The use of Environmentally Acceptable Lubricants (EALs) for stern tube lubrication is increasing. Although the machine components of a sailing vessel are designed to operate together with mineral oil-based lubricants, these are being replaced by the less environmentally harmful EALs. Little is known about the rheological performance of EALs in particular at the high shear rates that occur in stern tube seals. In this study, the viscosity and wetting properties of a set of different EALs is analysed and compared to traditional mineral oil-based lubricants using a set of experimental techniques. Some of the EALs present Newtonian behavior whereas other show shear thinning. No significant difference in surface tension was observed between the different lubricants.


The purpose of this study is to discover the combination of techniques and elements that create the highest-level aesthetic performance arts experience for the audience. This study challenges theories about popular culture and high culture techniques, the environment, and the experience between the audience and the artist to discover which mixture of elements communicate the highest-level experience. Twelve performances were included in this study using the participant observation method. Field notes were taken and analyzed to find the patterns of the most effective techniques used at each performance. Five aesthetic senses had the most influence on the outcome of the performance: venue, staging, connection, participation, and sound.


Purpose: This article proposes and empirically tests the country of market (COMK) effect, which captures the consumer's responses of home market to a country where the product is marketed. Design/methodology/approach: Study 1 applies a lab experiment about Chinese consumers' purchase intention for printers marketed either in the US or China. Study 2 applies country level data to examine the impact of economic development of 22 host countries on the performance of 167 multinational retailers in their home country. Findings: Study 1 shows that the printers marketed in US attract a higher level of purchase intention than printers marketed in China. This COMK effect is more salient for printers manufactured in China than those manufactured in US. In addition, innovation and design factors corresponding to the host country's image fully mediate the COMK effect. Results in Study 2 show that a retailer that markets its services in a host country with a higher (lower) level of economic development is likely to generate higher (lower) level of retailing performance in its home country. Furthermore, it is found that COMK effect is diminished as the level of economic development of a vendor's home country increases. Research limitations/implications: In addition to the cognitive components of country image (e.g., design and innovation), consumers' affective components may also influence the COMK effect. Future research could discuss the impact of consumer ethnocentrism and consumer animosity on consumers' attitude towards the product marketed in other countries. Practical implications: Strategically, marketing products to a country with a favorable image could benefit vendors from an emerging economy. For manufacturers from developed countries, marketing a product within their own countries may enhance the associated innovation and design images while marketing the same product in an emerging market. Originality/value: This article proposes and tests a demand side country effect on consumers' purchase intention for products marketed in other countries. It is in sharp contrast to the traditional country effect which focuses on the supply side effect (e.g., country of origin, country of manufacture, country of assembly etc.).


Epidemiological studies of Schizophrenia have shed scant light on etiological factors involved in this disorder. They have been useful, however, in estimating the frequency of the disease (incidence of about 1/1 000 and prevalence of 2-10/1 000), the age of risk (adolescence and young adulthood) and identifying certain individual characteristics such as male sex, single or marital status and black race (USA data) which are associated with higher rates than those found in the general population. Recent studies indicate that in the next decade, the incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia are expected to rise substantially. The increased fertility of schizophrenic women, the reduced mortality rate due to better medical treatment of the chronically ill will play a part. But the major factor will be population trends. In the United States, the population most at risk for schizophrenia (young black males) is expected to expand by 42% and a parallel increase in the number of new cases should ensure. In order to forestall the consequences of this incipient epidemic, it is imperative that aggressive treatment programs be maintained and reinforced and that research efforts geared toward primary prevention be adequately supported.


Journalism training programs in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are numerous, and are not monitored by any one body internationally or even nationally. This massive training effort, a sort of mini-Marshall Plan, is being undertaken by many organizations, in many different countries, on a piecemeal basis.Alaskan training activitiesIn 1992, USIA put out a Request for Proposals for the CIS which included a media training component. The Journalism and Broadcasting Department at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks received $82.220 for a project for journalism and media management training in Yakutsk, Sakha Republic. The project began in June 1993, included a 30-day training visit by eight Russian journalists to Fairbanks, and will conclude in May 1994 with a training and evaluation visit to Yakutsk by three American journalism faculty members and six local media professionals.During the month's training in Fairbanks, all eight trainees spent the first two weeks in the Department of Journalism and Broadcasting. Three faculty members lectured on all aspects of American journalism, including theory, history, law, ethics, criticism, advertising, and public relations. Each afternoon they were trained to write news stories on computers equipped with Russian fonts. During the last two weeks, the four print journalists spent each day at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner learning from the editorial, business, advertising and distribution departments. The four broadcast trainees spent the last two weeks in the studios of KTVF, the CBS affiliate. Here they learned mainly from the station manager and the advertising manager, although they spent some time observing local news production and electronic editing on new equipment. Two news pieces were produced and aired on this television station.These journalists and media managers were excellent students. They absorbed everything, continually asked questions, engaged us in constant debate on the merits of our commercial media and freedom of expression, and on the problems facing their newspapers and television stations. Many training sessions turned out to be a wonderful exchange of information. We provided them with audiovisual and written materials in Russian, computer programs for use at home, and textbooks in their areas of interest. It was an intensive, exhausting experience but very satisfying. We also took them sight-seeing, to cultural events, and on tours of the local media.The department received a $81,000 extension to this grant from USIA through the newly created American Russian Center in Anchorage. This second phase will build upon the initial project. Six journalists from radio, television, and newspapers will spend six weeks as interns in Alaska in July and August 1994. These interns will learn aspects of management as well as news-production techniques. The grant also includes funds for one of our faculty to visit Yakutsk for three months, to assist with the development of a new journalism department at Yakutsk State University. A side-visit to St. Petersburg will enable study of the journalism department, perhaps for use as a model. The station manager of the local CBS affiliate who worked with the trainees last summer will accompany the faculty member. She will continue to train independent television station managers for a month.The Department of Journalism and Public Communication at the University of Alaska at Anchorage will soon begin a training and exchange program with journalists from Magadan, Magadan Province, in the Russian Far East. Journalists from Anchorage will visit Magadan and assist the media with business reporting. UAA received a $70,000 grant from the Russian American Center in Anchorage. Contact: Dr. Fred Pearce, (907) 786-1506.Anchorage's public radio station KSKA-FM is training 10 radio journalists from Magadan, and Provideniya and Anadyr, Chukotka Province, in the Russian Far East, supported by a grant of $110,000 from USAID through the Eurasia Foundation. …


This article reports on epidemiological features of railway traffic accidents and factors influencing traffic safety. An analysis of various kinds of railway traffic accidents over 30 years in Nanjing Railway Branch, Showed that railway traffic accidents have become a sort of modern social disease, and had particular epidemiological features. The peak of the epidemic curve appeared cyclically and had a close relation to social disturbances, Frequency of accident occurrence was the highest in the first season (period of spring transport) and the third season (period of high temperature) of the year thus most accidents happen in February and August. Most accidents occurred on Fridays and least on Mondays. Distribution of accidents had obvious "antenna" phenomenon in round graph which had a 24-hour cycle. Analysing the multiple factors influencing traffic safety, the results showed that the upper-limit-age of a train driver should not be more than 50 years old; The phenomenon "bathtub" between personage accident rate and age must be taken seriously. More attention should be paid to the psychological aspects when recruiting train drivers. In our country, it is urgent to set up standard of psychomovement function for choosing train locomotive drivers. Fatigue was one of the direct causes resulting in accident occurrences. No statistical correlation was found between biorhythm and accident occurrence.


Accurate landscape-scale maps of forests and associated disturbances are critical to augment studies on biodiversity, ecosystem services, and the carbon cycle, especially in terms of understanding how the spatial and temporal complexities of damage sustained from disturbances influence forest structure and function. Vegetation change tracker (VCT) is a highly automated algorithm that exploits the spectral-temporal properties of summer Landsat time series stacks (LTSSs) to generate spatially explicit maps of forest and recent forest disturbances. VCT performs well in contiguous forest landscapes with closed or nearly closed canopies, but often incorrectly classifies large patches of land as forest or forest disturbance in the complex and spatially heterogeneous environments that typify fragmented forest landscapes. We introduce an improved version of VCT (dubbed VCTw) that incorporates a nonforest mask derived from snow-covered winter Landsat time series stacks ( LTSSw) and compare it with VCT across nearly 25 million ha of land in the Lake Superior (Canada, USA) and Lake Michigan (USA) drainage basins. Accuracy assessments relying on 87 primary sampling units (PSUs) and 2640 secondary sampling units (SSUs) indicated that VCT performed with an overall accuracy of 86.3%. For persisting forest, the commission error was 14.7% and the omission error was 4.3%. Commission and omission errors for the two forest disturbance classes fluctuated around 50%. VCTw produced a statistically significant increase in overall accuracy to 91.2% and denoted about 1.115 million ha less forest (- .371 million ha disturbed and -0.744 million ha persisting). For persisting forest, the commission error decreased to 9.3% and the omission error was relatively unchanged at 5.0%. Commission errors decreased considerably to near 22% and omission errors remained near 50% in both forest disturbance classes. Dividing the assessments into three geographic strata demonstrated that the most dramatic improvement occurred across the southern half of the Lake Michigan basin, which contains a highly fragmented agricultural landscape and relatively sparse deciduous forest, although substantial improvements occurred in other geographic strata containing little agricultural land, abundant wetlands, and extensive coniferous forest. Unlike VCT, VCTw also generally corresponded well with field-based estimates of forest cover in each stratum. Snow-covered winter imagery appears to be a valuable resource for improving automated disturbance mapping accuracy. About 34% of the world's forests receive sufficient snowfall to cover the ground and are potentially suitable for VCTw; other season-based techniques may be worth pursuing for the remaining 66%.


In the immunocompromised patient, early diagnosis of a lung cavity is essential for appropriate treatment. Rhodococcus equi (formerly Corynebacterium equi) is a variably acid-fast bacterium that can produce cavitary disease in an immunocompromised host. The two cases presented here demonstrate the clinical and radiographic features of R equi lung abscess. The first patient was on long-term corticosteroid therapy for rheumatoid arthritis. The second patient had AIDS. The correct diagnosis in both cases was delayed because acid-fast bacilli seen on smears of sputum were presumed to be Mycobacterium tuberculosis.


Barrier dispersion coatings are applied to paper or board in order to lower the permeability of the material to liquids and gases. In the present study, the film formation and barrier properties of latices used for coating applications were investigated. The film topography and surface chemical composition of styrene/butyl acrylate latex films were studied by Atomic Force Microscopy, AFM, and Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis, ESCA, to see the effects of carboxylation and neutralizing agent on polymer interdiffusion. Barrier properties were determined for materials coated on different substrates, particularly the water vapor permeability. Latex dispersions were dialyzed in order to evaluate the effect of purity on film properties. Different three-ply base papers were coated with a pre-metering roll coater on a pilot scale, and the effects of drying conditions and soft calendering on the coating properties were studied. Heat sealability, barrier properties and blocking tendency of the coated material were studied.Surfactant migration in annealed films was confirmed with both AFM and ESCA and was taken to be a measure of polymer interdiffusion. The results showed that interdiffusion was retarded in carboxylated latex films and that this process was further slowed down when sodium hydroxide was used as neutralizing agent. Drying of the films at temperatures above Tg of the rigid outermost shell was required to achieve interdiffusion in carboxylated films. Non-carboxylated dispersions formed smooth films at the temperatures expected from their bulk Tg values. Dialysis removed excess amounts of electrolytes and surfactants and gave more densely packed films with a smoother surface topography. The lowest water vapor permeability was exhibited by carboxylated latex films, presumably because of the formation of a rigid polymer network with a low free volume available for water diffusion, combined with lower surfactant migration. Surfactant enrichment on the coated surface had a negative effect on the heat sealability and gave rise to an increased blocking tendency.The distribution of hydrophobic sizing agent and starch in surface-sized porous materials was studied by microscopy and ESCA. The degree of penetration of starch could be controlled by achieving a weak flocculation between the components through regulation of the pH and salt concentration. The results indicated that the sizing agent remained on the substrate surface, i.e. simultaneous penetration of the two components did not occur.


Genetic diversity and population structure of Japanese populations of the oval squid, Sepioteuthis cf. lessoniana, were compared with populations from Taiwan and Vietnam using nucleotide sequences of the mitochondrial DNA non-coding region 2. In total, 402 nucleotide sequences representing 242 individuals from Japanese waters (Ishikawa, Japan Sea coast of Honshu; Tokushima, eastern Shikoku; Nagasaki, western Kyushu; and Okinawajima and Ishigakijima Island, in the Ryukyu Archipelago) and the East and South China Seas (Keelung, northern Taiwan; Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkin) were examined. Among the 29 haplotypes recognized, haplotype no. 1 was shared by more than 75% of individuals from Japanese localities, whereas it was found in less than 13% of specimens from the East and South China Seas populations. Conversely, the East and South China Seas populations included more than 30% individuals with haplotype no. 2, whereas less than 10% of haplotype no. 2 individuals were from Japanese localities. The differences of haplotype and nucleotide diversities between pooled Japanese populations (0.2639, 0.23%) and the East and South China Seas populations (0.7900, 1.01%) indicate that S. cf. lessoniana from Japanese waters exhibits lower genetic diversity. An analysis of molecular variance between the Japanese populations and the East and South China Seas populations was highly significant. A minimum spanning tree of 29 haplotypes and an Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic mean (UPGMA) tree based on pairwise FST comparisons also supported the separation between Japanese and the East and South China Seas populations. We suggest that the Kuroshio Current physically limits gene flow and has thus caused the differences in genetic diversity among the populations examined.


[Extract] Emerging and worsening antimicrobial resistance represents an enormous threat to public health, one that is exacerbated by an almost dry antibiotic pipeline. The threat has recently been recognised by the World Health Organisation and the Australian Government. The costs of this worsening crisis are high and growing. In the United States alone, recent estimates indicate that about $20 billion per year is lost in direct costs associated with antimicrobial resistant infections and more than $35 billion per year in indirect, consequent loss of productivity. More than 2 million people per year in USA acquire an infection in hospital, many of them antimicrobial resistant, and there are 99,000 consequent deaths per year.

Abundant, potential coping strategies for the worsening antimicrobial resistance crisis have been proposed. Among these, bacteriophage therapy has received relatively little, but increasing, attention.

Bacteriophages (phages for short) are viruses that can infect and kill bacteria, including antimicrobial resistant pathogens. Bacteriophages are ubiquitous, highly diverse, astronomically numerous and most are exquisitely host strain-specific. They can infect only their target bacteria, often only a small subset of a particular host bacterial species. It is likely that a very large majority of all bacterial species have their own bacteriophages. It has been estimated that phage particles outnumber bacterial particles in a mammalian body by approximately 10:1. Given that bacterial cells outnumber mammalian cells approximately 10:1, there may be 100 phage particles per mammalian cell in a healthy animal's body.

Bacteriophages have been used extensively in development of the field of molecular biology. Just some of the discoveries made through study of phages include: DNA is genetic material; nucleic acid codons are arranged in triplets; messenger RNA is needed for protein synthesis; and restriction endonucleases (which arose during the course of evolution to cleave infecting bacteriophage DNA) can be used as workhorses by researchers and technologists in recombinant DNA work.

The diversity of phages is almost as impressive as their massive abundance. In one study,5 a single visit to a sewage treatment plant in a small city, and collection of a small volume of effluent fluid, was sufficient to discover 40 distinct bacteriophages capable of killing canine and feline uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) strains. The mean number of UPEC strains killed by an individual bacteriophage was 21/53 (40%; range 17-72%). Only 3/53 studied UPEC strains could not be killed by any of the phages that were collected during a single collection visit. The 10 "best" phages could each, individually, kill more than 50% of the 53 UPEC strains. Used in combination, the 10 phages would be expected to kill 92%.


The human newborn is highly dependent on parental care for its survival but also for the healthy development of its brain. A large body of literature demonstrates the impact of early life adversity, even during the prenatal period, on the adult's health. The susceptibility to neuropsychiatric diseases is often potentiated by early stress. If there is an agreement that a critical developmental period exists, the mechanisms underlying the long term effects of early life adversity are still poorly understood. Recent studies in animals highlight the involvement of epigenetic processes in the transmission of such vulnerabilities, notably via modifications in germ cells, which can be transmitted in the next generations.


In 1998, the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) model which is composed by four entities ( work, expression, manifestation and item) and their associative relationships ( primary, responsibility and subject) , was proposed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). The FRBR model can be deployed as a logical framework for proceeding metadata analysis and developing metadata format. This paper presents a case study of the National Palace Museum (NPM) in Taipei to examine the feasibility of the FRBR model. With the diversified needs from various content communities, an analysis model is introduced at Academia Sinica to refine and enhance the FRBR model, in order to meet metadata requirements across diverse knowledge domains, which is composed of three facets ( function, subject domain, data type and style)and one supportive community layer.


This paper presents a new marine exposure site being developed on the North-west Atlantic coastline of Ireland in Co. Donegal by the Centre for Built Environment Research at Queen's University Belfast. The site will initially contain a number of large precast concrete stems, each 1.5m high, 1.5m wide and 1m thick placed on concrete plinths poured in-situ. The concrete stems will be placed at three levels to achieve different exposure conditions outlined in EN 206, namely atmospheric (XS1), a splash or spray zone (XS3) and a tidal zone (XS3) where the stems will be submerged by the incoming tide twice daily. The concrete will consist of different cements and appropriate w/b ratios suitable for this type of exposure. The permeability and diffusion properties will be measured using nondestructive tests developed at Queen's University Belfast, namely the Autoclam permeability system and the Permit ion migration test. Other tests to measure the corrosion of the embedded rebar will also be undertaken. In order to monitor the internal concrete properties, electrical sensors will be attached to the rebar and embedded in concrete. The information from these sensors will be relayed back to the office using remote wireless technology. Such integrated monitoring systems for concrete structures can reduce assessment and repair costs by continuously profiling the covercrete and corrosion for the ingress of various deleterious substances, such as chlorides, in the reinforcing steel in real-time. This approach permits an informed assessment of the performance of the structure throughout its service life. This site will form part of a world-wide exposure study, including similar sites in Scotland, India and China.


Background:
 In chidden, the nonspecific presentation of posterior circulation arterial ischemic strokes (PAIS) poses challenges. Additionally, PAIS differ markedly from anterior circulation strokes. Incidence data is lacking and the information about outcome in children with PAIS is limited.

 Objectives:
 This study was aimed to calculate the incidence of and to review the clinical presentation, outcome and prognostic predictors of PAIS in children.

 Methods:
 A retrospective review of a population based cohort of children, birth to 18 years, in Manitoba, Canada, with PAIS, from January 1992 to December 2010. Data regarding demographics, clinical features and outcome of children with PAIS was collected.

 Results:
 Twenty four children with PAIS, 54.2% male, average age 5 years, were identified. Our ratio of PAIS to AIS was 20%, with an estimated incidence rate of 1 person per 10,000 if followed for 15 years. Warning symptoms before stroke onset were present in 33%. Seventy-one percent presented with sensorimotor deficits, 75% with impaired consciousness and 29% with seizures or posturing. Identifiable risk factors were present in two thirds: vasculopathy 25%, infection 21%, trauma 12.5% and congenital heart disease 12.5%. Average Pediatric National Institute of Health Stroke Severity Scale (PedNIHSS) at presentation was 11. Average Pediatric Stroke Outcome Measure (PSOM) at 3 months was 1.35. We found poor outcomes in patients with aboriginal ancestry (45.8%,p=0.003), high PedNIHSS score (p=0.02), bilateral infarction(42%,p=0.003), large artery infarcts (53%,p=0.02), occipital lobe infarcts(42%,p=0.04) and presence of vasculopathy (25%,p=0.05). Presence of abnormalities on vascular imaging trended towards recurrence (p=0.07). Outcome at 3 months correlated with outcome at 12 and 24 months (p<0.001).

 Conclusion:
 Our study is the first to report a population-based incidence of PAIS in children. The incidence rate and the predictors of outcome provide valuable information that will help direct treatment and prognostication of children with PAIS. Our data calls for close observation and management of children with suspected PAIS, in particular aboriginal patients, patients with bilateral and large infarction and abnormal vascular imaging.


During the last two decades, a growing number of research works has been devoted to oxidative stress, which represents a major problem with respect to healthiness, as it is known to be involved in ageing processes and has been suggested to be one of the potential causes for cataract, cancers, cardiovascular and degenerative diseases (Parkinson, Alzheimer) and even male infertility [1]. Among the low molecular weight antioxidant species, ascorbic (AA) and uric (UA) acids are of particular interest since they are present in most biological fluids and thus may be considered as biochemical markers in a lot of pathologies related to oxidative stress (preeclampsia disease, neonatal hypoxia, coronary heart diseases…) [2]. Recently, we have reported on a sensor based on a gold electrode functionalized by an electrogenerated polymer, namely poly[3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene] (PEDOT), for the simultaneous assay of UA and AA [3-5]. This sensor exhibited very good analytical performances including selectivity. We further improved the sensor by using a glassy carbon (GC) electrode functionalized by successive electrodeposition of 4-thiophenylbenzene diazonium (TBD) and (PEDOT) [6]. The use of the TBD layer induced an enhancement of the sensitivity, a lower detection limit for AA and an improved lifetime of the sensor. However, GC is hardly compatible with the silicon technologies required for a cost-effective mass production of integrated microelectrodes and the associated electrochemical microcells. In the present work, we have developed the proof-of-concept of a mixed TBD/ PEDOT functionalized graphene electrode integrated on a silicon substrate for the simultaneous detection and assay of UA and AA. The catalytic chemical vapour deposition (CVD) synthesis of graphene on either platinum (Pt) foils or thin films will be detailed, together with its electrochemical functionalization by both TBD salt grafting and EDOT electropolymerization. The characterization of the resulting modified electrodes by Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and cyclic voltammetry (CV) will be presented. The analytical performances obtained for AA and UA detection and quantification will be also discussed, and a focus will be given to graphene advantages over GC in terms of selectivity and sensitivity. [1] A.H. Colagar, E.T. Marzony, J. Clin.


This article investigates Indonesian history with transnational approach espe- cially in tracing social community of Indonesia in the context of globalization during nineteenth century. In this article, author focuses on holy tomb of ulama or saint ( wali ), Sayyid Husein bin Abu Bakar al-Aydarus, who died in the late eighteenth century and buried in Batavia. Although he died more than a century a go, his influence through tomb still can be sensed until now. In the nineteenth century, the tomb of Sayyid Husein bin Abu Bakar al-Aydarus became a symbolic mediator of Arab Hadrami communities in Batavia to build contact with the only Independence Muslim states, Ottoman state, after the decline of Mughal state in 1857. In the late nineteenth century, Hadrami communities requested donation from Ottoman sultan or Caliph to repair the tomb of Sayyid Husein bin Abu Bakar al-Aydarus. Upon this request, author concludes that in the middle of modernization and globalization, Ottoman government in Istanbul at that juncture was still concerned to preserve its spiritual network wiwth Indonesian Archipelago based on the Tradition of Islam ( al-din ).


The aim with this thesis has been to make a survey of radiation hardened electronics, explaining why and how radiation affects electronics and what can be done to harden it.The effects radiation have on electronics in general and in specific commonly used devices are explained qualitatively. The effects are divided into Displacement Damage (DD), Total Ionizing Dose (TID) and Single Event Effects (SEEs). The devices explained are MOSFETs, Silicon On Insulator (SOI) transistors, 3D-transistors, Power transistors, Optocouplers, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), three dimensional circuits (3D-ICs) and Flash memories.Different radiation hardening by design (RHBD) techniques used to reduce or to remove the negative effects radiation induces in electronics are also explained. The techniques are Annular transistors, Enclosed source/drain transistors, Guard rings, Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR), Dual Interlocked Storage Cells (DICE), Guard gates, Temporal filtering,Multiple drive, Charge dissipation, Differential Charge Cancellation (DCC), Scrubbing, Lockstep, EDAC codes and Watchdog timers.


Chapter 1 is purely introductory and gives a brief account of the taxonomic status of the subject of this thesis, the Manx Shearwater Puffinus puffinus . The main study area, Skokholm Island, Pembrokeshire is described and a general account of what is already known of the breeding biology of the Manx Shearwater is provided as a background to the more detailed studies described in the present work which was continued over five breeding seasons, 1973-1977. In Chapter 2 I demonstrate that male and female Manx Shearwaters differed in the length of their bills and tarsi but not in wing length. However most of the chapter is concerned with the weights and measurements of shearwaters, most of which were of known age but unknown sex, caught at the colony by night. In 1973 and 1974 the weight of all age groups was highest in March and then declined to a minimum in June and July. Weight increased slightly in August. It was generally true that the older a bird was, the heavier it was in any particular month, and this effect appeared to hold good until the birds were 8-10 years old. Unlike weight, bill and wing length did not alter with age. The implications of these results are discussed in the light of current hypotheses concerning the delayed onset of breeding shown by many seabirds including the Manx Shearwater. In the pre-laying period, covered by Chapter 3, both male and female Manx Shearwaters lost weight up until about two weeks before laying. Males lost weight more rapidly than females and this was related to the fact that males visited the burrow more regularly. In the two weeks prior to laying the male continued regularly to visit the burrow at night but the female was virtually absent from the colony; it appears that she may travel into the Bay of Biscay to feed during this period of absence. In the pre-laying period the weight of breeding birds was not different from the weight of birds which have bred formerly but which were not known to be breeding during the current season. However, breeding birds tended to be heavier than birds which started to breed in a future year. To test the possibility that young birds may be prevented from breeding by a shortage of burrows artificial burrows were dug, and some were occupied by young birds, probably breeding for the first time. A burrow-blocking experiment was also carried out. The possibility that competition for burrows was greater in an area of higher as opposed to lower burrow density was investigated by comparing the pre-laying attendance pattern of breeders in the two areas. No difference was found. Chapter 4 shows that the breeding success of newly-formed pairs was lower than that of established pairs, mostly because newly-formed pairs were less successful at incubation. The lower success of new pairs was not due to the new pairing per se but to the fact that such new pairs tended to include birds without previous breeding experience. Thus experienced birds may avoid the disadvantageous consequences (to breeding success) of forming a new pair if they mate with another experienced bird, and this they did. Divorce and change of breeding burrow were both more likely after a breeding failure than a success. Both the laying date and egg volume of individual female Manx Shearwaters varied little from year to year, once the first few years of breeding were passed. I am unable to reconcile this finding with Perrins' (1970) suggestion that the laying date of the female Manx Shearwater is determined by the difficulties she may encounter early in the season in building up sufficient food reserves to form the egg. Instead I propose that, although early laying would be advantageous from the point of view of chick survival (Perrins 1966), the shearwaters do not lay earlier because of the difficulties that would be encountered in successfully incubating an early egg. Evidence supporting this idea is presented. In each of the four study years the fledging weight of chicks declined as the season progressed, as described in Chapter 5. Various lines of evidence, including an egg-swapping experiment, support the view that this decline was mostly due to a deterioration of feeding conditions late in the season, rather than to a tendency for parents less proficient at rearing heavy young to breed later. It seems that date of fledging and weight at fledging may both influence the fledgling's chances of survival but I am unable to determine the relative importance of these two factors. Different pairs of shearwaters differed in their ability to feed chicks, but chick-feeding performance was not related to age or breeding experience. Chapter 6 evaluates the parameters necessary for the construction of a life table. Of the chicks which fledge from Skokholm at least 25andnbsp;% survive to breed on Skokholm, whilst adult survival is about 90andnbsp;%. About 20andnbsp;% of those adults known to be alive and to have bred previously do not breed in any one year- The age of first breeding, currently about six, has increased over the past ten or fifteen years. Among the birds which have been ringed as chicks on Skokholm and which bred there during the study period there was a 2:1 ratio of males to females. I suggest that about half the females fledging from Skokholm settle to breed in other colonies. The body measurements (used as an indicator of sex) and abundance of Skokholm-ringed birds on nearby Skomer Island support this hypothesis. The Manx Shearwater life table is therefore constructed to take account of immigration to and emigration from the Skokholm colony. Recruitment to the breeding population and loss by mortality are roughly equal. Chapter 7 shows that the calls given by male and female Manx Shearwaters were different. The response of other shearwaters to these calls was investigated by means of playback experiments. Females recognized the calls of their male mates but I am unable to show a selective response of males to the calls of their female mates. This difference is considered to be related to the different roles of the two sexes and to be associated with the fact that most calls heard from the ground were given by males whilst most calls uttered in flight were probably given by females. There is no evidence that nestlings can recognize the calls of their parents. The value of colonial breeding is considered in the concluding Chapter 8. It seems that Manx Shearwaters in the dense Main Colony experienced a lower rate of predation, but they did not have greater reproductive success than those breeding in areas of lower burrow density elsewhere on the island. Although nesting habitat on Skokholm is not fully utilised there may be a limited supply of breeding burrows available. This would create competition for burrows which, together with competition for food, is suggested as an important influence on the breeding biology of the Manx Shearwater. There are four appendices. The first shows that birds first caught in the colony at two years old were caught earlier in the year when three years old than those which were caught for the first time at three. Similarly, birds which have been caught when two or three years old were caught earlier in the year when four years old than those birds which were caught for the first time at four. These differences in time of return to the colony appear not to be associated with sex. Appendix 2 discusses the relationship between the body size of offspring and their parents. In the Manx Shearwater it appears that about three-quarters of the phenotypic variance of body size is due to genetic causes, and may therefore be inherited. Appendix 3 describes a simple experiment designed to test the possibility that vision may be one sense used by Manx Shearwaters attempting to locate their breeding burrow. The result of the experiment was positive but more extensive tests would be required to assess the relative roles of vision and any other senses that may be employed in burrow location. Appendix 4 describes an unsuccessful visit to the Basque coast of northern Spain to assess the status of the Manx Shearwater in the south-east corner of the Bay of Biscay in the pre-laying period, late April. I tentatively suggest that it is only in exceptional circumstances that many shearwaters feed south of about 46° N.


UNLABELLED
In this article, we address the cosmic frequency of technological species. Recent advances in exoplanet studies provide strong constraints on all astrophysical terms in the Drake equation. Using these and modifying the form and intent of the Drake equation, we set a firm lower bound on the probability that one or more technological species have evolved anywhere and at any time in the history of the observable Universe. We find that as long as the probability that a habitable zone planet develops a technological species is larger than ∼10(-24), humanity is not the only time technological intelligence has evolved. This constraint has important scientific and philosophical consequences.

KEY WORDS
Life-Intelligence-Extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology 2016, 359-362.


Aim: To review the results of open reduction and temporary rigid screw fixation of Lisfranc fracturedislocations performed in Singapore General Hospital (SGH) from 1996 to 1998. Methods: A retrospective review of 11 cases of Lisfranc injuries treated with temporary rigid internal screw fixation with a minimum follow up of six months was carried out. Radiological assessment was made at follow up to ascertain the anatomical reduction achieved and complications such as post-traumatic arthritis. In addition, the patients were evaluated with a functional assessment with relation to pain, interference to usual activities and the time to resumption of work. Results: Anatomical reduction was achieved in all cases. None of the cases showed loss of reduction at follow up after the temporary implants were removed. No longitudinal arch collapse or other deformities were seen. All the patients had good or excellent functional outcomes. Conclusions: Results of treatment of Lisfranc injuries are related to anatomical correction. Temporary screw fixation allows rigid internal fixation with stability to allow anatomical correction. Screws also maintain their stability longer, allowing ligamentous injuries the longer period necessary for healing. In conclusion, temporary rigid screw fixation of Lisfranc fracture maintains anatomical reduction and gives excellent functional outcomes for the patients.


Interprocedural analysis is at the heart of numerous applications in programming languages, such as alias analysis, constant propagation, etc. Recursive state machines (RSMs) are standard models for interprocedural analysis. We consider a general framework with RSMs where the transitions are labeled from a semiring, and path properties are algebraic with semiring operations. RSMs with algebraic path properties can model interprocedural dataflow analysis problems, the shortest path problem, the most probable path problem, etc. The traditional algorithms for interprocedural analysis focus on path properties where the starting point is fixed as the entry point of a specific method. In this work, we consider possible multiple queries as required in many applications such as in alias analysis. The study of multiple queries allows us to bring in a very important algorithmic distinction between the resource usage of the one-time preprocessing vs for each individual query. The second aspect that we consider is that the control flow graphs for most programs have constant treewidth. Our main contributions are simple and implementable algorithms that support multiple queries for algebraic path properties for RSMs that have constant treewidth. Our theoretical results show that our algorithms have small additional one-time preprocessing, but can answer subsequent queries significantly faster as compared to the current best-known solutions for several important problems, such as interprocedural reachability and shortest path. We provide a prototype implementation for interprocedural reachability and intraprocedural shortest path that gives a significant speed-up on several benchmarks.


This paper investigates the relationship between subjective expectations regarding the replacement rate of income at retirement and several measures of pension satisfaction. We use panel data on Dutch employees, analyzed with fixed effects models, allowing for correlation between unobserved heterogeneity in satisfaction and optimism or pessimism in expectations. The level of the expected replacement rate is found to be positively related to satisfaction: respondents who revise their expectations of the level of their replacement rate upwards tend to become more satisfied with their pension provisions, in particular with the level of the expected benefits. We do not find robust evidence for a relationship between uncertainty and pension satisfaction.


AN ALTER KÄMPFER AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE HOLOCAUST: OTTO OHLENDORF BETWEEN CAREERISM AND NAZI FUNDAMENTALISM Jennifer B. Capani On April 7th, 1951, Holocaust perpetrator Otto Ohlendorf's death sentence was carried out according to the ruling of the United States Military Courts in Nuremberg. In The United States vs. Otto Ohlendorf, et. al., leaders of the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units, were tried for war crimes which led to the deaths of millions of Jews and partisans. Under Ohlendorf's leadership of Einsatzgruppen D, more than 90,000 people were liquidated in the Ukraine. After this assignment, Ohlendorf resumed his positions head of Domestic Security in the Reich Security Main Office. As the war ended, he surrendered, and revealed the full scope of Einsatzgruppen activity, which eventually led to the second set of Nuremberg Trials. Outside of the Holocaust and the trial, little has been written on Ohlendorf. His academic career and ideology are insufficiently analyzed. This dissertation analyzes Ohlendorf's life, career, and National Socialist ideology. The key factor in exploring his motivations is to fuse together careerism and ideology through his elite status as an Alter Kämpfer, "old fighter" and Nazi party member before 1933. From this designation, Ohlendorf enjoyed privileged employment, promotions, and a high level of trust within the party. Further explored is the placement of Ohlendorf into the historiographical debate, and how his ideology, career, trial, and death connected to his position as an Alter Kämpfer. Ultimately, analyzing the historiography reveals how memory has been fashioned in such ubiquitous topics as World War II, Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust.


THE COMEDIES OF JOVAN STERIJA POPOVIC ; Jovan Sterija Popovic (1806-1856), a Serbian writer born in Voivodina, is very famous in Yugoslavia, especially for his thirteen comedies. In France Popovic is unknown, and his works were never translated into French. This book is the first one entirely devoted to Popovic's comedies. The first part includes biographical information, defines his place in Serbian literature, and discusses his other works: novels, poems, and historical dramas. The second part is devoted to the genesis of his comedies, and shows how J. S. Popovic created this genre in Serbian literature: intertextuality (cultural references, literary antecedents, in particular Moliere), and autointertextuality. The third part reviews the eighty characters in his comedies. Their names are examined, and a classification based on identity (false, destab- ilized, in transition, etc.) as a criterion is proposed. Then their speech is observed: these comedies are a true linguistic 'Tower of Babel'. The fourth part deals with theater techniques: the secondary text (which leads to a discussion of the very notion of 'didascalia'); the main text (dialogue, monologue, and asides); the structures of the action (from exposition to denouement); the spatial and temporal structures; and lastly the comic dimension with verbal and non-verbal comic devices. The approach is not chronological, but the study reveals the development of J. S. Popovic as an author who first of ail focused on his readers, then on his audience, and in his later plays on both.


Frequently the ethical attorney finds himself in a position where he can no longer reconcile con-flicting responsibilities he owes to his clients with those he owes so-ciety and himself. Faced with the dilemma of choice among coun-tervailing and competing obliga-tions, he has little training and precedence to guide him. If he is over forty, the overwhelming probability is that he never took a course on legal ethics; if he looks for a general, up-to-date text to provide insight, he will look in vain. Nor is there a developed body of case law from which to glean an appropriate course of action. This vacuum of authoritative formulations of responsible be-havior is a matter of concern not only to the legal profession, but to all sectors of American society. Lawyers shape the mores and thoughts of all of us. Their will is exerted not only in modifying our national institutions, but ulti-mately our individual, personal sense of values. This volume serves two impor-tant purposes: it provides the interested professional and lay reader with an appreciation of thespectrum of the ethical dilemmas confronting the legal profession, and it provides a sense of balance about the competing consid-erations present in each of these dilemmas. At a time when the legal profession is under attack both from within and without, this book represents some of the best critical thinking by lawyers about their role and responsibilities in American society.


Summary Rabbit thoracic aorta segments were treated with either proteoglycan-degrading enzymes or with glycosaminoglycan- binding proteins to examine the nature of the endothelial and subendothelial binding sites of 125I-thrombin. Treatment (5-30 min) with enzymes (heparitinase, chondroitinases AC or ABC) caused a decrease in 125I-thrombin binding by the endothelium (30-70%) and by the subendothelial (intima-media) layer (20-50%); a low- specificity protease destroyed endothelial binding almost entirely and reduced binding to the subendothelium by approximately 60% over a similar period. Of the glycosaminoglycan-binding proteins, pretreatment of the aorta wall with protamine caused a 30% decrease in thrombin binding to the endothelium whereas lipoprotein lipase (present during 125I-thrombin uptake) decreased binding by up to 40%. Pretreatment with antithrombin III did not significantly affect binding of either 125I-thrombin or 125I-FPR-inactivated thrombin. In contrast to thrombin, 125I- antithrombin III was not readily uptaken by the aorta segments. These observations indicate that, whereas the minimal binding by 125I-antithrombin III probably does not involve endothelial proteoglycan, a strong case can be made for endothelial and subendothelial proteoglycan binding sites for thrombin..


The explosion and dissemination of knowledge and technologies is one of the characteristics of the current time. The teacher is no longer the reference of knowledge or competence. The expansion and deepening of concepts and methods grow exponentially. Knowledge does not provide a clear path to future life success. Earth-related issues are global sustainability concerns. Now, the claim is to pick up and deal with the information to solve specific problems. The expert apps have become powerful tools for learning and professional operations. There is a new student with different problems, social environment and motivations, especially his appreciation for autonomy, in an immense diversity of offers and demands. And there is new ways to learn, more friendly but more away from the real world. What does this change in the curricula and for the teacher and student in the classroom? Two opposite answers are the common behavior: focus on teaching or focus on learning. In the first, good teachers will look for the best subjects, based on gaps and remarkable discoveries and good examples in the body of scientific knowledge and attractive ways of presenting them to students. In the second, good teachers will help and guide students to organize and work to find the most appropriate and motivating issues and ways to deal with them to be useful in their lives. Earth sciences have many problems, solutions and challenges, daily in the news and in the surroundings of place and student life. Students become proud to be active in the group, in his real world, according to his needs, his challenges; and they need help and guidance in this process. Teachers will focus on the motivations of these students to build their knowledge, their being, their skills, their professional abilities, their commitments as citizens and the reasons to lifelong learning.


We present a model of the resonant cyclotron dissipation of parallel‐propagating ion‐cyclotron waves in a coronal hole under the kinetic shell approximation. This approximation takes the resonant quasilinear wave‐particle interaction to be much faster than the non‐resonant processes affecting the proton distribution, essentially maintaining the resonant protons in a state of marginal stability with respect to this wave mode. Thus, the kinetic shell model represents the case of maximum possible dissipation by the resonant cyclotron mechanism. When the additional simplification of dispersionless waves is made, this model easily yields fast solar wind flows from plausible conditions at the model inner boundary. However, when ion‐cyclotron dispersion is included the model fails, resulting in cooling of the proton population and weak acceleration to speeds on the order of 300 km s−1. We conclude that resonant dissipation of parallel‐propagating waves cannot be responsible for the fast solar wind.


Global geomagnetic activity has been suggested to be enhanced during weekends above the weekly average after 1930. Before the 1930s, weekends and weekdays were found to be equally active. This so-called "weekend effect" was suggested to be due to power line harmonic radiation (PLHR) in the VLF range emitted by electric power lines. Since the consumption of electric power is different on weekends and weekdays, leading to different PLHR intensities, this could possibly cause the "weekend effect" in global geomagnetic activity. In the present paper, we reanalyse the suggested "weekend effect" in global geomagnetic activity using the 69-year planetary geomagnetic Ap index and the 131-year antipodal aa index. We conclude that there is no statistically significant "weekend effect" during the interval covered by these geomagnetic activity indices. Although global geomagnetic activity is slightly enhanced on weekends from the 1930s to the 1980s, the more recent data show rather a relative decrease in global geomagnetic activity on weekends, contrary to the expected increase in the "weekend effect", due to increasing power consumption. Moreover, the weekly distribution is fairly similar in solar wind speed and global geomagnetic activity during the last 35 years, further supporting the view that the "weekend effect" is only a statistical fluctuation.


Latvia is considering adopting a convertible currency which would be highly backed and which would be administered by a currency board. The problem is that with a tiny proportion of national income generated by trade with convertible currency countries this would require a huge initial undervaluation of the new domestic currency (the Lat), which would be highly stagflationary. The introduction of a bi-paper standard, with the Lat as a fully backed second currency circulating in parallel with the rapidly inflating Latvian ruble, avoids these costs. The advantages of such a system for revolutionary banking sector reform are also described.


In performing sharp cervical conization, one is often handicapped by blood obscuring the field, as well as the tendency of the blade to cut at uneven depths. The instrument * here described overcomes these faults. It consists of a hollow cone, open at the base, that attaches to a standard Bard Parker scalpel by a turn of a thumbscrew. The blade lies in a slot that runs the length of the cone, so that the specimen escapes into the cone as it is cut, and is constantly visible through the open base. Thus the surgeon always knows just what he is getting. The slot spacing of about 2 mm. procures specimens of uniform thickness which appear like a thick graft as they come into view. If greater depth is required, repeated sections are taken, although this is not generally necessary. Blood is excluded from the cone during the cutting process because


Objective: This study examines race differences in the association of sociodemographic and health-related characteristics with change in food sufficiency status over 1 year in homebound older adults.Method: Using sociodemographic and health-related data collected during two in-home assessments as part of the North Carolina Nutrition and Function Study, logistic regression models (binary and nominal outcomes) adjusted for covariates and examined the characteristics associated with 1-year change in risk (RFI) and presence (FI) of food insufficiency among a random sample of 268 home-delivered meals participants.Results: Not having enough money for food and having to prepare cheaper and smaller meals was associated with increased RFI and FI at 1 year; having to borrow money for food, loss of food stamps, and inadequate income increased the odds among Whites, and increased medication use among Blacks.Discussion: The findings suggest that race, independent of other characteristics, is associated with diminished food sufficiency over 1 year.


Groma is an open access peer-reviewed e-journal of the Department of History and Cultures (DISCI) of the University of Bologna focusing on the different methodologies applied to archaeology.


This essay is a reading of Andil Gosine's Nature's Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean (2021) that thinks through the author's contributions on LGBTQ+ history, art, and activism in the Caribbean. It begins with a look at how the animal is wielded discursively to deride queerness and thinks through the constructions of animality. Central to much of the essay is the framing of how for queer people Gosine's ideas of either rejecting the animal or reclaiming it can be read in Colin Robinson's poetry, and how liberation for the queer subject comes at a fraught cost. The essay concludes by looking at Gosine's notions of "wrecking work" and uses them to read the history of Indian indenture in the literary arts.


The development of methods for estimating the parameters of hydrologic models considering uncertainties has been of high interest in hydrologic research over the last years. In particular methods which understand the estimation of hydrologic model parameters as a geometric search of a set of robust performing parameter vectors by application of the concept of data depth found growing research interest. Bardossy and Singh (2008) presented a first Robust Parameter Estimation Method (ROPE) and applied it for the calibration of a conceptual rainfall-runoff model with daily time step. The basic idea of this algorithm is to identify a set of model parameter vectors with high model performance called good parameters and subsequently generate a set of parameter vectors with high data depth with respect to the first set. Both steps are repeated iteratively until a stopping criterion is met. The results estimated in this case study show the high potential of the principle of data depth to be used for the estimation of hydrologic model parameters. In this paper we present some further developments that address the most important shortcomings of the original ROPE approach. We developed a stratified depth based sampling approach that improves the sampling from non-elliptic and multi-modal distributions. It provides a higher efficiency for the sampling of deep points in parameter spaces with higher dimensionality. Another modification addresses the problem of a too strong shrinking of the estimated set of robust parameter vectors that might lead to overfitting for model calibration with a small amount of calibration data. This contradicts the principle of robustness. Therefore, we suggest to split the available calibration data into two sets and use one set to control the overfitting. All modifications were implemented into a further developed ROPE approach that is called Advanced Robust Parameter Estimation (AROPE). However, in this approach the estimation of the good parameters is still based on an ineffective Monte Carlo approach. Therefore we developed another approach called ROPE with Particle Swarm Optimisation (ROPE-PSO) that substitutes the Monte Carlo approach with a more effective and efficient approach based on Particle Swarm Optimisation. Two case studies demonstrate the improvements of the developed algorithms when compared with the first ROPE approach and two other classical optimisation approaches calibrating a process oriented hydrologic model with hourly time step. The focus of both case studies is on modelling flood events in a small catchment characterised by extreme process dynamics. The calibration problem was repeated with higher dimensionality considering the uncertainty in the soil hydraulic parameters and another conceptual parameter of the soil module. We discuss the estimated results and propose further possibilities in order to apply ROPE as a well-founded parameter estimation and uncertainty analysis tool.


Efficient CO2 scrubbing without a significant energy penalty remains an outstanding challenge for fossil fuel-burning industries where aqueous amine solutions are still widely used. Porous materials have long been evaluated for next-generation CO2 adsorbents. Porous polymers, robust and inexpensive, show promise as feasible materials for the capture of CO2 from warm exhaust fumes. We report the syntheses of porous covalent organic polymers (COPs) with CO2 adsorption capacities of up to 5616 mg/g (a world record-measured at high pressures, i.e., 200 bar) and industrially relevant temperatures (as warm as 65 C). COPs are stable in boiling water for at least one week, and near infinite CO2/H2 selectivity is observed. Theoretical calculations refer to an amorphous extended framework as density is likely the main reason for exceptional CO2 capacities. COPs 1-2 feature basic nitrogen sites that show chemospecific affinity towards acidic gases such as CO2. COP-3 has reasonably high surface area (418 m2/g), effective for low pressure operations. Post-combustion carbon capture from fossil fuel power plants demands pressures of up to 6 bar and a minimum temperature of 40 C. By tuning their architecture, we show that COPs reach to 3 mmol CO2/g sorbent at 6 bar and 45 C. High and low pressure capacities make these porous polymer structures viable alternatives to amine scrubbers*. *H. A. Patel, F. Karadas, A. Canlier, J. Park, E. Deniz, Y. Jung, M. Atilhan*, C. T. Yavuz*, J. Mater. Chem., 22, 8431-8437, (2012).


So far, many public complaints regarding the negative impact of livestock activities were due to negligence of most livestock farmers in waste management of their business, even in many situation, some of them dispose the waste into the river, causing environmental pollution. Livestock waste such as feces, urine, orts, water from cleaning the cattle, and the pens produce not just bad smell but also cause an itching when they are taking a bath in the contaminated rivers. These have triggered criticisms from the community. Treating or processing the waste, not only will reduce the impact on the environment, but also will provide benefits because it can be used to produce fuel. One of the available processing technology is biogas technology. Biogas can be used as economical fuel and also can be used to reduce environmental pollution in rural areas. Biogas technology in Desa Pinang District of Cendana Enrekang initially as an effort to use cow feces as alternative energy and reduce environmental pollution. In connection with that, some issues was emerging in relation to the adoption of biogas among the dairy farmers. The purpose of this study was to determine whether extension, experience, education, and motivation may influence the adoption of biogas technology in Pinang Village, Cendana Sub District, Enrekang District. The research was carried from January to February 2016 in Pinang Village, Cendana Sub District, Enrekang District. The type of research was quantitative explanatory. The analytical tool used was multiple regression analysis.The results of study showed that the factors influencing the adoption of biogas technology were extension and motivation, while education and experience had no effects on.


— This work presents the results of a study the incidence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in women with impaired reproductive function (IRF) according to the data of Astana, Kazakhstan. The anthropometric, biochemical and instrumental studies were conducted among 515 women, of which 53 patients with MetS according to IDF criteria, 2006, were selected. The frequency of occurrence of the IRF, due to MetS is 10.3% of cases according to the data of Astana. In women of childbearing age with IRF and the MetS, blood pressure (BP), indicators of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism were significantly higher and the level of high density lipoprotein (HDL) significantly lower compared to the same in women with the IRF without MetS. The hyperandrogenism, the hyperestrogenemia, the hyperprolactinemia and the hypoprogesteronemia were found in the patients with MetS and IRF, indicating the impact of MetS on the development of the polycystic ovary syndrome in 28% of cases and hyperplastic processes of the myometrium in 20% of cases.


Little is understood about the impact of level of motor competence on self-perceptions in adolescence, in particular how this may differentially affect girls and boys. A sample of 1,568 14-year-old participants (766 girls and 802 boys) were grouped into four motor competence levels (very low to high) based on the McCarron Assessment of Neuromuscular Development (MAND). Self-perceptions were assessed using the Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents. Boys had higher self-perceptions of global self-worth, athletic competence, and physical appearance, whereas girls had higher scores for close friendships and behavioral conduct. Main effects in the predicted direction were found for motor competence for self-perceptions of global self-worth, athletic competence, physical appearance, close friendships, social acceptance, and romantic appeal. These findings indicate that level of motor competence is important in many aspects of self-perceptions, affecting girls and boys differently. Higher motor competence has a protective effect on psychosocial health, particularly for girls.


Aim: To analyze the shaping ability of Unicone (Medin), Wave One (Dentsply Maillefer) and Reciproc (VDW) reciprocating systems through the use of micro-computed tomography (MCT) in simulated curved canals. Methods: The shaping time, the centering ability and the changes in canal volumes of these systems were measured. Sixty artificial root canals with a curvature range of 30 0 in resin blocks, were scanned pre and postoperatively by MCT. The resin blocks were divided into four groups (n=15) and the root canals were shaped using three reciprocating systems and Ni-Ti Flex files (Dentsply Maillefer) for the control group. The data were analized using the software CTAnalyser and the Shapiro-Wilks test with p<0.05 indicating a statistically significant difference. Results: The results showed statistically significant difference (p<0.05) between the reciprocating and manual instruments regarding the shaping time. There was not statistically significant difference between the reciprocating systems used in this study. In the cervical portion of the canal, the Unicone system showed the highest volume increase of the reciprocating systems. No statistically significant diferences regarding the centering ability of the reciprocating systems were found. Conclusions: In comparison to the manual preparation technique, the reciprocating instruments provided a faster shaping of the simulated root canals and similar centering ability. Lastly, concerning the volume increase of the root canal portions, statistically significant differences in the cervical portion of the root canals were observed, identifying the highest values for the Unicone group within the reciprocating systems. Lastly, the reciprocating systems provided an adequate centering ability.


COVID-19 is a public health emergency that has rapidly spread to over 200 countries and regions, and no effective treatment has been established to date. Severe and critical cases have been associated with higher mortality due to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and cytokine storm. Based on the novelty and recent emergence of COVID-19, no effective treatment regimen has been identified, thus prompting clinicians to engage in drug repurposing to address the immediate therapeutic need. This study focused on the molecular target angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) of SARS-CoV-2 and screened a group of ACE2 agonists by bioinformatics. Glucocorticoids are a type of ACE2 activator. We verified the efficacy of nine chemicals on regulating ACE2 expression in human GES-1, an upper digestive tract epithelial cell line, and THP-1, a human monocyte cell line, and found that several glucocorticoids imparted activating effects on ACE2 in both cell lines. The drugs triciribine and kinetin riboside activate ACE2 expression or inhibit IL-6 production in macrophages to some extent. In addition, we compared the efficacies of several glucocorticoids. Hydrocortisone showed the strongest effect on ACE2 activation, followed by prednisolone, dexamethasone, and methylprednisolone. We retrospectively analyzed the therapeutic efficacy of nine severe or critical patients from a cohort of 90 COVID-19 cases, who received medium to small doses of glucocorticoids from our integrated medical team in Wuhan. Seven out of nine patients revealed significant improvement in clinical parameters and chest CT images. This study provides experimental and clinical evidence that medium-to-low-dose glucocorticoids may play a protective role in the respiratory and digestive systems by activating ACE2 and suppressing cytokine storm.


In this paper we introduce and discuss five guidelines for the use of normative systems in computer science. We adopt a multiagent systems perspective, because norms are used to coordinate, organize, guide, regulate or control interaction among distributed autonomous systems. They are derived from the computer science literature. From the so-called 'normchange' definition of the first workshop on normative multiagent systems in 2005 we derive the guidelines to motivate which definition of normative multiagent system is used, to make explicit why norms are a kind of (soft) constraints deserving special analysis, and to explain why and how norms can be changed at runtime. From the so-called 'mechanism design' definition of the second workshop on normative multiagent systems in 2007 we derive the guidelines to discuss the use and role of norms as a mechanism in a game-theoretic setting, and to clarify the role of norms in the multiagent system.


The differentiation of Earth into a metallic core and silicate mantle left its signature on the chemical and isotopic composition of the bulk silicate Earth (BSE). This is seen in the depletion of siderophile (metal-loving) relative to lithophile (rock-loving) elements in Earth's mantle as well as the silicon isotope offset between primitive meteorites (i.e. bulk Earth) and BSE, which is generally interpreted as a proof that Si is present in Earth's core. Another putative light element in Earth's core is sulphur; however, estimates of core S abundance vary significantly and, due to its volatile nature, no unequivocal S isotopic signature for core fractionation has thus far been detected. Here we present new high precision isotopic data for Cu, a chalcophile (sulphur-loving) element, which shows that Earth's mantle is isotopically fractionated relative to bulk Earth. Results from high pressure equilibration experiments suggest that the sense of Cu isotopic fractionation between BSE and bulk Earth requires that a sulphide-rich liquid segregated from Earth's mantle during differentiation, which likely entered the core. Such an early-stage removal of a sulphide-rich phase from the mantle presents a possible solution to the long-standing 1st terrestrial lead paradox.


We have designed and tested a parallel 8-bit ERSFQ arithmetic logic unit (ALU). The ALU design employs wave-pipelined instruction execution and features modular bit-slice architecture that is easily extendable to any number of bits and adaptable to current recycling. A carry signal synchronized with an asynchronous instruction propagation provides the wave-pipeline operation of the ALU. The ALU instruction set consists of 14 arithmetical and logical instructions. It has been designed and simulated for operation up to a 10 GHz clock rate at the 10-kA/cm2 fabrication process. The ALU is embedded into a shift–register–based high-frequency testbed with on-chip clock generator to allow for comprehensive high frequency testing for all possible operands. The 8-bit ERSFQ ALU, comprising 6840 Josephson junctions, has been fabricated with MIT Lincoln Lab's 10-kA/cm2 SFQ5ee fabrication process featuring eight Nb wiring layers and a high-kinetic inductance layer needed for ERSFQ technology. We evaluated the bias margins for all instructions and various operands at both low and high frequency clock. At low frequency, clock and all instruction propagation through ALU were observed with bias margins of +/−11% and +/−9%, respectively. Also at low speed, the ALU exhibited correct functionality for all arithmetical and logical instructions with +/-6% bias margins. We tested the 8-bit ALU for all instructions up to 2.8 GHz clock frequency.


Recent reforms in Myanmar afforded local Christians new opportunities to more actively share the gospel with Buddhists. In doing so they entered into a public sphere tentatively emerging from five decades of censorship and other restrictions on expression. This article explores the place of misunderstanding and translation in encounters between evangelists and Buddhist audiences. For evangelists, to go public was to open oneself to the possibility, even the likelihood, of being misunderstood. Such misunderstandings emerged in part from the negotiation of similarity and difference entailed by translation practices. Edwards situates these practices in a conceptual and linguistic space partly shaped by nineteenth-century missionary efforts, and also by state attempts to regulate the public use of Buddhist language.


We have studied the chromosomal sensitivity to N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine (MNNG) of human diploid skin fibroblasts derived from individuals with adenomatosis coli (AC), which is a dominantly inherited disorder associated with multiple adenomas of the colon and rectum. Spontaneous frequencies of chromosome aberrations in the cell strains from the AC patients were similar to those in the control cells from normal individuals. However, the AC cells exhibited elevated chromosome instabilities when cells were expected to MNNG, with aberration frequencies approximately twice as high as in similarly treated control cells. The present results, together with findings by others, suggest that the AC cells are defective in a function which regulates cellular condition and are in a state more susceptible to the action of agents that react with chromosomal DNA. These findings also raise the possibility of developing a diagnostic procedure for early detection of abnormal gene carriers of AC.


Internet-scale Distributed Networks (IDNs) are large distributed systems that comprise hundreds of thousands of servers located around the world. IDNs consume significant amounts of energy to power their deployed server infrastructure, and nearly as much energy to cool that infrastructure. We study the potential benefits of using renewable open air cooling (OAC) in an IDN. Our results show that by using OAC, a global IDN can extract 51% cooling energy reducing during summers and a 92% reduction in the winter.


This paper uses option prices to learn about the uncertainty surrounding the fundamental information that is revealed on earnings announcement dates. To do this, we introduce a reduced-form model and estimators to separate the uncertainty over the information revealed on earnings dates from normal day-to-day volatility. The fundamental uncertainty estimators are easy to compute and rely only on option price information available prior to the announcement. Empirically, we find strong support for our reduced form specification and investigate the fundamental uncertainty estimators. We find that they are quantitatively large, vary over time, and are informative about the future volatility of stock price movements. Finally, we quantify the impact of earnings annoucements on formal option pricing models.


This guide links to books, journals and other resources that will be of particular use to managers in Health and Social Care.


A list of species of Rutelinae from Bahia state, Northeastern Brazil, is presented. The list is based on specimens deposited in Brazilian collections. The list includes 4 tribes, 23 genera, 101 species and 17 subspecies. The genera Byrsopolis Burmeister, 1844, Pseudodorysthetus Soula, 2008 and Trizogeniates Ohaus, 1917 are recorded for the first time in Bahia and Northeastern Brazil. Thirty species are newly recorded in Bahia: Areoda espiritosantensis Ohaus, 1905, B. laticollis Burmeister, 1855, Bolax flavolineata (Mannerheim, 1829), Chlorota abdominalis Ohaus, 1926, C. espiritosantensis Ohaus, 1912, Dorysthetus espiritosantensis Ohaus, 1905, D. fulgidus (Waterhouse, 1881), Leucothyreus acanthurus Ohaus, 1917, L. albopilosus Ohaus, 1917, L. campestris Burmeister, 1855, L. cayapo Ohaus, 1931, L. duplopunctatus Frey, 1976, L. eligius Ohaus, 1918, L. fluminensis Ohaus, 1918, L. iridipennis Ohaus, 1917, L. lucipetens Ohaus, 1931, L. occipitalis Ohaus, 1931, L. pallefactus Ohaus, 1924, L. paulista Ohaus, 1917, L. punctulatus Blanchard, 1851, L. suturalis Laporte, 1840, L. trochantericus Ohaus, 1917, L. verticalis Ohaus, 1924, Macraspis cincta (Drury, 1872), Paranomala tricostulata (Ohaus, 1897), P. violacea (Burmeister, 1844), Pseudodorysthetus calcaratus (Spinola, 1835), and Trizogeniates planipennis Ohaus, 1917. Pelidnota unicolor unicolor (Drury, 1778) is recorded for the first time in Bahia. Fourteen species are identified and will be described in subsequent papers: 10 of Leucothyreus MacLeay, 1819, 2 of Lobogeniates Ohaus, 1917 and 1 species of Byrsopolis Burmeister, 1844 and Pelidnota MacLeay, 1819. Rutelini is the richest tribe with 16 genera and 49 species. The information presented in the list generates an important set of knowledge regarding the diversity of Rutelinae of Bahia and Brazil and provides the basis for conducting future research within the group.


Studies were conducted with the goal of developing a kit for assaying anti-Chlamydia pneumoniae antibodies in human serum which would enable judging positive cases with high specificity by means of an objective numerical index. Thus, an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method employing a C. pneumoniae outer membrane complex protein was established. Elementary bodies (EB) were purified from the YK-41 strain of C. pneumoniae, and subsequent treatment with Sarkosyl, DNase and RNase yielded chlamydial outer membrane complex (COMC). COMC was employed as the antigen and immobilized on 96-well microplates for ELISA method. This ELISA method was used to test 51 serum specimens from patients who had been demonstrated to be positive for C. pneumoniae antigen (throat swab: PCR positive), and the levels of IgG, IgA and IgM antibodies were assayed. For each specimen, comparison was made with the antibody titers determined by the micro immunofluorescence test (Micro-IF method). The results showed good correlation coefficients of 0.950 for IgG, 0.852 for IgA and 0.866 for IgM. In addition, the two assay methods showed the following high agreement rates: 90.2% for IgG, 84.3% for IgA and 82.4% for IgM. Specimens which did not yield the same results with the ELISA method and Micro-IF method were subjected to analysis by Western blot method, and the rates of agreement with the ELISA results were 80% for IgG, 87.5% for IgA and 88.9% for IgM. These data indicate the efficacy of this new ELISA method. Moreover, COMC was reacted with mouse antisera to three Chlamydia species, and the mouse IgG antibody was assayed. Anti-C. pneumoniae antiserum showed the strongest reactivity, whereas weaker reactivity was shown by anti-C. trachomatis antiserum (1/32nd of the reactivity of the anti-C. pneumoniae antiserum) and anti-C. psittaci antiserum (1/4th). In addition, sera from patients infected with C. trachomatis or C. psittaci (Psittacosis) were subjected to the ELISA method using COMC from C. pneumoniae. It was found that the correlation between the ELISA and Micro-IF methods was higher in relation to the anti-C. pneumoniae antibody titer than either the anti-C. trachomatis antibody titer or anti-C. psittaci antibody titer. These findings indicate this new assay kit based on the ELISA method has high specificity for C. pneumoniae.


Good relations with the main Westeuropean powers has been the cornerstone of Chilean foreign Policy since independence. Since the Second World War, the U.S. replaced almost completely the european influence on Chilean international relations. But step by step, the European powers reconstructed the economic ties with Chile, which was their main goal. Chile's goal mainly intended to find wider markets for copper, and above all, economic assistance for development. The assistance was considered irreplaceable for the Chileans. Third, there was the larger context of the Cold War and the ideological history of the century, which colored the visions of Chileans and European alike. The visits of Frei to Europe in 1965; and the visits of General De Gaulle to Chile in 1965, and of Queen Elizabeth II to Chile in 1968, are the highpoints of a complex relationship. Under "West Europe" will be considered England, France, West Germany, plus Spain, which has been always seen be Chileans as part of a certain West Europe. The research has been done in Chilean, as well English, French, German and Spanish archives.


TASED-Net is a 3D fully-convolutional network architecture for video saliency detection. It consists of two building blocks: first, the encoder network extracts low-resolution spatiotemporal features from an input clip of several consecutive frames, and then the following prediction network decodes the encoded features spatially while aggregating all the temporal information. As a result, a single prediction map is produced from an input clip of multiple frames. Frame-wise saliency maps can be predicted by applying TASED-Net in a sliding-window fashion to a video. The proposed approach assumes that the saliency map of any frame can be predicted by considering a limited number of past frames. The results of our extensive experiments on video saliency detection validate this assumption and demonstrate that our fully-convolutional model with temporal aggregation method is effective. TASED-Net significantly outperforms previous state-of-the-art approaches on all three major large-scale datasets of video saliency detection: DHF1K, Hollywood2, and UCFSports. After analyzing the results qualitatively, we observe that our model is especially better at attending to salient moving objects.


Nonmicrobial inflammation contributes to CKD progression and fibrosis. Absent in melanoma 2 (AIM2) is an inflammasome-forming receptor for double-stranded DNA. AIM2 is expressed in the kidney and activated mainly by macrophages. We investigated the potential pathogenic role of the AIM2 inflammasome in kidney disease. In kidneys from patients with diabetic or nondiabetic CKD, immunofluorescence showed AIM2 expression in glomeruli, tubules, and infiltrating leukocytes. In a mouse model of unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO), Aim2 deficiency attenuated the renal injury, fibrosis, and inflammation observed in wild-type (WT) littermates. In bone marrow chimera studies, UUO induced substantially more tubular injury and IL-1β cleavage in Aim2-/- or WT mice that received WT bone marrow than in WT mice that received Aim2-/- bone marrow. Intravital microscopy of the kidney in LysM(gfp/gfp) mice 5-6 days after UUO demonstrated the significant recruitment of GFP+ proinflammatory macrophages that crawled along injured tubules, engulfed DNA from necrotic cells, and expressed active caspase-1. DNA uptake occurred in large vacuolar structures within recruited macrophages but not resident CX3CR1+ renal phagocytes. In vitro, macrophages that engulfed necrotic debris showed AIM2-dependent activation of caspase-1 and IL-1β, as well as the formation of AIM2+ ASC specks. ASC specks are a hallmark of inflammasome activation. Cotreatment with DNaseI attenuated the increase in IL-1β levels, confirming that DNA was the principal damage-associated molecular pattern in this process. Therefore, the activation of the AIM2 inflammasome by DNA from necrotic cells drives a proinflammatory phenotype that contributes to chronic injury in the kidney.


Cryptocurrencies have received a lot of research attention in recent years following the release of the first cryp-tocurrency Bitcoin. With the rise in cryptocurrency transactions, the need for smart contracts has also increased. Smart contracts, in a nutshell, are digitally executed contracts wherein some parties execute a common goal. The main problem with most of the current smart contracts is that there is no privacy for a party's input to the contract from either the blockchain or the other parties. Our research builds on the Hawk project that provides transaction privacy along with support for smart contracts. However, Hawk relies on a special trusted party known as a manager, which must be trusted not to leak each party's input to the smart contract. In this paper, we present a practical private smart contract protocol that replaces the manager with an MPC protocol such that the function to be executed by the MPC protocol is relatively lightweight, involving little overhead added to the smart contract function, and uses practical sigma protocols and homomorphic commitments to prove to the blockchain that the sum of the incoming balances to the smart contract matches the sum of the outgoing balances. An extended version of the paper is available at [1].


Abstract The internal stratigraphy of snow and ice as imaged by ground-penetrating radar may serve as a source of information on past accumulation. This study presents results from two ground-based radar surveys conducted in Greenland in 2007 and 2015, respectively. The first survey was conducted during the traverse from the ice-core station NGRIP (North Greenland Ice Core Project) to the ice-core station NEEM (North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling). The second survey was carried out during the traverse from NEEM to the ice-core station EGRIP (East Greenland Ice Core Project) and then onwards to Summit Station. The total length of the radar profiles is 1427 km. From the radar data, we retrieve the large-scale spatial variation of the accumulation rates in the interior of the ice sheet. The accumulation rates range from 0.11 to 0.26 m a−1 ice equivalent with the lowest values found in the northeastern sector towards EGRIP. We find no evidence of temporal or spatial changes in accumulation rates when comparing the 150-year average accumulation rates with the 321-year average accumulation rates. Comparisons with regional climate models reveal that the models underestimate accumulation rates by up to 35% in northeastern Greenland. Our results serve as a robust baseline to detect present changes in either surface accumulation rates or patterns.


ED06-01 The Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial is a large randomized trial evaluating the effects of screening on cancer-related mortality and cancer incidence. Ten screening centers located across the United States have enrolled 76,705 men and 78,237 women, ages 55 to 74, and randomized them to an intervention arm or control arm. Participants in the intervention arm of the trial receive screening for the PLCO cancers during their first 6 years of participation in the trial and follow-up continues for at least 7 additional years. Participants in the control arm are followed for at least 13 years after enrollment, but do not receive the screening examination as part of the trial. Blood samples were collected from screen arm subjects during annual screens. Approximately 2.9 million specimens are stored centrally in the PLCO biorepository. Several characteristics highlight the value of this resource: 1) up to 6 annually collected serial specimens are available; 2) specimens are collected prospectively, before cancer diagnosis; 3) specimens are linked to detailed epidemiological and clinical data; 4) large sample size allows statistical power. Specimens available include serum, plasma, buffy coat, red blood cells, and cryo-preserved whole blood from screened arm subjects; and buccal cells from control arm subjects. Epidemiological and clinical data available include baseline demographic and risk factor information; food frequency questionnaire; information on all-cancer incidence and selected other medical conditions (Table1 & 2). A newly added PLCO resource provides Tissue Microarrays (TMA) of tumor samples from PLCO participants who developed cancer. TMAs for colorectal cancer, colorectal adenomas, and ovarian cancer are now available. TMA construction for prostate cancer and lung cancer is under way. Additional collections for other cancers may be added. A unique advantage of the PLCO tumor samples is the availability of corresponding pre-diagnostic blood samples from the same patients. The longitudinally collected, pre-diagnostic serum/plasma samples are particularly suitable for the validation of promising early detection or screening biomarkers. Recently, PLCO embarked on an effort to coordinate biomarker validation studies using PLCO samples. The goal of this coordination effort is to: 1) ensure proper study design; 2) maximize the amount of useful information that may be obtained from studies using high-quality PLCO specimens; 3) ensure proper reporting of key results in publications. The study design, approach, statistical data analysis plan developed in this effort should be informative for other investigators who wish to conduct high-quality biomarker validation studies. Results from these studies will be available in the near future. The PLCO biospecimens resource has been providing samples to the entire scientific community since 2005. PLCO samples been extensively used for genetic and biochemical investigations of risk factors for cancers. For example, SNPs in genes in various genetic pathways have been identified to be associated with risk of cancers; serum levels of Vitamin D metabolites have been examined for correlation with risk of prostate cancer, breast cancer, and colorectal adenomas; a NCI cohort consortium pooling project is looking into Vitamin D in rare cancers. Other projects include dietary, BMI, alcohol, smoking and other life style factors and risk of cancers. A wealth of data has been published using PLCO samples. For example, genome-wide association study (GWAS) data is now available for prostate cancer and breast cancer through the NCI Data Access Committee (http://cgems.cancer.gov/). GWAS studies for pancreatic, lung, colorectal cancer are currently on-going from which data will also become available in the near future. Over 50 peer-reviewed research articles have been published using PLCO samples. The PLCO biospecimen and data resource is available to all qualified researchers through a panel review process. Applications are accepted twice a year in June and December. Detailed information about the panel review process, sample collection protocol, and application materials are available on the PLCO program website: www.parplco.org. Table1: Summary of Data and Specimens Available Table2: Cancer cases with biospecimens Abstract for AACR, November 16, 2008 Page 1 of 3 Citation Information: Cancer Prev Res 2008;1(7 Suppl):ED06-01.


SHPS-1 is a receptor-like glycoprotein that undergoes tyrosine phosphorylation and binds SHP-2, an Src homology 2 domain containing protein tyrosine phosphatase, in response to various mitogens. Cell adhesion to extracellular matrix proteins such as fibronectin and laminin also induced the tyrosine phosphorylation of SHPS-1 and its association with SHP-2. These responses were markedly reduced in cells overexpressing the Csk kinase or in cells that lack focal adhesion kinase or the Src family kinases Src or Fyn. However, unlike Src, focal adhesion kinase did not catalyze phosphorylation of the cytoplasmic domain of SHPS-1 in vitro. Overexpression of a catalytically inactive SHP-2 markedly inhibited activation of mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase in response to fibronectin stimulation without affecting the extent of tyrosine phosphorylation of focal adhesion kinase or its interaction with the docking protein Grb2. Overexpression of wild-type SHPS-1 did not enhance fibronectin-induced activation of MAP kinase. These results indicate that the binding of integrins to the extracellular matrix induces tyrosine phosphorylation of SHPS-1 and its association with SHP-2, and that such phosphorylation of SHPS-1 requires both focal adhesion kinase and an Src family kinase. In addition to its role in receptor tyrosine kinase-mediated MAP kinase activation, SHP-2 may play an important role, partly through its interaction with SHPS-1, in the activation of MAP kinase in response to the engagement of integrins by the extracellular matrix.


We report 7Li NMR, magnetic susceptibility, and heat capacity measurements on the triangular lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet compound LiCrO2. We find that in contrast to NaCrO2, magnetic properties of LiCrO2 have a more pronounced three dimensional character with sharp anomalies in the temperature variation of the 7Li NMR intensity and the NMR spin-lattice relaxation rate 1/T1. From heat capacity measurements we find that the total entropy related to the magnetic transition is in agreement with expectations. However, we find a significant contribution to the magnetic entropy in the range from the ordering temperature TN to nearly 4TN. This suggests the existence of magnetic correlations at temperatures well above TN which might be due to the frustrated nature of the system. Based on the temperature dependence of 1/T1, we discuss the possible occurrence of a Kosterlitz-Thouless-Berezinskii transition taking place at TKTB = 55 K in LiCrO2. Lithium depletion has no significant effect on the magnetic properties and the behaviour of Li0.5CrO2 is nearly unchanged from that of LiCrO2.


An analysis is made to determine how the radiant energy streaming from an isothermal-wall conical cavity is affected by a baffle that partially obstructs the cavity opening. Consideration is given both to baffles that are maintained at the same temperature as the cavity wall (emitting baffles) and to baffles that are cooled to a temperature well below that of the wall (non-emitting baffles). The cone-apex angle and the emissivity of the cavity wall are varied parametrically. The results are obtained by employing a newly devised Monte Carlo method, the application of which is described in detail. The presentation of results is made in terms of the apparent emissivity, which is the ratio of the radiant energy actually streaming from the cavity to the radiant energy emitted by a black surface whose size is the same as the baffle aperture. It is found that the apparent emissivity increases as more and more of the cavity opening is blocked by the baffle. The increases of apparent emissivity are greater when the baffle is emitting than when the baffle is non-emitting.


Abstract : This study sought to describe Turkish defense offsets in foreign procurements. Located at the epicenter of regions fraught with crisis, Turkey is a secular, democratic, liberal country sharing western moral values. With the tradition of its 1,000 years of statehood, its constitutional order, and its strong armed forces, Turkey is a center of power that can affect delicate balances of power in the region. Offsets started to become an important way of obtaining industrial and technological benefits when importing military equipment in the early and mid-1980s. Offset deals remain an important aspect of Turkish arms importing policy and offset applications in Turkish foreign procurements show that offsets are likely to appear increasingly in the foreseeable future. Consequently, the study of Turkish defense offsets is important. The history of offsets is introduced for the background of this research. As a major user of U.S. defense systems, Turkey each year buys American weapons worth more than $ 1 billion. So, U.S. offset policy is described as a main supplier. A history of the offset policy in Turkey and an analysis of the application of the offset policy is provided. The conclusion is reached that offsets might prove beneficial for development of the Turkish defense industry, provided that the appropriate policy measures create a defense industrial base capable of assimilating future offset benefits programs.


In this paper, a methodology developed for the detection of significant changes for cartographic purposes on a set of satellite images is applied to a series of three SPOT images. The detection of territorial changes is a keystone for the assistance to the scheduling of the cartographic updating projects. For this reason the Institut Cartografic de Catalunya (ICC) develops a project aimed to the detection of actual territorial changes on satellite images. A second objective of the project is the analysis of the territory dynamics. The main variables to be obtained in the process are not static land use maps corresponding to each of the pictures in the series but the speed of territorial change in the area. This output is especially interesting on the areas where these changes are more frequent, basically around the cities and along the sea side. Main input data used in the project are SPOT images obtained twice a year for change detection. The initial area of interest is the metropolitan area around Barcelona. As a previous step, a series of atmospheric correction processes are applied to each image and covers that are prone to generate blunder changes are detected and marked off. Next, multitemporal RGB images with information from two different SPOT pan bands are generated. Those images are processed by a combination of adapted threshold levels and photo interpretation analysis. The procedure is a tree classification system that allows detection and confirmation of the changes with the following images. General minimum mapping unit is 1 ha, but it is reduced for urban and other interesting cases. The final results showed good accuracy on detection of the actual changes only with SPOT imagery. They also indicated that the amount of changes for a year ranges between 0.56 and 1.13% of the studied area, with a mean value of 0.88% of the territory. Moreover, the detection methodology was found robust and it was difficult that a real change went unnoticed.