Export growth in India has been much faster than GDP growth over the past few decades. Several factors appear to have contributed to this phenomenon including foreign direct investment (FDI). However, despite increasing inflows of FDI especially in recent years there has not been any attempt to assess its contribution to India's export performance- one of the channels through which FDI influences growth. Using annual data for 1970-98 we investigate the determinants of export performance in India in a simultaneous equation framework. Results suggest that demand for Indian exports increases when its export prices fall in relation to world prices. Furthermore, the real appreciation of the rupee adversely effects India's exports. Export supply is positively related to the domestic relative price of exports and higher domestic demand reduces export supply. Foreign investment appears to have statistically no significant impact on export performance although the coefficient of FDI has a positive sign.


Background. Recent research supports the role of prototype perceptions in predicting a range of health behaviours. The current study adopts the prototype willingness (PW) model as a framework for examining a range of sun-related behaviours including sunbathing, sun protection, and incidental sun exposure. Method. Community participants (N=218) from North Queensland, Australia completed an online survey measuring the PW model variables and their sun-related behaviour. Findings. Results indicated that those who sunbathed rated all three prototypes (protector, incidental, deliberate) to be of similar favourability; in addition, the incidental prototype was perceived to be most similar to themselves. Those who abstained from sunbathing perceived the protector and incidental exposer prototypes to be significantly more favourable than the deliberate tanner. Prototype perceptions also predicted sunbathing and incidental sun exposure. Discussion. This research suggests that prototype perceptions can predict sun-related behaviours. The PW model could inform future interventions to reduce incidental sun exposure in high-risk regions.


Fiber-optic acoustic sensors are being developed for the detection and location of partial discharges in oil-filled transformers. The partial discharges can be detected acoustically and located by the triangulation method with the sensors placed inside the transformer tank. In this application, the directionality of the sensor should be as flat as possible within at least /spl plusmn/40/spl deg/ from the sensor axis and for a frequency range up to 150 kHz. A calculation of the directionality of a fiber coil acoustic sensor was made using a plane wave approximation. The calculation showed that if the diameter of a fiber coil is less than 20 mm, its directionality is relatively flat within /spl plusmn/300 for frequencies lower than 150 kHz. The directionality of an optical fiber acoustic sensor for the frequency range of 50-300 kHz was measured experimentally in an oil tank. The effect of reflected waves was avoided by using a gating technique. The experimental results show somewhat different directionality patterns from the theoretical results but are internally consistent and with maxima and minima at frequencies close to those predicted. The discrepancy is believed to be due to a resonance effect which is not taken into account in the theoretical model. However, the sensor achieves the directionality performance required for the application.


This paper presents a voltage regulator system for passive UHF RFID transponders, which contains a rectifier, a limiter, and a regulator. The rectifier achieves power by rectifying the incoming RF energy. Due to the huge variation of the rectified voltage, a limiter at the rectifier output is used to clamp the rectified voltage. In this paper, the design of a limiter circuit is discussed in detail, which can provide a stable limiting voltage with low sensitivity to temperature variation and process dispersion. The key aspect of the voltage regulator system is the dynamic bandwidth boosting in the regulator. By sensing the excess current that is bypassed in the limiter during periods of excess energy, the bias current as well as the bandwidth of the regulator are increased, the output supply voltage can recover quickly from line transients during the periods of no RF energy to a full blast of RF energy. This voltage regulator system is implemented in a 0.18 μm CMOS process.


In the near-weightless environment of orbiting spacecraft capillary forces dominate interfacial flow phenomena over unearthly large length scales. In current experiments aboard the International Space Station, partially open channels are being investigated to determine critical flow rate-limiting conditions above which the free surface collapses ingesting bubbles. Without the natural passive phase separating qualities of buoyancy, such ingested bubbles can in turn wreak havoc on the fluid transport systems of spacecraft. The flow channels under investigation represent geometric families of conduits with applications to liquid propellant acquisition, thermal fluids circulation, and water processing for life support. Present and near future experiments focus on transient phenomena and conduit asymmetries allowing capillary forces to replace the role of gravity to perform passive phase separations. Terrestrial applications are noted where enhanced transport via direct liquid-gas contact is desired.


In this paper, we introduce and analyze a practical codebook for single-antenna non-coherent communications, with codewords belonging to the Grassmannian of lines defined on the complex vector space. This codebook is structured and has zero storage requirement. It has higher packing efficiency, represented by the minimum distance, than other structured codebooks in the literature. Numerical results show that this codebook outperforms the training-based scheme in terms of error probability and achievable rate.


OBJECTIVE
Neural network-based representations ("embeddings") have dramatically advanced natural language processing (NLP) tasks, including clinical NLP tasks such as concept extraction. Recently, however, more advanced embedding methods and representations (eg, ELMo, BERT) have further pushed the state of the art in NLP, yet there are no common best practices for how to integrate these representations into clinical tasks. The purpose of this study, then, is to explore the space of possible options in utilizing these new models for clinical concept extraction, including comparing these to traditional word embedding methods (word2vec, GloVe, fastText).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Both off-the-shelf, open-domain embeddings and pretrained clinical embeddings from MIMIC-III (Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III) are evaluated. We explore a battery of embedding methods consisting of traditional word embeddings and contextual embeddings and compare these on 4 concept extraction corpora: i2b2 2010, i2b2 2012, SemEval 2014, and SemEval 2015. We also analyze the impact of the pretraining time of a large language model like ELMo or BERT on the extraction performance. Last, we present an intuitive way to understand the semantic information encoded by contextual embeddings.

RESULTS
Contextual embeddings pretrained on a large clinical corpus achieves new state-of-the-art performances across all concept extraction tasks. The best-performing model outperforms all state-of-the-art methods with respective F1-measures of 90.25, 93.18 (partial), 80.74, and 81.65.

CONCLUSIONS
We demonstrate the potential of contextual embeddings through the state-of-the-art performance these methods achieve on clinical concept extraction. Additionally, we demonstrate that contextual embeddings encode valuable semantic information not accounted for in traditional word representations.


CO2 capture via solid adsorption technology relies on the development of low-cost and high-performance new solid adsorbents. The robust and large-scale produced hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) porous materials are an ideal candidate but present low CO2 adsorption properties. Here, we report that in situ carbon doping of BN materials (BCN) can be facilely controlled by thermal annealing of boric acid and melamine mixtures in various atmospheres. CO2 uptake of the BCN materials is in the range of 3.74–3.91 mmol CO2 g−1 (165–172 mg CO2 g−1) at 298 K and ambient pressure, whereas it is only 1.16–1.66 mmol CO2 g−1 (53.0–73.1 mg CO2 g−1) over the pure BN materials. The separation coefficient between CO2 and N2 is up to 74 and no decrease in the adsorption performance was observed after nine adsorption/desorption cycles. The BCN material presents the best performance among known BN-based sorbents, which is comparable to many excellent carbon materials. Detailed characterization reveals that the incorporation of carbon into the BN matrix increases the density of ultramicropores (<0.7 nm) and chemical defects, consequently enhancing the CO2 adsorption capacity and the selectivity over N2 molecules.


This article introduces the concept of "pseudo-sousveillance" as simulated sousveillance practices created by the sensory environments of immersive technologies. To advance this concept, I analyze the virtual reality (VR) experience "Use of Force" that immerses participants within the scene of the night during which immigrant Anastasio Hernandez Rojas was beaten by border patrol officers at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. I argue that the pseudo-sousveillance practices of cellphone recording and surveillance from above enlist users to be active participants in resisting dominant surveillance practices by constructing alternative narratives about immigrant experiences, exposing the overreach of the border patrol, and revealing the limits of surveillance in immigration control. I then discuss the implications that pseudo-sousveillance has for rethinking the rhetorical power of emerging technologies and sousveillance in a surveillant age.


In the opening up oilfields, it's an important task in petroleum industry to predict and diagnose faults under the oilfields. In this paper, an algorithm of recognizing working patterns of oil-well based on BP (back propagation) neural network was put forward, and it was applied to economical automatic monitor and control system for an oilfield. It was more accurate and reliable than direct comparison of the corresponding point in working-pump's graph. To overcome the disfigurement and limitation of the fault recognition method at present, the Fourier descriptor of input samples was adopted to solve some problems, such as reducing the dimension of samples, increasing train speed, improving recognition rate and real time recognition. The result showed that this automatic monitor and control system was effective and satisfied with the requirement of the real-time fault diagnosis for oil pump


Instruments and procedures continue to become more complex and challenging, but the display environments to which these technologies are connected have not kept pace. Display real-estate (the size and resolution of the display), the configurability of the display, and the ability for display systems to incorporate, fuse and present diverse informational sources are limiting factors. The capabilities of display technologies are far exceeded by the procedures and instruments that rely on them. In this paper we show how to break free from display constraints by moving forward with a hybrid, heterogeneous display framework that preserves key characteristics of current systems (low latency, specialized devices). We have engineered a hybrid display and are currently using it to build a surgical simulation and training environment within which we can evaluate both the technology and the performance of subjects using the technology.


Typical male and female roles and relationships can be observed at different social levels: intergroup, intragroup, interpersonal, intrapersonal. In adolescence, increased development of gender characteristics (gender identity, gender stereotypes, gender roles) appears at all levels. Since the leading activity at this age is interpersonal communication, research into gender characteristics and their influence on relations in the student group is one of the most important tasks of modern psychology. One hundred and forty teenagers in grades 6-8 from secondary schools in Moscow, aged of 12–14, were involved in the research. Special social-psychological techniques were applied for assessment of status relations (sociometry, referentometry, methodology for defining the informal intragroup power structure) and gender characteristics (Bem Sex Role Inventory in classical and modified versions), as well as correlation and cluster analyses. We found that representations about the group leader contained clear masculine features. We underline the discrepancy between the qualities attributed to the image of the leader and the qualities of the actual group leaders. Thus, the image of the leader includes predominantly masculine characteristics, while actual high-status group members describe themselves with both feminine and gender-neutral features. Finally gender-typed behavior and masculine traits are more typical of low-status teenagers.


A search for Z bosons in the μ+μ− decay channel has been performed in PbPb collisions at √ sNN = 2.76 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC, in a 7.2 μb−1 data sample. The number of opposite-sign muon pairs observed in the 60–120 GeV/c2 invariant mass range is 39, corresponding to a yield per unit of rapidity (y) and per minimum bias event of (33.8± 5.5(stat) ± 4.4(syst)) × 10−8, in the |y| < 2.0 range. Rapidity, transverse momentum, and centrality dependencies are also measured. The results agree with next-to-leading order QCD calculations, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions. Submitted to Physical Review Letters ∗See Appendix A for the list of collaboration members ar X iv :s ub m it/ 02 04 01 9 [ nu cl -e x] 2 6 Fe b 20 11


Staging works from our rich concert dance heritage relies on determining what the "real" dance is, particularly when the work is no longer currently performed. Because choreographers frequently alter their choreography, creating multiple versions of a dance, identification of a definitive version can be a complex process. Adding to the complexity, there is the involvement of the stager, performers, and the audience who are each active or passive participants in the ultimate performance of a work. Through conversations with prominent stagers, scholarly discourse, and personal experience, the author investigates some of the key concerns and questions regarding staging dance legacy works in concert dance.


Thus far, daily diary studies have mostly focused on adults and adolescents, while only a few have researched young children. In this methodological article, we introduce and evaluate a mobile diary application, "You have a message from Illi", designed to capture young, under-school-age children's daily experiences at home and in day care, in the context of a 24h economy where parents work nonstandard hours and child care is arranged accordingly. We also compare childrens' mood ratings reported by both the children themselves and adults. Children recruited either from day care centers (N=15) or day and night and care centers (N=17) carried smartphones with them for one week and reported their daily moods and activities three times a day by mobile phone as motivated by "Illi", a fairy-tale character. The questions concerned daily activities, moods and transitions as well as good and challenging moments. The study demonstrated children's ability and motivation to participate in a mobile diary and produce valuable information about their daily lives. The method captured fluctuations in children's daily moods, as reported by both children and adults. The mood evaluations of adults and the children themselves correlated. Parents and day care staff perceived participation in the mobile diary study as practical, relevant and not overdemanding, and that the method was easy to integrate into daily life.


Recent work on moral reasoning has focused on the psychological relationship between the actor, the action and the outcome. The argument is that a tighter connection between these categories leads to more moral behavior. Using data from students who cheated on an exam, we extend this literature by delineating how people can rationalize non-moral behavior by loosening the above relationships. In particular, we found that students tried to distance themselves from the wrongfulness of cheating using four types of rationalization: separating themselves from the action, blaming a third-party for influencing the decision, re-defining the action as something good, and defining alternate outcomes from the behavior. Supporting these rationales are nine basic arguments based on confusion, character, professor clarity, attractive nuisance, culture, intent, acceptance, comparisons and outcome. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for our understanding of moral reasoning and provide some practical approaches for minimizing this behavior.


We derive the equations corresponding to twisting type-N vacuum gravitational fields with one Killing vector and one homothetic Killing vector by using the same approach as that developed by one of us in order to treat the case with two non-commuting Killing vectors. We study the case when the homothetic parameter ϕ takes the value -1, which is shown to admit a reduction to a third-order real ordinary differential equation for this problem, similar to that previously obtained by one of us when two Killing vectors are present.


The multilingualism of the Vaupés region in Northwest Amazonia has drawn attention from scholars for decades. This paper addresses issues involving code-switching and code-mixing in this region. The claim has often been repeated that in spite of intense multilingualism, code-mixing does not occur. I report findings that show this is not the case. This study is based on fieldwork in a Desano community in Colombia. This study documents code-switching and code-mixing and has important implications for the general claims that have been made. The data come from interactions among speakers of Eastern Tukanoan languages who have different ethnic affiliations but who engage in multilingual speech that violates what has been claimed to be prescribed norms of language that forbid code-mixing. The results contribute to the understanding of the linguistic practices of these people and correct misconceptions about their linguistic behavior.


In Mexico, the municipal governments have acquired the character of government with full rights and own competition since the constitutional reforms of 1999. In the same reforms period, the municipality has grown significantly in numbers of employees, management of economic resources, political influence, and incidence in older areas of the political, economic and social life. (Morales, 2008). However the reforms, in general terms, haven't increased their institutional capacity; in such a way that in many locations in Mexico, poor municipal management has generated limited economic, political, social and environmental effects in the local municipalities development in Mexico.


This paper describes a situation that suggests an optimistic future for periphery scholars, particularly from Latin America. First it shows a positive evolution of publications in English in Latin America, which appears to be associated to the concomitant evolution of postgraduate programmes. Then, it is argued that such evolution could be improved by a form of EAP instruction that capitalizes on the special characteristics of the Latin American situation, particularly the highly specific needs of learners, the common Latinate L1, the possibility of having homogeneous groups in terms of fields, and the limited set of genres used by researchers in this context. Such features could be exploited to the learners' advantage through the use of authentic and specific materials. Both authenticity and specificity will increase motivation and reduce comprehension problems, while allowing participants to contribute their knowledge of science to the course.


Background: The decision by paramedics to alert a receiving hospital to the imminent arrival of a critically ill patient is currently based on the crew's clinical judgement. Aims: To evaluate the efficiency of current alerting practice and to assess the need for objective guidelines. Methods: Data were collected in the Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, Birmingham, UK, over 1 week in February 2005. All alerted patients and all critically ill patients brought to the emergency department over this time period were identified. These two groups were studied to find those patients who were alerted but not critically ill, those who were critically ill but not alerted, and those who were both alerted and critically ill. The presenting conditions were identified and compared between groups. Results: 454 patients were brought by ambulance to the emergency department during the study week. Of the 27 alerted patients, 23 were critically ill, leaving four patients alerted inappropriately. 29 of the 52 critically ill patients had not been alerted by ambulance crews. Most (n = 22) of these patients were adults with medical conditions. Conclusions: Ambulance crews do not alert hospitals to critically ill patients adequately. The Modified Early Warning Score should be considered to be the basis of a prehospital tool to aid their decision.


Objective. Despite the clinical efficacy of tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi), the manner in which TNF-α contributes to disease in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) remains unresolved. We investigated the relationship between TNF-α gene promoter region polymorphism, serum TNF-α levels, and clinical phenotype. Methods. We did a cross-sectional and longitudinal cohort study in TNFi-naive patients with AS (n = 335). Clinical data and biological samples were collected during a research visit with genotyping for TNF-α −238 A/G and −308 A/G performed by Taqman RT-PCR and TNF levels determined by sandwich ELISA. Longitudinal TNF levels were monitored in unselected patients (n = 61). Results. TNF-α −308 GA/AA genotype was present in 14% and TNF-α −238 GA/AA genotype in 1% of patients. TNF-α −308 GA/AA genotype was associated with a reduced risk of uveitis and better spinal function, while TNF-α −238 GA/AA genotype was associated with later age of onset and lower erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). Serum TNF-α level was lower in patients with AS (151 pg/ml) than in controls (263 pg/ml), because more patients with AS had undetectable serum TNF-α (66 vs 25%, p < 0.001). TNFi treatment did not influence serum TNF-α. There was no effect of TNF-α −308/−238 or HLA-B27 genotype on serum TNF-α or subsequent initiation of TNFi. Conclusion. TNF-α −238 or −308 GA/AA genotypes in patients with AS are associated with signs of less severe disease. Serum TNF-α is, however, undetectable in two-thirds of patients with AS and is not influenced by TNF-α promoter genotype or TNFi therapy. These data suggest a more significant role for TNF-α at local sites of inflammation in AS than through systemic effects.


Nosiheptide-resistance methyltransferase (NSR) methylates 23S rRNA at the nucleotide adenosine 1067 in Escherichia coli and thus contributes to resistance against nosiheptide, a sulfur-containing peptide antibiotic. Here, the expression, purification and crystallization of NSR from Streptomyces actuosus are reported. Diffracting crystals were grown by the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion method in reservoir solution consisting of 0.35 M ammonium chloride, 24%(w/v) PEG 3350, 0.1 M MES pH 5.7 at 293 K. Native data have been collected from the apo enzyme and a SAM complex, as well as apo SeMet SAD data. The diffraction patterns of the apo form of NSR, of NSR complexed with SAM and of SeMet-labelled NSR crystals extended to 1.90, 1.95 and 2.25 A resolution, respectively, using synchrotron radiation. All crystals belonged to space group P2(1), with approximate unit-cell parameters a = 64.6, b = 69.6, c = 64.9 A, beta = 117.8 degrees .


With the ever increasing demand for energy, exploiting low-temperature heat sources has seen significant interest recently. The conventional organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is a typical approach used to exploit low-temperature heat sources but suffers from low efficiency. The Kalina cycle is a reversed absorption cooling system that normally utilizes an ammonia–water binary mixture as the working fluid. This paper investigates, using thermodynamic modelling, the performance of Kalina cycle system 11 (KCS11) used for low-temperature heat sources below 200°C compared with the ORC based on pure ammonia and R134a. The cycle performance was investigated at various operating conditions including the evaporator pressure of 10–50 bars, heat source temperature of 333–473 K, heat sink temperature of 283 K and in the case of KCS11 various ammonia mass fractions at the evaporator outlet. Results show that the KCS11 can produce up to 40% increase in the efficiency compared with the ORC when using ammonia and up to 20% increase when using R134a. Although the ammonia–water working pair has zero ozone depletion potential (ODP) and very low global warming potential (GWP), it is toxic and needs special safety procedures against leak as ammonia is part of this binary mixture. Therefore, further investigation was carried out to explore the feasibility of using alternative working pairs that are non-toxic and outperform the ammonia–water pair for the Kalina cycle. Nineteen working pairs were investigated and results showed that propane and propylene-based mixtures have the potential to replace the ammonia–water pair in the KCS11. Copyright , Oxford University Press.


Neural network accelerators with low latency and low energy consumption are desirable for edge computing. To create such accelerators, we propose a design flow for accelerating the extremely low bit-width neural network (ELB-NN) in embedded FPGAs with hybrid quantization schemes. This flow covers both network training and FPGA-based network deployment, which facilitates the design space exploration and simplifies the tradeoff between network accuracy and computation efficiency. Using this flow helps hardware designers to deliver a network accelerator in edge devices under strict resource and power constraints. We present the proposed flow by supporting hybrid ELB settings within a neural network. Results show that our design can deliver very high performance peaking at 10.3 TOPS and classify up to 325.3 image/s/watt while running large-scale neural networks for less than 5W using embedded FPGA. To the best of our knowledge, it is the most energy efficient solution in comparison to GPU or other FPGA implementations reported so far in the literature.


The number of athlete social protests has risen over the past several years, but no protest has touched a collective national nerve as kneeling for the national anthem has. Using the theoretical framework of social identity theory, this study examined how nationalistic attitudes affect participants' perceptions of athletes who engage in a form of activism. A 2 × 3 between-subjects factorial design was used for a manipulated newspaper article focusing on the issue of a college quarterback kneeling for the national anthem. Results found no significant effects with respect to implicit and explicit racial cues. Data did support the notion that individuals who displayed higher levels of nationalism would respond with more negative emotions to the athlete activism. On a theoretical level, this study lends support to the ideas of social identity theory and social identity threat management. Broader social and practical implications are also discussed.


Since its introduction in 1993, Control Language Programming for the AS/400 has been an integral part of hundreds of AS/400 college courses. The textbook has been a boon to students who plan to initiate careers as AS/400 programming professionals, as well as a must-read reference for programmers already in the workplace. Now Bryan Meyers and Jim Buck have updated this classic text with the publication of Control Language Programming for IBM i. This new book builds upon the success of the original text but brings it up to date with the IBM i 6.1 release for Power systems. The text covers all the basics as well as the latest CL features including new structured programming capabilities, file processing enhancements, and the Integrated Language Environment (ILE). Students without previous knowledge of CL will learn the basics quickly. As the book progresses methodically to more complex processes and concepts, it guides readers smoothly toward a professional grasp of CL programming techniques and style. Review questions and hands-on exercises and programming assignments reinforce each chapter s content. Professional programmers will also find this book useful as a daily CL reference. In additional to 25 chapters covering CL from start to finish, a comprehensive appendix serves as a condensed reference to the CL commands used most often in CL programs. Two other appendices cover the essentials of programming tools and debugging.


We review the literature on robust Bayesian analysis as a tool for global sensitivity analysis and for statistical decision-making under ambiguity. We discuss the methods proposed in the literature, including the different ways of constructing the set of priors that are the key input of the robust Bayesian analysis. We consider both a general set-up for Bayesian statistical decisions and inference and the special case of set-identified structural models. We provide new results that can be used to derive and compute the set of posterior moments for sensitivity analysis and to compute the optimal statistical decision under multiple priors. The paper ends with a self-contained discussion of three different approaches to robust Bayesian inference for setidentified structural vector autoregressions, including details about numerical implementation and an empirical illustration.


Objectives In intensive care units, the mixing of injectable drugs via Y-site administration is often necessary. However, some mixtures can lead to physical incompatibility or chemical instability. To assist healthcare professionals, several databases such as Stabilis compile compatibility and stability data. The objectives of this study were to update the online database Stabilis by adding physical compatibility data to the website and to characterise the incompatibility data already present in the database by specifying the phenomenon at the origin of the incompatibility and its time of occurrence. Methods Bibliographic sources referenced in Stabilis were evaluated using several criteria. After the evaluation, studies were rejected or the data they contain were added to the database. Data entries contained the following information: name of the two injectable drugs involved in the mixture and their concentration if available, the dilution solvent and the phenomenon at the origin of the incompatibility and its time of occurrence for incompatibility data. Three functions of the website were modified, including the 'Y-site compatibility table' function, which allows creation of customised compatibility tables. Results A total of 1184 bibliographic sources were evaluated, 77.3% (n=915) of which were scientific articles, 20.5% (n=243) were Summaries of Product Characteristics and 2.2% (n=26) were communications in a pharmaceutical congress. After evaluation, 28.9% (n=342) of the sources were rejected. From the 71.1% (n=842) sources selected, 8073 (70.2%) compatibility data entries and 3433 incompatibility data entries (29.8%) were made. With the addition of these data, the database contained compatibility and incompatibility data for 431 injectable drugs. Conclusions Since the update, the 'Y-site compatibility table' function has seen its traffic increased by about 66% (∼1500 tables per month compared with ∼2500 tables per month). Stabilis is now more complete to offer significant help to healthcare professionals with their problems of drug stability and compatibility.


Abstract This paper discusses the development of hydrocarbon reserves discovered onshore and offshore of the continent of Africa up to the start of the year 2000 and the future potential for new discoveries. Over 2400 hydrocarbon discoveries have been made in Africa, of which 700 were producing in significant quantities at the start of 2000. Initial recoverable reserves on these accumulations stood at 160 billion barrels of oil, 500 trillion cubic feet (TCF) gas and 12 billion barrels of condensate, with estimated cumulative production being 59 billion barrels of oil and condensate and up to 50 TCF gas. A similar proportion of the total discovered oil reserves as gas reserves have been found in cratonic basins while passive/rift basins contain more of the oil reserves than the gas reserves. Despite this mix, considerably more gas has been produced from cratonic basins than from the passive/rift basins. In the last decade, deeper-water exploration using 3-D seismic data has resulted in the discovery of significant reserves in deeper waters off West Africa and the Nile Delta. Future reserves growth is expected to be concentrated in the known petroliferous basins.


Education is considered to be a major component of culture, with an important role in transmitting knowledge, ideas and beliefs from generation to generation, especially nowadays, when information is vital for our society. At the same time, education can highly influence the strategic orientation of any company which activates on a global market, by forcing it to adapt its strategies accordingly to some educational indicators such as: the level of alphabetisation, the role of women in that society (are them accepted or not), the general state of the educational system or the adoption of the concept of lifelong learning. It is well known that the educational system of a country largely reflects its cultural development. That's why the aim of this article is to highlight the defining role of education on the economic development, the consumer behaviour and, furthermore, on the strategic orientations of companies that activate on the Single European Market.


ABSTRACT This paper seeks to compare the capabilities of assorted measures of consumer and economic sentiment in predicting the growth of household expenditure. An analysis of quarterly data on five European countries shows that for none of these can the model which incorporates the EU's headline consumer confidence indicator be deemed to be significantly inferior to any of its seven rivals. However, the rankings of the sentiment variables are seen to be influenced by: the proportion of total spending by households that is devoted to durable goods; and the nature of the behaviour of consumption over the forecast interval.


We have compared the time series of C-band HH-polarization backscattering coefficients (sigmadeg) of the Baltic Sea land-fast level ice with results from a 1-D high-resolution thermodynamic snow/ice model (HIGHTSI). The sigmadeg time series were obtained from ENVISAT synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. The study period was from the middle of the winter to the early melt season, February 3-April 7, 2004. Due to the large incidence angle range of the SAR images, the sigmadeg values were divided into three subseries. In general, the HIGHTSI results greatly helped to interpret the sigmadeg behavior with changing ice and weather conditions. The modeled snow-surface temperature, cases of snow melting, and evolution of snow and ice thickness were related to the changes in sigmadeg. Equally useful information could not be obtained solely on the basis of large-scale atmospheric models. Realistic forcing data for HIGHTSI were available in the form of coastal-weather observations and model results of the European Centre of Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The latter make it possible to apply HIGHTSI in the interpretation of SAR data from all ice-covered seas. There were some cases where detailed ground truth, combined with theoretical sigmadeg modeling, would have been needed for interpretation of the sigmadeg trends. A very interesting observation was the large variation of level ice sigmadeg with changing weather conditions, which complicates automatic classification of the SAR images, and thus, the algorithms must be tuned for different ice conditions. The HIGHTSI model could act as an indicator of various ice conditions for algorithm development


Prediction
of transformation of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) into multiple
sclerosis is of great clinical importance, as it enables timely determination of
the tactics for treatment of a patient as well as volume of respective
therapeutic interventions.This work is aimed at
ascertainingthe prognostic factors that determine the risk of
transformation of acute disseminatedencephalomyelitis
into multiple sclerosis. We have examined 101 patients with the diagnosis ADEM,
namely: 28 men and 73 women in the age from 17 up to 53 years (average value31.7 ± 1.01years).
To ascertain the prognostic meaning of clinic-paraclinic indices corresponding
to patients with ADEM, we estimated the cumulative part of absence of relapses
in the group of patients by using the Kaplan-Meyer method with estimating the
Fisher criterion and using the most important clinic-paraclinic data. Development
of transformation of ADEM into multiple sclerosis is reliably related to the
following prognostic signs: degree of disability in accord with the EDSS scale
and sizes of demyelination focuses determined using MRT. Criteria for congenial
prediction in disease development with delayed appearance of transformation of
ADEM into multiple sclerosis are as follows: slight degree (in EDSS scale) of
disability and large sizes of demyelination focuses (MRT data).Our analysis of the main clinic-paraclinic indexes
obtained using the Kaplan-Meyer method indicates reliability of results and
enables us to find a number of important prognostic criteria for development of
transformation of ADEM into multiple sclerosis.


Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by chronic airway inflammation and/or airflow limitation due to pulmonary emphysema. Chronic bronchitis, pulmonary emphysema, and bronchial asthma may all be associated with airflow limitation; therefore, exacerbation of asthma may be associated with the pathophysiology of COPD. Furthermore, recent studies have suggested that the exacerbation of asthma, namely virus-induced asthma, may be associated with a wide variety of respiratory viruses. COPD and asthma have different underlying pathophysiological processes and thus require individual therapies. Exacerbation of both COPD and asthma, which are basically defined and diagnosed by clinical symptoms, is associated with a rapid decline in lung function and increased mortality. Similar pathogens, including human rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza virus, parainfluenza virus, and coronavirus, are also frequently detected during exacerbation of asthma and/or COPD. Immune response to respiratory viral infections, which may be related to the severity of exacerbation in each disease, varies in patients with both COPD and asthma. In this regard, it is crucial to recognize and understand both the similarities and differences of clinical features in patients with COPD and/or asthma associated with respiratory viral infections, especially in the exacerbative stage. In relation to definition, epidemiology, and pathophysiology, this review aims to summarize current knowledge concerning exacerbation of both COPD and asthma by focusing on the clinical significance of associated respiratory virus infections.


Unsupervised image-to-image translation aims at learning the relationship between samples from two image domains without supervised pair information. The relationship between two domain images can be one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many. In this paper, we study the one-to-many unsupervised image translation problem in which an input sample from one domain can correspond to multiple samples in the other domain. To learn the complex relationship between the two domains, we introduce an additional variable to control the variations in our one-to-many mapping. A generative model with an XO-structure, called the XOGAN, is proposed to learn the cross domain relationship among the two domains and the ad- ditional variables. Not only can we learn to translate between the two image domains, we can also handle the translated images with additional variations. Experiments are performed on unpaired image generation tasks, including edges-to-objects translation and facial image translation. We show that the proposed XOGAN model can generate plausible images and control variations, such as color and texture, of the generated images. Moreover, while state-of-the-art unpaired image generation algorithms tend to generate images with monotonous colors, XOGAN can generate more diverse results.


Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) sensors provide an effective means for detecting changes in the sub-surface electrical properties of soils, such as changes indicative of landmines or other buried threats. However, most GPR-based pre-screening algorithms only localize target responses along the surface of the earth, and do not provide information regarding an object's position in depth. As a result, feature extraction algorithms are forced to process data from entire cubes of data around pre-screener alarms, which can reduce feature fidelity and hamper performance. In this work, spectral analysis is investigated as a method for locating subsurface anomalies in GPR data. In particular, a 2-D spatial/frequency decomposition is applied to pre-screener flagged GPR B-scans. Analysis of these spatial/frequency regions suggests that aspects (e.g. moments, maxima, mode) of the frequency distribution of GPR energy can be indicative of the presence of target responses. After translating a GPR image to a function of the spatial/frequency distributions at each pixel, several image segmentation approaches can be applied to perform segmentation in this new transformed feature space. To illustrate the efficacy of the approach, a performance comparison between feature processing with and without the image segmentation algorithm is provided.


Previous investigations suggest that the expression of K+ channels in cultured rat microglia is related to the activation status of these cells. Both, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and agents that raise intracellular cyclic AMP have been shown to inhibit microglial proliferation. LPS also regulates the mRNA expression levels of K+ channels in cultured microglia, which led us to investigate possible regulatory interactions between K+ channels and adenosine A2a‐receptors, which are coupled to the cAMP‐signal transduction pathway. The selective adenosine A2a‐receptor agonist CGS 21680 induced enhanced mRNA expression of both Kv1.3 and ROMK1, as well as an elevation of Kv1.3 protein. The selective adenosine A2a‐receptor antagonist aminophenol (ZM 241385) and the nonselective antagonist 8‐phenyltheophylline (8‐PT) inhibited these effects. Elevations of cyclic AMP by use of dibutyryl cyclic AMP (dbcAMP), phosphodiesterase‐inhibitor (RO 20–1724), forskolin, or cholera toxin (CTX), strongly enhanced Kv1.3‐mRNA expression, but decreased ROMK1‐mRNA levels. Results from experiments with actinomycin D suggest that K+ channel mRNA levels in cultured microglia were regulated by altered mRNA synthesis. Evidently, the CGS 21680‐induced effects upon Kv1.3 were mediated via an increase in intracellular cyclic AMP, whereas ROMK1‐mRNA expression appeared to be regulated by coupling of adenosine A2a‐receptors to an alternative pathway, which involves activation of protein kinase C (PKC). It is concluded that the cyclic AMP second messenger system in microglia is not only involved in regulation of K+ channel activity, but also in regulation of de novo K+ channel synthesis. GLIA 25:120–130, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Abstract Aggregation, extended mother-offspring-sibling interactions, and complex social behaviors are extremely rare among arachnids. We report and quantify for the first time in Amblypygi prolonged mother-offspring-sibling associations, active aggregation, and frequent "amicable" (tolerant, nonaggressive) tactile interactions in two species: Phrynus marginemaculatus C.L. Koch 1840 (Phrynidae) and Damon diadema (Simon, 1876) (Phrynichidae). Sociality is characterized by frequent contact and tolerance, and infrequent agonism until sexual maturity in D. diadema and into adulthood in P. marginemaculatus. We experimentally examined potential benefits and costs affecting aggregation: risk of predation, preferred habitats and prey availability. Only increased predation risk decreased nearest-neighbor distances and increased maternal vigilance. Individuals aggregated on a variety of surface textures and locations that varied daily, rather than aggregating only on preferred microhabitats. Manipulation of prey abundance had no affect on the tendency to aggregate. Patterns of parental care, duration of association, and the presence of social traits found in the most social taxa of non-spider arachnids are reviewed. Species in most arachnid orders have transient parental care with defense of eggs, a brief period of association with newly emerged young prior to independent foraging and explosive dispersal from the natal nest. More prolonged sociality, with long-term associations among mothers-offspring-siblings is rare and is only described in a few species in the Amblypygi, Scorpionida, Pseudoscorpionida, and Acari. All such species have subsocial origins, but current use of the term subsocial is overly broad and we propose a more restricted terminology for clarity.


ABSTRACT
 Hyaenodontidae is a diverse component of the carnivorous guild in early Eocene (Wasatchian) North American mammalian faunas. Although there have been suggestions that early members of the family had diverse locomotor repertoires, few Wasatchian postcrania are adequately described. Here we describe the first known postcranial remains of the rare Wasatchian hyaenodontid Galecyon, based principally on a well-preserved partial skeleton from the Willwood Formation, Wyoming. Galecyon is reconstructed as a 5.2–1.9 kg terrestrial carnivore. Small but significant differences throughout the skeleton distinguish Galecyon from Prolimnocyon. Galecyon is reconstructed as scansorial/generalized terrestrial because these postcranial differences consistently indicate a more terrestrial habit than in the scansorial Prolimnocyon. Among other hyaenodontids, Arfia shows evidence for parallel terrestrial adaptation, whereas Pyrocyon is morphologically intermediate between Galecyon and Prolimnocyon. Manipulation of the well-preserved bones forming the crurotarsal joint of Galecyon provides evidence that contradicts a previous proposal that Arfia, another Wasatchian hyaenodontid, was capable of hind foot reversal. In both genera, movements at the crurotarsal joint were largely restricted to a parasagittal plane. Phylogenetic analysis of a new postcranial character set supports a pattern of relationships for early Eocene hyaenodontids different from that supported by dental morphology. Combining the two data partitions favors most aspects of the dental topology, but the conflict between dental and postcranial data indicates that confident phylogenetic resolution can be elusive, even with relatively dense sampling.


Understanding the link between the brain's anatomy and its function through computer simulations of neural tissue models is a widely used approach in computational neuroscience. This technique enables rapid prototyping and testing of hypotheses, allowing researchers to bridge the scales of biological phenomena. Until recently, the constant trend of improvement in computational power has supported an exponential growth in the scale and level of detail of in silico experiments. However, a systematic characterization of the performance landscape has not yet been carried out. In this work we intend to capture intrinsic computational properties of the existing modelling abstractions and answer questions about the intricate relationship between simulation algorithms and modern hardware architecture. Our first contribution is a novel set of hardwareagnostic metrics that enables us to bring focus to the heterogeneous landscape of brain tissue models. We develop a methodology able to capture subtle differences between cell-based models and quantify their impact on performance based on hardware features. We show that lumping simulation experiments together by referring to numbers of neurons and synapses without further detail hides fundamental differences in computational and hardware requirements across models. In addition to analysing different neuron representations, we investigate the impact of biological heterogeneity on the performance of a cortical microcircuit model. Our analysis indicates that while general-purpose computers have until now sustained highperformance simulations of all brain tissue models, the next generation of in silico models will require hardware tailored to the underlying abstraction. We find that all formalisms saturate the memory bandwidth with a fairly small number of shared memory threads, but the reasons behind this are quite different: conductance-based models are dominated by the large memory traffic of clock-driven kernels, while current-based models are most affected by event-driven execution and memory latency. In distributed simulations the latency of the interconnect fabric is the root cause for a significant degradation in performance. We argue that performance analyses such as ours are required to enable the next generation of brain tissue simulations – or else scientific progress risks being hindered by the presence of severe hardware bottlenecks. Our methodology provides a common tool to facilitate the communication between modellers, developers and hardware designers in order to sustain the larger memory and performance requirements of future brain tissue simulations.


In "Superfluous Southerners, "John J. Langdale III tells the story of traditionalist conservatism and its boundaries in twentieth-century America. Because this time period encompasses both the rise of the modern conservative movement and the demise of southern regional distinctiveness, it affords an ideal setting both for observing the potentiality of American conservatism and for understanding the fate of the traditionalist man of letters. Langdale uses the intellectual and literary histories of John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, and Allen Tate the three principal contributors to the Agrarian manifesto "I ll Take My Stand" and of their three most remarkable intellectual descendants Cleanth Brooks, Richard Weaver, and Melvin Bradford to explore these issues. Langdale begins his study with some observations on the nature of American exceptionalism and the intrinsic barriers which it presents to the traditionalist conservative imagination. While works like Louis Menand s "The Metaphysical Club" have traced the origins of modern pragmatic liberalism during the late nineteenth century, the nature of conservative thought in postbellum America remains less completely understood. Accordingly, Langdale considers the origins of the New Humanism movement at the turn of the twentieth century, then turning to the manner in which midwesterners Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer Moore stirred the imagination of the southern Agrarians during the 1920s. After the publication of "I ll Take My Stand" in 1930, Agrarianism splintered into three distinct modes of traditionalist conservatism: John Crowe Ransom sought refuge in literary criticism, Donald Davidson in sectionalism, and Allen Tate in an image of the religious-wayfarer as a custodian of language. Langdale traces the expansion of these modes of traditionalism by succeeding generations of southerners. Following World War II, Cleanth Brooks further refined the tradition of literary criticism, while Richard Weaver elaborated the tradition of sectionalism. However, both Brooks and Weaver distinctively furthered Tate s notion that the integrity of language remained the fundamental concern of traditionalist conservatism. Langdale concludes his study with a consideration of neoconservative opposition to M.E. Bradford s proposed 1980 nomination as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and its significance for the southern man of letters in what was becoming postmodern and postsouthern America. Though the post World War II ascendance of neoconservatism drastically altered American intellectual history, the descendants of traditionalism remained largely superfluous to this purportedly conservative revival which had far more in common with pragmatic liberalism than with normative conservatism. "


Textbook of Men's Mental Health edited by Jon E. Grant and Marc N. Potenza. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Press, 2007,417 pp. There are many ways a textbook of men's mental health might approach its subject matter. It might, for example, examine recent men's studies literature on the social construction of masculinity (Levant & Pollack, 1995) and its implications for men's emotional well-being. In doing so, attention would be given to how the male gender role restricts men's optimal potentials and sometimes produces behavior disordered enough to be labeled mental illness. A second approach might start with the recognized categories of mental illness and identify differing epidemiologies and symptom expressions between the sexes. The present volume takes the second tack since in the first paragraph of the Introduction uses the terms "mental health concerns" and "psychiatric issues" interchangeably, and although it strives to cover both approaches, it primarily succeeds in its efforts to explore "the clinical presentation and treatment of various psychiatric disorders in men" (p. xiii). As such, most of the material reads very much like an expansion of the DSM-IV-TR, with great of attention paid to the rates, clinical courses, and co-morbidities of specific psychiatric disorders. It is a worthy ambition to provide greater attention to previously recognized male and female differences in psychiatric disorders. This is, however, an inherently limited approach to the broad subject of men's mental health, since it restricts attention to those men with diagnosed psychiatric pathology, so that what we have here is a textbook of "men's mental illness." In fairness, however, the editors have made efforts to incorporate life-span and sociocultural perspectives, thereby addressing matters relevant to non-clinical male populations. Some of the chapters are very well done, but some of them are not. Before discussing the merits of the various chapters, a few additional comments are needed on the textbook's adoption of a DSM-IV-TR conceptual framework. First, a common challenge of this psychiatric diagnostic system is the need to deal with co-morbidity and the overlapping of diagnostic categories (for example, depression and anxiety disorders). The issue is important since much material presented is redundant (for example, anxiety disorders with depression; substance abuse with antisocial personality disorder; impulse control disorders with sexual disorders). A more fruitful approach would be one that integrates these symptom expressions with a broader coverage of men's developmental issues, coping styles and help-seeking patterns. second, any approach to mental health that begins by looking primarily at characteristics of men with psychiatric diagnoses cannot pay enough attention to the critical issues of men who "fly under the radar." That is, there are many more men whose lives are impaired by depression, anxiety, sexual problems, and substance abuse than those reflected in even the best epidemiological statistics. The book's final chapter on stigma and barriers to mental health treatment for men is superb. The authors generate a broad theoretical model to account for men's underutilization of mental health services. The model incorporates general socio-psychological principles of stress and coping with more specific theories of masculinity ideology. It is unfortunate that, although many of the text's authors make reference to this chapter, few incorporate its perspectives into their own chapters. The book makes an effort to address men's life-span issues by including separate chapters on "childhood," "adolescence," and "older men." No rationale is provided for omission of the mid-life period. The chapter on childhood includes interesting observations about problems resulting from boys' delayed language development, attachment issues, and "rough and tumble" play style. It does not pay much attention to the special qualities of "boy culture" (Rotundo, 1993) or the role of bullying and trauma in young men's lives (Lisak, 2005). …


Background: The authors sought to determine the reliability of the Soong classification, which relates the position of the implant to the watershed line of the distal radius, for predicting flexor tendinopathy in distal radius fractures treated with volar plate fixation. Methods: Medical records were reviewed, including demographics, fracture and operative characteristics, tendon-related complications, and radiographic outcomes. Six hundred fifty-nine distal radius fractures were reviewed with a mean duration of clinical follow-up of 12.9 ± 0.7 months. Results: The incidence of isolated flexor tendinopathy and tendon rupture was 0.9 and 0.3 percent, respectively. The Soong classification failed to independently predict flexor tendon rupture or tendinopathy. Fractures classified as inadequately reduced were significantly associated with Soong grade 0 or grade 2, whereas adequately reduced fractures were significantly associated with Soong grade 1. Conclusion: The Soong classification is not the sole predictor of flexor tendinopathy and may be viewed as a reflection of the overall appropriateness of fracture reduction. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Risk, III.


Developing an electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection device with a better latch-up immunity has been a challenging issue for the nanometer complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. In this work, an improved grounded-gate N-channel metal-oxide semiconductor (GGNMOS) transistor triggered silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) structure, named GGSCR, is proposed for high holding voltage ESD protection applications. The GGSCR demonstrates a double snapback behavior as a result of progressive trigger-on of the GGNMOS and SCR. The double snapback makes the holding voltage increase from 3.43 V to 6.25 V as compared with the conventional low-voltage SCR. The TCAD simulations are carried out to verify the modes of operation of the device.


Abstract. We introduce Devito, a new domain-specific
language for implementing high-performance finite-difference partial
differential equation solvers. The motivating application is exploration
seismology for which methods such as full-waveform inversion and reverse-time
migration are used to invert terabytes of seismic data to create images of
the Earth's subsurface. Even using modern supercomputers, it can take weeks
to process a single seismic survey and create a useful subsurface image. The
computational cost is dominated by the numerical solution of wave equations
and their corresponding adjoints. Therefore, a great deal of effort is
invested in aggressively optimizing the performance of these wave-equation
propagators for different computer architectures. Additionally, the actual
set of partial differential equations being solved and their numerical
discretization is under constant innovation as increasingly realistic
representations of the physics are developed, further ratcheting up the cost
of practical solvers. By embedding a domain-specific language within Python
and making heavy use of SymPy, a symbolic mathematics library, we make it
possible to develop finite-difference simulators quickly using a syntax that
strongly resembles the mathematics. The Devito compiler reads this code and
applies a wide range of analysis to generate highly optimized and parallel
code. This approach can reduce the development time of a verified and
optimized solver from months to days.


Polyploid organisms often have different geographic ranges than their diploid relatives. However, it is unclear whether this divergence is maintained by adaptation or results from historical differences in colonization. Here, we conducted a reciprocal transplant experiment with diploid and autotetraploid Chamerion angustifolium to test for adaptation at the ploidy and population level. In the Rocky Mountains, pure diploid populations occur at high elevations and pure autotetraploid populations occur at low elevations with mixed ploidy populations between. We planted 3134 seedlings in 2004 and 3890 juveniles (bolting) in 2005 among nine plots, three in each of the diploid, mixed ploidy, and tetraploid zones, and monitored survival until 2008. For both seedlings and juvenile plants, elevation significantly influenced survival. The juvenile plants also showed a significant ploidy by elevation interaction, indicating that diploids and tetraploids survived best at their native elevations. In contrast, we found no evidence of local adaptation to plot within elevation. This suggests that the current distribution of diploids and tetraploids across elevations is the result of adaptation and that genome duplication may have facilitated the invasion of lower elevation habitats by limiting the movement of maladapted alleles from diploid populations at higher elevations.


The purpose of this study was to evaluate the value of 0.23T low-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and nanocolloid (NC) scintigraphy in assessing joint pathology associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Fat suppression methods combined with contrast media enhancement aid in distinguishing enhancing inflamed tissue from the surrounding fat, especially in the imaging of arthritic joints. The feasibility and image quality of a phase-shift water-fat MRI method for fat suppression at low-field 0.23T open configuration MR scanner was evaluated. The technique was combined with contrastenhanced imaging to assess the conspicuity of synovial hypertrophy in the joints of 30 RA patients. Improved conspicuity and delineation of synovitis was detected with this method. However, because of a great amount of manual post processing, future development is needed to make this method more feasible. Contrast-enhanced MRI and NC scintigraphy may provide objective and quantitative information about the inflammatory activity in arthritic joints. The value of quantitative and semiquantitative measures of inflammation derived from NC scintigraphy and low-field MRI of the wrist joint of 28 early RA patients was evaluated. Furthermore, it was investigated whether these parameters have predictive value of further erosive development during two years of follow-up. Strong correlations were detected between the NC scintigraphy and MRI measures, and these parameters were associated with laboratory markers of inflammation. During the two-year follow-up, the initial MRI and NC scintigraphy measures were closely related with the progression of wrist joint erosions. Small erosive-like bone defects can occasionally be found in wrist MRI of patients without clinically overt arthritis. The prevalence of these lesions was studied in bilateral wrist MRI examinations of 31 healthy persons. Small lesions resembling erosions were detected in 14 out of 31 subjects. Altogether 24 of the 930 wrist bones evaluated showed such lesions (3%). Thus small changes resembling erosions can be found in the wrist MRI of healthy subjects; the significance of these findings must always be interpreted with reference to the clinical picture. In conclusion, early RA patients with high local inflammatory activity, as detected by NC scintigraphy and MRI are at risk of developing further bone damage. Furthermore, in the follow-up of early RA patients, if clinically sustained response is not achieved, these methods help to identify patients who need more intensive drug treatment.


High-voltage transformers can be built with coaxial transmission lines. This paper describes a transformer design that uses the coaxial screen as primary winding and the inner conductor as secondary. An advantage of transmission line transformers is that the insulation problem is solved and the construction can be kept simple; the coupling between the primary and secondary coils is high even though the transformer uses an air core. The air core brings another advantage: the capacity to store large quantities of magnetic energy. The combination of a high coupling factor and large energy storage capacity makes this transformer ideal for charging high-voltage capacitors fast. The winding type for the transformer is alternating Archimedean spirals. Here, we present a magnetic field analysis of the transformer's primary, secondary, and mutual inductance using a finite-element solver. We compare the measured magnetic flux density versus the calculated value. The step-up winding ratio of the transformer influences the coupling factor marginally if the construction has an even number of spiral layers for each set of windings. However, the result from the finite-element solver predicts a drop in coupling factor if the step-up transformer construction has an odd number of spiral layers. The copper conductors used in the transformer resemble isotropic copper pipes.


The reproductive biology and population ecology of the sabellid polychaete, Sabella pavonina (Savigny) inhabiting an intertidal sand bank in Langstone Harbour, Portsmouth, was investigated between February 2007 and June 2009. 'Blind' thrown quadrats and sediment cores were used to characterise population distribution patterns at the site, and monthly coelomic fluid samples from 30 individuals were used to investigate the reproductive biology of the population, sex of the specimen, the presence of coelomocytes and the development of oocytes. Highest population densities (30.58 m−2 ± 8.05) were recorded on the low shore (0.4 m above chart datum) where the largest size particle fractions and lowest percentage organic content were found. Poisson distribution analysis showed the population was 'clumped' at the shore level, with a maximum number of 188 individuals in a 0.25 m2 quadrat, and within individual quadrats with up to 23 individuals in a 100 cm2 subsection. Sabella pavonina has an annual reproductive cycle which culminates in May/June spawning period. Oogenesis was a long process, first observed by the presence of small eggs (20 µm) from September onwards and maximum oocyte diameters were recorded (270 µm) between May and June prior to spawning. Between- and within-individual synchronicity was greatest in the early stages of oogenesis (October to February) when oocyte diameters ranged from 50–100 µm; however, increasing oocyte diameters were observed from March when rapid growth was initiated. Day length and sea temperature are candidates for exogenous cues controlling gametogenesis and possible mechanisms concerning fertilization in the species are discussed.


Bisphosphonates (BPs) have been used clinically for over 30 years to treat postmenopausal osteoporosis, hypercalcemia of malignancy and metabolic bone diseases. Although the use of BPs have been beneficial for these pathologies, several recent reports have linked BP usage to osteonecrosis of the jaw. A common factor amongst these case reports suggests a significant link of dental disease and bisphosphonate treatment in the development of bisphosphonate related osteonecrosis of the jaw (BRONJ). Since the pathophysiology of BRONJ is unknown, we developed two BRONJ animal models where aggressive periodontal and periapical disease was induced with zoledronic acid (ZA) treatment in the rat and mouse, respectively. Ligature-induced periodontal disease caused significant alveolar bone loss while ZA treatment attenuated this effect in rats. Significant changes of alveolar bone morphology including sequestration and extensive periosteal bone formation were observed by microCT in the ligated site of BP treated animals. These findings were confirmed histologically, demonstrating necrotic bone with diffuse loss of osteocytes and empty lacunae, rimming of the necrotic bone by squamous epithelium and inflammation, and exposure to the oral cavity. Importantly, the rat lesions were strikingly similar to those of BRONJ patients. Mandibular tooth drillings causing pulpal exposure in the right first and second mandibular molars caused significant periapical lesion development in the mouse. Periapical lesion were quantified from radiographic images and showed a significant increase in lesion space in vehicle versus ZA treated mice. Significant qualitative differences were seen in the morphology of the alveolar bone in ZA treated mice through microCT analysis. Periosteal bone formation was significantly increased in periapical disease induced ZA treated mice versus control mice. Extensive necrotic bone areas were demonstrated the absence of lacunae in osteocytes. TRAP staining shows no significant difference in the number of osteoclasts between ZA versus vehicle treated animals. However, significant morphologic differences were observed by the detachment osteoclasts and flattening of the ruffled border in ZA treated mice. BRONJ developed in 100% of periapical disease induced ZA treated mice.Our data suggest that dental disease and BP therapy is sufficient and necessary for BRONJ development. These animal models can serve as tools to understand the pathophysiology of BRONJ.


The presence of specific antineuronal antibodies in some patients with paraneoplastic central nervous system (CNS) disorders supports the theory that these syndromes have an autoimmune etiology. The anti‐Purkinje cell antibodies (APCAs) in some patients with paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration and ovarian or breast carcinomas stain the cytoplasm of Purkinje cells. APCAs react with several distinct neuronal protein autoantigens, including proteins featuring a "leucine zipper" sequence motif, which suggests that they function in regulating DNA transcription. Type 1 anti‐neuronal nuclear antibodies (ANNA‐1) associated with paraneoplastic encephalomyelitis and small‐cell lung carcinoma stain the nucleus and cytoplasm of all neurons, and react with a group of 35– to 40–kd proteins in neuronal immunoblots. The protein targets of ANNA‐1 belong to a family of RNA‐binding proteins that probably regulate posttranscriptional processing of RNA. Type 2 anti‐neuronal nuclear antibodies (ANNA‐2) associated with paraneoplastic opsoclonus‐ataxia and breast carcinoma also produce a panneuronal immunocytochemical staining pattern, but react with a group of higher‐molecular‐mass proteins (53–61 kd and 79–84 kd); these autoantigens probably also function as RNA‐binding proteins. Several patients with paraneoplastic stiff‐man syndrome have antibodies against a 128‐kd synaptic protein. These antineuronal antibodies are highly specific (but not infallible) diagnostic markers for the presence of a neoplasm in patients who present with neurological dysfunction. The actual role of these autoantibodies in the pathogenesis of neuronal damage and clinical disease remains to be determined. Current management options for patients with CNS neurological paraneoplastic syndromes are very limited. Only a small minority of patients with paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration or encephalomyelitis show significant neurological improvement after successful tumor treatment and/or immunosuppressive treatments, while patients with paraneoplastic opsoclonus or stiff‐man syndrome have a somewhat better outlook.


Ultrasound is a widely used technology for diagnosing developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) because it does not use radiation. Due to its low cost and convenience, 2-D ultrasound is still the most common examination in DDH diagnosis. In clinical usage, the complexity of both ultrasound image standardization and measurement leads to a high error rate for sonographers. The automatic segmentation results of key structures in the hip joint can be used to develop a standard plane detection method that helps sonographers decrease the error rate. However, current automatic segmentation methods still face challenges in robustness and accuracy. Thus, we propose a neonatal hip bone segmentation network (NHBS-Net) for the first time for the segmentation of seven key structures. We design three improvements, an enhanced dual attention module, a two-class feature fusion module, and a coordinate convolution output head, to help segment different structures. Compared with current state-of-the-art networks, NHBS-Net gains outstanding performance accuracy and generalizability, as shown in the experiments. Additionally, image standardization is a common need in ultrasonography. The ability of segmentation-based standard plane detection is tested on a 50-image standard dataset. The experiments show that our method can help healthcare workers decrease their error rate from 6%-10% to 2%. In addition, the segmentation performance in another ultrasound dataset (fetal heart) demonstrates the ability of our network.


Purpose
This study aims to explore the meanings of solo travel for Asian women, focussing on how Asian women construct and negotiate their identities in the heteronormalised, gendered and Western-centric tourism space.

Design/methodology/approach
In-depth interviews were conducted with 35 Asian solo female travellers from ten Asian countries/societies and analysed using constructivist grounded theory. The interpretation was guided by a critical stance and intersectionality lens.

Findings
The findings show that solo travel provides a means for self-discovery but the path was different for Asian women, for whom the self is constructed by challenging the social expectations of Asian women. Western-centric discourse was identified in the participants' interactions with other (Western) travellers and tourism service providers, as well as in the ways these Asian women perceive themselves in relation to Western travellers. In addition to gendered constraints and risks, the findings also reveal the positive meaning of being Asian women in the gendered tourism space.

Research limitations/implications
By labelling Asian women, the study risks adopting an essentialised view and overlooking the differences within the group. However, this strategic essentialism is necessary to draw attention to the inequalities that persist in contemporary tourism spaces and practices.

Originality/value
This study investigated Asian solo female travellers, an emerging but under-researched segment. It provides a critical examination of the intersectional effect of gender and race on identity construction for Asian solo female travellers. This study shows the need for a more inclusive tourism space.


1. Human growth hormone was prepared from acetone-dried residues after extraction of gonadotrophins from pituitary glands. 2. Crude growth hormone was purified by gel filtration on Sephadex, resulting in a product that is soluble in water or 0.5% sodium chloride. It is painless on injection and shows a twofold increase in biological potency. Aggregation of growth hormone on Sephadex columns can be avoided by the addition of urea (6m) and EDTA (1mm) to the buffer. 3. Growth hormone appeared as a single component from Sephadex and ion-exchange columns and sedimented as a single boundary in the ultracentrifuge. In the circular disk electrophoresis, however, the growth hormone showed one faster and two slower-moving anionic components. 4. These components were isolated by preparative electrophoresis on polyacrylamide columns. The purified growth hormone and its three components sedimented as single boundaries with coefficients 2.62, 2.66, 2.66 and 2.83s respectively. 5. Amino acid analyses of the purified growth hormone and its components were closely related. End-group analysis of purified growth hormone and its components showed only phenylalanine at both N- and C-terminals. 6. The purified growth hormone and its components were essentially free of other pituitary hormones, but contained significant prolactin activity. The biochemical similarities among the electrophoretic components of human growth hormone and the presence of the same three components in the growth hormone prepared from a single human pituitary gland suggest polymorphism of a biologically active protein molecule.


In earlier years Western ideas on Shinto were strongly influenced by "nativist" (kokugaku) ideas on the subject emanating from Japan and hence tended to showcase a very "essentialist" view of Shintō. This paper critiques various Western writers whose writings were typical of this approach. However the paper also explores how this attitude had a reverse influence on pre-war Japanese thinkers. This was especially the case with Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, a scholar who became a major figure in the production of the extreme imperialist ideology of the early Shōwa period. He was also a major source for discourses comparing the Japanese spirit to Nazi ideals, which were created mostly by contemporary German scholars. The origins of this process can be seen in Hiraizumi's sojourns in Europe, especially in France, Germany and England, from 1930 to 1931.


With about 700 confirmed extrasolar planets, it is time to move beyond discovery and towards characterization. Perhaps the most basic parameter of an extrasolar planet is its mass; however, this is very difficult to determine if the planet does not transit the star. The radial velocity technique, still the most fruitful method of discovering planets in the solar neighborhood, can only determine a minimum planet mass. We investigate a method using the near-future IGRINS near infrared spectrograph to detect the orbital motion of the planet itself. We simulate several observations of a star with an orbiting planet, and search for the spectral signature of the planet by cross-correlating against planet model spectra. A detection appears as a strong peak in the cross-correlation function, and gives the radial velocity of the planet at the time of observation. This, combined with the motion of the star from traditional radial velocity planet search programs, can determine the actual planet mass. We find that the IGRINS instrument can detect the spectral signature from large planets on very close orbits (so-called Hot Jupiters), and that the detections can provide tight constraints on the true planet mass.


The uniform loading theory [1] has been approximated and used to analyze a class of interconnection problems usually encountered in the design of high-speed circuit packaging and memory arrays in today's computers. The uniform loads are, for example, IC gates and via holes on multilayered printed circuit board and cross-coupling capacitance in memory arrays. They are treated as discrete loads along smooth transmission lines. The input and output transfer function, impulse response, unit step response, and propagation delay are calculated. To a first-order approximation, the pure resistive loaded line impedance and voltage reflection coefficient can be easily derived. Matching conditions and some experimental results are included. Oscillation due to second-order effects is also discussed.


Abstract The slice width of a computed tomography scanner can be considered as the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the slice dose profile. A method is described which uses dental film to image the slice and allows the FWHM of the dose profile to be determined directly from the digitization and analysis of the film image.


Learning tasks from a single demonstration presents a significant challenge because the observed sequence is inherently an incomplete representation of the procedure that is specific to the current situation. Observation-based machine-learning techniques are not effective without multiple examples. However, when a demonstration is accompanied by natural language explanation, the language provides a rich source of information about the relationships between the steps in the procedure and the decision-making processes that led to them. In this paper, we present a oneshot task learning system built on TRIPS, a dialogue-based collaborative problem solving system, and show how natural language understanding can be used for effective one-shot task learning.


Scattered sunlight and direct light from the moon was used in two wavelength ranges to measure the total column abundances of stratospheric ozone(O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at Thule, Greenland (76.5�N), during the period from 29 January to 16 February 1988. The observed O3 column varied between about 325 and 400 Dobson units, and the lower values were observed when the center of the Arctic polar vortex was closest to Thule. This gradient probably indicates that O3 levels decrease due to dynamical processes near the center of the Arctic vortex and should be considered in attempts to derive trends in O3 levels. The observed NO2 levels were also lowest in the center of the Arctic vortex and were sometimes as low as 5 x 1014 molecules per square centimeter, which is even less than comparable values measured during Antarctic spring, suggesting that significant heterogeneous photochemistry takes place during the Arctic winter as it does in the Antarctic.


Recently the merger and acquisition become the popular method and instrument for improving the industrial concentration degree and corporation efficiency, especially in the iron-steel industry. However did the merger and acquisition realize the original aim and effect? So it is necessary and significant to measure the corporate performance after the merger and acquisition. This research focuses on this issue. To examine the real effect of the merger and acquisition on the performance, this paper starts from the status of the iron-steel industry and selects all financial data and the merger and acquisition events between 2001and 2011, and then this paper uses the factor analysis method to evaluate the performance and uses the classified cluster method to classify the sample corporations. The empirical results show that the performance is not satisfactory in China's iron-steel companies after the merger and acquisition. In the conclusion the researchers analyzes the reasons and points out that the political management and intervene should be mainly responsible for these phenomenon. This research only focuses the particular industry-the iron-steel industry and uses continuous ten-year data to evaluate the performance, which makes its different from the before studies


This study takes a design-based research approach to explore how applications designed for mobile devices could support reflection in learning in K-12 education. Use of mobile devices is increasing in schools. Most of the educational apps support single-person use of interactive learning materials, simulations and learning games. Apps designed to correspond to collaborative learning paradigms, such as collaborative progressive inquiry or project-based learning, are scarce. In these pedagogical approaches, reflection plays an important role. This paper presents a design-based research study of mobile device apps, Re Flex and Team Up, that are specifically designed for use in student-centred and collaborative school learning, in which continuous reflection is an important part of the learning process. The design of the apps has relied on earlier research on digital tools for reflection and research about mobile devices in classroom learning. The design of the apps was accomplished as part of the qualitative design-based research conducted with a total of 165 teachers in 13 European countries. As a characteristic for a design-based research, the results of the study are twofold: practical and theoretical. The apps designed, Re Flex and Team Up, are practical results of the qualitative research carried out in schools with teachers and students to understand the design challenges and opportunities in schools, to renew their pedagogical practices and to take new tools in use. To understand better the capacity of the apps to facilitate reflection, we analysed the apps in light of earlier studies concerning the levels of reflection that digital tools may support and categorisations of affordances that mobile device apps may provide for classroom learning. Our research indicates that there is potential for fostering the practice of reflection in classroom learning through the use of apps for audio-visual recordings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


Communication protocols determine how network components interact with each other. Therefore, the ability to derive a specification of a protocol can be useful in various contexts, such as to support deeper black-box testing or effective defense mechanisms. Unfortunately, it is often hard to obtain the specification because systems implement closed (i.e., undocumented) protocols, or because a time consuming translation has to be performed, from the textual description of the protocol to a format readable by the tools. To address these issues, we propose a new methodology to automatically infer a specification of a protocol from network traces, which generates automata for the protocol language and state machine. Since our solution only resorts to interaction samples of the protocol, it is well-suited to uncover the message formats and protocol states of closed protocols and also to automate most of the process of specifying open protocols. The approach was implemented in a tool and experimentally evaluated with publicly available FTP traces. Our results show that the inferred specification is a good approximation of the reference specification, exhibiting a high level of precision and recall.


The number of available reference materials of complex matrices is continuously growing but it is still far from ideal. There are too many different matrices which are of interest for too many different analytes. The certified reference materials are expensive and are intended for the validation of methods or for the assurance of traceability of the analytical result. However, many determinations are carried out on a daily basis and the quality control for these determinations requires the use of reference materials, although not certified but laboratory reference materials. These materials are not certified but must be homogeneous and stable with respect to the concentration of the analytes of interest and they must have a similar matrix compared to the samples to be analysed, in order to be able to perform the quality control of the analytical determinations. The reference material presented in this paper is an exhausted electrowinning electrolyte from a local copper producing company. The analytical determination of the metals in the solution was performed using ICP-AES with a multivariate calibration procedure. The analytes are the following: As, Ca, Cu, Fe, Na, Ni, Sb and Zn.


ABSTRACT In this paper we examine the information systems (IS) literature surrounding the use of genre analysis. We look at why IS researchers use genre analysis, the insights that using genre analysis brings forth, and the resulting impact the research has. We also show that genre analysis is successfully providing an identity for the IS discipline. We use this review to provide insight into new avenues that IS researchers might explore using genre analysis, as well as show how practitioners may be able to benefit from its use. INTRODUCTION Introduced in 1976, bulletin board systems still abound on the Internet (Yahoo Groups alone has over 2,000,000 such boards operating (groups.yahoo.com)) and provide a way for people to communicate. Lately, new ways to communicate such as Internet messaging (IM) over the Internet and text messaging using cell phones have arisen. How can we understand the types of communication taking place using these widely disparate systems? Such an understanding is important as more and more work becomes a matter of electronic information exchange (Orlikowski and Yates, 1994). Genre analysis, first introduced to the field of IS research by Yates and Orlikowski (1992), provides a powerful tool to help understand the communication practices occurring within different IT and non-IT supported systems (although our present focus will of course be on IT-supported systems). In particular, genre analysis is useful in examining how a community communicates. Such interpersonal communication creates structures that then affect what else gets said and done and by whom (Weick, 1979), and indeed, without it "there would be no organizing or organization" (Orlikowski and Yates, 1994). How one defines community is not of great import; it could be a small group of workers in an R&D lab, or a widely dispersed (both geographically and based on depth of interest) set of owners of Honda Odysseys. What matters is that genres of communication are "socially recognized types of communicative actions - such as memos, meetings, expense forms, training seminars - that are habitually enacted by members of the community to realize particular social purposes" (Yates and Orlikowski, 1992). In an organizational context, such purposes typically include the completing of work, but may also extend to the formation of social relationships, which can have a significant effect on the quality of work (Firth, 2003). Of equal importance, these technologically mediated organizational discourses play an important part in the institutionalization of organizational roles, which later enable and constrain organizational actors (Hasselbladh and Kallinikos 2000). In this paper we will first lay out the basic concepts of genre and genre analysis. We then examine how genre analysis has been used in the IS literature. This will focus on why genre analysis was used, and the impact using genre analysis has had on our understanding of systems and communication. To show that genre analysis is not an irrelevant research tool but is indeed helping to provide an identity for the IS discipline, we will use the principles described by Benbasat and Zmud (2003). Finally we will use our review to highlight directions for future research. BASIC CONCEPTS A genre within a community serves as an organizing structure that shapes the ongoing communicative actions of community members through their use of it (Orlikowski and Yates, 1994). It is this ability to shape interaction amongst individuals that gives management as well as the users of a community the ability to use genres "both as instruments and outcomes of organizational power and politics" (Yates and Orlikowski, 1992). Each genre is differentiated from another as a typified communicative action by having both a socially recognized communicative purpose, and a common characteristic of form (Yates and Orlikowski 1992). A communicative purpose is one that is relevant to the community within which it is used. …


Health Informatics Department, Debre Markos University, Debre Markos, Ethiopia Background: Although the measurement scale developed by Norman and Skinner is the widely used scale to assess consumers' eHealth literacy, translating and validating the scale for the language of the target population under consideration is necessary. Amharic is the official national language of Ethiopia, with 29.3% of native speakers. Methods: The total sample size calculated was 187 with 6% non-response rate. The internal consistency of the ET-eHEALS was measured using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Test–retest reliability was assessed by re-administering the ET-eHEALS questionnaire to 74 patients which is 40% of the total sample size. Construct validity was evaluated using exploratory factor analysis. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) statistic and Bartlett's test of sphericity were used to check the suitability of performing the factor analysis. Results: Of the respondents, 63.1% (n=118) were males and 55.1% (n=103) were aged between 18 and 35 years, with 57.2% (n=107) of the participants being educated to high school diploma level or higher. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the translated ET-eHEALS total score was 0.94. Test–retest reliability of ET-eHEALS total score was acceptable for both agreements and consistent with ICC (interclass correlation coefficient) of 0.92. The KMO ratio of sampling appropriateness was acceptable (0.91), and Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant with p < 0.001. The EFA (exploratory factor analysis) extracted two factors based on an extraction principle of a minimum eigenvalue of one. The extracted factor explained 80.2% of the common variance which is 51.8% for factor 1 and 28.4% for factor 2. Except for item, item fit for both infit and outfit mean squares were within the adequate range (0.5–1.5). Conclusion: This study depicted that ET-eHEALS is a consistent and valid instrument to evaluate Amharic-speaking chronic patients' eHealth literacy level. Since there is no prior validation of eHEALS in low-income country, this finding may indicate important directions for further improvement in eHEALS item performance in resource-limited settings.


The 156 breeds of registered dogs in the United States offer a unique opportunity to map genes important in disease susceptibility, morphology, and behavior. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) is of current interest for its application in whole genome association mapping, since the extent of LD determines the feasibility of such studies. We have measured LD at five genomic intervals, each 5 Mb in length and composed of five clusters of sequence variants spaced 800 kb-1.6 Mb apart. These intervals are located on canine chromosomes 1, 2, 3, 34, and 37, and none is under obvious selective pressure. Approximately 20 unrelated dogs were assayed from each of five breeds: Akita, Bernese Mountain Dog, Golden Retriever, Labrador Retriever, and Pekingese. At each genomic interval, SNPs and indels were discovered and typed by resequencing. Strikingly, LD in canines is much more extensive than in humans: D' falls to 0.5 at 400-700 kb in Golden Retriever and Labrador Retriever, 2.4 Mb in Akita, and 3-3.2 Mb in Bernese Mountain Dog and Pekingese. LD in dog breeds is up to 100x more extensive than in humans, suggesting that a correspondingly smaller number of markers will be required for association mapping studies in dogs compared to humans. We also report low haplotype diversity within regions of high LD, with 80% of chromosomes in a breed carrying two to four haplotypes, as well as a high degree of haplotype sharing among breeds.


Despite the continued growth of adolescent risk assessment tools, we do not know how these tools are being used in adolescent court cases or how this information influences legal decision making. To address this gap, we reviewed 50 Canadian, American, and international adolescent offender cases using the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth or Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory. The results confirm that adolescent risk assessment tools are primarily introduced during sentencing or adult transfer proceedings. Judges identified the specific risk and protective factors of youth in 36.2% and 19.0% of cases, respectively. In terms of legal decision making, the risk assessment was either directly or indirectly referred to in 76.0% of cases; however, judges most often placed some weight on the risk assessment as a part of an enumerated list of other important factors. Although risk assessments were generally considered admissible in these cases, some legal concerns were raised, particularly with the use of risk assessments to guide sentencing decisions.


Hydroponics is an effective means for promoting plant growth as it facilitates water and nutrient uptake by plant roots. For increasing the production of sweetpotato ( Ipomoea batatas ), we developed the new hydroponic cultivation system in which tuberous roots were grown in solid media in the pots whereas fibrous roots were grown in the nutrient solution. Using this method, the effect of pot volume (1.6, 3.0, and 4.5 L) on the growth of sweetpotato was investigated. When plants were grown in small-sized pots (1.6 L), the fresh weight of the top and that of tuberous roots were decreased compared with plants grown in 3.0 L and 4.5 L pots. No clear difference was observed between the top and the tuberous roots in terms of the dry weight ratio, regardless of the pot size. The number of tuberous roots per plant and the maximum tuberous root weight were not influenced by the pot size either. However, the number of tuberous roots weighing more than 100 g was decreased in plants grown in small pots. Some of the tuberous roots grown in this hydroponic system contained a non-hypertrophic parts with severely lignified metaxylems. These results suggest that the environment surrounding the tuberous root influenced by the pot volume may be important for root enlargement in this hydroponic system.


On the way to higher efficiencies and reduced costs material quality has to increase while wafer thickness decreases. With industrial screen-printed Cz solar cells reaching above 19% efficiency [1] the wellestablished Al-BSF is a limiting factor for further improvement. Simple and cost effective to deposit dielectrics with good characteristics for backside passivation have to be found. Our approach is a multilayer stack-system consisting of amorphous silicon carbide (SiCx), silicon oxide (SiO2) and silicon nitride (SiNx). This system enables us to achieve a low surface recombination velocity of 7.6 cm/s although a transparent SiCx layer with high carbon content (CH4/SiH4 flow rate of 8) is used. SiCx passivates nand p-doped silicon at high deposition rates and low deposition temperatures. The cross compatibility of the used dielectrics enables us to deposit the stack system within one deposition step.