campylobacter spp., in the municipality of Iasi and its surrounding areas were studied in 2012, during the surveillance period of AGE (May to October). Results: The most frequent has been the Salmonella spp. (63.9%) from which the S. enterica Thyphimurium in 21 cases (29.2%) and S. enteritidis in 7 cases (9.7%), followed by E. coli (20.8%) from which E. coli O:127 in 3 cases (4.2%), Shigella sonnei S (13.9%) and Yersinia enterocolitica (1.4%). In the case of the children from the group of 0-1 year, the Salmonella enterica Thyphimurium has been the pathogenic agent most frequently encountered (6 cases – 29.2%), followed by Salmonella Colindale, S. enteritidis, Shigella sonnei S, E. coli O:127 registered with a frequency of 5.6%. The antibiotic resistance rates are high in the case of ampicillin (43.1%), tetracycline (31.9%), amoxicillin – clavulanic acid (26.4%), trimethoprim/ sulfametoxazole (22.2%), sulfonamides (11.1%). Conclusions: The antibiotic resistance rates are high in the case of ampicillin, tetracycline, amoxicillin – clavulanic acid, trimethoprim/ sulfametoxazole, sulfonamides.


The article presents the first hitherto known written monument of the Kursenieku language from the Curonian Spit. In the XV–XVII c. Curonian descendants moved to the Curonian Spit and the mainland seacoast from Courland and brought their own dialect, which eventually became a separate language of the ethnic minority in Prussia. It was the language of the local fishermen and has never been official or acquire a written form. However, there have been attempts to record it by using scripts of other languages. One of such attempts – in the so-called Pallas dictionary. The dictionary Linguarum totius orbis vocabularia comparative augustissimae cura collecta has been published by the order of Catherine II in the end of the XVIII c. and was first reviewed under the guidance of an academician Peter Simon Pallas. The Kursenieku language was also included among the 200 represented European and Asian languages: there have been 286 Russian words that were translated and transcribed in Cyrillic into the following language. The first edition of the dictionary appeared in two parts in 1787, 1789 and the following is considered to be the date of the first written monument of the Kursenieku language. Nevertheless, there is more value for linguistics in the manuscript with Latin characters, which is stored in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Even though it is already known to scholars from Daina Zemzare and other publications, it has never been published as a source. Here the following source is presented in more details from the perspective of the development of the Kursenieku language itself. KEY WORDS: Pallas's dictionary, Kursenieku language, manuscript, first written monument. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/rh.v21i0.1521


The recent crisis has revealed the potentially dramatic consequences of allowing the build-up of an overstretched leverage of the financial system, and prompted proposals by bank supervisors to significantly tighten bank capital requirements as part of the new Basel 3 regulations. Although these proposals have been fiercely debated ever since, the empirical question of the macroeconomic consequences of shocks to banks'leverage, be they policy induced or not, remains still largely unsettled. In this paper, we aim to overcome some longstanding identification issues hampering such assessments and propose a new approach based on a data-rich environment at both the micro (bank) level and the macro level, using a combination of bank panel regressions and macroeconomic factor models. We first identify bank leverage shocks at the micro level and aggregate them to an economy-wide measure. We then compute impulse responses of a large array of macroeconomic indicators to our aggregate bank leverage shock, using the new methodology developed by Ng and Stevanovic (2012). We find significant and robust evidence of a contractionary impact of an unexpected shock reducing the leverage of large banks. JEL Classification: C23, C38, E32, E51, G21, G32


We consider the task of knowledge graph link prediction. Given a question consisting of a source entity and a relation (e.g., Shakespeare and BornIn), the objective is to predict the most likely answer entity (e.g., England). Recent approaches tackle this problem by learning entity and relation embeddings. However, they often constrain the relationship between these embeddings to be additive (i.e., the embeddings are concatenated and then processed by a sequence of linear functions and element-wise non-linearities). We show that this type of interaction significantly limits representational power. For example, such models cannot handle cases where a different projection of the source entity is used for each relation. We propose to use contextual parameter generation to address this limitation. More specifically, we treat relations as the context in which source entities are processed to produce predictions, by using relation embeddings to generate the parameters of a model operating over source entity embeddings. This allows models to represent more complex interactions between entities and relations. We apply our method on two existing link prediction methods, including the current state-of-the-art, resulting in significant performance gains and establishing a new state-of-the-art for this task. These gains are achieved while also reducing convergence time by up to 28 times.


particularly in the treatment of the biological sciences, but the work as a whole is sound and one to be recommended to undergraduates and the better sixth-formers.


The paper examines the impact of informal sector activities on economic growth in Nigeria between 1980-2014. The contributions of informal sector activities to the growth of Nigerian economy cannot be over emphasized. It is the source of livelihood to the majority of poor, unskilled, socially marginalized and female population and is the vital means of survival for the people in the country lacking proper safety nets and unemployment insurance especially those lacking skills from formal sector jobs. The relationship between informality and economic growth is not clear because the sector is not regulated by the law also there is no concrete evidence that this sector enhances growth because the sector's contributions to growth is not measured. The use of endogenous growth model becomes relevant in this study. The theory emphasizes the role of production on the long-run via a higher rate of technological innovation. The variables that were tested are official economy nominal GDP, informal economy nominal GDP, currency in circulation, demand deposit, ratio of currency in circulation to demand deposit, narrow money, informal economy as percentage of official economy. ADF test was conducted to establish that the data series of all variables are stationary t levels. Having established the stationarity test we also, conducted causality test of the response of official economy nominal GDP to informal economy nominal GDP. In conclusion, the impact of informal sector economy on economic growth in Nigeria is quiet commendable. Even though, the relationship between informality and economic growth is not straight. The paper recommended thus, the need for the government to integrate the activities of the informal economy into formal sector and size of the sector is measured and regulated because their roles are commendable. As it will improve tax collection and enhance fiscal policy.


We examined the possibility of chemical evolution in superheated hydrothermal environments and found the formation of microspheres at 250 degrees C and above from a mixture of glycine, alanine, valine, and aspartic acid. The microspheres did not form at lower temperatures and consisted of silicates and peptide-like polymers that contained imide bonds and amino acid residues having an abundance of valine. The results show the possibility of thermophilic cellular structures, which might be adopted by the extremely thermophilic organisms, if they exist, reported by Baross and Deming.


A key issue for the use of control charts in a manufacturing process is the selection of their design parameters. At the moment of chart design, it is important to consider the inspection resources available at the workstation and the process operating parameters, which can strongly constrain the search for optimal chart design parameters. In this paper, the constrained economic-statistical designs of EWMA and Shewhart charts monitoring the sample mean are compared: the SPC inspection activities are locally self-managed by a worker demanded also to perform the manufacturing activities at the workstation. The shift to the out-of-control condition for the monitored quality characteristic is assumed as a random variable. A benchmark of 64 process scenarios has been generated to investigate the influence of several process operating parameters and workstation configuration. Finally, the accuracy of the expected inspection cost estimation has been computed for several distributions fitting the random shift behaviour.


OBJECTIVE
To identify and summarize rigorous evaluations of psychosocial and educational interventions aimed at the primary prevention of alcohol misuse by young people aged up to 25 years, especially over the longer term (>3 years).

METHODS
Cochrane Collaboration Systematic Review.

DATA SOURCES
A comprehensive search of 22 databases and recursive checking of bibliographies for randomized and non-randomized controlled trials and interrupted time-series studies.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Objective or self-report measures of alcohol use and misuse.

RESULTS
Fifty-six studies were selected for inclusion in the systematic review. Twenty of the 56 studies showed evidence of ineffectiveness. No firm conclusions about the effectiveness of prevention interventions in the short- and medium term were possible. Over the longer term (>3 years), the Strengthening Families Programme (SFP) showed promise as an effective prevention intervention. The Number Needed to Treat (NNT) for the SFP over 4 years for three alcohol initiation behaviours (alcohol use, alcohol use without permission and first drunkenness) was 9 (for all three behaviours). One study also highlighted the potential value of culturally focused skills training over the longer-term (NNT = 17 over 3.5 years for 4+ drinks in the last week)

CONCLUSIONS
(1) Research into important outcome variables needs to be undertaken; (2) the methodology of evaluations needs to be improved; (3) the SFP needs to be evaluated on a larger scale and in different settings; (4) culturally focused interventions require further development and rigorous evaluation; and (5) an international register of alcohol and drug misuse prevention interventions should be established and criteria agreed for rating prevention interventions in terms of safety, efficacy and effectiveness.


National project "Fight against oncological diseases 2019 - 2024" implemented for the fourth year. During this time, experience has been gained in planning the volume of medical care, including diagnostic tests, and financial support in the system of compulsory medical insurance, but there is no systematic analysis of planning problems. The purpose of this study was to study the planning by the subjects of the volume of medical care and their implementation of the target indicators of the territorial programs of state guarantees of free medical care (TPGG) and to identify planning problems. We analyzed the territorial programs of state guarantees of some subjects of the Russian Federation. Also, from the territorial CHI Funds (TFOMS) we received information on the performance of TPSG indicators: the volume of care in round-the-clock and day hospitals, planned and actually performed molecular genetic studies and cases of positron emission tomography combined with computed tomography in 2021 and the first half of 2022 of the year. We found significant problems, some of which have causes at the federal level, others are purely regional in nature, which lead to significant differences in planning the volume of medical care between the subjects of the Russian Federation. Conclusion. Planning the volume of medical care in the field of "Oncology" varies significantly between the subjects of the Russian Federation and has systemic difficulties, control over the effective use of funds is insufficient. We consider it necessary when planning medical care for the oncology profile in the Program of State Guarantees of Free Medical Care to take into account the standardized incidence rate per 100,000 population, and not the number of insured persons in the subject.


This paper presents a study on the relationship between feedrate and fatigue life of Al7075-T6 specimens before and after shotpeening. For this purpose, six groups of specimens, each of which consists of eight specimens, were first machined at six different feedrates (0.05, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20, 0.25, 0.30 mm/rev). Half of eight specimens in each group were then peened and the others remained un-peened. Next, the fatigue life was measured by using 4-point rotary bending machine. One observation was that the fast the feedrate was, the large the mean diameter of a specimen was. To apply the same bending stresses in all cases, different loading conditions were thus recalculated and applied to specimens based on their mean diameters. Finally, the effect of feedrate on the fatigue life was estimated by comparing twelve sets of specimens (six groups times two sets, peened and un-peened).


A basic bacteriology course was offered in two successive academic years, first in a conventional format and subsequently as a "hybrid" course. The latter combined (i) online presentation of content, (ii) an emphasis on online resources, (iii) thrice-weekly, face-to-face conversations to advance understanding, and (iv) frequent student postings on an electronic discussion board. We compared the two courses through statistical analysis of student performances on the final examinations and the course overall and student assessment of teaching. The data indicated that there was no statistical difference in performance on the final examinations or the course overall. Responses on an instrument of evaluation revealed that students less strongly affirmed the following measures in the hybrid course: (i) The amount of work was appropriate for the credit received, (ii) Interactions between students and instructor were positive, (iii) I learned a great deal in this course, and (iv) I would recommend this course to other students. We recommend clear direction about active learning tasks and relevant feedback to enhance learning in a hybrid course.


We develop a Boltzmann-Langevin description of Coulomb drag effect in clean double-layer systems with large interlayer separation $d$ as compared to the average interelectron distance $\lambda_F$. Coulomb drag arises from density fluctuations with spatial scales of order $d$. At low temperatures, their characteristic frequencies exceed the intralayer equilibration rate of the electron liquid, and Coulomb drag may be treated in the collisionless approximation. As temperature is raised, the electron mean free path becomes short due to electron-electron scattering. This leads to local equilibration of electron liquid, and consequently drag is determined by hydrodynamic density modes. Our theory applies to both the collisionless and the hydrodynamic regimes, and it enables us to describe the crossover between them. We find that drag resistivity exhibits a nonmonotonic temperature dependence with multiple crossovers at distinct energy scales. At the lowest temperatures, Coulomb drag is dominated by the particle-hole continuum, whereas at higher temperatures of the collision-dominated regime it is governed by the plasmon modes. We observe that fast intralayer equilibration mediated by electron-electron collisions ultimately renders a stronger drag effect.


Objective: This study was to investigate the relationship between recurrent oral ulcer and cow's milk allergy.
Data and Methods: The research collected 128 patients with recurrent oral ulcer that saw a doctor in the outpatient of our allergic reaction department from 2010 to 2015. All the patients joined this study with informed consents. The occurrence rate of the recurrent oral ulcer was calculated according to the detailed medical history and comprehensive laboratory test results, including serum specific IgE of food allergy, IgG test and oral food challenge test. Finally, a typical patient with recurrent oral ulcer was shown to strengthen the conclusion we got.
Results: 17 patients were directly related to food allergy and accounted for 13.3% of the total patients with RAU, with the ratio of male to female of 4.67:1. Among them, 6 were allergic to milk, with the ratio of male to female of 2:1. 1 was allergic to fish, 1 was allergic to soybean, and 2 were allergic to wheat. Among 17 patients, 2 showed ulcer symptoms on the day of treatment, 3 were in the early ulcer stage, 10 were in the ulcer stage, 2 were in the healing period.
Conclusion: Multiple food allergies can induce and aggravate recurrent oral ulcer. In addition, the patients in the ulcer stage have more ulcer symptoms than at early ulcer stage. We should make a detailed diagnosis and treatment from the perspective of food allergen in the treatment of recurrent oral ulcer.


In today's video delivery and broadcast networks, issues of copyright protection have become more urgent than in analog times, since the copying of digital video does not result in the decrease in quality that occurs when analog video is copied. One method of copyright protection is to embed a digital code, a"watermark", into the video sequence. The watermark can then unambiguously identify the copyright holder of the video sequence. Watermarks can also be used to identify the purchaser of a video sequence, which is called "fingerprinting". The objective of this master thesis was to implement a program that would insert watermarks into video sequences and also detect if a given video sequence contains a givenwatermark. The video standard I chose to use was the H.264 standard (also known as MPEG4 AVC) as it offers a significant efficiency improvement over the previous video compression standards. A couple of tests that can be considered representative for most image manipulations and attacks were performed. The program passed all tests, suggesting that the watermarking mechanism of this thesis can be expected to be rather robust, at least for the video sequence used. By looking at the watermarked video sequences and comparing them to the originals, or measuring the signal to noise ratio, one can also see that the watermarks are unobtrusive. The execution times were also measured. Compared to coding and decoding a H.264 video stream, the time it takes to insert and extract watermarks was much less. Calculating a threshold takes roughly double the time as decoding the sequence, though.