The reproducibility of some thermometric fixed points and the accuracy of four platinum resistance thermometers (PRTs) were studied. It was found that the fixed points of aluminium (Al), zinc (Zn), tin (Sn), indium (In) and gallium (Ga) were realized reproducibly within ±0.17 mK; ±0.11 mK; ±0.10 mK; ±0.13 mK and ±0.12 mK, respectively. Because the actual impurities and their concentration in our samples (of 99.9999% or 99.999 99% purity) are unknown, the systematic uncertainty due to impurities cannot be estimated. However, any of the samples of Ga, In, Sn, Zn and Al is consistent with the rest within ±0.2 mK, using a cubic or quadratic deviation function, in the temperature range 0 °C to 660 °C. This indicates that the effect of impurities is negligible. Four PRTs were selected at random. They were calibrated repeatedly, first up to the Zn point and then up to the Al point. The resistance of each PRT drifted. From time to time, for each PRT, a seemingly well-established resistance drift suddenly and unpredictably changed to a different rate of drift. Occasionally, the resistance of the PRTs shifted. Such unpredictable changes obviously limit the accuracy of temperature measurements using PRTs no matter what the accuracy of their calibrations. In the case of our four PRTs, the uncertainty of temperature measurements near 660 °C ranged from about ±1 mK to about ±2.5 mK even though they were all calibrated at all fixed points well within ±0.25 mK uncertainty. Possible explanations are offered for the apparently permanent drifts and the erratic shifts in the resistance of the PRTs. Some comments are made concerning the ambiguity of immersion tests in general. The furnaces of the National Research Council of Canada used in this work are high-temperature adiabatic calorimeters.


We examine the valuation performance of a comprehensive list of value drivers and find that multiples derived from forward earnings explain stock prices remarkably well: pricing errors are within 15 percent of stock prices for about half our sample. In terms of relative performance, the following general rankings are observed consistently each year: forward earnings measures are followed by historical earnings measures, cash flow measures and book value of equity are tied for third, and sales performs the worst. Curiously, performance declines when we consider more complex measures of intrinsic value based on short-cut residual income models. Contrary to the popular view that different industries have different "best" multiples, these overall rankings are observed consistently for almost all industries examined. Since we require analysts' earnings and growth forecasts and positive values for all measures, our results may not be representative of the many firm-years excluded from our sample.


Electromagnetic energy harvesting has been identified as a free compliment resource to wireless sensor nodes, which essentially prolongs the operating lifespan of built-in batteries. Voltage multiplier is a critical component in energy harvesting circuits and it attracted plenty of efforts in studying how to optimize the design. However, little information was found on how to determine the necessary amount of coupling capacitance required in a voltage multiplier design. This paper aims to fill in this gap and provides an analysis on how coupling capacitance affects voltage and power outputs. Computer simulations affirm that as long as the coupling capacitance is beyond a certain value, e.g., 10pF for Wi-Fi energy harvesting circuit operating at 2.45GHz, it has limited effect on voltage output and power output of a voltage multiplier.


Austempered ductile cast iron is newly developed engineering material with a favorable combination of comprehensive mechanical properties. Its properties, such as good comprehensive mechanical properties, high fatigue strength, and good fiction and wear characteristics are included. The application of ADI at home and abroad was presented as well. In order to ensure and improve mechanical properties of ADI, it should ensure high rank nodularity in terms of nodular cast iron, improve graphite nodules, reduce segregation and properly cut down the content of silicon and manganese. While in terms of heat treatment, in order to achieve ideal austenite ferrites, stable and reliable heat treatment process as well as relevant equipment is required.


Aim of this paper is to present "WEGES" (ways, routes in German): a flexible and effective smart sensor for gas monitoring in environmental applications. In order to test the flexibility of this smart sensor, it was used into two different research projects requiring a module for air monitoring: "Ecourb", and "Slimsafe". Ecourb is a Strategic Project (P-047) funded by Apulia Region and finalized to the analysis and modeling of atmospheric (chemical and thermal) pollution and urban eco-labeling. Slim-Safe is funded by the European Seventh Framework Program for Research and Sustainable Development and it is finalized to increase safety in ports' mobility (activity Slim-Port). The case studies and the obtained results demonstrate the high flexibility of WEGES and its ability to work in complex operating scenarios such those of these two research projects.


In vivo effect of metronidazole on the active oxygen production by neutrophils in the peripheral blood of patients with urogenital chlamydial infection (9 females and 7 males) was studied with the use of luminol dependent chemiluminescence. Metronidazole was administered orally in a dose of 250 mg twice a day for 10 days. Blood for the specimens was collected prior to the treatment and on the next day of the treatment course completion. No effect on the spontaneous and zymozan or phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate stimulated chemiluminescence was observed, although a significant increase in the chemiluminescence indices was stated in 3 females and 1 male. It was suggested that the changes in the individual values of the neutrophil chemiluminescence after the treatment were associated with the influence of metronidazole and/or its metabolites on the blood cells and with different activity of the host enzymes participating in the drug biotransformation.


The problem of limited resources in computing and related data management and processing operations is a paramount challenge that is affecting the functions of Ministry of education and in general the Government of Kenya core functions and will remain for a little longer as a catastrophic phenomenon if not considered as a priority concern now. MapReduce programming technique in cluster computing was studied and whose primary advantage was that, it allows automatic parallelization of applications written in a functional programming style. This allows researcher with no specific knowledge of parallel programming to attain parallelism in distributed cluster environment. Various optimization techniques are considered during the design stage of the system to make it highly efficient on shared memory system architectures, that is, cluster computing environment. As a result, a MapReduce tool was formulated, designed and developed which consisted of two core sections, the API for MapReduce programming environment and MapReduce runtime system entirely implemented on Hadoop Distributed File system (HDFS). The implementation of the MapReduce runtime system was specifically tailored for shared memory multi-core systems: Case for teachers' web portal as a source of data. The MapReduce tool provided a considerable performance on any multi-core architecture where large dataset on distributed cluster computing is operational. The research revealed that in making keen evaluations, the MapReduce tool improved the high performance in data optimization as the numbers of computing nodes and data size increases hence scalability of cluster computing is considerably improved. Researcher's evaluation concluded that the tool can improve on the general security of the data in the system since all data is replicated on nodes hence making them available at all times across the system. It is therefore envisioned that the study will be of a considerable benefit to the strategist and policy makers in formulations of policies for effective implementation where technology resources are utilized by integrating various new and existing technologies in cluster computing for resource optimizations.


Currently induction motors are widely used in industry due to strong construction, high efficiency, and cheap maintenance. Machine maintenance is needed to prolong the life of the induction motor. As studied, bearing faults may account for 42% -50% of all motor failures. In general it is due to manufacturing faults, lack of lubrication, and installation errors. Misalignment of motor is one of the installation errors. This paper is concerned to simulation of discrete wavelet transform for identifying misalignment in induction motor. Modelling of motor operation is introduced in this paper as normal operation and two variations of misalignment. For this task, haar and coiflet discrete wavelet transform in first level until fifth level is used to extract vibration signal of motor into high frequency of signal. Then, energy signal and other signal extraction gotten from high frequency signal is evaluated to analysis condition of motor. The results show that haar discrete wavelet transform at thirth level can identify normal motor  and misalignment motor conditions well


Predicting a high quality depth map from a single image is a challenging task, because it exists infinite possibility to project a 2D scene to the corresponding 3D scene. Recently, some studies introduced multi-head attention (MHA) modules to perform long-range interaction, which have shown significant progress in regressing the depth maps. The main functions of MHA can be loosely summarized to capture long-distance information and report the attention map by the relationship between pixels. However, due to the quadratic complexity of MHA, these methods can not leverage MHA to compute depth features in high resolution with an appropriate computational complexity. In this paper, we exploit a depth-wise convolution to obtain long-range information, and propose a novel trap attention, which sets some traps on the extended space for each pixel, and forms the attention mechanism by the feature retention ratio of convolution window, resulting in that the quadratic computational complexity can be converted to linear form. Then we build an encoder-decoder trap depth estimation network, which introduces a vision transformer as the encoder, and uses the trap attention to estimate the depth from single image in the decoder. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our proposed network can outperform the state-of-the-art methods in monocular depth estimation on datasets NYU Depth-v2 and KITTI, with significantly reduced number of parameters. Code is available at: https://github.com/ICSResearch/TrapAttention.


This paper investigates the spillover effects of Chinese real and monetary sector shocks on the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) economies. The study adopted a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) estimation technique to analyse the dynamic propagation of Chinese shocks in the real sector (gross domestic product (GDP) and trade openness (OPEN)) and monetary sector (nominal interest rate (NIR)) for a sample of 50 BRI countries from 2000 to 2017. The main results revealed that Chinese income shocks positively spill over to all macroeconomic variables except BRI countries' consumer price index (CPI). However, the Chinese trade openness shock only has a temporary positive spillover to BRI international trade and a temporary negative spillover on its monetary policy. In addition, the Chinese monetary policy shock has a negative spillover on GDP and a positive spillover on CPI in BRI economies. Chinese shocks, however, do not constitute a significant source of variation in any interest variable. As explained by the Chinese income shock, the BRI interest rate is the highest percentage of variable variation accumulated over time. Further, the highest variation of Chinese trade shock is BRI trade openness, and lastly, the highest variation of Chinese interest rate shock is CPI in BRI economies. The beggar-thy-neighbour effect may dominate the positive trade effect and is a negative impact of the Chinese shocks. Hence, BRI economies should alleviate the adverse shocks since the upcoming rapid growth from the Chinese has disturbed the BRI economies. Our results reveal the importance of Chinese development on BRI partners' economies and the significance of Chinese shocks in real and monetary sectors in assisting policymakers in designing international and monetary policy for BRI economies.


Collaborations among digital humanities and social science disciplines are not new, but they are increasingly responding to recent, increased examination of how "discourse" looks in public spheres (particularly U.S. North American). Whether focused on the involvement of social media during the U.S. Presidential campaign, re/definitions of "civility," credibility of source information, or presumed shortening of reader attention spans, disciplinary collaborations now find themselves addressing general and/or public discursive phenomena with the same frequency as with field-specific communications. Technical communication, always a cross-disciplinary act, has the opportunity to shape and direct public discourses in this new environment. Technical writers working within agricultural contexts are well-positioned to participate in this regard. Whether, e.g., translating the role of data and scientific research during landowners and farmers' conservation decisions, pointing out the influence of extension agents' research reports, interacting with advocacy organizations (such as Farm Bureau or the Iowa Soybean Association), working with local agronomists upon farm-level operations, or illuminating the deployment and use of big data by Big Ag, technical communicators long have been involved in this elemental enterprise (food production, consumption, and distribution) as it daily plays out in public contexts.


A symbolic computational technique is used to study the secondary bifurcations of a parametrically excited simple pendulum as an explicit function of the periodic parameter. This is made possible by the recent development of an algorithm which approximates the fundamental solution matrix of linear time-periodic systems in terms of system parameters in symbolic form. By evaluating this matrix at the end of the principal period, the parameter-dependent Floquet transition matrix (FTM), or the linear part of the Poincare map, is obtained. The subsequent use of well-known criteria for the local stability and bifurcation conditions of equilibria and periodic solutions enables one to obtain the equations for the bifurcation boundaries in the parameter space. Since this method is not based on expansion in terms of a small parameter, it can successfully be applied to periodic systems whose internal excitation is strong. By repeating the linearization and computational procedure after each bifurcation of an equilibrium or periodic solution, it is shown how the bifurcation locations as well as the new linearized equations may be obtained in closed form as a function of the periodic parameter. Bifurcation diagrams are constructed and the results are compared with those obtained elsewhere using the point mapping method.


ABSTRACT In this longitudinal study, the cross-language transfer from second language (L2) to first language (L1) was examined among Spanish-speaking English-language learners in an English intervention (Grades 1–3) in the southwest United States. Path analysis revealed statistically significant transfers (ps < .05) for the treatment group from English reading comprehension to Spanish reading comprehension. English vocabulary and English grammar also had an indirect influence on Spanish reading comprehension through English reading comprehension. For the comparison group, no English to Spanish paths were statistically significant. We concluded that intervention activities in L2 influenced L1 reading even when L1 instructional time was reduced.


Alluvial corridors of ephemeral river systems provide viable opportunities for natural water storage in dry lands. Whilst alluvial corridors are widely recognized as water buffers, particularly for areas experiencing constant water scarcity, little research has been undertaken in Sub-Saharan Africa to explore their hydrological variability and water resource potential as alternative water sources for nearby communities. This study investigated the water flow behavior and storage potential of an ephemeral river system in the Mara Basin of Kenya for purposes of supporting water resources development and ecological sustainability. The water flow processes – including the recharge rates and water loss processes – from existing sand storage systems were established through monitoring of ground and surface water levels. Water samples along the alluvial corridor were collected and analyzed for major ions and isotopic signatures required to establish the water storage dynamics. The storage potential was estimated through Probing and Electrical Resistivity Tomography techniques, augmented with in-situ measurements of hydraulic conductivities and channel bed porosities. The mean annual storage volume in the alluvium of the study reach was estimated at 1.1 Mm3, potentially capable of providing for the annual domestic and livestock water demands of the area. Transmission losses into the alluvium beneath the ephemeral channel-bed were noted to attenuate the flood peak discharges, depending on the level of saturation of the alluvial bed. However, water storage in the alluvium was subject to losses through evapotranspiration and seepage through fractured bedrocks. The study demonstrated the potential of alluvial corridors as water storage buffers providing alternative water sources to communities within the dry land regions with water scarcity, thereby to supporting ecosystem sustainability.


The rapid development of foreign direct investment will help Chinese enterprises to explore overseas markets, acquire resources and technologies, and circumvent trade protection and trade barriers while operating overseas, thereby promoting multinational enterprises to continue to move towards a higher performance level. However, in the process of actual foreign direct investment, the improvement of the investment performance level of multinational enterprises is not an easy task. In the process of foreign direct investment, Chinese enterprises often encounter a series of taking-for-granted" unwarranted accusations, negative comments or stereotypes from host country stakeholders. In Chinese enterprises' foreign direct investment, whether the existence of stigma affects the internationalization performance and what are the situational conditions for this effect, it is a major issue worthy of attention in theoretical and practical circles. Although the existing research has a rich explanation on the factors affecting the internationalization performance of enterprises, there are few studies from the theoretical perspective of organizational stigma. Starting from the perspective of the organizational stigma theory, this paper firstly constructs a conceptual model of internationalization performance based on the legality theory, and further analyzes the role of geographical distance, cultural exchange and political connection in regulating the relationship between organizational stigma and enterprise internationalization performance based on the information asymmetry theory. This paper takes 97 investment events in which Chinese enterprises first went to the host country for foreign direct investment during 2006-2012 as research samples, and uses SPSS19.0 analysis software to perform hierarchical regression. The results show that there is a significant negative correlation between organizational stigma and enterprise internationalization performance, geographical distance and political connection will strengthen this negative effect, while cultural exchange will weaken this negative effect. The research findings will have implications for Chinese enterprises' foreign direct investment in how to effectively avoid and weaken the negative effect of organizational stigma, and actively acquire the legitimacy of host countries and improve their internationalization performance.


Purpose
With considerable attention paid to the motives and process of idiosyncratic internationalization trajectory of multinationals from emerging economies (EMNCs), little is known on whether, and if so how, new competitive advantages of EMNCs are created and accumulated over time. MNC and EMNC literature agrees on the importance of external and internal knowledge linkages in technological competence creation. By building upon this framework, this paper aims to evaluate EMNCs' external and internal knowledge flow patterns by benchmarking their counterparts from mature industrialized countries (MMNCs).

Design/methodology/approach
This study analyzes US patents granted between 2000 and 2014 to leading innovation-oriented EMNCs from China and India, and their matched MMNCs. Being the first to use the US patent and citation data in studying leading innovation-oriented EMNCs, the authors use a descriptive statistical method.

Findings
The findings offer empirical insights of the scale, scope and quality of EMNC technological competence creation. Moreover, in contrast to existing EMNC literature, it is found that EMNC parents have been the most important center of EMNC technological knowledge generation. The matched group comparisons of external and internal knowledge flows further reveal detailed similarities and differences of competence creation between EMNCs and MMNCs, and among EMNCs.

Originality/value
This study represents one of the first attempts to investigate the post-internationalization technological competence creation of EMNCs by using a novel data source. This study sets the foundation to deepen the understanding of EMNC technological competence creation. The findings suggest interesting propositions and offer important implications for future researches.


P a landscape plan can be an enjoyable and satisfying experience with a little homework and some simple guidelines. Though helpful, a landscape base map can be drawn without a computer, special software or even expensive drafting supplies to develop a landscape plan. The first step in preparing a landscape plan is to draw a base map. The base map is an accurate representation of the existing landscape, scaled to fit the paper, showing information such as house dimensions, distance to street, location of trees or woods, and driveway and sidewalks, if these are already present in the landscape.


This paper presents the implementation of a mobile robotic arm simulation whose task is to order different objects randomly distributed in a workspace. To develop this task, it is used a Faster R-CNN which is going to identify and locate the disordered elements, reaching 99% accuracy in validation tests and 100% in real-time tests, i.e. the robot was able to collect and locate all the objects to be ordered, taking into account that the virtual environment is controlled and the size of the input image obtained from the workspace to be entered to the network should be 700x525 px.


Background Guidelines recommend stepping down asthma treatment to the minimum effective dose to achieve symptom control, prevent adverse side effects, and reduce costs. Limited data exist on asthma prescription patterns in a real-world setting. We aimed to evaluate the appropriateness of doses prescribed to a UK general asthma population and assess whether stepping down medication increased exacerbations or reliever use, as well as its impact on costs. Methods and findings We used nationwide UK primary care medical records, 2001–2017, to identify 508,459 adult asthma patients managed with preventer medication. Prescriptions of higher-level medication: medium/high-dose inhaled corticosteroids (ICSs) or ICSs + add-on medication (long-acting β2-agonist [LABA], leukotriene receptor antagonist [LTRA], theophylline, or long-acting muscarinic antagonist [LAMA]) steadily increased over time (2001 = 49.8%, 2017 = 68.3%). Of those prescribed their first preventer, one-third were prescribed a higher-level medication, of whom half had no reliever prescription or exacerbation in the year prior. Of patients first prescribed ICSs + 1 add-on, 70.4% remained on the same medication during a mean follow-up of 6.6 years. Of those prescribed medium/high-dose ICSs as their first preventer, 13.0% already had documented diabetes, cataracts, glaucoma, or osteopenia/osteoporosis. A cohort of 125,341 patients were drawn to assess the impact of stepping down medication: mean age 50.4 years, 39.4% males, 39,881 stepped down. Exposed patients were stepped down by dropping their LABAs or another add-on or by halving their ICS dose (halving their mean-daily dose or their inhaler dose). The primary and secondary outcomes were, respectively, exacerbations and an increase in reliever prescriptions. Multivariable regression was used to assess outcomes and determine the prognostic factors for initiating stepdown. There was no increased exacerbation risk for each possible medication stepdown (adjusted hazard ratio, 95% CI, p-value: ICS inhaler dose = 0.86, 0.77–0.93, p < 0.001; ICS mean daily = 0.80, 0.74–0.87, p < 0.001; LABA = 1.01, 0.92–1.11, p = 0.87, other add-on = 1.00, 0.91–1.09, p = 0.79) and no increase in reliever prescriptions (adjusted odds ratio, 95% CI, p-value: ICS inhaler dose = 0.99, 0.98–1.00, p = 0.59; ICS mean daily = 0.78, 0.76–0.79, p < 0.001; LABA = 0.83, 0.82–0.85, p < 0.001; other add-on = 0.86, 0.85–0.87, p < 0.001). Prognostic factors to initiate stepdown included medication burden, but not medication side effects. National Health Service (NHS) indicative prices were used for cost estimates. Stepping down medication, either LABAs or ICSs, could save annually around £17,000,000 or £8,600,000, respectively. Study limitations include the possibility that prescribed medication may not have been dispensed or adhered to and the reason for stepdown was not documented. Conclusion In this UK study, we observed that asthma patients were increasingly prescribed higher levels of treatment, often without clear clinical indication for such high doses. Stepping down medication did not adversely affect outcomes and was associated with substantial cost savings.


Phytochelatins (PCs) are major chelators of toxic elements including inorganic arsenic (As) in plant cells. Their synthesis confers tolerance and influences within-plant mobility. Previous studies had shown that various metal/metalloid ions differentially activate PC synthesis. Here we identified C-terminal parts involved in arsenite- [As(III)] dependent activation of AtPCS1, the primary Arabidopsis PC synthase. The T-DNA insertion in the AtPCS1 mutant cad1-6 causes a truncation in the C-terminal regulatory domain that differentially affects activation by cadmium (Cd) and zinc (Zn). Comparisons of cad1-6 with the AtPCS1 null mutant cad1-3 and the double mutant of tonoplast PC transporters abcc1/2 revealed As(III) hypersensitivity of cad1-6 equal to that of cad1-3. Both cad1-6 and cad1-3 showed increased As distribution to shoots compared with Col-0, whereas Zn accumulation in shoots was equally lower in cad1-6 and cad1-3. Supporting these phenotypes of cad1-6, PC accumulation in the As(III)-exposed plants were at trace level in both cad1-6 and cad1-3, suggesting that the truncated AtPCS1 of cad1-6 is defective in PCS activity in response to As(III). Analysis of a C-terminal deletion series of AtPCS1 using the PCS-deficient mutant of fission yeast suggested important regions within the C-terminal domain for As(III)-dependent PC synthesis, which were different from the regions previously suggested for Cd- or Zn-dependent activation. Interestingly, we identified a truncated variant more strongly activated than the wild-type protein. This variant could potentially be used as a tool to better restrict As mobility in plants.


Melting, freezing, and evaporation of individual and aggregates of snow crystals are simulated in the laboratory under controlled temperature, relative humidity, and air velocity. Crystals of selected habit are grown on a vertical filament and subsequently melted or evaporated in reverse flow, with the velocity adjusted for appropriate fall speed to reproduce conditions of the melting layer. Nonequilibrium conditions are simulated for larger melting ice particles surrounded by smaller drops at a temperature up to (cid:1) 5°C or growth of an ice crystal surrounded by freezing ice particles down to (cid:2) 5°C. Initial melting of well-defined faceted crystals, as individuals or in combination, occurs as a water layer (cid:3) 10 (cid:4) m thick. For larger ( (cid:3) 100 (cid:4) m) crystals the water becomes sequestered by capillary forces as individual drops separated by water-free ice regions, often having quasiperiodic locations along needles, columns, or arms from evaporating den- drites. Drops are also located at intersections of aggregate crystals and dendrite branches, being responsible for the maximum of the radar scatter. The drops have a finite water–ice contact angle of 37°–80°, depending on ambient conditions. Capillary forces move water from high-curvature to low-curvature regions as melting continues. Toward the end of the melting process, the ice separating the drops becomes sufficiently thin to fracture under aerodynamic forces, and mixed-phase particles are shed. Otherwise ice-free drops are shed. The melting region and the mechanism for lowering the melting layer with an increasing precipitation rate are associated with smaller ice particle production capable of being lofted in weaker updrafts.


Background Geosocial-networking apps like Grindr have been used increasingly among men who have sex with men (MSM) to meet anonymous partners. These mobile dating apps employ global positioning system technology to facilitate connections with other users based on their current location. These new technologies have generated quicker and easier modes for men who have sex with men to meet potential partners based on attraction and physical proximity. Objective The aim of this study is to describe geosocial-networking app use and recent sexual behaviors of MSM in the Atlanta metropolitan statistical area. Methods Our sample was recruited from Grindr, the most commonly used of these mobile apps among MSM, using broadcast advertising. Advertisements were displayed over the course of a 72-hour period and participants were directed to a Web-based survey. Results In total, 604 men clicked through the advertisement, and 92 users completed the survey. One-third (38.0%) of the men reported using these mobile apps to meet new sexual partners, and one-fifth (18.5%) used them to "kill time" when bored. Men reporting currently being in a relationship were less likely to report using these mobile apps to meet other MSM to date or to find a boyfriend or romantic partner, but more likely to report using these mobile apps to meet other MSM to have sex, X 2 24=12.1, P=.016. Respondents had current accounts on 3.11 mobile apps (SD 1.84) on average, with Grindr being the most common (100%), followed by Scruff (52.5%), and Jack'd (45.7%). Most men were most active in the late night (40.2%), and on weekdays (64.1%). Each day, on average, men reported opening these mobile apps 8.38 times (SD 8.10) and spent 1.31 hours (SD 1.15) on these mobile apps. The age respondents began using these mobile apps was associated with the age at their first instance of insertive anal sex (r80=.527, P<.001) and receptive anal sex (r76=.527, P<.001). Conclusions These findings suggest that MSM use multiple mobile apps and spend significant time on them. For these reasons, HIV prevention interventions could be delivered on these mobile apps.


In 2002 the international community adopted a new system of hazard classification and labeling of chemical products, which is recommended to be implemented by all the Member- countries of the United Nations through national legislation and international acts. Within the frame of the implementation of this decision, in 2015 the amendments were made to the Directive of the European Community of June 24, 1982, № 82/501/EEC on the prevention of major industrial accidents, and to the United Nations Convention onthe prevention of major industrial accidents, and a little later to the national legislation of the European countries establishing measures on preventing major accidents. In 2017, the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union adopted the technical regulation on the safety of chemical products, which establishes classification criteria that are completely identical to the criteria for the system of hazard classification and labeling of chemical products. Entry into force of the technical regulation of the Eurasian Economic Union will lead to the need for amending all theregulatory legal acts and regulations that contain regulations based on the classification of chemical products, including in the Federal Law № 116-FZ of July 21, 1997, On industrial safety of hazardous production facilities. The task of harmonizing the legislation on industrial safety with the international documents in terms of the classification of chemicals was planned to be solved when developing a new law on industrial safety. During the discussion, the developers encountered different approaches to the definition of classes of hazardous substances, the analysis of which became the subject of this article. The authors formulated proposals that can be used at the next round of harmonization of the Russian legislation on industrial safety with the international documents. When preparing proposals with classes and lists of hazardous chemicals for use in the industrial safety legislation, a comparison was made not only of the definitions of classes of chemicals in different documents, but also of their quantities, which are the criteria for qualifying objects as hazardous production facilities. It is noted that the term «flammable liquids», used in 116-FZ, practically does not occur in the international classifications, therefore, when developing new documents, it was proposed not to use it.


Professional networks are vital for individuals' career advancement. Research demonstrates, however, that women are often disadvantaged in their access to such networks. Using a randomized field experiment at an IT conference, we found that women had worse networking outcomes than men. Relative to men, women met 42% fewer new contacts, spent 48% less time talking to them, and added 25% fewer LinkedIn connections. We theorize that in fields where women are underrepresented (e.g., IT) two networking barriers—search and social—differentially affect men and women. We designed and experimentally tested interventions for reducing these barriers. The search intervention was designed to facilitate locating diverse contacts and information. The social intervention was designed to facilitate helping behavior and connecting across social boundaries. Our findings indicate that the search intervention increased the number of new contacts women met by 57%, the time they spent talking with them by 90%, the number of LinkedIn connections they added by 29%, and their odds of changing jobs by a factor of 1.6. The social intervention also increased the time women spent talking to new contacts by 66%. However, the interventions did not improve men's outcomes. Our results show that simple interventions can help women expand their networks and find jobs.


The amount of time and expense spent debugging, customizing, updating, and maintaining software far outstrips the amount spent buying it. This book provides a simple and straightforward introduction to software maintenance activities that work. It is the first book to cover software transition--the process of moving the product from developer to maintainer. Written by one of the world's foremost experts on software maintenance, it draws on real world case studies to explore basic do's and don'ts, IEEE and ISO requirements, organizational issues, and the often sticky issue of metrics. Other topics addressed include object-oriented software and client/server software, corporate education and training programs, creative cost controls, and more.


SUMMARY: The standard methods for assessing viability of micro-organisms are not applicable to rat and human leprosy bacilli since neither organism can be grown in vitro. McFadzean & Valentine (1958, 1959) suggested that the electron microscope might provide a quantitative guide to the viability of these organisms by allowing dead forms to be identified. This technique is further investigated and shown to be valid and reasonably accurate for Escherichia coli provided the organisms are not morphologically fixed by the killing agent. It is concluded that the method can assess death of leprosy bacilli in the host when this occurs either naturally or aided by bactericidal drugs, and also loss of viability on storage, but not sudden killing by more violent chemical or physical means. The method has been found useful for following the survival of Mycobacterium lepraemurium in tissue cultures. It is suggested that death in the host but not death occurring on storage can be measured by a simple classification of the bacilli seen with the light microscope after the conventional carbol fuchsin stain. It is indicated that many of the bacilli obtained from untreated human cases of leprosy are dead, while from rats the percentage which is degenerate is low. The significance of various features of the leprosy bacilli seen with the electron microscope is discussed. There is no evidence that the bacilli form spores or capsules.


2. Proposers should direct proposals to S1.01 for technologies that don't address fundamental photodetection process improvements, (i.e., improvement in detection efficiency, excess noise, dark count rate, gain characteristics, afterpulsing, etc.), but instead focus on lidar-only solutions for detection and readout technologies not widely applicable to other fields. Please see the S1.01 scope for further clarification on what is being solicited. Â


In this paper we study a variant of the Sand Piles Model, where the evolution rule consists of the falling down of one grain to a random column and an avalanche to reach a stable configuration. We prove that the infinite set of all stable configurations have a lattice structure which is a sublattice of Young lattice. At the end, based on a discussion about avalanches, we construct a generating tree of this model and show its strongtly recursive structure.


In many construction projects, main contractors usually sublet most of their construction works to domestic sub-contractors especially specialist works in order to lower their overhead costs in terms of employment and equipment costs. The sub-contractors are hired only when their services are needed to undertake the certain works in the project and they are usually hired based on competitive biddings. This is one of the reason identified causing poor relationship between main contractors and domestic sub-contractors. Another problem with such an arrangement is the lack of early involvement of domestic sub-contractors in the construction process. Partnering was identified as one of the solution to this adversarial relationship.The objective of this study is to look at the possibility of partnering between main contractors and sub-contractors and identify benefits from partnering between the two. The results of the study indicate that Malaysia construction business environment is based on competitive bidding, confirming that the Malaysian construction industry is very competitive and business relations are short-termed in nature. The main contractors in Malaysia normally place more emphasis on the consideration of lowest bid price ahead of relationship factors in the selection of domestic sub-contractors although most of them acknowledge the benefit of partnering with their sub-contractors.
Keywords: Partnering, main contractor, domestic sub-contractor, competitive bidding


Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) is a central problem in computational biology. It is well known that MSA can be formulated as a shortest path problem and solved using heuristic search, but the memory requirement of A* makes it impractical for all but the smallest problems. Partial Expansion A* (PEA*) reduces the space complexity of A* by generating only the most promising successor nodes. However, even PEA* exhausts available memory on many problems. Another alternative is Iterative Deepening Dynamic Programming, which uses an uninformed search order but stores only the nodes along the search frontier. However, it too cannot scale to the largest problems. In this paper, we propose storing nodes on cheap and plentiful secondary storage. We present a new general-purpose algorithm, Parallel External PEA* (\xppea), that combines PEA* with Delayed Duplicate Detection to take advantage of external memory and multiple processors to solve large MSA problems. In our experiments, \xppea\ is the first algorithm capable of solving the entire Reference Set 1 of the standard BAliBASE benchmark using a biologically accurate cost function. This work suggests that external best-first search can effectively use heuristic information to surpass methods that rely on uninformed search orders.


This paper presents a novel approach to build consistent 3D maps for multi robot cooperation in USAR environments. The sensor streams from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and ground robots (UGV) are fused in one consistent map. The UAV camera data are used to generate 3D point clouds that are fused with the 3D point clouds generated by a rolling 2D laser scanner at the UGV. The registration method is based on the matching of corresponding planar segments that are extracted from the point clouds. Based on the registration, an approach for a globally optimized localization is presented. Apart from the structural information of the point clouds, it is important to mention that no further information is required for the localization. Two examples show the performance of the overall registration.


Secondary hypertension co-occurrence with hyperkalaemia is not an expected finding. Gordon's syndrome is an autosomal dominant disease which is a rare cause of secondary hypertension and hyperkalaemia is the most important feature. Normal glomerular filtration rate, hyperchloraemic metabolic acidosis, low renin, generally normal aldosterone levels and sensitivity to thiazide diuretics are the other features. A 33-year-old male patient presented with hypertension and hyperkalaemia. Due to a familial hypertension history, normal serum urea, creatinine levels and lack of drug use, we assumed that the patient had Gordon's Syndrome. Gordon's syndrome is a rare cause of hypertension and mostly reported only as case reports. Gordon's syndrome should be considered in the differential diagnosis of hyperkalaemic hypertensive patients with normal renal function.


Adult albino rats of Wistar strain (200 to 250 g) were lesioned at the nucleus accumbens (Acb) either in the shell area (Acbsh) or in the core area (Acbc). The rats were offered a choice of water and 0.2 per cent saccharine or water and 12 per cent sucrose solution. During the prelesion period, the rats preferred water to the sweet tasting fluids. The Acbc lesion shifted the preference to saccharine from water, but rats with the same lesion consumed equal quantities of sucrose and water. On the other hand, lesion of the Acbsh increased the water intake when paired with either sucrose or saccharine. Food intake was also increased in this lesioned group. The results suggest that the Acbc area appears to participate in the mediation of taste of food while the Acbsh area probably regulates feeding behaviour based on the nutritional value of food substances.


The existence of gender inequalities in health, in the use of health services, and in the development of informal care has been demonstrated throughout scientific literature. In Spain, a law was passed in 2007 to promote effective equality between men and women. Despite this, different studies have shown that the previous gender inequalities are still present in Spanish society. For all these reasons, the objective of this paper is to study the differences by sex in informal care and in the use of emergency care, and to identify the existence of gender inequalities in Spain 10 years after the adoption of the aforementioned equality law. In this case, we development a cross-sectional study based on the 2017 Spanish National Health Survey of the Spanish population aged 16 and over. To analyze the influence of gender determinants on informal care and emergency care utilization, logistic regressions were performed, model 1 was adjusted for age, and model 2 was further adjusted too by the variables of the Andersen care demand model. The results showed that informal care and the use of the emergency care continues to be higher in women than in men. Informal care in women was related to a higher level of education. In emergency care, the older the age, the lower the probability of utilization, and living in a rural municipality was related to a higher probability of utilization for both sexes. Finally, we concluded that there is still a need for studies that analyze gender inequalities in different contexts, such as the informal care and the use of health services. This is especially relevant in Spain, where economic changes have led to a change in roles, mainly for women, and new management strategies are needed to achieve equity in care and effective equality between men and women.


In this paper, the surface integrity is studied when machining the aeronautical titanium alloys. Surface roughness, lay, defects, microhardness and microstructure alterations are studied. The result of surface roughness judges that the CVD-coated carbide fails to produce better Ra value than the uncoated. Lay is characterized by cutting speed and feed speed directions. Feed mark, tearing surface, chip layer formation as built up layer (BUL), and deposited microchip are the defects. Microhardness is altered down to 350 microns beneath the machined surface. The first 50 microns is the soft sub-surface caused by thermal softening in ageing process. Microstructure alteration is observed in this sub-surface. Down to 200 microns is the hard sub-surface caused by the cyclic internal work hardening and then it is gradually decreasing to the bulk material hardness. It is concluded that dry machining titanium alloy is possible using uncoated carbide with cutting condition limited to finish or semi-finish for minimizing surface integrity alteration.


Oral complications of cancer therapy include a multitude of conditions that compromise a patient's quality of life and can be potentially life threatening. Severe oral pain, infection, and bleeding can result. Often, these oral complications cause postponement of cancer therapy and hospitalization for management. Oral intervention before and after radiation, chemotherapy, and bone marrow and stem cell transplantation can greatly reduce these complications. A close working relationship between oncologists and dental professionals should be established to successfully manage patients undergoing cancer treatment.


Context and setting Mentorship is a critical aspect of career development that is often overlooked as a result of increasing clinical, administrative and research demands on academic medicine faculty staff. Prior research on mentorship has explored the effectiveness of traditional longitudinal dyadic models. Alternative ways to efficiently provide career advice are sorely needed. Why the idea was necessary Although academic medical meetings often offer mentoring opportunities, few attendees participate. Most attendees, however, hope to gain valuable advice from networking with others. We explored an innovative approach known as 'panel advising' as an alternative to the dyadic model and hypothesised that panel advising would be a feasible and acceptable method of addressing topics and themes previously associated with effective dyadic mentor–mentee relationships. What was done Panel advising was offered at two annual meetings of the Southern Society of General Internal Medicine (SSGIM; 2006, 2007). The SSGIM is the premier academic society for general internal medicine. Registrants at the SSGIM meetings interested in panel advising participated in 30-minute sessions which included one advisee and three or four advisors. Advisors were recruited based on varying expertise and interests from multiple academic medical centres. Sessions were tape-recorded and then evaluated by a single reviewer, who identified themes and categorised them as 'content', 'process' or 'growth over time' based on a previously published study of traditional year-long dyadic mentoring sessions. Emerging themes not described in the traditional model were also noted. Additionally, advisees and advisors completed questionnaires using Likert scales and free text questions that assessed the feasibility and acceptability of the panel advising sessions (response rate > 90%). Evaluation of results and impact Fifteen panel sessions with 15 advisees and 23 advisors were conducted. Compared with traditional themes, panel advising included 15 of 21 'content', 18 of 18 'process' and none of six 'growth over time' themes. Several unique themes also emerged in the panel sessions, including: developing networking and negotiation skills; creating a teaching portfolio, and incorporating advice from multiple advisors. Sessions were highly valued by advisors and advisees. The median scores for the post-session questions ('enjoyed the mentoring session', 'panel session was feasible', 'panel session was useful', 'panel and mentee were a good match' and 'overall rating of session') were 1.2–1.5 for advisors and 1.2–1.3 for advisees (1 = excellent, 5 = poor). All (100%) advisees would recommend the session to others and 69% of advisees preferred panel advising to traditional one-to-one mentoring. Both advisors and advisees considered panel sessions to be a feasible and acceptable method of career counselling. Panel advising shares several themes with traditional mentoring and also explores new themes and allows advisees to interact with advisors from diverse backgrounds. Panel advising as a single event precludes the opportunity to address growth over time, but future studies could explore the longitudinal effect of panel advising. As dyadic mentoring becomes less realistic and desirable as a result of time restraints and competing professional obligations, panel advising offers an efficient, feasible and well-received alternative model.


Artificial Intelligence Algorithms have been used in recent years in many scientific fields. We suggest employing flower pollination algorithm in the environmental field to find the best estimate of the semi-parametric regression function with measurement errors in the explanatory variables and the dependent variable, where measurement errors appear frequently in fields such as chemistry, biological sciences, medicine, and epidemiological studies, rather than an exact measurement. We estimate the regression function of the semi-parametric model by estimating the parametric model and estimating the non-parametric model, the parametric model is estimated by using an instrumental variables method (Wald method, Bartlett's method, and Durbin's method), The non-parametric model is estimated by using kernel smoothing (Nadaraya Watson), K-Nearest Neighbor smoothing and Median smoothing. The Flower Pollination algorithms were employed and structured in building the ecological model and estimating the semi-parametric regression function with measurement errors in the explanatory and dependent variables, then compare the models to choose the best model used in the environmental scope measurement errors, where the comparison between the models is done using the mean square error (MSE). These methods were applied to real data on environmental pollution/ air pollution in the city of Baghdad, and the most important conclusions that we reached when using statistical methods in estimating parameters and choosing the best model, we found that the Median-Durbin model is the best as it has less MSE, but when using flower The pollination algorithm showed that the Median-Wald model is the best because it has the lowest MSE, and when we compare the statistical methods with the FPA in selecting semi-parametric models, we notice the superiority of the FP algorithm in all methods and for all models.


The purpose of these studies was to establish the validity of a system for investigation of the manner in which transcription from mammalian DNA is regulated. Mammalian chromatin was isolated; its chemical composition was determined in terms of relative quantities of DNA, histone, acidic chromosomal protein and chromosomal RNA. A procedure employing binding of the dye bromsukphalein to protein was developed for estimation of protein in chromatin. Correlation between the relative quantities of DNa and histone and, to a lesser extent, between those of acidic chromosomal protein and chromosomal RNA, was noted. RNA transcribed from mammalian DNA was also studied. The best available procedure for characterisation of such RNA was considered to be DNA-RNA molecular hybrudisation. RNA was synthesized in vitro using purified bacterial DNA-dependent RNA polymerase. Procedures of purification from Micrococcus luteus (lysodeikticus) were compared with a view to obtaining both maximal yields and a product not contaminated by ribonuclease acitivity. Evidence that the enzyme catalysed the synthesis of RNA complementary to DNA template, that its acitivity was dependant on the presence of the latter and that DNS-RNA hybrid might be formed during RNA synthesis was obtained. Synthetic RNA was isolated by removal of all other componentsof RNA-synthesizing mixtures. Particular care was required to remove acid-soluble ribonucleotides. Otherwise, the fraction of synthetic RNA hybridisable to DNA appeared to be very small. Procedures for isolation of native DNA from mammalian cells were established, as were procedures for denaturation of DNA and for separation of denatured Landschutz ascites tumour cell DNA into "fast", "intermediate" and "slow" fractions by virtue of their relative rates of renaturation. DNA which had renatured was separated from that which had not by passage through hydroxyapatite. Under certain controlled conditions, the former, but not the latter, was retained by hydroxyapatite. Conditions for optimal binding of denaturated DNA to nitrocellulose and retention of it by nitrocellulose were established. DNA-nitrocellulose binding proved to be dependent on temperature, ionic strength and concentration of solvents which weaken hydrogen bonds, suggesting it is at least partly due to such bonding. Procedures and conditions for carrying out DNA-RNA hybridization between RNA in solution and DNA immobilised on nitrocellulose were established. RNA saturation curves and double reciprocal plots derived from them showed that RNA synthesized in vitro from native calf thymus DNA was hybridisable to approximately 20% of denatured calf thymus DNA under the conditions employed. This figure was the same after three different periods of incubation of an RNA-synthesizing mixture, but was greatly reduced when the materials used in such experiments were contaminated by ribonuclease activity. It was also markedly reduced on incubation of hybridization mixtures at room temperature in the presence of 30% v/v formamideinstead of at 67


Cardiovascular-related disorders are a significant worldwide health problem. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in developed countries, making up a third of the mortality rate in the US1. Congenital heart defects (CHD) affect ∼1% of all live births2, making it the most common birth defect in humans. Current technologies provide some insight into how these disorders originate but are limited in their ability to provide a complete overview of disease pathogenesis and progression due to their lack of physiological complexity. There is a pressing need to develop more faithful organ-like platforms recapitulating complex in vivo phenotypes to study human development and disease in vitro. Here, we report the most faithful in vitro organoid model of human cardiovascular development to date using human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). Our protocol is highly efficient, scalable, shows high reproducibility and is compatible with high-throughput approaches. Furthermore, our hPSC-based heart organoids (hHOs) showed very high similarity to human fetal hearts, both morphologically and in cell-type complexity. hHOs were differentiated using a two-step manipulation of Wnt signaling using chemical inhibitors and growth factors in completely defined media and culture conditions. Organoids were successfully derived from multiple independent hPSCs lines with very similar efficiency. hHOs started beating at ∼6 days, were mostly spherical and grew up to ∼1 mm in diameter by day 15 of differentiation. hHOs developed sophisticated, interconnected internal chambers and confocal analysis for cardiac markers revealed the presence of all major cardiac lineages, including cardiomyocytes (TNNT2+), epicardial cells (WT1+, TJP+), cardiac fibroblasts (THY1+, VIM+), endothelial cells (PECAM1+), and endocardial cells (NFATC1+). Morphologically, hHOs developed well-defined epicardial and adjacent myocardial regions and presented a distinct vascular plexus as well as endocardial-lined microchambers. RNA-seq time-course analysis of hHOs, monolayer differentiated iPSCs and fetal human hearts revealed that hHOs recapitulate human fetal heart tissue development better than previously described differentiation protocols3,4. hHOs allow higher-order interaction of distinct heart tissues for the first time and display biologically relevant physical and topographical 3D cues that closely resemble the human fetal heart. Our model constitutes a powerful novel tool for discovery and translational studies in human cardiac development and disease.


Recent crystal structures of ClC chloride channels have led to a proposed fast-gating mechanism that couples ion permeation to ion channel gating. This proposed mechanism is studied by pushing the amino acid E148 of StClC out of the path of the proposed permeation path. The resulting structure produces an open state that is similar to the mutant EcClC E148Q structure, a proposed open structure of ClC-type channels. Due to the interaction of the fast-gate with permeating ions, a hybrid methodology is proposed for explicitly simulating the interaction of protein fluctuations with permeating ions. This methodology is used for two model systems and compared to single-ion Potential of Mean Force permeation models methodologies.


Abstract The first archaeomagnetic dating in Hungary was made using a reference inclination curve derived by interpolation between three inclination curves then available from continental Europe, namely from France, Bulgaria and the Ukraine. As the corresponding declination curves could not be interpolated with confidence, all three declination curves were used only for an estimation of the time interval to which the measured declinations might be assigned. As data accumulated it became feasible for dating to be made exclusively on the basis of archaeomagnetic and direct observational results for Hungary. The results now cover the last 2000 years with relatively short gaps (sixth and thirteenth centuries ad), for which data interpolation is plausible. The variation of inclination is fairly sinusoidal and well resolved. It exhibits two maxima (c. 70°) at approximately ad 800 and ad1500 and three minima at about ad300 (c. 58°), ad 1300 (c. 55°) and in the twentieth century (c. 62°). Although the variation of the declination is twice as large as that of the inclination, the declination record has inherently less resolution (dD = dI/cosI > dI). Approximately zero declination values during the first half of the first millennium ad were followed by westerly values during the sixth to eighth centuries (c. 10°). It appears that by ad 900 the declination was already easterly and rapidly increasing until ad 1000 when it peaked with a value over 20°E. A newly discovered feature is a short oscillation beginning with 16° at ad 1300 and ending with 16.5° at ad 1600 during which the declination became westerly with a minimum of −10° in the first half of the fifteenth century. From ad 1600 on the declination rapidly decreased and described a negative half circle between about ad 1620–30 and 1950 with a minimum of −18° at ad 1800. The general pattern of the directional secular variation for Hungary is in agreement with that for France, Sicily, Britain, the Ukraine and the Balkans.


: The results of studies on submicroscopic organization of nuclear polyhedrosis viruses (NPV) isolated from different species and populations of insects are presented. The following morphological criteria are proposed for NPV identification: the frequency of occurrence of polygenomic virions with definite number of nucleocapsids, the presence of electron-dense membrane on the surface of suprapolyvirion capsids (SPVC); total number of nucleocapsids inside one average SPVC of NPV. Analyses of morphometric maps of NPV infecting different species and populations of the same species of insects are presented.


In view of changing job mobility patterns in Europe, the impact of job mobility on job satisfaction is gaining importance, yet has received little attention. This article analyses 23 European countries to address two questions: (1) how do different types of job mobility affect job satisfaction, and (2) do welfare state regimes alter the relationship between job mobility and job satisfaction? Theoretically the study integrates economic and sociological approaches to job satisfaction with insights from the psychology of well-being. The findings show that job mobility differentially affects job satisfaction domains. External upward mobility is decisive to enhance satisfaction with objective working conditions and work–life balance, while internal mobility is pivotal for satisfaction with future career prospects. The experience of unemployment lowers all job satisfaction domains even after re-employment. The article's findings on welfare regimes indicate that social policies interact with country differences in workforce composition, such as the overall prevalence of unemployment, to determine job satisfaction.


According to a handful of researchers who have explored the problem of portages, they have been present in almost every time period and in almost every place, but the interest they have garnered is disproportionate to the role they used to play. Scarce source information on them is surely an important factor here, and a similar situation can be seen in the Polish historiography, which – due to the very poor source base (written records, place names) – is basically limited to two examples: the alleged Ślesin portage and the system of portages on the Polish-Ruthenian borderland. Meanwhile, as Andrew Sherratt argued, the portages were "a simple but powerful idea:" in a situation where rivers and reservoirs determined directions themselves, portages – comprising the landborne part of primarily waterway routes – offered a more "flexible" way of using these connections. Such a combination (both waterand land-based) type of communication is considered to be characteristic of the early stages of transport systems development, which has not always been recognised in the literature, where the importance of water communication is particularly highlighted in the context of prehistoric and early historic societies. Portages stimulated settlement (contact points, break in transportation), and therefore, in the absence of other preconditions, settlement analysis including habitational, economic, spiritual and communicational spheres of human activity should be treated as the main identification factors of these communication amenities. Only the results of such an extensive research can indicate not only the locations of presumed portages, but also their local and supra-local significance. It seems that they are usually wrongly linked to long-distance routes. Recently conducted archaeological research and settlement studies based on them allow to suggest the presence of such communication solutions near several sites (Żolte, Parsecko, West Pomeranian Voivodeship; Pawlowek, Kuyavian- Pomeranian Voivodeship) which could be also localised on the frontiers of the so- -called Baltic zone functioned from 9th to 11th century.


This pocket-sized book is aimed as an easy guide to practical management of difficult airway problems. The 17 chapters are written by 16 contributors and edited by Dr Hagberg. The first three chapters discuss airway anatomy, prediction of the difficult airway and the ASA Difficult Airway algorithm. The fourth chapter on preparation of the patient for awake intubation is useful but rather long. All the possible airway nerve blocks, some unnecessary in clinical practice, are described in detail, giving an impression that local anaesthesia of the upper airway is a difficult task. Five chapters discuss practical techniques for difficult airway management. These are on flexible fibreoptic intubation, retrograde intubation, airway gadgets, laryngeal mask airway (LMA) and Combitube, and surgical approaches to airway management. The chapter on fibreoptic intubation is excellent with useful practical advice. The retrograde intubation chapter details all the possible methods rather than giving a simple practical guide to one or two techniques. The imbalance in the paper space allocated is obvious; for example, the chapter on retrograde intubation (infrequently used) occupies 34 pages compared to the LMA and Combitube chapter's 14 pages. The UK anaesthetists' favourite aid, the gum elastic bougie, is only briefly mentioned. The chapters on clinical postoperative and medical conditions affecting the airway discuss the clinical scenarios well but lack practical advice. The four chapters on difficult airway in paediatrics, obstetrics, trauma and intensive care cover a lot of ground. The best is on paediatrics, which discusses the problems and their solutions in a practical, easy to follow style. This is the only chapter that states that the techniques should be learnt in workshops and practised on normal patients before they are used in difficult airway patients; this very sound advice should have been a recurring theme in this book. The last two chapters deal with extubating the difficult airway and dissemination of critical airway information. Dr Hagberg's aim is for this book to serve as a quick reference during an encounter with a difficult airway problem. I put this aim to test when encountered with an adult patient with Down's syndrome and a previously known difficult intubation but easy mask ventilation. With a trainee, I tried to use this handbook to find out ways of intubation through the LMA since this patient was unsuitable for awake intubation. The index easily guided us to the relevant chapter and page numbers. We settled on a fibreoptic-assisted technique but there was no cross-referencing to the fibreoptic chapter. Various techniques were discussed but in the trainee's words `the chapter mentions what can be done but doesn't explain how I should do it'. In the end, we settled for a fibreoptic technique, one that I have practised and taught, of using an Aintree Intubation Catheter (not mentioned in the book!). The book is lightweight and easy to carry but the small text is difficult to read. The content lists chapters and subheadings with page numbers, which is useful. The index is thorough and well presented. The text is well referenced but cross-referencing is poor. The line diagrams are of good quality but some chapters have too many (retrograde and surgical techniques) and some too few (LMA). The quality of endoscopy pictures is satisfactory in the fibreoptic chapter but extremely poor in the intensive care chapter. Many illustrations have been reproduced from other books, compromising quality in the process. For someone who has read the original work, I found this reproduction very disappointing. In summary, this book presents more as a mini reference book rather than a quick practical guide. The target specialists for the book are anaesthesiologists, surgeons, emergency and critical care physicians. I don't think all anaesthetists need this book in their pockets although a copy in the departmental library would be useful. This book will best serve as a cheaper substitute to reference textbooks.


Media artist Sharon Daniel has been involved with the i-Docs community since its inception—having presented her online documentaries and works in progress at all five i-Docs symposia that have taken place since 2011. We consider her to be a central and inspirational figure within this community, for whom the concepts of polyphony and heteroglossia are key to her ongoing practice. Here we build on her own previous references to these terms, in order to explore with her in more depth how polyphony and heteroglossia play out through her work. We also ask how and why she sees this approach to "cultural democracy" as an ever-moreurgent form of activism and intervention.


E nvironmental agents that are injurious to cells trigger a spectrum of responses that can range from cell death to adaptation, repair, and proliferation. Cell death, in turn, can take the form of apoptosis—a programmed form of cell death that requires gene expression—or necrosis. A host of environmental agents have been implicated in toxic cell injury, among them free radicals (nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon derivatives), which are known to interact with cellular constituents including membrane lipids and chromagen materials. In addition to a direct toxic effect on a cell, which may result in cell death, an environmental agent may alter normal cell development and differentiation or cause an altered distribution of cell types. To achieve normal physiological processes needed for the maintenance of a healthy state, certain cell types are often required to cooperatively interact within a well-defined microenvironment of extracellular constituents, and environmental agents may disrupt cell trafficking, the homing milieu, or the cellular receptors and signaling molecules needed for appropriate intra-organ interactions. Thus, this chapter presents units that address both cell toxicity mechanisms and methods to assess changes in parameters from cell surface structure and function to DNA and chromatin modeling.


OBJECTIVE To investigate whether young IDDM patients develop central nervous dysfunction and to establish a possible relationship with various disease parameters. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Thirty-two patients, aged 13.5 ± 2 years, with disease duration of 6 ± 2.6 years and age of onset of 7.7 ± 3.2 years (group 1), and 21 patients with short-term disease, age 9.7 ± 3.5 years, duration of disease < 2 years and age of onset of 9.4 ± 3.3 years (group 2) were compared with age- and sex-matched control subjects. Exclusion criteria were clinical signs of neuropathy, retinopathy, nephropathy, or hearing impairment. Neurophysiological studies included auditory and visually evoked potentials (EPs). RESULTS Patients in group 1 revealed increased P100 latencies of visually EPs (103.4 ± 4.5 vs. 96.8 ± 3.7 ms) and interpeak latencies I-V of auditory EPs (4.16 ± 0.10 vs. 3.99 ± 0.09 ms) and had abnormal latencies (values outside 2.5 SD) in 37%. However, short-term patients (group 2) had results within normal limits compared with control subjects. In group 1, longer disease duration and younger age at onset correlated with an increase of P100 latency (P < 0.001) and IPL I-V (P < 0.001). Patients with a history of severe hypoglycemic episodes had increased latencies compared with patients without hypoglycemia (P < 0.05). Furthermore, metabolic control during the last 2 years was related to P100 latencies (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS EPs noninvasively detect subclinical central nervous system involvement in children and adolescents with IDDM. Most important risk factors are duration of disease and frequency of severe hypoglycemia.


In the north of Sweden lies the municipality of Umea and the city Umea, the later with a growing population which increases the demand for housing. In today's society, environmental questions and issues are of high concern, especially in regards of the homes that are being built. This study based on literature research and interviews, investigates whether locally active construction companies adapts to building more environmental friendly homes, mainly focusing on the possibilities of lowering the energy consumption. In order to narrow down the topic, a few specific parameters are pinpointed. The result of this study showed that even though many companies are willing to build more environmental friendly and sustainable homes, it also depends on whether the order placer of the building is willing to go that extra mile economically. Though, the results based of the investigated buildings can be considered as more environmentally adapted as compared to older buildings. When a comparison was made between apartment buildings from the 1970's and recently, there was a significant difference in the energy use and U-value. As the study performed did not include all relevant parameters regarding environmental and sustainable adaption of houses, it's uncertain to assume whether these investigated buildings were truly adapted.


The ability to avoid collisions with moving obstacles, such as commercial aircraft is critical to the safe operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other air traffic. This paper presents the design and implementation of sampling-based path planning methods for a UAV to avoid collision with commercial aircraft and other moving obstacles. In detail, the authors develop and demonstrate a method based on the closed-loop rapidly-exploring random tree algorithm and three variations of it. The variations are: 1) simplification of trajectory generation strategy; 2) utilization of intermediate waypoints; 3) collision prediction using reachable set. The methods were validated in software-in-the-loop simulations, hardware-in-the-loop simulations, and real flight experiments. It is shown that the algorithms are able to generate collision free paths in real time for the different types of UAVs among moving obstacles of different numbers, approaching angles, and speeds.


In this paper, we analyze the performance of two subspace based methods, ESPRIT, and the Toeplitz Approximation Method (TAM), for estimating the direction of arrival (DOA) of plane waves in white noise. In the case of a linear equispaced sensor array, it is shown that ESPRIT, like TAM, can be treated via a state space formulation leading to interesting insights. The state transition matrix estimated by ESPRIT is shown to be related to that obtained by TAM by a diagonal similarity transformation. The performance of these methods is also analyzed. In particular, aysmptotic results for the mean squared error in the estimates of the direction of arrival are derived for each of the above mentioned methods. Simple closed form expressions for the one source case are derived, and compared with the corresponding expressions for the Minimum-Norm method and MUSIC. Computer simulations are provided to substantiate the analysis.


This document discusses the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei and its market opportunities in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are discussed in comparison to the recent sanctions taken against the firm by the US government and the ongoing US-China trade war. The analysis first offers some background information of the US-China trade war that has been rattling the global financial markets for months. This is followed by the examination of the sanctions taken against Huawei by the US government and the reasons for them. Into this milieu, potential market opportunities for Huawei are explored within the GCC and especially its leading member-state markets such as Saudi Arabia. The observation is made that despite the US sanctions, Huawei is certainly the leading telecommunications equipment provider internationally. These attributes of the firm's business case provide it with the commercial heft necessary in order to convince the GCC and its member-states that it is a safe harbor investment for their 5G network build-out. The recommendation is made that Huawei make price concessions to the GCC and its member states in order to convince them to offer exclusive 5G vendor contracts. This exclusivity in the market would stabilize Huawei's revenues over the long-term.


In this paper, we propose Self Inference Neural Network (SINN), a simple yet efficient sentence encoder which leverages knowledge from recurrent and convolutional neural networks. SINN gathers semantic evidence in an interaction space which is subsequently fused by a shared vector gate to determine the most relevant mixture of contextual information. We evaluate the proposed method on four benchmarks among three NLP tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that our model sets a new state-of-the-art on MultiNLI, Scitail and is competitive on the remaining two datasets over all sentence encoding methods. The encoding and inference process in our model is highly interpretable. Through visualizations of the fusion component, we open the black box of our network and explore the applicability of the base encoding methods case by case.


The CCDF Policies Database Book of Tables provides tables containing key Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) policies for each state as of October 1, 2012. The tables are based on information in the CCDF Policies Database, a database tracking state child care subsidy policies over time and across the States, D.C., and the Territories. The Book summarizes a subset of the information available in the database, including information about eligibility requirements for families; application, redetermination, priority, and waiting list policies; family copayments; and provider policies and reimbursement rates.


Tourism is one of the major potential growth sectors in Sri Lanka. It contributesimmensely to the economic growth of the country. This contribution has been quitesignificant during the past four decades. Although the tourist arrivals increased rapidlyafter introducing an open economic policy in 1977, the growth of tourism in Sri Lankahas not been steady and smooth. The study is based on the tourist arrivals" data from thehighest tourist arrivals countries to Sri Lanka such as India, United Kingdom (UK),Germany, Maldives, France, Australia, Netherlands, United States of America (US),Japan and Italy during the period from January 1977 to April 2012. The tourist arrivalsseries of each country exhibits different cyclical periods and trend patterns, strongseasonality, and irregular fluctuations. The aim of the study is to find the best fitted timeseries model for describing tourist arrivals process to Sri Lanka from each country. The Winter"s Multiplicative Exponential Smoothing Method (WMESM) and Boxand Jenkins Multiplicative Seasonal Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average(SARIMA) method were applied to describe tourist arrival processes. Standard modelselection criteria were used to select the best fitted models. Most appropriate model for describing tourist arrivals processes of countries,India, UK, Germany and Australia are the WMESM on levels data while Maldives,Netherlands, USA, Japan and Italy are the WMESM on logarithmic transformed data.The SARIMA model on logarithmic transformed data is the most appropriate model onlyfor describing tourist arrival processes of France and it was ARIMA (1,1,1) (0,1,1)12.According to the scale developed by Lewis based on Mean Absolute Percentage Error(MAPE) models for Germany, Maldives Australia and USA (MAPE is less than 10%)are highly accurate whilst models for India, UK, France, Netherlands, Japan and Italy(MAPE is 10-20%) remain in a good level of accuracy. Key words: Tourist arrivals, Best fitted model, Model selection criteria, Levels ofaccuracy


Ankle-brachial index (ABI) is an important indicator of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and PAD has a negative impact on quality of life (QOL). However, the correlation between ABI and QOL is unknown among chronic hemodialysis patients. Ankle-brachial index was measured, and WHOQOL-BRIEF (TW) questionnaire was completed. The association between ABI and QOL was analyzed using linear regression. A total of 54 chronic hemodialysis patients (mean age of 56.2 ± 14.6 years) were included. Ankle-brachial index was positively associated with QOL (r = .448, P = .001). The QOL scores were 3.1 ± 2.9 and 2.6 ± 0.4 for 37 patients with an ABI more than 0.9 and 17 patients with an ABI less than 0.9 or more than 1.3 (p < .001). In linear regression, only ABI was significantly associated with QOL scores with a β of .448 (95% CI: 0.443 to 1.55, P = .001). Ankle-brachial index is positively correlated to QOL among chronic hemodialysis patients.


"Dwelling for Intervals is a morphing International Artist Residency program, based on a forest retreat, that has hosted more than 150 resident artists from around the world since it began in 2001. First known as "A Week in the Woods", it was situated in a room, in an apartment, in Montreal. Three years later, it became "This Neck of the Woods", in a cabin in a backyard in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Finally, the project became a roving para-site called "Knock on Woods" which has temporarily staked claim to land in Holland, France, Portugal, Berlin, Japan, and Canada. Dwelling for Intervals is an independent state, a sculpture, a series of collaborations, an international artist residency, a wilderness, a tree house, a traveling circus and a relative site/situation for temporary doing and undoing. It will soon also be a full colour hardcover book which documents both the sites and the on-site work of the residents." -- Publisher's website.


I begin by quoting from two valuable recent works on Horace. Professor Brink in his Horace on Poetry (1964) writes: 'The centre of the short piece lies in lines 21—34. Readers, among them critics and poets, had denied one aspect of the Odes which was surely above criticism—the striking originality of these poems. Horace's defence turns on the question of originality' (p. 180) and 'Epistle 19 is unique in that it alone among the literary satires and letters reiterates Horace's claim to be the Latin fidicen' (p. 182). And Dr. McGann in his Studies in Horace's First Book of Epistles (Collection Latomus 100: 1969): 'In Ep. 19... as in the literary satires, Horace is a practising poet or at least a very recently practising one, engaged in defending himself against hostile criticism' (p. 40) and 'As the only epistle concerned exclusively with literary matters, the nineteenth stands apart' (p. 82).


We demonstrate that quantum dots injected into two model tumors rapidly migrate to sentinel lymph nodes. PEG-coated quantum dots having terminal carboxyl, amino, or methoxyl groups all migrated from the tumor to surrounding lymph nodes similarly. Passage from the tumor through lymphatics to adjacent nodes could be visualized dynamically through the skin; at least two nodes could usually be defined. Imaging during necropsy confirmed confinement of the quantum dots to the lymphatic system and demonstrated easy tagging of sentinel lymph nodes for pathology. Examination of the sentinel nodes identified by quantum dot localization showed that at least some contained metastatic tumor foci.


Introduction: Tension-type headache is a common psychosomatic disease with physical and psychological symptoms causes impairment in different lives. As stress and emotional distress are the start-up factors in different headaches, emotion regulation can be considered as an important factor in effective control and adaptation of this disorder. The present research is trying to investigate the effect of the training of emotion regulation on the level of distress tolerance and reduction of emotion regulation difficulties on female patients with tension headache disorders.

Methods: This is a semi experimental study with pretest-posttest design with a control and experimental groups. The statistical random sampling in this research were taken in Isfahan in the year 91 including female patients effected with tension-type headaches in two groups. 30 patients were selected and randomly assign to experimental and control groups. Before treatment, the patients received questionaires regarding the difficulties of emotion regulations (DERS) and tention tolerance (DTS). Finally, post-test and follow-up activities along with evaluation and measurment of the results were implemented. The duration of the treatment for the research group was 8 sessions (one session each week) and follow-up activities were effected 30 days after post-test. The data was analyzed by spss-20 software with covariance method.

Results: Findings after analysis showed that emotion regulations led to the decrease of the level of the strict difficulties of emotion regulation and also enhancement of distress tolerance of the patients bearing headache tensions. (P<0.001)

Conclusion: Based on these findings, it can be claimed that giving the trainings regarding emotion regulations, while helping patients through giving awareness about their positive and negative emotions, especially by helping them to have access to and put forward their difficulties in due course, can reduce drastically the difficulties of emotion regulation and can enhance tension tolerance level in female patients.


Clinicians' work in hospitals is safety- and time-critical, and often stressful due to the number and complexity of patient cases they must attend to. Therefore, how clinicians gather information, identify problems and make decisions concerning patients is a crucial concern, a process that can be labelled 'achieving overview'. In the process, clinicians use various artefacts amongst which medical records are central. Decades of experience is embedded in the structure and use of paper-based records. However, the development of electronic patient records (EPR) will change both structure and use of medical records, including 'achieving overview'. We conducted an ethnographic study in a hospital ward using paper-based medical records in order to understand how clinicians achieve overview. Inspired by the approach of exnovation, we elicit the use of paper-based records in order to inform the design of EPRs. We propose five axes which span out the process of achieving overview and describe implications for design of EPRs.


Synaptic function and integrity in the nervous system requires the expression of synaptic adhesion molecules (SAMs) linking pre- and post-synaptic sites. Studies indicate that SAMs participate in the formation, maturation, function and plasticity of synaptic connections, and thus are essential for trans-cellular signaling. Alterations in SAMs lead to susceptibility to neurological diseases including the autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, and addiction. Neurexins compose a family of highly polymorphic type I transmembrane proteins that are expressed on the pre-synaptic membrane at excitatory glutamatergic and inhibitory GABAergic synapses. Beta-neurexins have a single folding domain in the extracellular region, while alpha-neurexins have a larger extracellular region containing nine independently folding domains and multiple protein interaction sites. They both function as adhesion molecules through a trans- synaptic complex with post-synaptic neuroligins. Synaptogenesis and synapse function requires the precise assembly of pre- and post-synaptic protein complexes. The work described herein uses structural and biophysical techniques to discern the molecular properties of the neurexin and neuroligin proteins that mediate their complex formation. The first aim included solving the X- ray crystal structure of the beta-neurexin:neuroligin complex, which showed a stable neuroligin dimer and two monomeric beta-neurexin molecules bound on either side of the dimer. This structure revealed the molecular adhesion properties of the complex, including a Ca²⁺-coordination site. Alpha- and beta-neurexins have the same binding domain for neuroligins, yet they are likely to act as functionally distinct molecules in the synapse. To consider their distinctive adhesion properties, as well as how the multi-domain alpha-neurexins assemble in the limited space of a synapse, the second and third aims were directed at solving the 3D structure of alpha-neurexin. First, small angle X-ray scattering and single-particle negative-stain electron microscopy provided information on the overall domain organization and flexibility of the protein. This work led to the high-resolution crystal structure of a major portion of the alpha-neurexin extracellular region. The crystal structure reveals molecular details that suggest a multi-functional mechanism of the alpha-neurexin extracellular region in the synapse. Overall, this work contributes to the understanding of how synapses assemble through a complex network of protein-protein interactions and provides structural templates for the development of molecular tools to study function and potentially therapeutic applications


Machine reading comprehension has gained attention from both industry and academia. It is a very challenging task that involves various domains such as language comprehension, knowledge inference, summarization, etc. Previous studies mainly focus on reading comprehension on short paragraphs, and these approaches fail to perform well on the documents. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical match attention model to instruct the machine to extract answers from a specific short span of passages for the long document reading comprehension (LDRC) task. The model takes advantages from hierarchical-LSTM to learn the paragraph-level representation, and implements the match mechanism (i.e., quantifying the relationship between two contexts) to find the most appropriate paragraph that includes the hint of answers. Then the task can be decoupled into reading comprehension task for short paragraph, such that the answer can be produced. Experiments on the modified SQuAD dataset show that our proposed model outperforms existing reading comprehension models by at least 20% regarding exact match (EM), F1 and the proportion of identified paragraphs which are exactly the short paragraphs where the original answers locate.


The default mode network is active during restful wakefulness and suppressed during goal-driven behavior. We hypothesize that inhibitory interference with spontaneous ongoing, that is, not task-driven, activity in the angular gyrus (AG), one of the core regions of the default mode network, will enhance the dominant idling EEG alpha rhythms observed in the resting state. Fifteen right-handed healthy adult volunteers underwent to this study. Compared with sham stimulation, magnetic stimulation (1 Hz for 1 min) over both left and right AG, but not over FEF or intraparietal sulcus, core regions of the dorsal attention network, enhanced the dominant alpha power density (8–10 Hz) in occipitoparietal cortex. Furthermore, right AG-rTMS enhanced intrahemispheric alpha coherence (8–10 Hz). These results suggest that AG plays a causal role in the modulation of dominant low-frequency alpha rhythms in the resting-state condition.


Approximately 15-20% of ovarian cancer patients receiving platinum-based chemotherapy are primary platinum-resistant. Identification of these patients and transfer to other more effective therapy could reduce the morbidity of ovarian cancer. ERCC1 is a DNA repair gene which can complex with XPF to repair cisplatin-induced DNA damage and cause chemotherapy resistance. In this study, we found a novel ERCC1 transcript initiated upstream of the normal transcription initiation site. The expression of this larger ERCC1 transcript dramatically increased following cisplatin treatment in ovarian cancer cells and was regulated by the MAPK pathway. This phenomenon conferred enhanced cisplatin resistance on ovarian cancer cells, and was confirmed with chemosensitive and chemoresistant patients' samples. Our data suggested that larger ERCC1 transcript levels correlated with the outcome of platinum-based chemotherapy.


Recent exploration activity in the San Juan basin of northwestern New Mexico has resulted in the discovery of new oil fields in the Entrada Sandstone of Jurassic age. The major trapping element is provided by topographic relief in excess of 100 ft (30 m) on top of the Entrada. Preliminary analyses indicate that the topographic relief was created by preserved eolian sand dunes which were formed in a topographic basin which then became the sight of a large lake in which limestones and anhydrites of the Todilto Formation were deposited over the Entrada sands. The organic-rich limestones of the Todilto provide the most likely source for the oil found in the underlying Entrada. Analysis of stratigraphy, oil shows, source-rock potential, and porosity distribution led to the selection of an initial exploration area located along the southeastern flank of the San Juan basin. Seismic model studies, confirmed by an experimental seismic program, indicated that the topographic relief on top of the Entrada could be mapped seismically. An extensive seismic and drilling program has resulted in the discovery of six new oil pools. In addition to the topographic relief on top of the Entrada, other factors which control the oil accumulations include local structural conditions, hydrodynamics, source-rock and oil-migration history, and porosity-permeability relations in the Entrada. The knowledge gained from this exploration program should aid in future exploration for Entrada oil fields in the San Juan basin, and encourage exploration for similar stratigraphic traps in other basins.


Fluorinated carbohydrates have been employed as probes for fundamental studies of protein-carbohydrate interactions, but also in the development of mechanism-based enzyme inhibitors. There is a continuing demand for novel fluorinated carbohydrate probes. Whereas most examples so far involved monodeoxyfluorinated sugars, multiply deoxyfluorinated sugars have gained much interest. Here we report the synthesis and characterisation of novel vicinal dideoxy-difluorinated d-galactoses with fluorination at the 3,4-positions, and at the 2,3-positions, the latter in both the pyranose and furanose forms. This includes a successful pyranose-into-furanose isomerisation protocol.


: Ambergris, which is an internal secretion of the sperm blue whale, was extracted with 96% ethanol. The saponified and unsapondied portions have been studied in detail. The number of fractions and components of the unsaponified matter as separated by column and thin layer Chromatography confirm the presence of ambrein (triterpenoid) as well as same other steroid. The saponified portion is reported to contain stearic, oleic, linoleic, archidic and betenic acids. More than one compound have been found in each fraction.


The problem of the sense-production accompanies us throughout history and intensifies with each new technological paradigm. When we think of webdocumentaries (or webdocs), the universe of sense-production involves some typical concepts of digital writing that deserve to be rethought, such as interactivity, linearity, multilinearity and the very concept of narrative. From the analysis of 109 webdocumentaries made over two decades (2002-2020), which remain online, it was possible to verify an overlap between the formatting of the main webdocs production software and the standardization of the narrative structure as a reflection of the argorithmic configuration of each one of them. Flash and HTML (dominant during the first decade), Korsakow, HTML5, Klynt, RacontR, acted, each in its own way, according to the results obtained, decisively in the organization of contents, navigability, usability, hypertextuality and interactivity.


During anaerobic digestion of manure in CSTR biogas reactors, less than half of the organic material is degraded to methane and carbon dioxide. The remaining organic material, mainly lignocellulose, is only slowly degraded in anaerobic environments and leaves the reactor almost unattached. Liquefaction is a transformation process whereby solid biomass are converted into liquid products under high pressure and high temperature. Anaerobic degradation of liquefied manure (LM) was examined in both batch and continuous cultures. The main objective of the work was to determine the optimal parameters for anaerobic degradation of LM. The continuous experiments also examined the biodegradation of specific chemical components of the LM using GC/MS analysis. The batch experiments shows that liquefied manure (LM) is degraded most efficiently when low concentrations (1-5% LM) are added to manure, whereas a significant inhibition occurs when higher concentrations (> 25% LM) are added. The results from the CSTR experiments confirm the results from the batch experiments. The GC/MS analysis shows that LM is composed of a broad range of organic compounds, of which many are toxic. The results shows further a large potential for anaerobic degradation of some toxic compounds and, thereby, gives further knowledge of the potential of combining liquefaction and anaerobic digestion.