The success of the service-oriented computing (SOC) paradigm considerably depends on the ability of service consumers to distinguish between published services and choose the ones best suited for a development project. Current SOC standards primarily give information about technical service properties such as the programming interface and the binding information. This enables designers to analyze the technical compatibility of services with the rest of the system. On the basis of such technical information, it is difficult to assess which business semantics a service actually implements and whether it is suited to satisfy functional requirements, however. In this paper, we therefore propose the WS-Functionality language which allows providers to specify the business semantics of software services in business terms. In a design science approach, we firstly describe how conceptual models, which contain business terms and relationships between them, can be used to specify the business semantics of services. Building upon this solution concept, we present the language constructs of WS-Functionality and show a prototypic implementation as proof-of-concept. In a controlled experiment, we were able to support our claim that the information provided with WS-Functionality enhances the ability of service consumers to analyze the business semantics of services and judge whether it satisfies existing functional requirements.


Large amounts of carbon disulphide are consumed in the conventional production of viscose. Until a novel, eco-friendly, wood-based process for the production of cellulose textile fibres has been developed and implemented, it is important to try to find ways to improve the conventional viscose process, e.g. in terms of reducing the carbon disulphide requirement of the process. The aim of this thesis was to reduce the amount of carbon disulphide consumed in the preparation of high-viscosity viscose by pre-treating pulps with enzymes. It also aimed at investigating and linking the different measurements of reactivity, i.e. gamma number, Fock reactivity and Kw, and determining the sensitivity of the gamma number to the hemicellulose content of pulp. Reactivity was measured as Fock reactivity and gamma number. The gamma number of viscose solutions remained unchanged when an enzyme stage was used prior to the viscose process. The gamma number analysis was found to be selective not only to cellulose but also to the hemicellulosic material. It was verified that both cellulose and hemicellulose molecules in the pulp material were substituted in the viscose preparation stages, showing that the gamma number of the pulp is due to both substituted cellulose and substituted hemicelluloses. The mechanisms responsible for the Fock reactivity, or the filter-clogging value (Kw) on the one hand and the gamma number on the other, are probably not the same. It was speculated that the analysis method employed in Fock´s test and the filter-clogging value measure the results on a fibre level, whereas the gamma number measures changes mainly on a molecular level. This could explain the difference in the levels of reactivity found in this study.


In the present paper, the taxonomic classification of 134 lactobacilli isolates from vaginal samples of 200 women of Tucumán, Argentina, is reported. They were clustered in three metabolic groups of the genus Lactobacillus, most belonging to the obligately homofermentative group (56%), mainly represented by Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. delbrueckii and L. acidophilus. In the facultatively heterofermentative group (24%), the dominant species were L. paracasei subsp. paracasei and L. agilis, and in the obligately heterofermentative group (20%), L. brevis was the dominant species. All strains were studied for surface characteristics and adhesion-predicting properties. A correlation between the methods employed for hydrophobicity testing of the different isolates (Microbial Adhesion to Hydrocarbons and Salt Aggregation Test) is reported. Most strains were highly hydrophobic. Their hemagglutination capability with human erythrocytes was also tested, which was positive only for a few strains. Some isolates were self-aggregating. From our results, strains that shared the properties assayed were selected for further testing of some other desirable characteristics, such as antagonistic substance production, adhesion to biological substrates, and appropriate technological properties, to suggest the elaboration of a probiotic for the vaginal tract.


A method is described to express the effect of antimicrobial drugs on the growth in vitro of various Bacteroides species during the first few hours of exposure. Drugs studied were clindamycin, chloramphenicol, metronidazole, and tinidazole. The effect of the various drugs is expressed at different time points as the log ratio, this being the logarithm of the ratio of the number of colony forming units in the control growth and that in the presence of the drug. For any given concentration, the course of the log ratio in time can be fitted to the equation log ratio = i (t + e -t 1), where i is a concentration-dependent parameter. Concentration-effect curves on the basis of values of i show a different behavior of drugs with different modes of action. Those curves also show that the interpretation of the minimal inhibitory concentration after 24 h is different for different kinds of drugs. The clinical significance of infections by anaerobic microorganisms, whether present alone or in combination with aerobic bacteria, is now well recognized [4]. To assess the possible usefulness of antibacterial drugs in this kind of infection, in vitro testing is necessary. While the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) may be useful for initial screening, it does not give insight on the time-related effect of those drugs on the growth of bacteria [1]. It is doubtful whether the MIC of anti-anaerobic drugs gives sufficient information for clinical purposes. In previous studies we developed a mathematical approach to the short-term in vitro growth of aerobes that enabled us to express antibacterial activity in precise quantitative terms [3]. For antianaerobic drugs the short-term effects on growth may also be relevant considering their pharmacokinetics in vitro; therefore, the present study was undertaken to modify our technique for anaerobes. Materials and Methods Microorganisms. The strain of Bacteroides fragilis (no. 1) tested for four antibiotics was a clinical isolate obtained from the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid (RIV), Utrecht, The Netherlands. Six other Bacteroides strains were also clinical isolates, obtained either from the RIV or from patients in the University Hospital, Leiden. Media. The cultures were maintained in prereduced brain-heart infusion broth (BHI-OXOID) (Oxoid, Basingstoke, England), supplemented with lg MgSO4 9 7 H20, 0.5 g cysteine hydrochloride, 1 ml Tween 80, and 5 mg haemin/l. Resazurin (4 mg/l) was added as an indicator of anaerobic condition. Eugonagar (BBL Becton, Dickinson & Co., MD) plates supplemented with 12 mg/l haemin were used for the viable counts. Antibiotics. Clindamycin (Upjohn, Ede, The Netherlands), chloramphenicol (Gist Brocades, Delft, The Netherlands), metronidazole (Rh6ne-Poulenc, France), and tinidazole (Pfizer, Karlsruhe, FRG) were used. Standard stock solutions of 1000 rag/1 were prepared in sterile physiological saline and stored at 4~ for a maximum of one month. MIC determinations. The MICs for all four antibiotics were determined against Bacteroides fragilis (no. 1) with serial twofold dilutions of the antibiotics, by broth dilution as well as by agar dilution. The broth dilution method was performed in prereduced BHI under a 90% nitrogen/10% carbon dioxide flow (N2/CO2), with an inoculum of 50 /.d from an 18-h culture of Bacteroides fragilis in 10 ml, giving a final density of 106-107 colony forming units (CFU) per ml. The rubber-stoppered tubes were then incubated for 24 h at 37~ The agar dilution method was performed using Eugonagar plates supplemented with haemin. The inoculum was a drop of 5 ~1 of a 1:100 dilution of an 18-h culture containing 104-105 CFU * To whom reprint requests should be addressed. 192 CURRENT MICROBIOLOGY, VOI. 8 (1983)


Khalaf et al . (1) presented a sub-sequent analysis of a previously conducted phase II trial aimed to compare activity of abiraterone acetate + prednisone (AA + P) versus enzalutamide (E) in more than 200 patients with treatment-naive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (2). In this study, the authors found that AA + P and E showed similar activity in terms of time to prostate-specific antigen (PSA), clinical, or radiographic progression (2).


The authors report a field experiment with skateboarders that demonstrates that physical risk taking by young men increases in the presence of an attractive female. This increased risk taking leads to more successes but also more crash landings in front of a female observer. Mediational analyses suggest that this increase in risk taking is caused in part by elevated testosterone levels of men who performed in front of the attractive female. In addition, skateboarders' risk taking was predicted by their performance on a reversal-learning task, reversal-learning performance was disrupted by the presence of the attractive female, and the female's presence moderated the observed relationship between risk taking and reversal learning. These results suggest that men use physical risk taking as a sexual display strategy, and they provide suggestive evidence regarding possible hormonal and neural mechanisms.


Abstract : An effort was made to construct two structurally similar risk-taking tasks in order to evaluate inter-task consistency of individual differences. Only the mode of response differed between tasks. In one task, subjects chose their preferred bet within each of a number of pairs of bets. In the other, they set selling prices for these same bets. A measure of the subject's preference for 'long shot' gambles was obtained from each response. Reliable individual differences were found for each measure. However, the inter-measure correlation was relatively low considering the high degree of similarity between tasks. It is argued that the two response modes triggered different methods of processing information about probabilities and payoffs in a way that perturbed individual differences and reduced inter-task consistency. Information-processing considerations may be one important component of the situation specificity prevalent in risk-taking behavior. These results imply that high correlations are unlikely between risk-taking measures in structurally different settings or between risk-taking and other behaviors. (Author)


Calculating the log-determinant of a matrix is useful for statistical computations used in machine learning, such as generative learning which uses the log-determinant of the covariance matrix to calculate the log-likelihood of model mixtures. The log-determinant calculation becomes challenging as the number of variables becomes large. Therefore, finding a practical speedup for this computation can be useful. In this study, we present a parallel matrix condensation algorithm for calculating the log-determinant of a large matrix. We demonstrate that in a distributed environment, Parallel Matrix Condensation has several advantages over the well-known Parallel Gaussian Elimination. The advantages include high data distribution efficiency and less data communication operations. We test our Parallel Matrix Condensation against self-implemented Parallel Gaussian Elimination as well as ScaLAPACK (Scalable Linear Algebra Package) on 1000 x1000 to 8000x8000 for 1,2,4,8,16,32,64 and 128 processors. The results show that Matrix Condensation yields the best speed-up among all other tested algorithms. The code is available on this https URL


Stainless steels are corrosion‐resistant, but to take full advantage of their corrosion‐resistant properties, stainless steel piping and components must be properly specified, installed, and operated. The recommendations included in this article are intended to arm engineers and operators with a screening‐level tool for avoiding misapplication. To properly select the right grade of stainless steel for the various environmental conditions existing in different areas of the process, equipment, piping, and conveyance systems must be defined, including chlorides, pH, free chlorine in solution, bacteria, and temperature. Considering the environments that occur during idle, startup, normal operations, and shutdown conditions within treatment and conveyance facilities is also important. Once the stainless steel is specified and manufactured, proper care over its shipping, installation, and operation must be taken to protect the integrity of the materials to minimize corrosion.


In this paper, the transition discontinuities of flip chip circuits are modeled and investigated using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to predict the S-parameters of different packages. This includes transition between two coplanar lines on the chip and mother board and transition between two striplines in a package. The computed S-parameter of the flip chip package using the FDTD model are used to develop an equivalent circuit for the transition discontinuity over a wide frequency band. A general and accurate equivalent circuit model of the interconnect has been developed and presented. In this circuit model, a statistical analysis is used to compute the value of the circuit elements. Also, losses in the flip chip package are represented by a simple function versus frequency. These losses include substrate loss of the chip and the mother board due to excitation of surface wave and radiation loss due to the bump. Conductor and material substrate losses are not included in this circuit model. Good agreement has been obtained between the S-parameters of the FDTD model and the equivalent circuit model over a wide frequency band of up to 50 GHz. Furthermore, the effects of the bump dimensions on the equivalent circuit model has been also evaluated and presented. The results show important issues in the design of the flip chip interconnect. The bump dimensions can be used as impedance matching parameters to achieve minimum losses over a wide frequency band. The presented equivalent circuit model can be used in commercial circuit simulators to predict monolithic microwave/millimeter wave integrated circuit (MMIC) performance including the package.


This memo describes NTR-TSU submission for SIGTYP 2021 Shared Task on predicting language IDs from speech. Spoken Language Identification (LID) is an important step in a multilingual Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) system pipeline. For many low-resource and endangered languages, only single-speaker recordings may be available, demanding a need for domain and speaker-invariant language ID systems. In this memo, we show that a convolutional neural network with a Self-Attentive Pooling layer shows promising results for the language identification task.


Appropriate self-care practices, including nutrition and medication compliance, are essential to satisfactory control of diabetes mellitus (DM). This descriptive study assesses self-care practices, and their relationships to glycaemic control in adults with DM in Jamaica. A pre-tested structured interview and anthropometric measurements were carried out on 98 women and 35 men, randomly selected from a population (n = 510) of adult clinic patients. HbA1c was used as the index of glycaemic control. Self-care practice scores indicated the extent of compliance with appropriate lifestyle practices. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Men (median age, 62 years) were significantly older (z = -2.64, p = 0.008) than the women (55 years). The median duration of DM was: men, seven years; women: 10.5 years. Sixty-nine per cent were being treated with insulin. Only 45% reported full compliance with medications. Their median body mass index (BMI) was 29.1, (16.6-47.4) kg/m2. Eighty-one per cent were overweight or obese. Forty-six per cent described diet and/or obesity as contributing to their diabetes. Eighty-five per cent had consulted a dietitian but only 56.4% reported being on a "special diet". Only 16.5% reported not taking any sugar. Self-care scores were inversely related to HbA1c% (p = 0.008), BMI (p = 0.001), sugar intake (p = 0.005) and were lowest in the area of weight control and exercise. Only 23% had blood glucose controlled to HbA1c < or = 6.5%. In women, HbA1c% levels were inversely related to compliance with medication (p = 0.004). Glycaemic control in adults with diabetes mellitus is related to their self-care practices, especially weight control, exercise and medication compliance.


Water, the medium in which most cellular reactions take place, constitutes approximately 60% of the total weight in adults. This article discusses the complexities of shifts among the intravascular, interstitial, and intracellular compartments, and administration of hypotonic, isotonic, and hypertonic solutions.


Shaking table test on soil-structure interaction system in harder site condition is presented briefly in this paper. Three-dimensional finite element analysis on shaking table test is carried out using ANSYS program. The surface-to-surface contact element is taken into consideration for the nonlinearity of the state of the interface of the soil-pile and an equivalent linear model is used for soil behavior. By comparing the results of the finite element analysis with the data from shaking table tests, the computational model is validated. Based on the calculation results, the paper gives the seismic responses under the consideration of soil-structure interaction in harder site condition, including acceleration response, contact analysis on soil pile interface and so on.


Background & Aims: Drug prescribing by nurses is a historic movement for the nursing profession and an essential part of the solution that the leading countries health care system applied in order to improve access and reduce patients waiting time to receive medication. Despite the increasing attention of the world to discuss nurse prescribing, the review of the literature indicates that there is no evidence in nurse prescribing in Iran. This study aimed to assess nurse prescribing context in our country. Material & Methods: This study was designed as a descriptive qualitative study. The purposeful sampling method carried out through semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders of health care system, including policy makers, doctors and nurses. Data analysis was conducted using conventional content analysis and the coding of interviews was performed by MAXQDA software. To achieve the accuracy and reliability of the data, the Lincoln and Guba authenticity criteria were used. Results: Analysis of the recorded interviews of participants in this study resulted in 38 original codes, 5 sub categories and 5 main categories. The main extracted categories were "The theoretical context of nurse prescribing " with 2 sub categories, "Organizational context of nurse prescribing" with 3 sub categories, "Educational context of nurse prescribing", "Research context " and "The socio-cultural context of nurse prescribing,". Conclusion: The views and perspectives of nursing policy makers and health care system stakeholders indicated there are many challenges in organizational, educational, research and socio-cultural context of nurse prescribing that require the problem based designing in nurse prescribing field.


There is little high-quality evidence investigating the relationship between preoperative nutritional status and clinical outcomes in children. Children with congenital heart disease are reported to be at increased nutritional risk. As healthcare associated infection, specifically surgical site infection (SSI), is a common postoperative complication, nutritional status prior to surgery may be one of few modifiable risk factors open to intervention in this patient group.
In this thesis, three interlinked studies explored links between nutritional status, with an emphasis on undernutrition, and postoperative infection-related complications in children after cardiac surgery. Firstly, existing evidence of this relationship following surgery in children < 18 years was systematically reviewed: 12 low-quality studies suggested a tentative association between undernutrition and postoperative infection-related complications, but lack of evidence on SSI.
A retrospective cohort study of 666 children undergoing cardiac surgery then explored whether undernutrition at time of surgery (weight-for-age z-scores (WAZ) less than two standard deviations below mean) was an independent risk factor for SSI. No relationship between undernutrition and SSI was found but neonatal age, preoperative Staphylococcus aureus carriage (OR 1.88, CI 1.01 – 3.07) and third or more cardiac reoperation (OR 5.41, CI 1.30 – 22.56) were independent risk factors. Furthermore, neonates who experienced the highest SSI rates, had low incidence of undernutrition. Consequently, a case study of 19 neonates explored postoperative feeding patterns and postoperative complications, including infection, during hospitalization following cardiac surgery. Four feeding patterns were identified. Those with more interrupted feeding patterns had more infections but less SSI and increased length of stay.
In conclusion, Staphylococcus aureus carriage should be targeted prior to surgery and during subsequent hospitalisation. There should be more research undertaken on the role of postoperative feeding in improving outcomes following neonatal cardiac surgery. Current methods of measuring SSI do not take into account competing risks from other infections potentially leading to erroneous conclusions about surgical performance.


The crop farming sector has been relatively profitable in the past several years, whereas the general economy has gone through a great deal of turmoil. In this research, we constructed an Aglndex, which tracked the stock prices of publicly traded companies dealing with agriculture performed since 2000. As a group, the market values of publicly traded firms within the Aglndex exceeded those of Standard & Poors 500 (S&P 500) since 2000. Returns were higher for agricultural firms compared with S&P 500 firms. Performance varied across agricultural sectors with fertilizer and seed companies performing the best.


The provision of awareness on the status of cooperative work is an essential prerequisite for the successful application of groupware systems. This paper describes NESSIE, an application-independent awareness infrastructure that is based on Internet technologies. After outlining the system architecture, we illustrate how different presentation methods can be used to enhance a user's physical working environment by awareness displays. Special attention is paid to the integration of NESSIE with a multi-user 3D environment to create shared awareness spaces. These spaces illustrate the activities of a cooperative environment in a symbolic way to provide a quick and intuitive impression of the current workgroup's situation to the user.


Constitutional Failure is a major contribution to studies of the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), the Weimar Republic, and the relationship of constitutionalism, political economy, and democracy. An internationally renowned scholar of Weimar legal theory, Ellen Kennedy brought Schmitt's neglected work to the attention of English-speaking readers with her highly regarded translations of his work and studies of its place in twentieth-century political theory. In this eagerly awaited book, she tracks Schmitt's contribution to the canon of Western political philosophy during its most difficult and dangerous moment—the time of Weimar Germany and the Third Reich—demonstrating the centrality of his thought to understandings of the modern constitutional state and its precarious economic and social foundations.

Kennedy reveals how Schmitt's argument for a strong but neutral state supported the maximization of market freedom at the cost of the political constitution. She argues that the major fault lines of Weimar liberalism—emergency powers, the courts as "defenders of the constitution," mass mobilization of anti-liberal politics, ethnic-identity politics, a culture of resentment and contested legitimacy—are not exceptions within the liberal-democratic orders of the West, but central to them. Contending that Schmitt's thought remains vital today because liberal norms are inadequate to the political challenges facing constitutional systems as diverse as those of Eastern Europe and the United States, Kennedy develops a compelling, rigorous argument that unsettles many assumptions about liberalism, democracy, and dictatorship.


Differential SAR interferometry (DInSAR) is an unique tool for low-cost, large-coverage surface deformations monitoring. As well known, the technique involves interferometric phase comparison of SAR images gathered at different times and has the potential to provide millimetric accuracy. Though temporal decorrelation and atmospheric dishomogeneities strongly affect interferogram quality, reliable deformation measurements can be obtained in a multi-image framework on a small subset of image pixels, corresponding to stable areas. These points, hereafter called Permanent Scatterers (PS), can be used as a "natural GPS network" to monitor terrain motion, analysing the phase history of each one. In this paper, results obtained using 34 ERS SAR images gathered over the Italian city of Ancona are presented.


The present paper examines how interpersonal ritual notions are appropriated in intercultural contact, hence filling a knowledge gap in intercultural and cross-cultural pragmatics. As a case study, we examine how the English metalexeme 'heckling' has been appropriated in Chinese and Japanese cultures. We argue that the history and pragmatic features of native heckling metalexemes in Chinese and Japanese strongly influence the way in which English 'heckling' has been incorporated into these cultures. By studying the relationship between intercultural appropriation and metalexical history, we aim to draw attention to the importance of examining culture-specific metalexemes in intercultural research on rituals and other interpersonal pragmatic phenomena.


OBJECTIVE
Thyroid cancer (TC) is one of the most common malignancies in the world. The prognosis of TC patients with advanced stage or recurrence is still poor. However, the biological role of miR-299-3p in TC remains unknown. The aim of our current research was to investigate the role of miR-299-3p in TC progression.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
MiR-299-3p expression level in both TC tissues and cell lines was determined by quantitative Real Time-Polymerase Chain Reaction (qRT-PCR). Cell proliferation ability was examined by Cell Count Kit-8 (CCK-8) assay and 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU) incorporation assay. Cell cycle progression and cell apoptosis were determined by flow cytometric analysis. Dual-Luciferase reporter assay was recruited to validate whether SHOC2 was a downstream target of miR-299-3p. In addition, the protein expression SHOC2 in transfected cells was examined by Western blotting.

RESULTS
We found that miR-299-3p was significantly downregulated in TC tissues and cell lines. To verify the role of miR-299-3p in TC, we transfected mimics and inhibitor in selected cell lines for over-expressing or down-expressing miR-299-3p, respectively. After transfection, cell functional experiments were subsequently employed. The results indicated that miR-299-3p could inhibit cell proliferation and cell cycle progression, whereas remarkably promote cell apoptosis in TC cell lines. Bioinformatics predicted that SHOC2 might be a potential target of miR-299-3p. Subsequent Dual-Luciferase reporter analysis validated our hypothesis. Rescue assay showed that miR-299-3p functioned as a tumor suppressor by targeting SHOC2 in TC.

CONCLUSIONS
MiR-299-3p functioned as a tumor suppressor in TC by targeting SHOC2. Our research provided novel insights into the molecular mechanism underlying TC progression, which might afford some new understanding in biomarkers and therapeutic strategies in TC development.


PURPOSE We sought to determine the association between timely receipt of diabetes-related preventive services and the longitudinal pattern of outpatient service use as characterized by a novel taxonomy that prioritized visits based on the Oregon State Prioritized Health Services List. METHODS We performed a cross-sectional analysis of mail survey and automated health care data for a population-based sample of patients with diabetes enrolled in a health maintenance organization in Washington State (N = 4,463). Outcomes included American Diabetes Association–recommended preventive services, including regular hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C) monitoring, retinal examination, and microalbuminuria screening. Patients with fewer than 8 visits during the 2-year study period were considered infrequent users, while patients with 8 or more visits were classified as lower-priority users if most visits were for conditions of relatively low rank on the Oregon list and as higher-priority users otherwise. RESULTS After adjustment for social, demographic, and clinical factors, and depression, infrequent users had significantly reduced odds of receiving at least 1 HbA1C test (odds ratio [OR] = 0.35, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.24–0.51), retinal examination (OR = 0.74, 95% CI, 0.63–0.86), and microalbuminuria screening (OR = 0.75, 95% CI, 0.58–0.96) relative to higher-priority users during the previous year. Lower-priority users also had relatively reduced odds of receiving at least 1 HbA1C test (OR = 0.59, 95% CI, 0.35–1.01), retinal examination (OR = 0.68, 95% CI, 0.56–0.84), and microalbuminuria screening (OR = 0.79, 95% CI, 0.57–1.09) despite attending a similar mean number of total visits as higher-priority users. CONCLUSIONS Patients who attend relatively few outpatient visits or who attend more frequent visits for predominantly lower-priority conditions are more likely to receive substandard preventive care for diabetes.


Purpose

When apologizing for a brand crisis, self-attribution by a business inevitably affects consumer attitude and behavior. The purpose of this study is to draw from the dissonance-attribution model and investigate the effect of self-attribution in apologies on consumers' brand attitude.

Design/methodology/approach

This study includes two scenario-based experiments of 2 × 2 design.

Findings

In the first experiment on product failure, the results show that internal attribution generates significant change in brand attitude in a positive direction, while external attribution leads to negative change in brand attitude. Dispositional attribution leads to significantly more positive brand attitude than situational attribution. Internal/dispositional attribution produces significantly more positive effect on consumer attitude than the other three types of attribution. Moreover, perceived risk is found to mediate the relationship between attributions and brand attitude, and such mediating effect is moderated by consumers' corporate associations. However, in the second experiment on moral crisis, the mediating and moderating effects are not significant.

Practical implications

Clearly, how a company apologizes for a product crisis makes a big difference in the effectiveness of recovery strategies to restore consumer confidence. Sincere apologies based on internal/dispositional attribution are more effective to re-gain the respect of consumers and win them back.

Originality/value

This study is the first to examine consumer reactions to self-attributions by marketers apologizing for a brand crisis and the combined effect of self-attributions along the horizontal dimension (internal versus external attribution) and the vertical dimension (dispositional versus situational attribution).


CONTEXT
Down syndrome (DS) is the most common genetic cause of mental retardation. However, the biological determinants of this are poorly understood. The serum sodium/myo-inositol cotransporter gene is located on chromosome 21, and myo-inositol affects neuronal survival and function. Nevertheless, few in vivo studies have examined the role of myo-inositol in DS.

OBJECTIVE
To determine if people with DS have significant differences in brain myo-inositol concentration from controls and if, within people with DS, this is related to cognitive ability.

DESIGN
A case-control study.

SETTING
Outpatient.

PARTICIPANTS
The sample was composed of 38 adults with DS without dementia (age range, 18-66 years) and 42 healthy controls (age range, 19-66 years). The DS and control groups did not differ significantly in age, sex, ethnic origin, apolipoprotein E status, or handedness.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Hippocampal myo-inositol concentration and cognitive performance, as measured by the Cambridge Cognitive Examination.

RESULTS
Hippocampal myo-inositol concentration was significantly higher in people with DS than in controls (P = .006), and within people with DS, increased myo-inositol concentration was significantly negatively correlated with overall cognitive ability (P = .04).

CONCLUSIONS
Adults with DS have a significantly increased brain concentration of myo-inositol, and this is associated with reduced cognitive ability. Future studies are required to relate myo-inositol concentration in people with DS to brain development and increased risk for developing Alzheimer disease.


e12004 Background: Chronic infections with hepatitis C virus (HCV) are frequently pronounced in the etiology of malignancies especially in hepatocellular carcinoma. The association between HCV and risk of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) development has been stated recently.

METHODS
The authors retrospectively evaluated hepatitis serology for HCV and HBV in patients who had RCC diagnosis between 2005 and 2010 in 6 oncology centers. Control group was also included from the published 3 different studies that hepatitis serology studied in healthy people that has been living in the same geographical regions.

RESULTS
Histologically confirmed 903 RCC cases and 5267 healthy subjects were included the study. Median age at diagnosis of RCC was 58 (range: 26 - 89). There was no increase in HCV positivity in RCC patient s compared to healthy control group (1.7% vs 1.5% ; p=0.77). Frequency of HBsAg positivity was 4.4% and 4.1% in RCC and control groups, respectively (p=0.65).

CONCLUSIONS
There is no increase in the frequency of HCV and HBsAg positivity in RCC patients. HCV positivity was not different from the healthy people.


This paper explores and describes the changes in the organizational field of regional Destination Marketing Organizations, or DMOs, in Sweden. The organization of tourism and coordination of marketing alliances at tourist destinations is a public and a private matter. DMOs operating at a regional level in Sweden are traditionally organized as public administrations and are in general strategically oriented to serve public interests. Previous research has indicated that some of the DMOs are changing their strategies to employ corporate models and business strategies. The research question examined in this paper is whether it is possible to use websites on the Internet as an indicator to describe the present structure of the organizational field of regional DMOs and the changes that are in progress. The overall purpose of this paper is to describe the organizational changes within the field of DMOs. The results show that it is possible to use the Internet as an indicator. The websites on the Internet reveal changes in the institutional structure at the organizational field level. There is evidence of an ongoing enterprization and emerging competition in an area traditionally organized by public oriented administrations. A new type of meta-competition challenges the old structures within this group of organizations.


This account of American films is balanced between subjective enthusiasm and objective analysis. Scorsese starts from his own childhood love affair with the cinema, when he discovered King Vidor's "Dual in the Sun" as a boy. The book is not an orthodox film history, but rather a genuinely personal voyage of discovery. Scorsese recalls from his youth the kind of films that had a strong influence on him: not only the prestige titles from major directors and studios, but also the unsung B-films, as well as other despised and undervalued genres. What Scorsese responds to, and celebrates, is cinema itself - the films that make the fullest use of the medium's potential, and the film-makers who worked within the system, yet still retained a personal vision.


This thesis presents a unique and efficient solver to the state estimation (SE) problem for the power grid, based on probabilistic graphical models (PGMs). SE is a method of estimating the varying state values of voltage magnitude and phase at every bus within a power grid based on meter measurements. However, existing SE solvers are notorious for their computational inefficiency to calculate the matrix inverse, and hence slow convergence to produce the final state estimates. The proposed PGM-based solver estimates the state values from a different perspective. Instead of calculating the matrix inverse directly, it models the power grid as a PGM, and then assigns potentials to nodes and edges of the PGM, based on the physical constraints of the power grid. This way, the original SE problem is transformed into an equivalent probabilistic inference problem on the PGM, for which two efficient algorithms are proposed based on Gaussian belief propagation (GBP). The equivalence between the proposed PGM-based solver and existing SE solvers is shown in terms of state estimates, and it is experimentally demonstrated that this new method converges much faster than existing solvers.


Drugs that target oncogenic receptor tyrosine kinases activate parallel signaling pathways that trigger cell death. Cancer cells undergo extensive genetic and epigenetic rewiring to support the malignant phenotype, and yet cell survival and proliferation often remain dependent on one or a limited number of driver mutations. This is the concept of oncogene addiction, the elucidation of which has led to substantial progress in therapeutic interventions. However, because resistance mechanisms often emerge, explicating the pathways that connect therapeutic oncogene inactivation to the cell death machinery is critical to exploiting additional synthetic lethal opportunities.


First-principles calculations have been performed on the band structure of mono- and few-layer TiS3 nanofilms. It is found that the band gap character of the TiS3 films is quite robust, almost independent of layer thickness, vertical strain and stacking order, which is in sharp contrast to most other two-dimensional materials, such as MoS2. The robustness of the band gap originates from the location of the CBM and VBM states, which are at the center atoms of TiS3, and are thus unaffected by the layer-layer coupling. Such a property of TiS3 nanofilms promises good application potential in nanoelectronics and optoelectronics, and also makes TiS3 a good platform to study the electronic properties of a material in the two-dimensional limit.


Background Gastric cancer (GC) is still the main challenge for the social and clinical system. Increasing studies have proved that microRNA dysfunction is closely associated with the GC progression. miR-675-3p has been confirmed as the tumor support in multiple tumor cells, while its role in GC remains unclear. Methods. The clinical data in the TCGA database were excavated for analyzing the role of miR-675-3p in pan-cancer and GC. qRT-PCR was applied to detect the abundances of the genes. The Starbase 2.0 was executed to target the prediction of miR-675-3p. Moreover, the enrichment analysis was performed with the DAVID database. The PPI-network analysis of the targets was performed with Cytoscape. Results miR-675-3p was dramatically upregulated in multiple types of cancer, and elevated miR-675-3p was also found in GC tissues. Moreover, increased miR-675-3p was closely related with the poor survival rates of the patients. The qRT-PCR showed that miR-675-3p was extremely upregulated in GC tissues and cell lines. The enrichment analysis showed that the targets of miR-675-3p were located in the cellular nucleus and associated with the transcriptional misregulation in cancer. The PPI-network showed that three clusters and total of 40 genes were screened as potential hub nodes. Moreover, BRIP1, MYO5B, and PDS5B were related with the prognostic survival of the patients according to the TCGA database and decreased BRIP1, MYO5B, and PDS5B were also found in GC cell lines. Conclusion This study identified miR-675-3p as a potential biomarker in GC development and revealed the potential regulation network of miR-675-3p.


STAVAX ESR(S-136)is a type of high stainless steel, used in precision mould widely . It has fine anticorrosion, polishing-alike, wearable,good process capacity and quench stability. To obtain the smooth surface of STAVAX ESR, the material removal mechanism in the paper is discussed. The experiment is processed on the ultra-precision plane polishing machine (Nanopoli-100). The experiment processes are as follows. Rough lapping and Ultra-precision lapping: the material of lapping pads is cast iron. #1000Al203 (10wt%) abrasive powders are used in rough lapping. Finally, surface roughness is 62nm. In ultra-precision lapping, abrasive powders are for #4000Al203(10wt%). Removal rate is 1nm with linear velocity 8.6m/min, pressure 3.65MPa. After 4000 rounds, surface roughness is 35nm.Ultra precision polishing: The super smooth surfaces of STAVAX ESR(S-136)with 5nm roughness have been obtained by adopting SiO2(> 30wt%) slurry and soft tin polisher in the experiment.


Private and community grantmaking foundations are part of the U.S. nonprofit sector, although they primarily distribute funds rather than seek them. Like all nonprofit organizations, they are governed by a board of directors or trustees. Despite normative expectations that members of charitable boards work without compensation, many grantmaking foundations provide fees and other benefits to their trustees. Although these payments are required by law to be reasonable and necessary, some compensation is demonstrably high and occasionally incidental to the effective operation of the foundation. This article documents and probes the practice of individual and institutional trustee compensation in the 10,000 largest U.S. grantmaking foundations. It shows that the practice is common, if not widespread. Typical trustee compensation is not necessarily unreasonable, although cases in the upper distribution might deserve more regulatory and public scrutiny. Independent foundations, larger foundations, those with staff, and those with any endowment are most likely to engage in individual trustee compensation.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the major causes of death from a single infectious agent worldwide. Its resurgence in 1990s is primarily due to co-infection with HIV and the emergence of multi-drug-resistant (MDR) strains. Our objectives in this study were demonstration and grading of acid-fast bacilli in smears from sputum specimens of clinically newly diagnosed pulmonary TB patients, isolation of the organism, speciation and drug susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates to isoniazid (H), rifampicin (R), streptomycin (S), and ethambutol (E).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Sputum specimens were collected from 150 patients. Smear examination was done after Ziehl-Neelsen staining. The specimens were cultured onto Lowenstein Jensen media after Petroff's method of concentration. The growth was identified as M. tuberculosis with standard tests. Sensitivity of 50 isolates of tubercle bacilli to anti-TB drugs H, R, S, E were determined by Resistance-Ratio method.

RESULTS
Out of 150 sputum specimens examined, 62(41.3%) were smear positive. Out of these 62,56 grew on culture. 50 isolates of M. tuberculosis were picked up for drug susceptibility testing. Total of 31 (62%) were resistant to S, 14(28%) to H, 9(18%) to R, 6(12%) were resistant to E and 2 strains (4%) were resistant to H and R.

CONCLUSION
From the small cohort, incidence of primary MDR-TB was found to be 4% in this region, which is within the expected range.


Purpose
The purpose of this study is to better understand the nexus between environmental taxes and other environmental management systems (EMSs) and to propose an alternative framework for implementing environmental protection tax (EPT) in China.

Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a multimethod approach encompassing document analysis and comparative analysis. The archival data covers laws, reports, regulations, guidelines and standards related to the EPT and EMS sub-systems in China.

Findings
The study identifies several institutional features of environmental taxes that have not been fully explored in past tax research. In addition, the study reveals that information-sharing mechanisms are key to addressing the risks and uncertainties associated with the implementation of an environmental tax and that the mechanisms are grounded in the nexus among EPT and two EMS sub-systems.

Research limitations/implications
The findings of this study have implications for the understanding of China's environmental tax system, the Environmental Impact Assessment system and the pollutants discharge permit (PDP) system. The construction of an alternative framework provides insights for approaches to environmental taxation. A limitation of this study is that the application of the framework might be undermined by the inaccurate manual sampling, as some pollutants may be non-replicable.

Practical implications
The findings of this study are relevant to policymakers who are designing, improving or abandoning environmental taxes for alternate solutions to environmental issues.

Social implications
The insights gained from this study may be of assistance to lower the risks and uncertainties associated with the implementation of an environmental tax.

Originality/value
The study contributes to approaches to environmental taxes by constructing an alternative framework that connects an environmental tax system with two EMSs. The framework lays the groundwork for some promising research opportunities. Additionally, the study extends the tax accounting literature (Hanlon and Heitzman, 2010) by connecting accounting and environmental knowledge and developing a transdisciplinary approach. The study also contributes to the emerging body of literature that addresses the challenges in implementing environmental taxes in China.


From the ancient period, Green leafy vegetables (GLV) are part of the daily diet and were believed to have several health beneficial properties. Later it has been proved that GLV has outstanding nutritional value and can be used for medicinal benefits. GLV is particularly rich in minerals like iron, calcium, and zinc. These are also rich in vitamins like beta carotene, vitamin E, K, B and vitamin C. In addition, some anti-nutritional elements in GLV can be reduced if it is grown properly and processed properly before consumption. Tropical countries have a wide variety of these green plants such as Red Spinach, Amaranth, Malabar Spinach, Taro Leaf, Fenugreek leaf, Bengal Gram Leaves, Radish Leaves, Mustard Leaves, and many more. This review focuses on listing this wide range of GLVs (in total 54 underutilized GLVs) and their compositions in a comparative manner. GLV also possesses medicinal activities due to its rich bioactive and nutritional potential. Different processing techniques may alter the nutritional and bioactive potential of the GLVs significantly. The GLVs have been considered a food fortification agent, though not explored widely. All of these findings suggest that increasing GLV consumption could provide nutritional requirements necessary for proper growth as well as adequate protection against diseases caused by malnutrition.


While many good textbooks are available on Protein Structure, Molecular Simulations, Thermodynamics and Bioinformatics methods in general, there is no good introductory level book for the field of Structural Bioinformatics. This book aims to give an introduction into Structural Bioinformatics, which is where the previous topics meet to explore three dimensional protein structures through computational analysis. We provide an overview of existing computational techniques, to validate, simulate, predict and analyse protein structures. More importantly, it will aim to provide practical knowledge about how and when to use such techniques. We will consider proteins from three major vantage points: Protein structure quantification, Protein structure prediction, and Protein simulation & dynamics.


Due to intrinsic limitations of conventional silicon based devices the trend of miniaturisation cannot continue indefinitely, thus molecular devices are being used to develop smaller, faster and higher storage density memory devices. We present a thermally activated, switchable hetero-polyoxometalate (HPOM) cluster immobilised on a highly polarisable gold surface which has potential as such a device. This cluster consists of a nanometre sized Mo(IV) oxide "shell" which encapsulates two electronically active pyramidal sulfite (SIVO32-) groups, and has the ability to reversibly interconvert between two electronic states. In the passive state, at cryogenic temperatures (77 K), the two SO32- groups are non-bonding with respect to the sulfur centres, however upon thermal activation, i.e. when the temperature is increased to room (298 K), two electrons are ejected from the active sulfite anions and delocalised over the metal oxide cluster cage. This has the effect of switching it from a fully oxidised to a two-electron reduced state, along with the concomitant formation of an S-S bonding interaction between the two sulfur centres inside the cluster shell. This process does not occur in the crystalline state and to proceed requires the stabilising effects provided by an image charge, generated as a consequence of being adsorbed onto a metal surface.
The prototypical enantio-selective heterogeneously catalysed reaction involves the hydrogenation of the α-ketoester, methyl pyruvate on Pt. Using TPD, XPS and UPS we have investigated this compound's behaviour on a model Cu(111) single crystal surface. Monolayers of methyl pyruvate at 180 K consist predominately (ca. 66%) of a chemisorbed methyl pyruvate moiety, with its keto-carbonyl bonded to the surface in a η2configuration, this moiety desorbs intact at 364 K. The rest of the monolayer contains weakly adsorbed methyl pyruvate, which desorbs at 234 K, and interacts with the surface through the lone pair electrons of the oxygen atoms of the C=O groups, adopting a η1 configuration. The observation of a strongly chemisorbed moiety in the present study is attributed to the activation of the keto-carbonyl by the electron withdrawing ester group, and is consistent with the homogeneous inorganic chemistry of ketones. It is widely assumed that the α-ketoester needs to be π-bonded to the surface for the enantio-selective hydrogenation to proceed, consequently, given both the formation of a η2 bonded methyl pyruvate moiety on Cu(l11) and the known activity of Cu as a selective hydrogenation catalyst, it is suggested that it is maybe worthwhile considering the possibility of testing the effectiveness of chirally modified supported Cu as an enantio-selective catalyst.
The thermal and electron induced chemistry of (S)- and (R)-methyl lactate (MLac) on Cu(111) was investigated; both enantiomers exhibited similar behaviour. MLac adopts one of two adsorption modes on the terraces of a Cu(111) crystal, which desorb molecularly at 209 K and 220 K. Concerning the molecules adsorbed at defect sites, as the temperature is increased over the range 250 – 300 K, a fraction desorb intact, while the majority lose a hydrogen atom to form the more strongly bound alkoxy species on the surface. Of these, some recombine with the hydrogen and proceed to desorb as MLac at 360 K, while a larger proportion are dehydrogenated further and methyl pyruvate and hydrogen are ejected from the surface at 380 K. When a monolayer of MLac is irradiated with a low energy electron beam, the molecules at the terrace sites are electronically excited and desorb as intact molecules, while those at the defect sites undergo electron induced hydroxyl O-H bond cleavage. Subsequent to electron bombardment there is consequently a decrease in molecularly adsorbed MLac and an increase in the number of strongly bound alkoxy species on the surface, entities which are not susceptible to ESD. We believe the ESD excitation mechanism is dissociative electron attachment. Low energy electrons of <1 eV are prevalent in the secondary electron background and can excite the hydroxyl O-H stretch, facilitating its cleavage at a threshold of 1.4 + 0.7 eV. The cross sections for the electron induced processes are high, 3.0 + 0.4 x 10-16 cm2 for 50 eV electrons, thus MLac is extremely susceptible to electron stimulated desorption.
The enantio-specific adsorption of both the (S)- and (R)- enantiomers of methyl lactate on the chiral Cu(643)R surface has been investigated. The results from the (111) surface enabled us to assign the features in the TPD profiles. The peaks arising from molecular desorption at terrace and step sites occurred at the same temperature for both enantiomers, however, those attributed to desorption from the kink sites differed by 13 K, representing an enantio-specific difference in desorption energies of 0.94 kcal mol-1. This value is significantly larger than those observed in previous experimental work, although it is consistent with theoretical studies. Furthermore, we also observed enantio-specific surface reactions. It was found that there was a greater tendency for the (R)- enantiomer to undergo both the alkoxide recombination reaction and further dehydrogenation to methyl pyruvate, while the (S)-enantiomer had a greater proclivity to undergo total decomposition.
We have discovered, to the best of our knowledge, the first example of enantio-specific surface chemistry initiated by a beam of non-chiral low energy electrons. When (S)- and (R)-methyl lactate molecularly adsorbed at the chiral kink sites of a Cu(643)R substrate is irradiated with 50 eV electrons, it has been found that (R)-methyl lactate is more receptive to both electron induced desorption of the parent molecule and electron induced cleavage of the hydroxyl O-H bond. This behaviour has been attributed to the (S)-enantiomer forming a more intimate bond with the kink site than the (R)-enantiomer, as evidenced by its higher desorption temperature. Consequently the substrate is more effective at providing relaxation channels to the electronically excited adsorbate, which reduces the probability of ESD occurring. Starting with a racemic mixture, we have demonstrated a 20% enantiomeric enrichment in the molecular adsorbates at the chiral kink sites, after only 30% depletion of the initial population. As a control, the initial rates of desorption from terrace and step sites were found to be unaffected by enantiomeric identity, which was to be expected because these sites are achiral, and as such both enantiomers interact to a similar degree with each. When the monolayer is considered as a whole, it was found that electron irradiation drives desorption more completely with an (R)-MLac covered surface than with (S). It has been suggested that this property of the system could be exploited in the laboratory as a method for separating racemic mixtures, and that in an astrochemical context, it could provide insight into the origins of biohomochirality.


Biofumigation denotes the use of plant material to treat fields infected with soil borne diseases or nematodes. The plants are usually Brassica species such as B. juncea, Sinapis alba or Raphanus sativus, but also Allium species have been used. The principle in biofumigation is that the plant material is macerated and incorporated into the soil where it releases toxic substances. In Brassica species these are mostly isothiocyanates that are liberated from glucosinolates by an enzymatic process. In Alliums the toxic substances are various sulphides liberated after maceration and incorporation. In two carrot fields infected with carrot-cyst nematodes (Heterodera carotea) and various fungal diseases, experiments with application of Biofence ® (pellets of dried B. juncea) and leek (Allium porrum) material were carried out. The Biofence (3 t/ha) and leek material (100 t/ha) were incorporated (early April) into the soil (top 15-20 cm) in a randomised block design with three replicates. Control plots with no biofumigation were treated as for other plots. All treatments were carried out with or without plastic covering immediately after incorporation. Nematode concentrations in the soil were recorded prior to, and 2 weeks after treatment. After 2 weeks from treatment, plastic coverings were removed and carrots (cultivar 'Bolero') were sown in all plots. At harvest, around early November, the plot soil was again analysed for nematodes. Approx. 80 kg of carrots from each plot were cool stored (1°C and >95% RH) until March next year, when the degree of fungal storage diseases (Sclerotinia, Phytium, Rhizoctonia, Rhexocercosporidium, Mycocentrospora, Streptomyces) was assessed. No significant effect of either Biofence ® or leek material on the number of live nematode in soil samples at carrot harvest could be detected. The incidence of fungal diseases in March on the stored carrots also did not show any significant effects of the biofumigation treatments.


Subject of the present investigation is the elastic-plastic rotating annular disk having a rigid casing. The plane state of stress is considered for two different boundary conditions: a) inner surface with constraint, allowing no motion in the radial direction, b) free inner surface without radial stress. The analysis is based on Tresca's yield condition, its associated flow rule, and linear strain hardening material behaviour. For both cases, closed form solutions are obtained and numerical results are presented. It is shown that the influence of hardening parameter on the elastic-plastic interface radii is very small, for fixed boundary conditions.


The interaction between humans and robots has increased and become more personalized in this century. Robots are being used in various fields such as medicine, manufacturing, automation, etc.; however, they lack the interaction capability that is found in a human mainly because more than 60% of human communication is non-verbal, and thus, is hard to replace him. This project presents an interactive face robot which is able to mimic the six universal human facial expressions: happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, and disgust. It can interact with the user using speech recognition in order to mimic a career/major adviser. The Interactive Face Robot is made out of a rubber mask to simulate the skin. Facial expressions are created by moving muscle-like structures based on a facial mass-spring model. Nine servo motors move the different action units in the face to create the different expressions. The Interactive Face Robot mimics a career/major adviser using speech recognition software, the BitVoicer, which recognizes the user's speech and communicates with a LabVIEWTM program that evaluates the answers and calculates the best career/major choice. The LabVIEWTM program, which runs on a laptop computer, also converts the pre-defined questions that the robot asks into voice, and communicates with an Arduino Mega the expression that the face is to generate. Using pulse-width modulation, the Arduino Mega controls the needed servo motors to create the necessary facial expression. The Interactive Face Robot has proven to be user-friendly, and interacted with humans as pre-programmed. Facial expressions provide robots with more capabilities for human-like interactions, making them more adequate for applications requiring interactions with humans. This Interactive Face Robot can replace a career/major adviser, and can be programmed as a receptionist, front-desk operator, or can be used in therapeutic applications. Keywords—HCI; Facial Expressions; Interactive Robot


A 68-year-old man presented acutely with periorbital pain and proptosis of the right eye, on a background of generalised pain and weight loss. Imaging showed bilateral signal abnormalities in the basal skull extending into the extraconal orbits with compression of the right optic nerve. His medical history revealed symptoms in keeping with benign prostatic hypertrophy. However, the prostate was irregular on rectal examination and prostate-specific antigen was markedly raised at 1880 ng/dl. A provisional diagnosis of metastatic prostatic carcinoma was made based on the clinical and radiological picture. This was later confirmed to be metastatic adenocarcinoma through means of tissue diagnosis.


INTRODUCTION: Improving access to modern methods of contraception and decreasing the unmet need for contraception are important in working toward decreasing the rates of unintended pregnancy. This study was designed to obtain a greater understanding of desire for contraception among women and their partners in Rwanda and assess factors associated with uptake of contraception in the immediate postpartum period. METHODS: The cross-sectional, family planning attitude and practices survey was conducted among postpartum women and their partners prior to discharge from the hospital. The study was conducted at two large referral hospitals providing maternity care in Rwanda. Data was aggregated and we performed comparison on postpartum contraception attitude and practices among women and partners and logistic regression. RESULTS: One hundred and five patients and thirty-one partners of patients completed the questionnaire. Immediately postpartum, 47.6% of women desired contraception, while only 11.4% received postpartum family planning (PPFP) prior to discharge. Factors associated with a patient receiving PPFP immediately postpartum include: discussing PPFP with provider during antenatal care (p = 0.02), discussing with partner immediately postpartum (p = 0.003), and discussing with provider immediately postpartum (p = 0.01). CONCLUSION: These findings indicate a gap in postpartum contraception counseling and uptake in Rwanda.


Bilinear pairing, an essential tool to construct-efficient digital signatures, has applications in mobile devices and other applications. One particular research challenge is to design cross-platform security protocols (e.g. Windows, Linux, and other popular mobile operating systems) while achieving an optimal security-performance tradeoff. That is, how to choose the right digital signature algorithm, for example, on mobile devices while considering the limitations on both computation capacity and battery life. In this paper, we examine the security-performance tradeoff of four popular digital signature algorithms, namely: CC (proposed by Cha and Cheon in 2003), Hess (proposed by Hess in 2002), BLMQ (proposed by Barreto et al. in 2005), and PS (proposed by Paterson and Schuldt in 2006), on various platforms. We empirically evaluate their performance using experiments on Windows, Android, and Linux platforms, and find that BLMQ algorithm has the highest computational efficiency and communication efficiency. We also study their security properties under the random oracle model and assuming the intractability of the CDH problem, we reveal that the BLMQ digital signature scheme satisfies the property of existential unforgeable on adaptively chosen message and ID attack. The efficiency of PS algorithm is lower, but it is secure under the standard model.


The scientific image of an endless homogeneous three-dimensional space becomes firmly established in the public consciousness of the 17 th-18 th centuries. The artistic image of this space is represented in the baroque music. The author reveals some basic ways of creating this image.


AN INDOOR NAVIGATION SYSTEM USING A SENSOR FUSION SCHEME ON ANDROID PLATFORM Jiayi Xin Marquette University, 2017 With the development of wireless communication networks, smart phones have become a necessity for people's daily lives, and they meet not only the needs of basic functions for users such as sending a message or making a phone call, but also the users' demands for entertainment, surfing the Internet and socializing. Navigation functions have been commonly utilized, however the navigation function is often based on GPS (Global Positioning System) in outdoor environments, whereas a number of applications need to navigate indoors. This paper presents a system to achieve high accurate indoor navigation based on Android platform. To do this, we design a sensor fusion scheme for our system. We divide the system into three main modules: distance measurement module, orientation detection module and position update module. We use an efficient way to estimate the stride length and use step sensor to count steps in distance measurement module. For orientation detection module, in order to get the optimal result of orientation, we then introduce Kalman filter to de-noise the data collected from different sensors. In the last module, we combine the data from the previous modules and calculate the current location. Results of experiments show that our system works well and has high accuracy in indoor situations.


The soil-rock mixture (SRM) is a kind of special engineering geological material, which has been exposed to the field for a long time and is affected by rainwater seepage, geological force, slope sliding force and human activities, resulting in the spatial variability of its mechanical properties. Taking the SRM distributed on a slope of the Three Gorges Reservoir area as the research object, four test locations were selected along and transverse the slope. First, in-situ large-scale direct shear test was carried out, and then the laboratory large-scale direct shear test, particle sieving test, and water content test were carried out in the undisturbed sample to study the variation of shear mechanical properties of SRM distributed in different spatial locations. The results show that: (1) Under the same normal stress, the peak strength of the SRM decreases at a similar rate along the slope direction and the transverse slope direction. (2) The cohesion of the SRM is continuously strengthened, and the friction angle is continuously deteriorated along the slope from high to low, the cohesion and friction angle are almost no variability along the transverse slope. (3) The mechanism of the above-mentioned variation in the shear mechanics parameters of SRM is that the lower the elevation along the slope, the more fragmented the rock, the lower the rock content. (4) Spatial variability models of cohesion and friction angle of SRM were established, which can provide references for related engineering applications.


In Mexico there are more than 201 400 ha grown with different mango (Mangifera indica L.) cultivars. This may cause variations in mineral requirement, fruit mineral concentrations and nutrient removal. The objective of this research was to make a survey of mineral concentration in fruit tissues and calculate nutrient removal by fruit tissues during harvest of the most important mango cultivars (Ataulfo, Kent and Tommy Atkins) from several production regions (Campeche, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Nayarit, and Sinaloa) of Mexico. Fruit at physiological maturity were harvested from commercial mango orchards and concentration of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sulfur (S), iron (Fe), copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn) and boron (B) was determined for skin, mesocarp, endocarp, and seed tissues. Each tissue was cut into thin slices and they were dehydrated in a forced air oven at 70 °C, after that, were pulverized and they were analyzed: nitrogen by semi-microKjeldahl digestion, phosphorus with the ascorbic acid method and the other nutrients with atomic absorption. The removal of nutrients was calculated considering the weight of the fruit and the content of nutrients in each tissue. Signif icant differences in the concentration of N, K, Mg, and Zn were found among cultivars and tissues. Concentration of P, S, Cu, and Mn in the skin, Ca, Cu, and Mn in the mesocarp, Ca, S, Mn, and B in endocarp, and S, Fe, and Mn in the seed were not affected by mango cultivar. Production region affected concentration of minerals in 'Ataulfo' fruit more than in 'Tommy Atkins' and 'Kent'. Nutrient removal by mango fruit tissues was little affected in cvs. Ataulfo, Tommy Atkins and Kent. The regions with the greatest nutrient removal were Oaxaca, Campeche and Sinaloa for 'Ataulfo', 'Tommy Atkins' and 'Kent', respectively.


This article explores 15 to 18-year old boys' and girls' compositional processes as mediated by music technology. Adopting Sherry Turkle's theory of 'hard' and 'soft' styles of mastery, I assert that a compositional approach that emphasizes technological control and manipulation may be more conducive to the working styles of boys than girls. In drawing this conclusion, I focus on three female composers, examining to what extent they were able to transcend or reconfigure the hard mastery expectations that had been imposed upon them.


Diphosphine chelate ligands are essential in many catalytic processes with both the electronic structure and bite angle having a dramatic influence on the coordination behavior and catalytic performance. The synthesis of a new class of diferrocenylmercury-supported diphosphine chelate ligands was accomplished by the reaction of (ortho-diphenylphosphino)ferrocenyl sulfinate (2) with t-BuLi, followed by treatment with mercury(ii) chloride. Two diastereomers, 4a (pSpR-, meso-isomer) and 4b (pSpS-isomer), differ in the orientation of the ferrocene moiety relative to the central Ph2PC5H3-Hg-C5H3PPh2 bridging entity. They were isolated independently and fully characterized in solution and in the solid state by single crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. Key characteristics of these ligands are their exceptionally wide and flexible bite angles and the unique stereochemical environment that is achieved upon coordination to transition metals. Complexation to Pd(ii)Cl2 gives rise to unusual square-planar trans-chelate complexes 5a (meso) and 5b (pSpS). In competition reactions, 4a and 4b show similar reactivity toward Pd(ii)Cl2. The molecular structures of 5a and 5b exhibit short PdHg contacts, possibly indicating secondary metallophilic interactions as further evidenced by bond-critical points between Pd and Hg that were identified by AIM analyses.


Journal readers may be aware that population uptake of the National Health Service (NHS) Cervical Screening Programme has been declining in recent years with up to one in four of those eligible for screening not attending. As a result, in 2019 Public Health England launched a national cervical screening campaign to promote uptake. It has been recognised that certain population groups may experience additional challenges in attending for cervical screening: this may be related to socioeconomic or ethnic factors, disability or age, for example. There have been efforts to facilitate screening in transgender men, and those who have experienced sexual violence. Healthcare professionals may be able to identify other patient groups who may find cervical screening challenging. As endocrinologists, we hypothesised that women with the condition classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), which can cause developmental differences of the genital tract, may also experience barriers, and conducted a population survey to explore this hypothesis. In brief, CAH is a rare autosomalrecessive disorder of adrenal steroid synthesis affecting 1 in 10 000–20 000 live births. As well as causing adrenal insufficiency, CAH is associated with adrenal androgen accumulation, which in females results in varying degrees of genital virilisation. Features include clitoromegaly, labial fusion and a shared urethral–vaginal opening, often requiring surgery. In adulthood, women with CAH commonly experience vaginal stenosis. We invited women with a selfreported diagnosis of classical CAH aged between 25 and 64 years (ie, those eligible for invitation to cervical screening) to complete an anonymous online survey about their cervical screening experiences. This was conducted between 1 January and 1 August 2020 (following appropriate ethical approvals) using the Online Surveys software accessed via a link from the Living with CAH charity website. Results were compared with population figures from NHS Digital and published population survey data. 5 In total, 38 respondents were eligible for inclusion in our study. Some 84% of respondents had undergone previous genital tract surgery, with 79% describing that vaginal narrowing was a problem in adulthood. When asked about their last invitation to screening, only 37% of respondents had attended, compared with 78% of the general population (p=1.28 E). Some 39% stated they had never attended for cervical screening, compared with just 3% of those questioned in a 2009 population survey (p=1.59 E). When asked about their previous experiences, 39% of women reported finding the procedure painful or embarrassing, and the procedure could not be completed in 22% of respondents. As shown in figure 1, reasons given for not attending screening included no recent, or only female, sexual partners, a previous painful or unsuccessful experience, and embarrassment about the appearance of their genitals, with some women reporting that healthcare professionals had commented negatively about the appearance of their external genitalia which had deterred them from future examinations. Others had been incorrectly informed that they lacked a cervix and so screening was not indicated. While national public health campaigns may raise awareness at the population level, healthcare professionals, particularly in the fields of reproductive endocrinology, gynaecology and sexual and reproductive health, have an important role in improving access to these important health interventions in their specialist patient groups. For example, having the procedure performed by an experienced person familiar with their condition was supported by this surveyed group, and we are trying to establish a pathway for this within our region. Notably, only 29% of respondents reported ever discussing sexual health issues with their specialist care provider. While this survey reflects a small patient group, we found the results striking and invite journal readers to consider whether there may be similar unmet health needs in their own patients that should be explored.


Modern nonlinear control theory seeks to endow systems with properties such as stability and safety, and has been deployed successfully across various domains. Despite this success, model uncertainty remains a significant challenge in ensuring that model-based controllers transfer to real world systems. This paper develops a data-driven approach to robust control synthesis in the presence of model uncertainty using Control Certificate Functions (CCFs), resulting in a convex optimization based controller for achieving properties like stability and safety. An important benefit of our framework is nuanced data-dependent guarantees, which in principle can yield sample-efficient data collection approaches that need not fully determine the input-to-state relationship. This work serves as a starting point for addressing important questions at the intersection of nonlinear control theory and non-parametric learning, both theoretical and in application. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method with respect to input data in simulation with an inverted pendulum in multiple experimental settings.


Protonated form of poly(sulfonic acid diphenyl aniline) (p-PSDA) was synthesized through oxidative chemical polymerization of sodium salt of diphenylamino-4-sulfonic acid in hydrochloric acid and then, its deprotonated form (PSDA) was obtained by neutralization with aqueous ammonium hydroxide solution. The samples were characterized by thermal analysis and Fourier Transform Infrared, Ultraviolet-visible, 1H-NMR spectroscopy techniques. Their dispersive surface energies as well as surface acidity and basicity were determined by inverse gas chromatography at temperatures between 313 and 353 K. The dispersive surface energy of p-PSDA was found to be considerably lower but it increased with temperature while that of PSDA was close to those of conventional polymers and decreased slightly with temperature. According to the Schreiber's procedure, the surfaces of p-PSDA and PSDA were found to be acidic and amphoteric, respectively. It was observed from the electron microscope images p-PSDA chains can form self-organized circular polydisperse micro-sized aggregates in aqueous solutions while PSDA cannot self-organize to form individual aggregates. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 55:1246–1254, 2015. © 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers


Cyber-defenders face lengthy, repetitive work assignments with few critical signals and little control over what transpires. Their task is one of vigilance, well studied in contexts including air traffic control and medical monitoring. Cyber-defense display information density is several orders of magnitude above that seen in the aforementioned domains, and therefore blindly generalizing prior research is inadvisable. To understand this unique domain, we asked participants to perform a simulated cybersecurity task, searching for attack signatures in Internet traffic information. Consistent with results observed in "traditional" vigilance paradigms, signal detection declined significantly over time, it was directly related to signal probability, and it was inversely related to event rate. Reported high mental workload accompanied such degraded performance. These results highlight the necessity for understanding the physical and cognitive ergonomics underlying cyber-defense. They also suggest vulnerability to denial & deception (D&D) tactics which would effectively hack the human rather than the machine.


The larynx consists of an intricate array of muscles, ligaments, and cartilaginous structures that provide several vital functions. These vary from the protection of the airway during swallowing to the production of voice. Thhis activity will discuss the anatomy and function of these structures and how they interact with one another. Furthermore, it will explore the significant clinical implications in regards to surgical and anesthetic considerations.[1]


In May of 1987, the Gitksan aboriginal people entered the Canadian legal system to seek justice. It was an unprecedented opportunity for Chief Justice McEachern of the British Columbia Supreme Court to find a just and lawful process to place the Gitksan within the context of Canada. Almost four years later, the Chief Justice handed down his "Reasons for Judgement" in Delgamuukw et al. v. The Queen (8 March 1991). The decision in Delgamuukw was a stunning disappointment. The Chief Justice concluded that according to Anglo-European law the Royal Proclamation of 1763 does not apply in British Columbia and that any sovereignty, jurisdiction, or title the Gitksan may have, which he says is next to none, has in any case been extinguished. Indeed, according to the decision, the Gitksan have no land-based aboriginal rights at all.  This paper will begin with a description of the very divergent views that aboriginal peoples and Western society have of the world and how this in turn affects their property systems. I will then analyze how Chief Justice ,through a Western view of the world and, specifically, the view that the Gitksan are a 'primitive' people, constructed a screen of judicial bias. I will also analyse the final ingredients of the sifting process and raise serious questions as to whether Chief Justice McEachern's findings of law were based on relevant and accurate findings of fact. In other words, his method of finding fact and selecting legal precedent will be examined to determine the validity of the finding that the Gitksan do no not possess proprietary rights.


Author Helen Boyd is a happily married woman whose husband enjoys sharing her wardrobeand she has written the first book on transgendered men to focus on their relationships and their female partners. Traditionally known as cross-dressers, transvestites, or drag queens, men like Helen's husband are diverse and don't always conform to stereotype. Many of the older transvestites are socially conservative, deeply closeted, and devout churchgoers. Helen addresses every imaginable question concerning the reasons for behavior that still baffles not only "mental health professionals" but the practitioners themselves; the taxonomy of the transgendered and the distinct but overlapping societies of each group; coming out; bisexuality; and homophobia. The book features interviews with some very interesting people, all of whom struggle and love: dominatrix and her cross-dressing husband; a crossdressing Reiki master and his son; a woman who after dating one cross-dresser wanted to date others and metand fell in love witha transsexual instead; a woman whose husband promised her he was only a cross-dresser and later realized that he was transsexual. This is a book about relationships that will engage the reader, and Helen's narrative is a powerful lens with which to examine our own notions of gender and equality. "


In this study, Turkish EFL students' conceptualization of an effective English language teacher is studied. A survey formerly developed by Yu-Hsin (1999) was adapted and administered to 100 foreign language learners studying at two state universities' English language preparatory schools. Also, participants' written responses were collected to understand the qualities attributed to the effective teacher. Results show that an effective teacher is a friendly, young, enthusiastic, creative, and humorous person whose gender is not important. Also, students expect the teacher to be a native speaker of Turkish, but fluent in English, someone who likes to play educational games, and who teaches grammar effectively by using real life situations to explain language items. Also, students claim that an effective English language teacher has correct pronunciation.


The image data transfer and accelerate the drive of the printing element of the present application discloses a printhead, it does not increase the signal lines and the connection terminal of the case. Providing image data to the print head with 4-bit bus format containing block selection data in the header region signal format. This signal is separated by the selection signal, only contained in the header block selection data is held in the latch, and supplied to the decoder. And four consecutive segments corresponding to 4-bit image data are respectively held in the four latches of a first printing control unit.


Tropical rain forest chemistry is driven by the exchange of biogenic compounds, dynamic processes like turbulent mixing and the diurnal variability of the atmospheric boundary layer. The segregation of species due to inefficient turbulent mixing has recently been recognized as a possible relevant dynamic influence that could explain the large discrepancies between observations and simulations of reactive trace gas concentrations over the tropical rain forest. The inability of turbulence to mix the species leads to correlated or anti-correlated accumulations of the reacting species, therefore modifying the boundary layer mean reactivity. In order to make observations comply with large scale model results, chemists currently assume ad hoc values of the intensity of segregation that correspond to a substantial decrease in the isoprene-OH reaction rate. We will present numerical experiments with a large-eddy simulation (LES) model that are based on typical dynamic and chemistry conditions in the Amazonian rain forest. With a chemistry module coupled to the LES, we examine the main processes that control the species segregation. Our results indicate that the influence of segregation is negligible in a typical situation for the Amazonian rain forest characterized by uniform emission conditions. Finally we will present the potential enhancement of segregation due to spatially heterogeneous surface emissions. In these simulations, spatial segregation is induced by introducing heterogeneities in the surface properties: a cold and wet forested patch characterized by high isoprene emissions is alternated with a warm and dry patch, representing pasture with relatively low biogenic emissions


Etiologic factors were sought in a study of 114 patients with lymphedema of the arm after radical mastectomy. In 94 of these there had not been any local recurrence of the cancer. The results suggested that infection was of primary importance. Radiodermatitis, late fibrosis in the axilla due to radiation or surgery, and anatomical or functional obstruction of the axillary vein were major contributing factors. Localized induration and barely perceptible warmth in the arm and forearm were consistent physical findings of chronic subclinical infection which disappeared with appropriate antibiotic treatment. Control of existing infection, instruction in skin care, restoration of shoulder function, pneumatic compression to eliminate pitting edema, and wearing of a precision-fitted elastic sheath were effective in controlling edema in about 90% of the patients.


Recently incretin-based therapies have been developed in the clinical practice, this class includes both the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors (sitagliptin, vildagliptin, saxagliptin, linagliptin), and the glucagon-like peptide- 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists [exenatide, exenatide long acting release (LAR) and liraglutide]. In particular exenatide and liraglutide have structural similarity and bind to the GLP-1 receptor, displaying a similar broad range of activities relevant to improving glycemic control, including stimulation of insulin secretion and reduction of glucagon secretion, both in a glucose-dependent manner. Furthermore, GLP-1 slows gastrointestinal motility and increases satiety, reducing the food intake; it also promotes β-cell proliferation and probably neogenesis, while reducing apoptosis in animal models. We conducted a review analyzing clinical efficacy and safety of GLP-1 receptor agonists exenatide and liraglutide, both alone and in combination with other anti-diabetic drugs, including the most important studies about them in the latest ten years. We concluded that GLP-1 receptor agonists appear to be a good choice to decrease HbA1c levels and to lower postprandial blood glucose levels. They also suppress glucagon secretion and slow gastric motility. They also have positive effects on β-cell function and they gave a significant decrease of body weight. They are not associated with hypoglycemia, but cause a relatively high frequency of gastrointestinal disturbances, with some patients experiencing one or more episodes of nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. However, after an evaluation of the advantages and the disadvantages, we concluded that, once metformin fails to reach an adequate glycemic control, GLP-1 receptor agonists can be a valid alternative, especially in obese type 2 diabetic patients. GLP-1 receptor agonists should be considered also in patients in therapy with metformin and another agent, such as a sulfonylurea, because of the minor risk of developing hypoglycemia and the positive effect on body weight.


The usefulness of applying such concepts as signal-to-noise ratio to the quantitative measurement of grainy photographic images has been limited by doubts as to how this ratio depended on the measuring apparatus, and, in particular, as to how it could be related to subjective measurements. Information theory now makes it possible to treat such subjective measures in terms of objective procedures which (in the sense that they extract all the relevant information content of the image) are ideal and cannot be bettered by a human observer, but to which a skilled observer closely approximates. Examples are given illustrating how such procedures could be applied in photography. It is argued that the properties of grain can be described practically completely by the autocorrelation function of the transmission of the developed emulsion. An expression is derived giving, in terms of the autocorrelation function, the mean square fluctuation in transmission for any scanning aperture. This derivation makes no assumption as to the particular nature of grain. A rapid method of measuring the autocorrelation function is proposed.In terms of these concepts, some discussion is given of the "root area" law of granularity, parametric representation of grain, and the relation of image sharpness to grain structure.


The VLSI design process must address the fields of definition, realisation and verification of complex systems. The most important aspect is the management of the complexity in all three fields. The paper discusses the use of structures to aid in these objectives, and describes a particular process sequence. The field of VLSI design is characterised by somewhat obscure terminology. The key to understanding the operations involved in VLSI is seen as a clear definition of these terms in this context, and also their inter-relationships. The terms addressed here are: structure; function; behaviour; hierarchy; abstraction. The design process is widely regarded as being essentially a top-down process, from a precise definition of required function, progressing through a hierarchy of functional levels to the full implementation of the system. A practical situation is discussed, where a process of refinement is applied at each level and the use of structured design enables a degree of bottom-up definition to be incorporated into the design flow. The use of structures in a design introduces the need for design partition. Partition implies communication between the parts. Communication is seen as a vital aspect of system behaviour. Partition frequently is applied to the design team also, and this requires communications between designers, a further important link in the design process. The detailed interplay between definitions and descriptions, both up and down the hierarchy and also between the different design abstractions is seen as the essential activity of the design process where a structural approach is applied. The features of the design system necessary to support this activity are discussed. The status of test in the design process can never be placed too high. The significance of structured design on the ease and validation of test is therefore also considered.


ABSTRACT Li, H.; Wang, Y.; Chang, H.; Xiao, W.; Yu, Z., and Guo, S., 2020. Acoustic impedance and its application in seismo-acoustic landmines detection models. In: Zheng, C.W.; Wang, Q.; Zhan, C., and Yang, S.B. (eds.), Air-Sea Interaction and Coastal Environments of the Maritime and Polar Silk Roads. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 99, pp. 92-98. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Acoustic-to-seismic (A/S) coupling method has been demonstrated to be an effective and accurate technique for the detection of non-metallic landmines buried in soils. However, the complexity and diversity of landed zones in different countries or areas make it difficult to design a practical landmine detection system used in different landed zones. Buried non-metallic mines induce very complex vibration characteristics, which depends on interaction between the soil and the mines as well as on their respective properties. Acoustic impedance is a simple and efficient parameter that can be used to describe A/S coupling and buried non-metallic mines impact on the coupling efficiency. In this paper, theoretical studies will be overviewed including the linear resonance, the non-linear resonance and the anti-resonance models. Relationships will be also discussed between the ground surface acoustic impedance and the buried mines. Finally, frequency response transfer function is proposed to study and summarize dynamics of the soil-mine resonance system.


The manufacturing sector occupies a critical position in the South African economy. However, in recent decades this sector experienced significant instability due to challenges within macroeconomic indicators. The sector's challenges include the issue of electricity distribution, growing inflation rate and commodities price instability. This study aims to assess the effects of electricity supply, inflation and fuel prices on food and beverage production and sales in the manufacturing sector. To this end, the study applied different econometric approaches such as Johansen test for cointegration, vector error correction model (VECM) and Granger causality test on a monthly time series data ranging between January 2002 and December 2019. The study findings suggested the existence of a joint long-run relationship between electricity distribution, inflation rate, fuel price and production and sales of both food and beverage within the manufacturing sector. The result also indicated that both electricity supply and inflation highly impact the production of food and beverage sales compared to the effect of petrol price. Granger causality results have shown that inflation rate can serve in predicting short term production and sales of food and beverage in the South African manufacturing sector. Given the aforementioned findings, the study suggested that to increase production and sales of food and beverage in the manufacturing sector, policymakers should reduce tax on imported fuel. This would assist in lowering petrol prices that may have a repercussion on the inflation rate. Additionally, besides the government support towards electricity production in the Eskom, more effort and resources (financial) would also be allocated to generate and improve other sources of energy such as solar, wind, gas and biogas.


Although individuals within social groups experience reduced predation risk and find food patches more consistently, there can be competition for food among group mates. Individuals with a higher standard metabolic rate (SMR) may be less social, to prioritize food acquisition over defense, while a greater maximum metabolic rate (MMR) may modulate sociability through increased competitive ability. Therefore, in theory, individuals with a higher SMR may prefer smaller groups and those with greater MMR may prefer larger groups. We examined links among metabolic phe -notype, sociability, and choice of group size in the redbelly yellowtail fusilier Caesio cuning . Individuals were exposed to three association tests: (a) a choice between two fish or zero fish; (b) a choice between five fish or zero fish; and (c) a choice between two fish and five fish. The first two tests quantified sociability while the third meas ured relative group size choice. Although there was no link between SMR and socia -bility, fish with a higher MMR were more social than those individuals with a lower MMR. While no correlation was found between MMR and group size choice, there was weak evidence that, if anything, individuals with a higher SMR preferred larger groups, contrary to our hypothesis. As C . cuning is an active fish that spends a large proportion of time operating above SMR, this result could suggest that the links be tween sociability and SMR may shift depending on a species' routine behavior. Links between sociability and MMR may arise if competitive ability allows individuals to obtain resources within groups. Although metabolic traits had no significant influ ence on group size choice, variation in food availability or predation risk could alter the effects of metabolism on group size choice.


INTRODUCTION
The hospital, as a unique type of social organization requires elevated values for management. This paper shows the result of a documented, qualitative, exploratory and descriptive survey about hospitals and their value statements.

OBJECTIVE
Identify values expected for hospitals by a search of literature; identify values expressed by hospitals on their web pages and compare results of both.

METHODS
Critical reading of theses, books and articles. A bibliographic search was carried out on BVS (Health Virtual Library) using keywords such as ethics and healthcare management. The values stated by hospitals on web pages were found in sections such as social responsibility, mission, view, principles, and our values. The categories care, healthcare management and accountability were defined after content analysis of empirical data.

RESULTS
Values stated by hospitals on web pages express social expectations for an organization that deals with issues as elevated as health and life. Although hospitals have a bureaucratic and organizational structure that resembles those of business enterprises, they are different due to their 'duties to patients' rights and life. Healthcare managers, as well as health professionals, must imprint an ethical attitude on their job and daily work. Only such an attitude will permit patients to trust the hospital and its services.


Diluted magnetically doped CeO2 films is an attractive dilute magnetic oxide which would facilitate the practical realization of spintronic devices and may also be used to explore novel magneto-optical applications. In this experiments, 3 at% cobalt-doped CeO2 films with the stoichiometry of Ce0.97Co0.03O2-δ (CCO) were deposited by magnetron sputtering methods on Al2O3 (0001) substrates. The structural, magnetic, and magneto-optical properties were investigated. The results indicate that CCO films with CeO2 (100) orientation can readily be obtained via magnetron sputtering on Al2O3 (0001) substrates. Films are ferromagnetic at room temperature, which is anisotropic with an out-of-plane magnetization easy axis. Magneto-optical measurements exhibit a giant Faraday rotation of about 4800 deg/cm at 650 nm wavelength in out-of-plane direction. The excellent room-temperature ferromagnetism and the giant Faraday rotation in CCO films show highly potential applications in novel magneto-optical devices as well as in spintronics.