A novel algorithm for fundamental frequency and harmonic components detection is presented in this paper. The technique is based on a real-time implementation of discrete Fourier transform, and it allows fast and accurate estimation of fundamental frequency and harmonics of a distorted signal with variable fundamental frequency. It is suitable for active shunt filter applications, when fast and accurate tracking of the reference signal is required to achieve a good control performance. The main application for the algorithm is aircraft ac power systems, where the fundamental frequency can be either fixed on 400 Hz and its actual value fluctuates around the nominal value, or variable in the range 360-900 Hz. Hence, a real-time estimation of fundamental frequency is essential for active filter control. The proposed algorithm has been at first implemented in Matlab/Simulink for computer simulation, and it has been compared with a Phase Locked Loop (PLL) algorithm for frequency detection and the synchronous dq reference method for harmonic detection. Experimental tests have been carried out in order to validate the simulation results. The distorted current absorbed by a nonlinear load is analyzed and processed by means of a digital implementation of the algorithm running on the active shunt power filter control DSP, in order to calculate the active filter compensating current.


In this essay, I examine how glass is played and how urbanites are "played" by glass in Jacques Tati's film Playtime, in which the protagonist Hulot and a group of American tourists get lost in a world of transparency and reflection. Since its emergence in the late 19th century, glass has transformed our cityscapes, our perceptions of space, and our interactions with the material world. Glass is unique in the sense that it can be both medium and barrier, and thus conveniently becomes a rich source of metaphors that refract the complexities and paradoxes of modern urban life. Using glass as a device and a trope, Tati criticizes the unpleasant uniformity of the cityscape and how glass contributes to further the ambiguity of space and produces false impression and misrecognition. Drawing on Benjamin's "reception in the state of distraction," I discuss how the viewing experience of Playtimes parallels the urban experience full of unfocused chaos, making the film itself mirror-like. Despite Tati's critique of the transparent glass labyrinth in Playtime, he seems to acknowledge the productive nature of glass, which is a perfect medium for capturing the transience and the uncanny in the modern urban experience.


Developing software systems in heavily regulated industries requires methods to ensure systems comply with regulations and law. A method to acquire finite state machines (FSM) from stakeholder rights and obligations for compliance monitoring is proposed. Rights and obligations define what people are permitted or required to do; these rights and obligations affect software requirements and design. The FSM allows stakeholders, software developers and compliance officers to trace events through the invocation of rights and obligations as pre- and post-conditions. Compliance is monitored by instrumenting runtime systems to report these events and detect violations. Requirements and software engineers specify the rights and obligations, and apply the method using three supporting tasks: 1) identify under-specifications, 2) balance rights with obligations, and 3) generate finite state machines. Preliminary validation of the method includes FSMs generated from U.S. healthcare regulations and tool support to parse these specifications and generate the FSMs.


İpek S, Güllü UU. Are Genetics Involved in the Development of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndromes in Children?. ABSTRACT The relationship between Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) and genetic predisposition is not well established. The aim of this article emphasize the presence of genetic predisposition in MIS-C by presenting two sibling cases from two separate families with a diagnosis of MIS-C. The patients applied with complaints of fever, abdominal pain, diarrhea and maculopapular rash. While the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) polymerase chain reaction test was negative in all cases, three had both IgM and IgG positivity, and the other case had only IgG positivity. Patients who did not define any other infection were diagnosed with MIS-C according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria. The patients were discharged with full recovery. The fact that siblings share the same genetic background and the same environmental factors suggests that MIS-C syndrome occur in individuals with a genetic predisposition. Further genetic studies with a large MIS-C series are needed to determine which genotypic trait may cause the development of MIS-C in COVID-19 infection.


Development of information technology has fueled globalization is one among changes in the external environment that has a very significant impact on the conduct of business and society today. So much so that the necessary changes before a new paradigm to be competitive in the new business environment. To achieve that goal required organizational restructuring that leads to integrated enterprise, with information systems and integrated information technology as a means of support in business operations. Thus it is very important to know whether the information system has been quality to support all business processes of the organization.


Abstract Knowledge of fluid flow processes in the subsurface is important for CO2 storage operations as well as for hydrocarbon exploration. Repeated seismic surveys for more than 10 years of CO2 injection into the Utsira Formation, in the Sleipner area, offer a unique dataset. This dataset holds information on fluid migration processes that can be analysed for the benefit of hydrocarbon exploration and CO2 storage considerations alike. Thorough analyses of these datasets reveal several features that give useful information of subsurface fluid flow processes. The CO2 in the Utsira Formation has flowed laterally beneath thin, intra-formational shales. At the same time, CO2 has flowed vertically through shaly horizons that would normally be considered as barriers to fluid flow. This flow has apparently taken place through vertically stacked flow conduits through the shales. These conduits may to some extent have existed prior to the start of CO2 injection, but may also have been augmented by the CO2 injection process. The calculated pushdown of seismic reflectors below the CO2 plume is less than that observed, which may point to the presence of hitherto unrecognized flow paths for the CO2. Hydrocarbon migration pathways are in general not recognizable in seismic data. This implies that such avenues are significantly thinner than those of the CO2 migration in the Utsira Formation. This result points to the presence of mixed-wet migration pathways, in which capillary flow resistance may not control the (sub-horizontal) flow path thickness. A circular depression at the top of the Utsira Formation that existed prior to the injection may be interpreted as a result of a deeper seated sand remobilization feature. Such features will also promote vertical hydrocarbon migration where they are present. A more widespread occurrence of such features may explain why hydrocarbons are generally found beneath thick shales, but are less likely to be found below thin intra-formational shales below the structural spillpoint of the top seal. These observations suggest that seal thickness is an important parameter, even if the capillary entry pressure of the sealing rock is sufficiently high to preserve significant hydrocarbon columns.


The present paper discusses the process of young immigrant integration from the point of view of policymakers. The focus in narrowed to application of multiculturalism in pre-primary, primary and secondary education strategies as a tool for integration. Interpretation of multiculturalism is compared in two countries – Germany and Sweden and on two levels – national and supranational. The paper is constructed on a critical analysis of the available European and national policies, reports and work papers based on five carefully chosen criteria, which are relevant for the educational process and integration. Furthermore, the paper presents the general background on the development of integration and education policies in the European Union, Germany and Sweden and explores the possible means for cooperation and information exchange. The paper's main findings read that lately the issues of integration and education as a valuable tool for young immigrant integration has been receiving increased attention. At the same time, a lot of problems connected to immigrant education remain pending, irrespective of the efforts spent. Due to distinct perception of immigrants and roles of the host societies in the integration process, the application of multiculturalism is quite different in the two countries. Because education lies in the sphere of responsibilities of particular member-states and as there are very few available means for control and monitoring, the European Union policies and recommendations have general character. However, within the framework of European Union separate member-states have increasing opportunities for collaboration and joint elaborations.


The disease causes by the application of cement-stabilized macadam in our country first-class highway mainly performance as serious shrinkage fracture and other destructions like decreased capacity etc.This mainly related to test, design and other methods of the cement stabilized macadam. In the cement stabilization granular base construction,according to the standard job practice, uses the inorganic binding stable material compaction test to perform the standard compaction test. Doing compactness test at the scene, always present that the dry weight density is bigger than the maximum value result made by compaction test, result made by compactness test can more than 100%.The compaction principle of vibration compaction test is through pressure exciting force over the compacted materials,forced the downing of solid materials have a "resonance", In this state, the small particles aggregate can filling the gap between the large particles aggregate, to achieve the dense state. And during this process do not need too much water as lubricant. Therefore the vibration compaction test definite intensity result tallies with the scene reality. To imitation effects of roller compacted to improve the performance of cement stabilized gravel, the use of vibration method designed cement stabilized gravel is very necessary and timely.


Gaussian graphical model (GGM)-based method, a key approach to reverse engineering biological networks, uses partial correlation to measure conditional dependence between two variables by controlling the contribution from other variables. After estimating partial correlation coefficients, one of the most critical processes in network construction is to control the false discovery rate (FDR) to assess the significant associations among variables. Various FDR methods have been proposed mainly for biomarker discovery, but it still remains unclear which FDR method performs better for network construction. Furthermore, there is no study to see the effect of the network structure on network construction. We selected the six FDR methods, the linear step-up procedure (BH95), the adaptive linear step-up procedure (BH00), Efron's local FDR (LFDR), Benjamini-Yekutieli's step-up procedure (BY01), Storey's q-value procedure (Storey01), and Storey-Taylor-Siegmund's adaptive step-up procedure (STS04), to evaluate their performances on network construction. We further considered two network structures, random and scale-free networks, to investigate their influence on network construction. Both simulated data and real experimental data suggest that STS04 provides the highest true positive rate (TPR) or F1 score, while BY01 has the highest positive predictive value (PPV) in network construction. In addition, no significant effect of the network structure is found on FDR methods.


More and more mobile communications comes to company sites through local (typically indoor) wireless communication networks. However, planning wireless networks is quite different from planning traditional wire-based networks. Planning must take into account the specifics of radiowave propagation at the installation site. Current systems are cellular in that a base station (i.e. a sender or transmitter) controls the links to the transceivers. Buildings require multicellular systems because walls and floors absorb part of the radio signal. Today, an experienced salesperson estimates the number and positioning of base stations. To help the salesperson, Siemens has compiled a set of guidelines based on typical scenarios. However, a scenario might not always apply, and the approach does not handle positioning the base stations well. Computer-aided planning can help ease the difficulties of planning. Toward that end, we have developed Popular (Planning Of PicocellULAr Radio). The Popular prototype lets users compute the minimal number of base stations and their location, given a blueprint of the installation site and information about the wall and ceiling materials.


Abstract The purpose of this review is to describe the evolution of portable open-circuit spirometry systems, and discuss their validity, reliability, and principles of operation. Eleven devices were selected for review: the Oxylog, Aerosport KB1-C, Cosmed K2, Cosmed K4RQ, Cosmed K4b2, MetaMax I, MetaMax II, Metamax3B/VmaxST, Medgraphics VO2000, Oxycon Mobile I and Oxycon Mobile II. The validity (compared to the Douglas bag method (DBM)) and reliability of each device for measuring VO2 was summarized. Mean differences in resting measurements of VO2 were within ±0.05 L∙min-1 for all devices except one (difference of 0.17 L∙min-1). When compared to the DBM, VO2 differences for all devices ranged from 0.01 L∙min-1 to 0.29 L∙min-1 during submaximal intensity exercise and from 0.01 L∙min-1 to 0.36 L∙min-1 during vigorous/maximal intensity. During submaximal and maximal intensities, ICC ranged from 0.66-0.99 and CV ranged from 2.0-14.2%. Of these devices, four used breath-by-breath technology and six used micro-proportional sampling technology. Validity and reliability of devices did not seem to differ between methods of gas collection. Of the three commercially available devices in 2015, all were found to be reliable. Two of the three systems (Cosmed K4b2 and Oxycon Mobile II) provided valid estimates of VO2 (mean values within ±0.10 L/min-1 of DBM) during rest, and submaximal and maximal intensities, while the MetaMax3B slightly overestimated VO2, particularly at maximal exercise.


High fault coverage embedded system test is a desirable capability in many applications. The test requirement may be for on-line test, remote test capability or for rapid field diagnostics and repair. Two industry standards have recently become available for this purpose. The serial 4 wire IEEE 1149.1 boundary scan standard is widely used for board test and provides interconnect test and device functionality. Although primarily intended as an aid to prototype and manufacturing test, 1149.1 can also be extended over the backplane by the use of commercially available hardware. The proposed IEEE P1149.5 standard is modeled on the DOD's TM bus and is a fault tolerant, 5-wire, packet based master-slave communications protocol for up to 251 modules. This paper discusses the relative merits of various techniques extending 1149.1 over a backplane. The alternatives are evaluated in terms of test capability and efficiency, fault tolerance and board real estate and component overhead.


This thesis argues that Kant is able to maintain the distinctiveness of his position in
opposition to Hume's naturalism (contrary to the arguments of R. A. Mall and L. W.
Beck) without invoking premises which are question begging with regard to Hume's
scepticism. The argument of Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, as
presented in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, is considered in relation
to the two sets of criticism that have been levelled at it from its publication up to the
present day, both of which aim to demonstrate that synthetic a priori judgements are
subjectively necessary but without objective validity.
The first set of criticisms involves problems raised with regard to the status of
transcendental arguments. The difficulties identified here (by B. Stroud, M. S. Gram,
and others) are that the Deduction can either, at best, show that it is necessary for
experience to be regarded in a certain way without demonstrating anything as to the
nature of experience as such, or the argument is circular in that it begins by making
assumptions regarding the nature of our experience.
Alternatively, if the Deduction is taken to establish the objective nature of concepts
via an analysis of the conditions under which it is possible for us to have some
knowledge of ourselves, then incoherence is said to arise because this requires either an
implausible reflective theory of consciousness (according to D. Henrich) or that we
have knowledge of the subject-in-itself (as held by J. G. Fichte and other
contemporaries of Kant).
Through a consideration of both the historical and contemporary manifestations of
these criticisms, the thesis advances an interpretation of the Deduction, with special
attention paid to the role and nature of the subject, which does not fall prey to the
alleged incoherence. As such, the thesis defends both the distinctiveness and legitimacy
of transcendental philosophy.


The circadian timing system controls absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination processes of drug pharmacokinetics over a 24-h period. Exposure of target tissues to the active form of the drug and cytotoxicity display variations depending on the chronopharmacokinetics. For anticancer drugs with narrow therapeutic ranges and dose-limiting side effects, it is particularly important to know the temporal changes in pharmacokinetics. A previous study indicated that pharmacokinetic profile of capecitabine was different depending on dosing time in rat. However, it is not known how such difference is attributed with respect to diurnal rhythm. Therefore, in this study, we evaluated capecitabine-metabolizing enzymes in a diurnal rhythm-dependent manner. To this end, C57BL/6J male mice were orally treated with 500 mg/kg capecitabine at ZT1, ZT7, ZT13, or ZT19. We then determined pharmacokinetics of capecitabine and its metabolites, 5′-deoxy-5-fluorocytidine (5′DFCR), 5′-deoxy-5-fluorouridine (5′DFUR), 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), in plasma and liver. Results revealed that plasma Cmax and AUC0-6h (area under the plasma concentration-time curve from 0 to 6 h) values of capecitabine, 5′DFUR, and 5-FU were higher during the rest phase (ZT1 and ZT7) than the activity phase (ZT13 and ZT19) (p < 0.05). Similarly, Cmax and AUC0-6h values of 5′DFUR and 5-FU in liver were higher during the rest phase than activity phase (p < 0.05), while there was no significant difference in liver concentrations of capecitabine and 5′DFCR. We determined the level of the enzymes responsible for the conversion of capecitabine and its metabolites at each ZT. Results indicated the levels of carboxylesterase 1 and 2, cytidine deaminase, uridine phosphorylase 2, and dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (p < 0.05) are being rhythmically regulated and, in turn, attributed different pharmacokinetics profiles of capecitabine and its metabolism. This study highlights the importance of capecitabine administration time to increase the efficacy with minimum adverse effects.


The study of decision making poses new methodological challenges for systems neuroscience. Whereas our traditional approach linked neural activity to external variables that the experimenter directly observed and manipulated, many of the key elements that contribute to decisions are internal to the decider. Variables such as subjective value or subjective probability may be influenced by experimental conditions and manipulations but can neither be directly measured nor precisely controlled. Pioneering work on the neural basis of decision circumvented this difficulty by studying behavior in static conditions, in which knowledge of the average state of these quantities was sufficient. More recently, a new wave of studies has confronted the conundrum of internal decision variables more directly by leveraging quantitative behavioral models. When these behavioral models are successful in predicting a subject's choice, the model's internal variables may serve as proxies for the unobservable decision variables that actually drive behavior. This new methodology has allowed researchers to localize neural subsystems that encode hidden decision variables related to free choice and to study these variables under dynamic conditions.


This paper presents frame synchronization and two frequency synchronization techniques for high-rate wireless LANs (local area networks). Also, to improve the reliable communication under the multipath fading channel, we propose the wireless LAN system employing the space-time code. The proposed frame synchronization technique using the threshold checking scheme is directly based on the correlation method. We then describe a coarse frequency synchronization technique combining two conventional synchronization techniques to estimate an integral frequency-offset and a frequency synchronization technique employing interpolation method to estimate the integral and fractional frequency- offsets at the same time, respectively. Finally, by simulation, the performance of the proposed techniques is evaluated.


Akad in the Islamic law is a contact made by the partiesconcerned (aqaid) based on the agreement (ikhtiari) which is indicated by presence of ijab and qobul on the aqad object which must be absent from the prohibition stipulated in the legal provision in the Islamic contract. The research used judicial normative and descriptive analytic. The principle of amanah/ keeping the promisewhich is line with the principle of pacta sunt sevanda, the principle of taswiyah (equality) which is in line with the principle of equality in the contract law in the Civil Code. A Notary should understand thoroughly the defference and the similarity of the principles of akad in the Islamic legal contract and in the legal contract found in the Civil code. In consequence, the implementation of making a notarial authentic deed must be based on the guidance of akad in the Islamic law. The principle of the akad must be in line with the procedure of making a notarial authentic deed, base on the legal principles of a contract in the Civil Code according to the prevailing regulations in making a notarial authentic deed. Keywords : Priciples of Agreement, Islamic Law, Notarial Deed


Abstract. We reconstruct the geometry and strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation during the Heinrich stadial 2 and three Greenland interstadials of the 20–50 ka period based on the comparison of new and published sedimentary 231Pa / 230Th data with simulated sedimentary 231Pa / 230Th. We show that the deep Atlantic circulation during these interstadials was very different from that of the Holocene. Northern-sourced waters likely circulated above 2500 m depth, with a flow rate lower than that of the present-day North Atlantic deep water (NADW). Southern-sourced deep waters most probably flowed northwards below 4000 m depth into the North Atlantic basin and then southwards as a return flow between 2500 and 4000 m depth. The flow rate of this southern-sourced deep water was likely larger than that of the modern Antarctic bottom water (AABW). Our results further show that during Heinrich stadial 2, the deep Atlantic was probably directly affected by a southern-sourced water mass below 2500 m depth, while a slow, southward-flowing water mass originating from the North Atlantic likely influenced depths between 1500 and 2500 m down to the equator.


Three-dimensional textile SiC fiber reinforced SiC composites with pyrolytic carbon interfacial layer (3D-SiC/C/SiC) were fabricated by chemical vapor infiltration. The microstructure and complex permittivity of the 3D textile SiC/C/SiC composites were investigated. The flexural strength of the 3D textile SiC/C/SiC composites was 860 MPa at room temperature. The real part (ε′) and imaginary part (ε″) of the complex permittivity of the 3D-SiC/C/SiC composites are 9.11~10.03 and 4.11~4.49, respectively at the X-band frequency. The 3D-SiC/C/SiC composites would be a good candidate for structural microwave absorbing material.


Understanding the roots of human cooperation among strangers is of great importance for solving pressing social dilemmas and maintaining public goods in human societies. We study the development of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine which of three fundamental pillars of human cooperation – direct and indirect reciprocity as well as third-party punishment – emerges earliest as an effective means to increase cooperation in a repeated prisoner's dilemma game. We find that third-party punishment exhibits a strikingly positive effect on cooperation rates by doubling them in comparison to a control condition. It promotes cooperative behavior even before punishment of defectors is applied. Children also engage in reciprocating others, showing that reciprocity strategies are already prevalent at a very young age. However, direct and indirect reciprocity treatments do not increase overall cooperation rates, as young children fail to anticipate the benefits of reputation building. We also show that the cognitive skills of children and the socioeconomic background of parents play a vital role in the early development of human cooperation.


Searching operations in complex datasets are performed using comparison criteria based on similarity because equality comparison are barely useful and those based on the ordering relationships cannot be applied due to the nature of these datasets. There are two basic operators for similarity queries: Range Query and k-Nearest Neighbor Query. A great amount of research was done to achieve effective algorithms for those operators. However, algorithms that deal with these operators as parts of a more complex operation (compositions of them) were not developed yet. This article presents two new algorithms, named kAndRange and kOrRange, which are designed to answer conjunctions and disjunctions operations between those similarity criteria. The new algorithms were tested with sequential scan and with a metric access method called Slim-tree. The experimental results, performed with real and synthetic datasets, show that the new algorithms have better performance than the composition of the two operators to answer these complex similarity queries in all measured aspects, being up to 40 times faster. This is an essential point that will enable the practical use of similarity operators in Relational


Abstract New material of dsungaripterid pterosaurs from the Early Cretaceous of Tatal, western Mongolia, allows the diagnoses of Dsungaripteridae and Noripterus to be amended. All pterosaurs found at Tatal belong to Dsungaripteridae (either Dsungaripterus or Noripterus). The name Phobetor is a junior synonym of Noripterus. The differing shapes of the anterior tips of skulls, differing tooth morphologies and the coexistence of both Dsungaripterus and Noripterus may imply that they occupied distinct ecological niches.


Only when investors actively look for red flags can they be involved in the maintenance and, if needed, turnaround of their investments. Keep your radar tuned for these indications of stormy weather ahead: rapid revenue growth, systems conversions, over-expansion, high debt, low margin distribution channels, family conflicts, and others noted in this article.


cotyledons, such as Dracaena. Contrary to the usually accepted view, the author finds that cambial activity is present not in the pericycle but in the inner layers of the cortex. Cell divisions in the pericycle are confined to the points where lateral roots make their appearance, and this growth may have been confused by other investigators with the true secondary growth in the cortex. The second part of the paper is devoted to an account of the so-called "Aussenscheide," a zone of more or less thick-walled cells found in the inner cortex of many monocotyledonous roots. This zone is not a real secondary tissue, i. e., produced by the division of meristematic cells, though it may assume the power of secondary growth. This zone is considered to be equivalent to the secondary tissues discussed in the first part of the paper. Several suggestions are offered as to the function of the "Aussenscheide," varying with the habits of the plant in which it occurs. Naturally the mechanical function seems to be the most common one.-M. A. CHRYSLER. Morphology of Cucumis sativus. TJLI MAN2' has investigated sporogenesis and embryogeny in the cucumber. The most interesting items reported arc as follows: the presence of two integuments that elongate greatly and invest the remarkable beak-like prolongation of the nucellus; the somewhat irregular development of the embryo; and an haustorial enlargement of the pollen tube on its passage through the long nucellar beak. The fusion of the unequal polar nuclei was seen, but no case of double fertilization was observed. J. M. C. Enzymes of Polyporus. BULLER22 finds in the juice of P. squamosus the following laccase, tyrosinase, amylase, emulsin, a protease, lipase, rennetase) and coagulase; but negative results were obtained by tests for pectase, maltasc' invertase, trehalase, and cytase. Yet the fact that it destroys the wood of Acer pseudo platanus indicates the presence of cytase and possibly hadromalase.C. R. B. Limiting factors. An illuminating paper on Optima and limiting factors has been published by Dr. F. F. BLACKMAN,23 which it behooves every physioloCist to read. The argument shows, and it is sustained by the results of research, that much physiological experimentation has been falsely interpreted. C. R. B. Photosynthesis extra vitam. MACCHIATI replies24 to BERNARD,25 criticizing his methods, maintaining that photosynthesis does occur in vitro, and stating certain modifications of the process. He makes a weak case. C. R. B.


The development of wireless sensor networks (WSN) can be motivated by several types of applications such as habitat monitoring, smart healthcare system, building automation, and etc. These applications however, demand an energy-efficient WSN that can prolong the network lifetime and can provide high throughput, low latency and delay, and high packet received rate data communication. The ability of wireless network structure to minimize network lifetime is among the hot topic due to limitation resources such as energy, processing and memory, in sensor network architecture itself. This paper proposes a novel approach that tries to reduce idle energy consumption by implementing active-sleep algorithm named energy aware A-MAC protocol. The result from the computational model shows that the algorithm can prolong network lifetime due to efficiency in energy consumption from time slot management.


This qualitative study reviews and documents the activity of Church Planters within the Baptist Union of Great Britain, who have started churches between 1980 and 2010. Two periods of church planting have been identified. From 1980 to the mid 1990s practitioners reacted to the threat of decline and secularisation. From the mid 1990s to 2010 practitioners re-engaged with the missionary task of church planting, drawing on the concept of contextualisation.The difficulty of gathering statistics about church planting within the Baptist Union of Great Britain has been identified by reviewing all the available data. A qualitative study was chosen to give an in-depth analysis of the experience and perspectives of practitioners. Twelve practitioners participated in the study. Each participant was interviewed and the contents of the interview transcribed and analysed. The interviews, along with accounts of church planting from both periods has enabled the practice of planting churches to be set into context. Firstly, into the context of decline in church attendance and the developing social theory of secularisation. Secondly, into the missiological theory of contextualisation.A review of the developing theory of secularisation revealed that current research calls progressive and total secularisation into question. This research suggests that decline in religious practice is evidence of a change in general approaches to spirituality, rather than evidence of a total secularisation. The reality of church decline and the theory of secularisation paved the way for a robust approach to church planting. During this period the need for contextualisation was identified but was practised by a relocation of worship meetings to a different venue. A review of the development of contextualisation in the field of missiology was conducted. The theory of contextualisation has influenced practitioners involved in church planting from the mid 1990s to 2010. During this time practitioners took the process of contextualisation further. Rather than simply relocating their meetings they began to contextualise the content of the meeting.With these developments in mind the practice of planting churches within the Baptist Union of Great Britain has been described, along with events that have influenced church planting practice. As practitioners have engaged with the process of contextualisation it is possible to see how a missionary approach has gathered pace among the practitioners. It is appropriate for practitioners to continue the processes of learning from wider missiological perspectives and developing their own contextualised practice.


The purpose of this study was to both see the effects of wastewater on profitability as well as determine an efficient way of dealing with that wastewater. In addition to finding the most efficient way of treating wastewater, the cost of implementing such a technology was also discussed. Two technologies were specifically talked about and those were an anaerobic digester and a two stage anaerobic digester. Between the three breweries that were discussed, two of them use one of those pieces of equipment; Sierra Nevada has an anaerobic digester and Red Hook has a two stage anaerobic digester. To analyze the two technologies discussed, three financial tools were used. All three show the costs, expenses, as well as the increased revenue that would come from the equipment. Partial budgeting was used to compare the cost of water with and without the technology for Sierra Nevada and Red Hook, net present value was used to determine the present value of the equipment should it be used continuously for the next ten years, and finally a cost-benefit analysis was used to show the cost reductions and revenue increases for each brewery. Based on the data collected from the three breweries (one of which was not large enough to acquire such a costly piece of equipment), the water costs decreased by a substantial amount and in one case cut costs by nearly 50%. Even when taking into account the immense cost of purchasing the equipment, the savings generated would be enough for a business to either take out a loan or pay off the equipment over the course of several years. Though the study was in depth, there is room for improvement in terms of data collection. If someone with access to specific brewery data were to take on this study, he or she may be able to provide a more specific analysis as well as review some additional breweries.


In the focal plane of a pushbroom imager, a linear array of pixels is scanned across the scene, building up the image one row at a time. For the Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI), each of fifteen different spectral bands has its own linear array. These arrays are pushed across the scene together, but since each band's array is at a different position on the focal plane, a separate image is produced for each band. The standard MTI data products (LEVEL1B_R_COREG and LEVEL1B_R_GEO) resample these separate images to a common grid and produce coregistered multispectral image cubes. The coregistration software employs a direct ``dead reckoning' approach. Every pixel in the calibrated image is mapped to an absolute position on the surface of the earth, and these are resampled to produce an undistorted coregistered image of the scene. To do this requires extensive information regarding the satellite position and pointing as a function of time, the precise configuration of the focal plane, and the distortion due to the optics. These must be combined with knowledge about the position and altitude of the target on the rotating ellipsoidal earth. We will discuss the direct approach to MTI coregistration, as well as more recent attempts to tweak the precision of the band-to-band registration using correlations in the imagery itself.


Large-scale Wi-Fi networks have encountered several critical issues of access point (AP) management such as manual configuration, channel interference, and unbalanced loads, which should be carefully addressed to ensure efficient system performance. Since most of the commercial Wi-Fi products are proprietary and hardware-dependent, some recent studies have aimed at introducing open and programmable solutions. Unfortunately, the studies demand additional protocols and software agents but cannot provide complete solutions. To this end, this experience paper presents the design, prototype implementation, and evaluation of SAMF, which is an open, programmable, and generic framework for access point management in large scale Wi-Fi networks. By adopting the concept of SDN technology and OpenFlow protocol, SAMF can readily be deployed on low-cost commodity access point hardware and a cloud-based controller, while enabling new network services to be integrated rapidly. Furthermore, experimental results confirm that the framework can significantly reduce operational costs since it accelerates the AP configuration process by approximately 15 times. Besides, SAMF can increase system throughput up to 26.5% and improve the balanced degree of the system by about 40%.


The e-leadership have been studied, during the late 1990s, with the rapid rise in advanced information technology (AIT) tools as the Internet, e-mail, video conferencing, what sap, virtual teams, virtual learning platforms. This research covers a deep review of the literature between 1990 - 2019 and the source data are derived from the Web of Science (WoS), in order to reveal the holistic landscape of this field, VOSviewer as popular visualization tools are em-ployed to process the bibliographic data. We use VOSviewer, the most related terms in this field were obtained by co-occurrence analysis from abstracts and keywords. The terms and its clusters were illustrated on a graphs and density maps were utilized. Also, findings show that the literature refer explicitly to e-leadership, there are a number of interesting insights to be found in the theoretical articles. Paper concludes with recommendations for further multidisciplinary re-search at the intersection of the fields of companies, educational technology and educational management, focusing on values, strategy, organization and leader-ship interactions, teaching and learning at all levels.


It has always been concerned about seismic motion and building materials near faults, but it still remains as an uncertain problem due to insufficiency of case study and information. The paper presents the main cases of seismic disaster by field investigations of M8.0 Wenchuan earthquake, on the relationship among earthquake faults, ground motion and earthquake disasters near fault zone, i.e. the forms of structural damage are very complex in the fault areas, with main forms of shear failure and damage of tension and compression. The brittle materials such as reinforced concrete and masonry materials are prone to partial brittle fracture, and main forms are composed of up and down shake and surface ruptures. The brittle materials are prone to tension and compression damage. By using qualified materials, following building codes, the constructions in urban areas showed good seismic performance. Survey results showed that the framework and the structure of the steel and wood that use the flexible materials with flexible structures possess good seismic performance.


Abstract

Wallerian degeneration is a process that happens following nerve fiber damage, in which the part of the axon distal to the injury degenerates. This is also termed as anterograde or orthograde degeneration. We present a case of 16 year-old patient who was referred to neuro-ophthalmology clinic for glaucoma suspect evaluation which concluded to be related to Wallerian degeneration from neonatal intra-cranial hemorrhage.


Abstract Familiar accounts of fin-de-siecle Vienna tend to view Arnold Schoenberg9s atonal works and Adolf Loos9s anti-ornamental polemics as expressions of similar modernist principles. But although the two friends were equally determined to challenge bourgeois standards of beauty, the calm appearance of Loos9s buildings, whose denuded facades shielded plush yet refined interiors, is hard to reconcile with Schoenberg9s radically dissonant and expressive music circa 1910. This divergence can be understood in terms of contrasting responses to urban modernity. While Loos9s architecture facilitated a retreat inward, Schoenberg9s release of unconscious impulses into the compositional process mimicked the psychological breakdown Georg Simmel believed to threaten city dwellers—a breakdown in which inner and outer realms were no longer distinguishable. Situating Schoenberg9s music in relation to the problem of interiority in modern metropolitan life, I argue that the composer9s creative aesthetics began to converge with those of Loos only later in his career. By incorporating concealment into the very fabric of twelve-tone music, Schoenberg took an "inward turn" resembling Loos9s architectural efforts to protect subjectivity from needless exposure. The increasing emphasis on multidimensionality in Schoenberg9s discussions of twelve-tone musical space also betrays the influence of Loos9s innovations in interior space planning in the 1920s and 1930s. Harnessing the psychological and sociological aims of Loos9s designs as tools of interpretation, I propose that the twelve-tone method represents a renewed commitment to privacy and interiority in the face of the externalizing impulses of urban modernity.


The present investigation analysed the Community Psychology doctoral thesis trends with respect to student demographics, thesis topics, research methodology, research participant demographics, rural/urban focus, community empowerment focus, and programme development and evaluation at one institution. Of the 51 students who completed the course, 45.1% were Educational Psychologists, 33.3% Clinical Psychologists and 21.6% Counselling Psychologists. Self-help programmes, school-based programmes and non-professional-help programmes predominated. Of the 51 theses, seven addressed HIV and AIDS and one studied sexual violence. The majority used qualitative methodologies, and focused on adults. Only 11.8% focused specifically on rural communities, while 74.5% included community empowerment, 62.7% were programme evaluations.


ABSTRACT We consider a conflict-free minimum latency data aggregation problem that occurs in different wireless networks. Given a network that is presented as an undirected graph with one selected vertex (a sink), the goal is to find a spanning aggregation tree rooted in the sink and to define a conflict-free aggregation minimum length schedule along the arcs of the tree directed to the sink. Herewith, at the same time slot, each element of the network can either send or receive at most one message. Only one message should be sent by each network element during the whole aggregation session, and the conflicts caused by signal interference should be excluded. This problem is NP-hard and remains NP-hard even in the case when the aggregation tree is given. Therefore, the development of efficient approximation algorithms is very important for this problem. In this paper, we present new heuristic algorithms based on genetic local search and variable neighbourhood search metaheuristics. We conducted an extensive simulation that demonstrates the superiority of our algorithms compared with the best of the previous approaches.


Edge-Valued Binary-Decision Diagrams (EVBDD's) are directed acyclic graphs that can represent and manipulate integer functions as effectively as Ordered Binary-Decision Diagrams OBDD's) do for Boolean functions. They have been used in logic verification for showing the equivalence between Boolean functions and arithmetic functions. In this paper, we present EVBDD-based algorithms for solving integer linear programs, computing spectral coefficients of Boolean functions, and performing function decomposition. These algorithms have been implemented in C under the SIS environment and experimental results are provided. >


The fast expanding of social media fuels the spreading of misinformation which disrupts people's normal lives. It is urgent to achieve goals of misinformation identification and early detection in social media. In dynamic and complicated social media scenarios, some conventional methods mainly concentrate on feature engineering which fail to cover potential features in new scenarios and have difficulty in shaping elaborate high-level interactions among significant features. Moreover, a recent Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) based method suffers from deficiencies that it is not qualified for practical early detection of misinformation and poses a bias to the latest input. In this paper, we propose a novel method, Convolutional Approach for Misinformation Identification (CAMI) based on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). CAMI can flexibly extract key features scattered among an input sequence and shape high-level interactions among significant features, which help effectively identify misinformation and achieve practical early detection. Experiment results on two large-scale datasets validate the effectiveness of CAMI model on both misinformation identification and early detection tasks.


The fluctuation of mechanical fields arising in polycrystals is investigated. These materials are viewed as composites of the Hashin–Shtrikman type with a large number of anisotropic phases and a 'granular' topology. We show that the estimation of the intra–phase stress and strain (rate) second moments comes down to the resolution of a linear system of equations. Applied to a linear viscous face–centred cubic (FCC) polycrystal, it is observed that significant local slip rates are estimated even when the corresponding Schmid factor vanishes, due to the intergranular interactions. For the application to viscoplastic polycrystals, the secant and affine nonlinear extensions of the self–consistent scheme are compared. At large stress sensitivity (n = 30), it is observed that the secant linearization leads to almost uniform slip rates for all slip systems in every phase, whereas the affine approach predicts a much larger spread. Furthermore, there is no one–to–one relation between the phase–average stress (or strain rate) and the corresponding second moment. It is emphasized that intra–phase strain–rate heterogeneities should be accounted for when dealing with microstructure evolution.


The high resolution optical spectrograph (HROS) for Gemini is currently within its conceptual design phase. The science requirements for this instrument demand spectral resolutions of 50,000 and 120,000 with entrance slits of 0.57 and 0.24 arcsec respectively. Amongst the current large telescope projects, HROS will be the only instrument of its class to be mounted at a Cassegrain station and this will pose considerable technical challenges which are described in this paper: HROS will be a spectrograph with unique characteristics, like prismatic cross-dispersion, immersed echelle grating and active compensation of flexure. HROS is expected to perform better than any other high resolution spectrograph with respect to throughput, resolution and simultaneous spectral coverage.


The application of music as a therapeutic, strategized intervention in the intensive care environment is considered as critical consideration and evaluation of current research is explored. Through a comprehensive literature review, it is considered why music might prove suitable in ICU care, and how it can significantly affect cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic parameters amongst other physiological and psychological aspects pertinent to recovery. Consideration of music application outside of the intensive care unit in affiliated areas is discussed as well as its use in targeted therapy application with specific patient groups. The importance of distinguishing between a live or recorded musical intervention and the music type itself is highlighted, particularly with respect to research where this has typically been poorly defined.


This article is a follow-up to Jones, Nagin, and Roeder (2001), which described an SAS procedure for estimating group-based trajectory models. Group-based trajectory is a specialized application of finite mixture modeling and is designed to identify clusters of individuals following similar progressions of some behavior or outcome over age or time. This article has two purposes. One is to summarize extensions of the methodology and of the SAS procedure that have been developed since Jones et al. The other is to illustrate how group-based trajectory modeling lends itself to presentation of findings in the form of easily understood graphical and tabular data summaries.


Aims: The objective of this in vitro study was to compare the microhardness values of coronal dentin adjacent to resin-modified glass-ionomer cement (RMGIC) and compomer. Materials and Methods: Standardized Class V preparation was performed for 30 extracted human permanent molars affected by Class V caries. The samples were divided into three groups as follows: specimens before restoration (Group 1) (n = 10), samples restored using RMGIC (Group 2) (n = 10), and specimens treated with compomer (Group 3) (n = 10). Dentinal discs with 2-mm diameter were obtained after embedment into acrylic resin. Vickers microhardness measurements were performed using a digital microhardness tester (Zwick/Roell) immediately after the 10th, 20th, and 30th day by applying a load of 25 g for 15 s at a distance of 100, 200, and 300 μm from the cavity floor. Statistical Analysis Used: One-way analysis of variance and post hoc Tukey tests (P < 0.05) were conducted for all groups of specimens. Results: Group II demonstrated higher microhardness values as compared to those obtained for Group I and Group III. Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that the microhardness of the dentin adjacent to RMGIC was higher than that of the dentin adjacent to the compomer.


The primary purpose of my research is to analyse the development of British reactions to and perceptions of the May Fourth Movement manifestations, especially in Shanghai during late 1910's and early 1920's. The aim is to study what kind of implications the British attitudes and reactions had on the development of the May Fourth Movement. Or in other words, the purpose is to identify the various forms of May Fourth activities that resulted from the foreigners' operations and so to determine the extent of the British influence on the May Fourth Movement in Shanghai. By researching the British reactions, the objective is to explore more profoundly their political, economic and cultural hegemony in Shanghai. The three major British groups that are researched here are the governmental and municipal officials, the business community and the missionaries. While I agree with earlier researchers' emphasis on both the ideological and political causes of the Movement and the need for China's democratic liberation, we also need to take account of power relationships between the foreign and Chinese communities. Hence, another purpose of the study is to assess Chinese May Fourth protagonists' activities in relation to the Shanghai foreign community. Accordingly, the focus is also on the dynamics of interaction between the British and Chinese and its impact on the development of the May Fourth Movement. The fundamental hypothesis is that the British reactions affected developments of the May Fourth Movement activities in Shanghai. When elaborated further, this assumption proposes that the contemporary British actions had a certain influence on a subsequent new wave of Chinese anti-foreign and anti-Christian movements. This approach supports the hypothesis that the succeeding outbreak of radical Chinese nationalism was partly influenced by the British reactions to the May Fourth Movement. This research is based on previously closed materials held in the Shanghai Municipal Archives and they are supplemented with sources from British Archives. These include the Jardine, Matheson & Company materials, especially its vast twentieth century correspondence and access to this material was not available until very recently.


To operate in dynamic and potentially unknown environments a mobile client must first discover the local services that match its requirements, and then interact with these services to obtain the application functionality. However, high levels of heterogeneity characterize mobile environments; that is, contrasting discovery protocols including SLP, UPnP and Jini, and different styles of service interaction paradigms e.g. Remote Procedure Call, Publish-Subscribe and agent based solutions. Therefore given this type of heterogeneity, utilizing single discovery and interaction systems is not optimal as the client will only be able to use the services available to that particular platform. Hence, in this paper we present an adaptive middleware solution to this problem. ReMMoC is a Web-Services based reflective middleware that allows mobile clients to be developed independently of both discovery and interaction mechanisms. We describe the architecture, which dynamically reconfigures to match the current service environment. Finally, we investigate the incurred performance overhead such dynamic behaviour brings to the discovery and interaction process.


Difficulties in simulating systems composed of classical and quantum particles lie in the treatment of the many-body interactions between quantum particles and the geometrical variety of configurations of classical particles. In order to overcome these difficulties, we have developed some numerical methods and applied them to simple cases. As for stationary states, the finite element method provides us with sufficient geometrical freedom.
Combined with the Kohn-Sham equation based on the density
functional theory, this method virtually satisfies our requirement. In order to investigate time-dependent phenomena, we apply the time-dependent Kohn-Sham equation. Adopting the finite difference method, we are able to follow the development of quantum many-body system. As an example, we estimate the effects of the potential height, the electric field, and many-body interactions in some transition processes in quantum wells coupled by a tunneling barrier. This example is important in itself in relation to semiconductor superlattices and also serves as a benchmark for quantum simulations, variety of geometry
corresponding to that of classical particles.


The Great Bear magmatic zone in northern Canada hosts large iron oxide and alkali-altered systems that developed within a 10-m.y. period during the Paleoproterozoic. In the Eastern Treasure Lake and Duke sectors, and at the NICO deposit, early albitization associated with magmatism was followed by tungsten mineralization that was spatially associated with extensive skarn and Fe skarn alteration. Subsequent fluid-rock reactions led to substantial iron enrichment that culminated in iron oxide-apatite mineralization. At the transition from compressional/transpressional to extensional/transtensional stress regimes, changes in magma composition increased the metal budget of exsolved magmatic-hydrothermal fluids and played a key role in the formation of Au-Co-Bi mineralization at the NICO deposit and its satellite showings in the Duke zone. This process happened as the systems regionally transitioned to magnetite-bearing, potassic-iron alteration. The continued evolution of magmatism and fluid chemistry then contributed to the formation of iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) and variant mineralized zones in the Sue-Dianne and NICO deposits and other showings, and albite-hosted uranium mineralized zones elsewhere. The Great Bear magmatic zone illustrates that the evolution of magmatically derived fluids during a transition between different stress regimes can play a significant role in metal endowment and the ability of metasomatic systems to form skarn, iron oxide-apatite, IOCG, and albitite-hosted uranium mineralization.


A wide-frequency range (50-300 kHz) power system has been implemented for use with a new RF antenna - the "Shoelace" antenna - built to drive coherent plasma fluctuations in the edge of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak. A custom, dynamically tunable matching network allows two commercial 1 kW, 50-Ω RF amplifiers to drive the low-impedance, inductive load presented by the antenna. This is accomplished by a discretely variable L-match network, with 81 independently selected steps available for each of the series and parallel legs of the matching configuration. A compact programmable logic device provides a control system that measures the frequency with better than 1 kHz accuracy and transitions to the correct tuning state in less than 1 ms. At least 85% of source power is dissipated in the antenna across the operational frequency range, with a minimum frequency slew rate of 1 MHz/s; the best performance is achieved in the narrower band from 80 to 150 kHz which is of interest in typical experiments. The RF frequency can be run with open-loop control, following a pre-programmed analog waveform, or phase-locked to track a plasma fluctuation diagnostic signal in real time with programmable phase delay; the amplitude control is always open-loop. The control waveforms and phase delay are programmed remotely. These tools have enabled first-of-a-kind measurements of the tokamak edge plasma system response in the frequency range and at the wave number at which coherent fluctuations regulate heat and particle transport through the plasma boundary.


The outputs of two cw diode lasers are coupled into a flash-lamp-pumped Ti:sapphire laser cavity for regenerative amplification. Slices of each seed beam are simultaneously trapped in the cavity and amplified for approximately 33 round trips. The output is a 4.7-ns pulse, the total pulse energy is 110 mJ, and linewidths are only 50% greater than the Fourier-transform limit. The timing jitter between the pulses at the two wavelengths is less than +/-75 ps , and their relative energy is controlled by adjustment of the seed power of the cw diode lasers. Gain competition between the two frequencies does not lead to instabilities.


Motion simulation platforms are mechanical devices designed to replicate the dynamics of a given vehicle. These devices are very attractive for training individuals as drivers, pilots or passengers. In the case of river boats, the simulator consists of a section of the boat (hull) mounted over a 3 DOF parallel robot with a passive mass compensator (3UPS + PU). If users have mobility in the hull, an uncertainty in the position of the upper platform's center of mass is produced. This variation may generate excessive loads on the robot that can be prevented by an adequate placement of the hull over the robot. Dynamic calculations, based on measurements of the real boat in motion, are computed by numerical simulations in SimMechanics. Three methodologies are presented for optimizing the configuration of a boat simulation platform. First, a manual procedure is developed in which critical cases are intuitively detected and evaluated. Then, two multi-variable optimization algorithms are used to systematically obtain the best position and orientation (pose) of the boat section: Genetic Algorithms and low discrepancy sequences. The pose is the design variable; the average forces are the objective functions and the maximum difference between the average forces is the fitness function. The article describes the design problem, the proposed optimization methodologies and simulation results for the optimal configuration.Copyright © 2010 by ASME


Background:  The Foresight report (Butland et al., 2007) has identified that risk perception is an area where additional evidence is needed to improve the understanding of obesity. The Department of Health (2009) reports university students as a group vulnerable to weight gain and therefore future programs for obesity could be informed by the knowledge of the target group. The aim of this project was to investigate the knowledge of Coventry University students regarding the health risks associated with obesity.

Methods:  Non-probability convenience sampling was used to recruit 40 participants from Coventry University. Data was collected using a 'pen-and-paper' questionnaire format and the validated Obesity Risk Knowledge–10 scale (ORK-10 scale) was used to assess level of knowledge (Swift 2006). The ORK-10 Scale consists of 10 brief questions covering obesity related co-morbidities such as diabetes, cancer, life expectancy and high blood pressure, with the option of answering true, false or don't know. Each correct answer scored 1 point, therefore a higher score indicated greater knowledge. Socio-demographic data including gender, age, ethnicity, course and faculty were also collected. Because of the small sample size of the study, these independent variables were dichotomised; gender into male and female, age groups into 20 years, ethnicity into Caucasian and non-Caucasian, course into undergraduate and postgraduate and faculty into health and life sciences compared with other faculties. A Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to assess the normality of the distribution of ORK-10 scale scores. The results indicated normal distribution of ORK-10 score for gender, ethnicity, course and faculty groups, supporting the use of a t-test. For comparing scores between age groups, the data was not normally distributed, supporting the use of a nonparametric Mann–Whitney U-test. The study received approval from the Coventry University Ethics Committee.

Results:  The participant population consisted of 16 males and 24 females, 13   20 years of age, 25 Caucasians and 15 non-Caucasians, 36 undergraduates and four postgraduates, and 20 in the health and life sciences faculty and 20 in other faculties including engineering and computing, art and design, business, environment and society, and lifelong learning. No significant differences were found in ORK-10 scores between gender (P = 0.276), ethnicity (P = 0.179), course (P = 0.310), or faculty (P = 0.168). However, a statistically significant difference was found in ORK-10 scores between age groups, participants >20 years of age had a greater level of knowledge (median = 6, interquartile range = 4), compared to those <20 years of age (median = 4, interquartile range = 2), P = 0.031.

Discussion:  Significant differences were observed in ORK-10 scores according to age with older students scoring higher. This agrees with the finding of Swift (2006) and may be explained by the increased exposure of this age group to health messages. In contrast to previous findings (Swift 2006), studying health and life sciences was not associated with increased knowledge of health risks. This may be explained by the limited sample size of the study, the students may have been in the early stages of their course, sampling bias may have meant that only students interested in health took part, and the sampling technique may not have been representative of the population.

Conclusion:  This study found a statistically significant relationship between knowledge of health risk associated with obesity and age of the students. There is a need for further research in this area, and future studies of larger randomly selected students would help to confirm the need for targeted obesity education programs. The results conclude that students <20 years of age should be considered as a target population for future obesity education programs, in order to make a positive impact on heath behaviour and dietary choices.

References:  Butland, B., Jebb, S., Kopelman, P., McPherson, K., Thomas, S., Mardell, J., & Parry, V. (2007) Foresight Tackling Obesities: Future Choices – Project Report. 2nd edn.Government Office for Science, Department of Innovation Universities and Skills.

Department of Health (2009) Obesity [online] Available at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publichealth/Healthimprovement/Obesity/index.htm [Accessed on 13 September 2009].

Swift, J.A., Glazebrook, C. & Macdonald, I. (2006) Validation of a brief, reliable scale to measure knowledge about the health risks associated with obesity. Int. J. Obesity30, 661–668.


Minimal sentence pairs are frequently used to analyze the behavior of language models. It is often assumed that model behavior on contrastive pairs is predictive of model behavior at large. We argue that two conditions are necessary for this assumption to hold: First, a tested hypothesis should be well-motivated, since experiments show that contrastive evaluation can lead to false positives. Secondly, test data should be chosen such as to minimize distributional discrepancy between evaluation time and deployment time. For a good approximation of deployment-time decoding, we recommend that minimal pairs are created based on machine-generated text, as opposed to human-written references. We present a contrastive evaluation suite for English–German MT that implements this recommendation.


To better understand the debate over international adoption, we utilize two previously unused datasets to better understand both who adopts internationally in the United States and the status of orphaned children in middle and low income countries. According to the National Survey on Family Growth conducted by the United States Center for Disease Control, international adopters according to the NSFG survey data are generally speaking church going, highly educated, stable families aware of the challenges faced by international adoption, with high incidences of infertility. According to the USAID/UNICEF Demographic and Health Surveys, orphans in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from significantly higher material deprivation, reduced schooling, and increased levels of stunting and underweight reported. Using DHS data, we estimate conservatively that that 150,000 orphans from our sample of sub-Saharan African countries died from the five year birth cohort. Due to systemic underestimation and extrapolating to non-sampled countries, the number of orphan deaths in sub-Saharan Africa could quite plausibly be 350,000 annually. Given the large number of stable families and the high number of orphan deaths, it seems counterproductive to restrict international adoptions given the significant benefit to both children and families that could be realized.


Magnetic field dependent transient solar observations are suggestive for axion-photon oscillations with light axion(like) particle involvement. Novel dark-moon measurements with the SMART X-ray detectors can be conclusive for radiatively decaying massive exotica like the generic solar Kaluza-Klein (KK) axions. Furthermore, the predicted intrinsic strong solar magnetic fields could be the reason of enhanced low energy axion production. Such an axion component could be the as yet unknown origin of the strong quiet Sun X-ray luminosity at energies below ∼ 1 keV. Solar axion telescopes should lower their threshold , aiming to copy processes that might occur near the solar surface, be it due to spontaneous or magnetically induced radiative decay of axion(like) particles. This is motivated also by the recent claim of an axion-like particle detection by the laser experiment PVLAS.


The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of different microbubble gases on the amount of myocardial contrast (MC) produced from intravenously (IV) injected dextrose albuinin microbubbles when using a new imaging modality termed transient response imaging (TRI). In 6 dogs (4 closed chest, 2 open chest) the peak anterior myocardial videointensity (PMVI) and visual degree of MC were determined following IV injections of equivalent doses of perfluorocarbon exposed sonicated dextrose albumin (PESDA), sulfur hexafluoride‐exposed sonicated dextrose albumin (SHESDA), and room air exposed sonicated dextrose albumin (RASDA) microbubbles. TRI was performed by triggering ultrasound impulses to 1 point every one to two cardiac cycles. The PMVI produced with TRI was compared to conventional 30 Hz frame rate imaging (CI) for each gas. Visual anterior and posterior MC was evident with TRI in all six dogs using PESDA, but not in any dog with CI. Although RASDA and SHESDA did not produce MC with CI, visually evident anterior MC was seen after 7 of 8 SHESDA and 4 of 9 RASDA injections when using TRI with both gases. PESDA produced the higest peak PMVI of all three microbubbles when using TRI, while SHESDA produced a significantly higher PMVI than RASDA. We conclude that although MC can be produced with TRI using microbubble gases of lower molecular weight, the brightest and most consistent contrast is produced with fluorocarbon containing microbubbles.


Hierarchical routing protocols are critical for the wireless sensor networks (WSN) to maximize its lifetime, but the existing protocols are prone to lead nodes in clusters to die early due to ignoring the state of neighbors in the cluster head decision. In this paper, a new cluster-based optimization algorithm is set up which optimizes clustering process, to effectively avoid the low-energy and long-distance nodes as the cluster head. Considering sink node, The object cluster head routing protocol is proposed, it ensure that only the object cluster head send overall data to sink node, which can balance energy depletion among the cluster heads in WSN. The simulation results show that the optimization strategy significantly prolongs survival time of the network, the object cluster head routing protocol reduces the unbalance of cluster heads energy dissipation caused by different distance from Sink node and maximizes the network lifetime.


Fusarium species is one of the common pathogens of post-harvest disease to cause rot on tomato and other perishable vegetable fruits. The objectives of this study were to determine the diversity of Fusarium isolated species from post-harvest diseases of tomato fruit, to identify the causal organisms by using phenotype characteristics and to verify the pathogens of Fusarium fruit of tomato based on pathogenicity test. Carnation leaf-piece agar (CLA) and potato dextrose agar (PDA) media were used for phenotype-based identification of the Fusarium isolates with emphasis for characterizations
of the shapes and sizes of the macroconidia and microconidia, colony features, growth rates, conidiogenous cells and chlamydospores. A total of 180 Fusarium isolates were obtained from 13 locations throughout Selangor. Fusarium solani was most abundantly isolated (34%) followed by F. semitectum (31%) and F. oxysporum (31%), F. subglutinans (3%) while the least was F. equiseti (1%). Twenty seven isolates were tested for pathogenicity test by injecting 1 mL of the conidial suspension onto healthy tomatoes. All the tested Fusarium isolates were pathogenic on tomato with different severity levels. The non-inoculated controls showed no symptoms of fruit rot. The most virulent was F. oxysporum isolate B711T with DSI 93.75%, while the least were isolates of F. solani (B647T) and F. oxysporum (B727T) with DSI 37.5%. Majority of the isolated Fusarium species can potentially produce mycotoxins as their secondary metabolites.
The potential production of mycotoxins by pathogenic isolates of Fusarium species in contaminated tomato fruits could pose health hazards when consumed.


Aortic diseases are highly evolutive pathological entities that may often have an acute clinical presentation. The estimated 5-year risk of rupture of a thoracic aortic aneurysm with a diameter between 4 and 5.9 cm is 16%, but it rises to 31% for aneurysms of ≥6 cm. Endovascular treatment is an emerging alternative option to surgery with low invasiveness, which allows to treat even high surgical risk patients. If almost all thoracic aortic diseases, acute or chronic, could be potentially treated with endovascular treatment, not all anatomic features of the aortic disorders allow it: vascular imaging is crucial for patient selection, endoprosthesis choice and planning of treatment. Early mid-term results of different published experiences are encouraging, but long-term results are necessary to definitively assess reliability of stent-graft materials and improvement in patient survival. In the choice between surgical or endovascular repair of thoracic aortic aneurysms, many factors must be considered, including clinical conditions, comorbidities, anatomic situation, efficacy of materials and last, but not least, experience of a working group.


Crisis is not the end, as shall be demonstrated in this paper presenting the
case of Ntalale village situated in Gwanda, Matabeleland South in Zimbabwe.
The economic decline witnessed in Zimbabwe in the last decade has reshaped
the livelihood strategies of people in both the urban and rural areas. This paper
seeks to highlight and explain how the peasant farming households in Ntalale
have had to reorganize their lifestyles by engaging more in diversified income
portfolios as coping strategies in the climate of macroeconomic decline.
Trends of de-agrarianisation in the area shall be explored with emphasis placed
on the empirical evidence that this phenomena has not only been the result of
the economic collapse but that there are other contributing factors leading to
this situation.
Venturing into the different income making strategies has created a visible
differentiated class of people in the village and this has had a bearing on social
relations in the area. This paper shall therefore also explore how these relations
have been reshaped and how they have reconstituted the social relations in the
area. Conclusions drawn from this paper reveal that though the economic
decline and harsh climatic conditions have resulted in diversified livelihood
portfolios and de-agrarianisation in the area this has not led to the 'inevitable'
demise of the peasantry.


Tribology deals with interacting surfaces in sliding, rolling or any others types of motions, which is much importance in designing for machine components to improve their durability's of mechanical engineering systems. This study overviews the most recent studies on the tribological behavior of polymeric based materials containing different fillers. Some microstructural and mechanical properties of the epoxy composite are introduced. In addition, mechanisms of increasing wear resistance and reducing friction coefficient for polymeric composites are reviewed. An overview is also covered the process optimization for the dry wear results of polymeric composites using Taguchi Method (TM) and Response Surface Method (RSM). Furhermore, future use of the fiber reinforced composites in tribological applications is included in this study.


The drive laser system of the photoelectric injector for the Los Alamos free-electron laser (FEL) is described. This system consists of a 1.053 mu m mode-locked Nd:YLF oscillator, a grating-rhomb pulse compressor, a fast electrooptic shutter to reduce pulse repetition frequency, a pulsed Nd:YLF amplifier chain, and a KTP frequency doubler. The bright electron beams required for high performance FELs demand stringent specifications on drive laser output levels, beam quality, and stability. The design specifications, laser architecture, and operating performance following the most recent round of upgrades are presented. >


A new real-time substructure method for testing systems under dynamic loading is described. The method separates a complex system into a physical, possibly nonlinear, subsystem (to be tested experimentally at large scale) and a surrounding linear system, modeled numerically. The two subsystems interact in real time allowing realistic time-dependent nonlinear behavior to take place. This behavior may be impossible to model computationally, and the method overcomes problems associated with scaling and time-dependent effects associated with current shaking table and pseudodynamic test methods. Dynamic forces are applied to the numerical model, and the resulting displacements at the interface between the two subsystems are applied to the physical system using servohydraulic actuators. The restoring forces are then measured and fed back to the numerical model, so that the response for the next time step can be calculated. The technique can be applied to a wide range of complex, linear/nonlinear systems such as structures with localized plastic deformation, soil-structure interaction, or vehicle-suspension interaction. The method is demonstrated for both single and multi-degree-of-freedom systems, using a single actuator to apply displacements to a physical specimen. Comparisons between experimental and theoretical results show excellent agreement.


Manihot esculenta, Crantz (Cassava) peel was taken for the isolation of acidic amylases. The enzyme activity of 20% and 40% precipitate was found to be 0.02 and 0.18μmole/min, whereas, 50% precipitate did not show any enzyme activity. The fractionation of 40% precipitate on Sephadex G-75 column yielded two peaks with enzyme activity 0.02 and 0.08μmole/min respectively. The second peak indicated a rich source of amylase. A gradual increase in the enzyme activity was observed at 350C to 500C, along with drastic decrease at 500C onwards. A maximum activity was observed from 500C at pH 6.8 to 7.0. The activity of purified enzyme was 0.14μmole/min.Besides, substrate concentration between 1 to 3% which led to substantial increase in enzyme activity. Further, the enzyme activity of Cassava amylase against commercial starch was tested and found that, the enzyme activity increased with increase in time and remains constant after 80th min, whereas, on its own starch there was no activity till 30th min and after this time point, the activity gradually increases and it remains constant after 90 minutes. Thus, indicating Cassava acidic amylases act very rapidly on commercial starch than on its own starch.


Nutrient stress is one of the most favorable ways of increasing neutral lipid and high value‐added output production by microalgae. However, little is known about the level of the oxidative damage caused by nutrient stress for obtaining an optimal stress level for maximum production of specific molecules. In this study, the antioxidant response of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii grown under element deprivation (nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus and magnesium) and supplementation (nitrogen and zinc) was investigated. All element regimes caused a decrease in growth, which was most pronounced under N deprivation. Element deprivation and Zn supplementation caused significant increases in H2O2 and lipid peroxidation levels of C. reinhardtii. Decrease in total chlorophyll level was followed by an increase of total carotenoid levels in C. reinhardtii under N and S deprivation while both increased under N supplementation. Confocal imaging of live cells revealed dramatic changes of cell shape and production of neutral lipid bodies accompanied by a decrease of chlorophyll clusters. Antioxidant capacity of cells decreased under N, S and P deprivation while it increased under N and Zn supplementation. Fluctuation of antioxidant enzyme activities in C. reinhardtii grown under different element regimes refers to different metabolic sources of reactive oxygen species production triggered by a specific element absence or overabundance.


This report discusses the election players, electoral challenges, and U.S. role in the July 2018 Zimbabwe elections -- the first since the November 2017 resignation of President Robert Mugabe after 37 years in office. The election has raised hopes for the resolution of a persistent economic crisis and for a democratic transition ending a long pattern of human rights violations and undemocratic governance--and an end to the years of international condemnation, sanctions, and isolation generated by such trends.


Since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the United States has conferred citizenship to all children born within U.S. territory with few exceptions. In recent years, however, some have proposed legislation that would exclude the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants from U.S. citizenship as a way of reducing incentives for unauthorized immigration. Using various interpretive lenses, scholars have debated whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires the bestowal of citizenship to all individuals born within U.S. territory. This article, however, reaches beyond the Fourteenth Amendment and analyzes the concept of territorial birthright citizenship more broadly. This article explores the substantive meaning and purpose of birthright citizenship in the United States as distilled from the historical trajectory of U.S. citizenship law. Specifically, this article examines several junctures in U.S. history in which courts and legislatures have grappled with decisions about citizenship, including the aftermath of the American Revolution, the formulation and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the exclusion (and later inclusion) of American Indians from U.S. citizenship. This article isolates the substantive factors that have played a role in these grants or denials of citizenship to evaluate whether a territorial conception of birthright citizenship continues to serve the substantive purposes and meaning of birthright citizenship in the United States. Ultimately, this article concludes that, although territorial presence is a waning proxy for substantive indicators of membership in other spheres of law, territorial presence at birth continues to serve as an accurate predictive proxy for these substantive indicators of membership in the realm of citizenship.


A well-known fact of the phonology of Spanish is the non-occurrence of palatal nasals and laterals in syllable-final position (e.g., desden-desdenar , clavel-clavellina ). Some scholars have recently claimed that they are lexical remnants that should be treated in terms of allomorphy (cf. Pensado 1997, Harris 1999). In this paper, we examine the empirical basis of depalatalization, we provide evidence for maintaining depalatalization as an actual phenomenon by appealing also to the phonology of borrowings and to other cases of place centralization, and we provide a parallel OT account of these facts. Overapplication of depalatalization in onset position in plural and diminutive forms (e.g., desdenes , claveles , clavelito ) is analyzed as an output-output effect, in line with work by Bakovic (1998, 2001) with respect to the plural cases. In our view, however, this output-output effect extends to diminutives because it is restricted by the strongest version of 'base' proposed in Kager (1999a,b).


Presently, metallic nanowires (NWs) are the most promising materials to fabricate flexible transparent electrodes as an alternative to indium tin oxide. Here, the high performance of transparent conductive electrodes (TCEs) based on silver nanowires (AgNWs) percolation networks is reported. With optimized experimental conditions for the deposition, the AgNWs result in low sheet resistance of 10 Ω sq−1 combined with a high optical transmittance of 92.6% at λ = 550 nm. This leads to a valuable figure of merit as compared to other TCEs. In this study, the nanoscale electrical properties of the AgNWs are measured via conductive atomic force microscopy to characterize the percolation network. The electrical resistivity value calculated for a single AgNW is found to be about 12.35 µΩ cm, while a nanoscale conductivity map over an AgNW network bridging two electrodes has revealed high levels of current within the network over a distance of more than 1000 µm. The favorable determined conductivity results along with the high optical properties of the AgNWs network strongly suggest that thin‐film electrodes based on AgNWs will be a potential approach for future flexible electronic devices.


Though evolution undoubtedly operates in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, the law of disorder, during billions of years organisms of incredible complexity came into being. Natural selection was described by Darwin2 as a process of optimization of the adaptation to environment, but optimization doesn't necessarily lead to higher intricacy. Methods of thermodynamics and thus of information theory could be suited for the examination of the increase of order and information due to evolution. Here I explain how to quantify the increase of information due to natural selection on the genotype and gene level using the observable change of allele frequencies. In populations with recombination (no linkage), the change of information content can be computed by summing up the contributions of all gene loci and thus gene loci can be treated as independent no matter what the fitness-landscape looks like. Pressure of deleterious mutations decreases information in a linear way, proportional to fitness loss and mutation rate. The information theoretical view on evolution may open new fields of research.


and Organizational Systems — Darren Dalcher and Luis Fernández-Sanz 6 Preventative Software Quality Control: Using Human Checking to Change Defective Human Practice — Tom Gilb and Lindsey Brodie 14 The Software Process Improvement Hype Cycle — Miklós Biró 21 Quality Going for Gold — Derek Irving and Margaret Ross 26 Can Teamwork Management Help in Software Quality and Proc ess Improvement? — Esperança Amengual-Alcover and Antònia Mas-Picacho 34 Evidence-based Software Engineering and Systematic Literature Reviews — Barbara Kitchenham, David Budgen, and O. Pearl Brereton 42 Software Project Success: Moving Beyond Failure — Darren Dalcher 51 Software Measurement for Better Project and Process Quality — Christof Ebert 62 Methods for Testing Web Service Compositions — José GarcíaFanjul, Marcos Palacios-Gutiérrez, Javier Tuya-González, and Claudio de la Riva-Alvarez 67 A Quality Evaluation Model for Web2.0 e-Learning Systems — Stephanos Mavromoustakos and Katerina Papanikolaou


Gastric ulcer bleeding in neonatal period, mainly in preterm newborn babies or in neonates treated in intensive care units, is relatively frequent, However the occurrence of significant gastric ulcer bleeding in healthy full term infants is unusual. We experienced a case of massive upper gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding in a 3-day-old healthy full term infant. Endoscopic examination confirmed the presence of gastric ulcerations. Treatment was initiated with transfusion and histamine 2 receptor antagonist, and the clinical signs resolved. Mother`s serum antibody to Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) was positive. We collected stool of the patient including other 17 infants in the intensive care unit. A highly sensitive semi-nested PCR for H. pylori DNA was performed, but all infants including the patient revealed negative. H. pylori infection is not related with upper GI bleeding in healthy full term infants. In conclusion, the diagnosis of upper GI bleeding in infant can be easily made by means of pediatric endoscopy, which is a simple and a well tolerated examination. (Korean J Gastroenterol 2006;48:210-214)


Filtering strategies enable social media users to remove undesired content from their feeds, potentially creating homophilic environments. Although previous studies have addressed the individual-level factors and content features that influence these decisions, few have solely focused on users' perceptions. Accordingly, this study applies social exchange theory to understand how users socially construct the process of unfriending. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with young Spaniards, we identify a widespread pattern of rejection over repetitive, opinion-challenging, and offensive posts, which we conceptualize as out-of-place content, a type of social media stimulus that hinders substantive online exchanges and challenges users' understanding of social reality and individual values. This study contributes to current literature on unfriending by suggesting that filtering strategies are implemented gradually when posts overwhelm users' tolerance threshold. Our findings also suggest that their deployment hinges on the closeness of the relationship between peers and social commitments formed in specific platforms. Future research is needed to assess to what extent the patterns identified in our interviews are present in the overall population.


HW/SW partitioning of modern heterogeneous systems, which combine signal processing as well as multimedia applications, is usually performed on a task or process graph representation. As this optimisation problem is known to be NP-hard, existing partitioning techniques rely on heuristic methods to traverse the vast search space. The Global Criticality/Local Phase (GCLP) algorithm, initially introduced by Kalavade and Lee as an integral part of the Ptolemy work suite, has been frequently referred to as fast and powerful technique to generate high quality solutions for a combined partitioning/scheduling problem. Although having a good reputation, GCLP neglects essential information with respect to the underlying communication model. A detailed communication model for a typical System-On-Chip (SoC) architecture is introduced that considers different read and write times for all memory and bus resources. The internal mechanisms of the GCLP algorithm have been thoroughly analysed and several modifications are proposed that lead either to a significant increase of the quality of the obtained solutions without affecting the computation time of the algorithm or to a substantially lower computation time while increasing the output of valid partitioning solutions.


The analytic expression of proton in deep inelastic scattering is studied by using the color glass condensate model and the dipole picture. We get a better description of the HERA DIS data than the GBW model which was inspired by the Glauber model. We find that our model satisfies the unitarity limit and Froissart Bound which refers to an energy dependence of the total cross-section rising no more rapidly than In2 s.


It is now possible to prevent effectively the occurrence of overwhelming pneumococcal infection from the majority of pneumococcal organisms in patients with increased susceptibility to infection. Immunization of patients with sickle cell disease and patients with splenectomy results in a significant increase in antibody amounts which persist for long periods of time. Patients under 2 years of age and patients with Hodgkin's disease and splenectomy respond less well. Most "vaccine failures" which have been described, have been in immunosuppressed patients, or a result of infection with S. pneumoniae type 6A. Future directions in the development of a more effective vaccine for patients under 2 years of age and immunosuppressed patients will include research efforts to formulate a new immunogenic vaccine. Definitive recommendations regarding booster immunization must await more definitive studies, but current data suggests that booster immunization is not necessary for at least 5-6 years following primary immunization.


We derive the distribution of the synchrotron spectral index across NGC 6946 and investigate the correlation between the radio continuum (synchrotron) and far-infrared (FIR) emission using the KINGFISH Herschel-PACS and SPIRE data. The radio-FIR correlation is studied as a function of star formation rate, magnetic field strength, radiation field strength, and the total gas surface density. The synchrotron emission follows both star-forming regions and the so-called magnetic arms present in the inter-arm regions. The synchrotron spectral index is steepest along the magnetic arms (α_n ~ 1), while it is flat in places of giant Hii regions and in the center of the galaxy (α_n ~ 0.6−0.7). The map of α_n provides observational evidence for aging and energy loss of cosmic ray electrons (CREs) propagating in the disk of the galaxy. Variations in the synchrotron-FIR correlation across the galaxy are shown to be a function of both star formation and magnetic field strength. We find that the synchrotron emission correlates better with cold rather than with warm dust emission, when the diffuse interstellar radiation field is the main heating source of dust. The synchrotron-FIR correlation suggests a coupling between the magnetic field and the gas density. NGC 6946 shows a power-law behavior between the total (turbulent) magnetic field strength B and the star formation rate surface density Σ_(SFR) with an index of 0.14 (0.16) ± 0.01. This indicates an efficient production of the turbulent magnetic field with the increasing gas turbulence expected in actively star forming regions. Moreover, it is suggested that the B-Σ_(SFR) power law index is similar for the turbulent and the total fields in normal galaxies. On the other hand, for galaxies interacting with the cluster environment this index is steeper for turbulent magnetic fields than it is for the total magnetic fields. The scale-by-scale analysis of the synchrotron-FIR correlation indicates that the ISM affects the propagation of old/diffused CREs, resulting in a diffusion coefficient of D_0 = 4.6 × 10^(28) cm^2 s^(-1) for 2.2 GeV CREs.


Nonspecific cell-mediated immunity to a relatively virulent strain of Escherichia coli was studied in mice infected with Staphylococcus aureus and elicited with specific antigens. The infected and elicited mice were protected against as intraperitoneal challenge by E. coli for an observation period of 7 days, whereas normal mice, given the same number of bacteria, died within 18 to 24 h. However, the amount of time elapsing between elicitation and challenge greatly affected the rate of protection. Little or no protection was observed in mice injected with S. aureus but not elicited or in mice injected with staphylococcal antigens but not infected with staphylococci.


Smart cities are concerned with the implementation of the new technologies and systems, which demonstrate the relationships between virtual and physical environment through proper applications. Transportation systems are among the fields which have been taken into consideration in this research. A pilot study for the parking system at An-Najah National University-New Campus has been made as part of the attempt to look forward towards transferring the university into a smart one by 2020. Smart parking helps in managing the parking supply and in understanding the interaction between parking supply and demand. In addition, it helps in finding the optimal allocation of parking spaces, through determining the best route, therefore reduces the delay to achieve a better time management. The goal of the smart parking is having an efficient parking system which delivers real improvements in user service quality and provides real-time flexibility. Proper management and control of parking lots also help through utilization of available parking spaces (supply) most efficiently. Moreover, parking availability information contributes to better allocation of spaces to users and in allowing good distribution over parking facilities. One aspect of smart parking is being considered using advanced technology. An implementation of Geographic Information System to Transportation (GIS-T) has been used with the association of GIS applications and taking into consideration the impedance of travel time or the distance travelled to find the optimal system assignment. The results show the outcome of the system optimal allocation of parking stalls for a sample of instructors' offices in Faculty of Engineering at An-Najah National University.


Machine learning frameworks such as graph neural networks typically rely on a given, fixed graph to exploit relational inductive biases and thus effectively learn from network data. However, when said graphs are (partially) unobserved, noisy, or dynamic, the problem of inferring graph structure from data becomes relevant. In this paper, we postulate a graph convolutional relationship between the observed and latent graphs, and formulate the graph learning task as a network inverse (deconvolution) problem. In lieu of eigendecomposition-based spectral methods or iterative optimization solutions, we unroll and truncate proximal gradient iterations to arrive at a parameterized neural network architecture that we call a Graph Deconvolution Network (GDN). GDNs can learn a distribution of graphs in a supervised fashion, perform link prediction or edge-weight regression tasks by adapting the loss function, and they are inherently inductive. We corroborate GDN's superior graph recovery performance and its generalization to larger graphs using synthetic data in supervised settings. Furthermore, we demonstrate the robustness and representation power of GDNs on real world neuroimaging and social network datasets.