Adorno develops critiques in parallel of the phenomenologies of G. W. F. Hegel and of Edmund Husserl. While respecting their differences, he rehearses conjoined objections to their accounts of philosophy, and of progress, of history, and of nature. Critical of Hegel's idealist dialectics, and of Husserl's transcendental idealism, Adorno also in his readings of their texts reveals a textual materiality of their philosophical enquiries, which provides material evidence in support of his critique. This essay seeks to reveal the dynamic of this process, and show certain parallels with results supplied in the phenomenological enquiries of Michel Henry, and in the deconstructions of Jacques Derrida. If an epoch may still be captured in the concept, then the negative dialectical conceptuality developed by Adorno must capture a condition common to that epoch, and, in part, shared by other such thinkers.


In this paper, the secrecy performance of finite-sized cooperative cyclic prefixed single carrier systems with multiple eavesdroppers and unreliable wireless backhaul connections across multiple transmitters is investigated. For nonidentical frequency-selective fading channels between the relay and destination nodes, secrecy performance metrics including the secrecy outage probability, ergodic secrecy rate, and probability of nonzero achievable secrecy rate are derived. Furthermore, the existence of performance limits on the secrecy outage probability and probability of non-zero achievable secrecy rate are verified for various backhaul scenarios. These limits are found to be exclusively determined by the backhaul reliability. For imperfect backhaul connections, it is found that the diversity gain promised by cooperative cyclic prefixed single-carrier systems cannot be achieved in the conventional asymptotic high signal-to-noise ratio region. Link-level simulations are conducted to verify the derived impact of backhaul reliability on the secrecy performance.


It is shown that lactate is a noncompetitive inhibitor of muscle creative kinase Ki 16 mmol with respect to MgATP. When inhibitors are applied in combination (lactate with glucose-6-phosphate or inorganic phosphate, glucose-6-phosphate with Pi or all three inhibitors together) a competition arises. When applied together the combined action is weaker than the sum of inhibition of three effectors in the case of separate application. The competition is revealed in model experiments with metabolite concentrations peculiar to resting and acting muscle. The supposition is made that formation of lactate, glucose-6-phosphate and inorganic phosphate in the muscle tissue can induce partial, but not complete inhibition of the creatine kinase activity.


This study explores the ways in which Dickens's published work and his thousands of letters intersect, to shape and promote particular myths of the reading experience, as well as redefining the status of the writer.

It shows that the boundaries between private and public writing are subject to constant disruption and readjustment, as recipients of letters are asked to see themselves as privileged readers of coded text or to appropriate novels as personal letters to themselves. Imaginative hierarchies are both questioned and ultimately reinforced, as prefaces and letters function to create a mythical reader who is placed in imaginative communion with the writer of the text. But the written word itself becomes increasingly unstable, through its association in the later novels with evasion, fraud and even murder.


Physics
There are several different approaches to quantum information processing currently under development, including (but not exhaustively) superconducting circuits, nitrogen vacancy defects in diamond, and semiconductor quantum dots. Each one relies on the basic building block of a qubit, a two-level quantum system, on which the information can be stored and manipulated. In the semiconductor quantum dot approach, manipulating the spin of a single electron is promising because it has all the requirements: being fast, controllable and stable. A downside, however, has been the issue of scalability. Any useful quantum processor will require a system of many qubits, but getting quantum dots to talk to each other has presented a challenge. Addressing a preliminary point of this issue, Schaibley et al. show that the light (a single photon) emitted from the excited state of a charged quantum dot is entangled with the spin of the electron on the dot. The authors argue that by making the single photons emitted from other distinct quantum dots interact, it may be possible to then entangle the spins on these quantum dots and thus realize a scalable architecture.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 , 167401 (2013).


In the field of urban climate policy, heat production and demand are key sectors for achieving a sustainable city. Heat production has to shift from fossil to renewable energies, and the heat demand of most buildings has to be reduced significantly via building retrofits. However, analyses of heat transition still lack its contextualization within entangled urban politico-economic processes and materialities and require critical socio-theoretical examination. Asking about the embeddedness of heat transition within social relations and its implications for social justice issues, this article discusses the challenges and opportunities of heat transition, taking Berlin as an example. It uses an urban political ecology perspective to analyze the materialities of Berlin's heating-housing nexus, its politico-economic context, implications for relations of inequality and power, and its contested strategies. The empirical analysis identifies major disputes about the future trajectory of heat production and about the distribution of retrofit costs. Using our conceptual approach, we discuss these empirical findings against the idea of a more just heat transition. For this purpose, we discuss three policy proposals regarding cost distribution, urban heat planning, and remunicipalization of heat utilities. We argue that this conceptual approach provides huge benefits for debates around heat transition and, more generally, energy justice and just transitions.


For several years there has been documentation (Vaughan  et al.,  2000) of the inverse correlation between the gravity of depression and the predisposition to adopt an attitude that can psychologically assess the connections between feelings, thoughts and actions. Such an attitude allows access to and thought about the origins and the meanings of subjective experiences. This predisposition, known in psychological terms as psychological mindedness,  is found to be lacking in the depressed patient, making him less able to get involved in a process of analysing and understanding his own psychological dynamics (Roose & Cabaniss, 2006). In the psychoanalytical context, the use of pharmacotherapy to facilitate the recuperation of  psychological mindedness  at the beginning of psychotherapy or during analysis of a depressed patient has also been recommended for some time. (Roose & Stern, 1995; Cabaniss, 2001). In a recent monograph (Busch, Rudden, & Shapiro, 2007) the authors reaffirmed and argued the importance of treating people suffering from medium to serious depression disorders using psychodynamic psychotherapy combined with a pharmacological treatment.  In this perspective, the elements underlying the process of this choice should include the patient's level of suffering and the degree to which the depression symptoms interfere with his daily functioning and with the psychotherapy process; if the symptoms do not lessen after two or three months of psychotherapy, the pharmacological therapy should be considered at every stage of the decisive process in the psychotherapeutic relationship. Psychodynamic therapy has the task of exploring both the decision about whether to use the drug, and the conflicts that may derive. The introduction of the drug, in this context, at times seems essential not only to moderate the symptoms of depression but also to enable the psychotherapy to procede, facilitating the detailed exploration of the patient's conflicts. According to Busch, Rudden, & Shapiro (2007), usually the combination of psychodynamic psychotherapy with a pharmacotherapy envisages the involvement of a psychotherapist coordinated with a psychiatrist, giving rise to a so-called "triangular treatment" (Beitman, Chiles, & Carlin, 1984; Busch & Gould, 1993; Riba & Balon, 2001), the points of which are made up of the patient, the psychotherapist and the psychiatrist. The "triangular treatment" may encounter serious difficulties, may fail or be interrupted for various reasons: the breakdown of the relationships, the fallout of conflicts on the interventions during the treatment, professional jealousy between the two figures involved. To try to avoid such an outcome it is therefore of fundamental importance for the two professionals involved to keep up constant productive communication, especially when difficulties arise during the treatment. For the sake of completeness, it should be remembered that Busch, Rudden, & Shapiro (2007) also indicate the possibility that the combination of psychodynamic psychotherapy with the use of drugs may involve only the figure of the physician-therapist. The clinical case on which this article focuses is in fact a concrete example of this very eventuality.  The results of psychotherapies in depressive disorders as well as the combination of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy have been examined by in-depth quantitative studies. For an preliminary survey, see for instance Rush & Thase (2001) and de Maat et al. (2008). In Italy Fava (2001) and his group (Tomba & Fava, 2006; Ruini, Tomba & Fava, 2007; Tomba & Fava, 2007; Tomba & Fava, 2009) have repeatedly examined these questions with empirical studies. We will present a single case, aware of the quantitative limitations but also of the fact that the in-depth study of a single case can reveal problem points and questions that can be further developed, play a heuristic role (Nasio, 2002) and find possible later validations or confutations also on the level of quantitative empirical research.


The paper aimed to analyze the development of organic agriculture in the world, the EU and Romania, based on the statistical data for the period 2006-2010 and the index, share and comparison methods. Organic agriculture covers 34.04 Million ha at world level, of which 26.99 % in Europe and 32.08 % in Oceania. The largest areas in organic agriculture are in Australia, Argentina, the USA, Brazil, Spain, China and Italy. At world level, there are 1.6 million organic producers, over 63 % operating in Africa and Asia, especially in India, Uganda and Mexico. In 2010, organic food sales accounted for Euro 44.5 Billions of which 50 % in Europe. In the same year, the organic agriculture area increased by 20 % in the EU-27 and reached 9.01 million ha and continues to grow, representing 5.10 % of agricultural land. The larges areas in organic agriculture are in Spain, Italy, Germany and France. In the EU-27 there are 219,290 organic producers of which 40 % in Italy, Spain, Germany and Austria. In 2010, Romania's area in organic agriculture was 300,205 ha, 2 times higher than in 2006. A number of 10,253 organic operators were registered in 2010, representing 4.67 %, of the EU number. The main organic products are cereals, vegetables, wine, honey, dairy products, representing a chance for Romania's export on the EU market.


The aim of the article is to establish when Estonian children begin to understand the Estonian morphological evidential (e.g., ole- vat " supposedly, it is") as an indirect evidential. Estonian is one of the few languages in Europe with a grammatical evidential. However, the Estonian evidential is an atypical evidential. It has developed from a partitive case form of a nonfinite verb (the partitive evidential) and, therefore, gives rise to epistemic modal readings as well. Another relevant factor that was taken into account in this study was the interdependence of linguistic and social cognitive development in the acquisition of evidentials. Of the age groups that were studied—four-, six-, and nine-year-olds—only nine-year-olds had already reached the social cognitive development level necessary for understanding indirectness: the realization that a statement is mediated. Therefore, the acquisition of the Estonian morphological evidential marker is a valuable source of evidence in many respects. The experiments conducted with children separated purely indirectness-related semantics from epistemic modal semantics. At the age of four, only half of the children interpreted the evidential as an indication of indirectness. This age group may have understood the evidential form as an epistemic modal or not understood it at all. At the age of six, sixty-six percent of the children understood the form as a vehicle of expressing indirect evidence. Nine-year-olds were already confident in interpreting the partitive evidential as an indirect evidential, since 95% of them att ributed the information that they were presented with as indirect and not deriving from the speaker herself as the original source of the conveyed information. Keywords first language acquisition, Estonian, experimental methods


Continuous-depth neural networks, such as Neural ODEs, have refashioned the understanding of residual neural networks in terms of non-linear vector-valued optimal control problems. The common solution is to use the adjoint sensitivity method to replicate a forward-backward pass optimisation problem. We propose a new approach which explicates the network's `depth' as a fundamental variable, thus reducing the problem to a system of forward-facing initial value problems. This new method is based on the principle of `Invariant Imbedding' for which we prove a general solution, applicable to all non-linear, vector-valued optimal control problems with both running and terminal loss. Our new architectures provide a tangible tool for inspecting the theoretical--and to a great extent unexplained--properties of network depth. They also constitute a resource of discrete implementations of Neural ODEs comparable to classes of imbedded residual neural networks. Through a series of experiments, we show the competitive performance of the proposed architectures for supervised learning and time series prediction.


Abstract Late Ordovician (c. 445 Ma) glacial sandstones form important gas reservoirs in the Illizi Basin, SW Algeria. These reservoirs have a high degree of depositional and diagenetic complexity, such that understanding and predicting reservoir quality (RQ) presents a major challenge to their economic development. Porosity is typically 1–10%, but reaches up to 15% and permeability is typically <10−15 m2 (<1 mD), but locally reaches >10−13 m2 (>100 mD). The key questions addressed herein concern the development and distribution of this RQ variability, specifically why has good RQ been locally preserved? Primary depositional fabric exerts a strong control on RQ. Muddy sandstones are either highly compacted or pervasively cemented by quartz and microporous illite, and have very poor RQ. Only fine- to medium-grained, moderately well sorted, clean sandstones can contain good RQ, but texturally and mineralogically similar sandstones span a wide range of porosity and permeability. This range is primarily driven by the degree of quartz cementation, with incomplete cementation resulting in the best RQ. Quartz overgrowths in incompletely cemented clean sandstones are patchy and non-luminescent in scanning electron microscopy with cathodoluminescence (SEM-CL), possibly indicating slow growth rates. There is tentative evidence to link incomplete quartz cementation with oil charging of the reservoir. An alternative or additional explanation of RQ preservation may be related to limited silica supply in the centres of the thickest, stacked, clean sandstones, where the better RQ tends to reside. The results of this study imply that sustained high-energy depositional processes, coupled with an early oil charge, are prerequisites for retaining the best RQ. This has important implications for the exploration and development of Late Ordovician glacial sandstones in the Illizi Basin, and potentially similar plays elsewhere.


Sustainable energy systems of the future will need more than efficient, clean, and low-cost energy sources. They will also need efficient price signals that motivate sustainable energy consumption behaviors and a tight real-time alignment of energy demand with supply from renewable and traditional sources. The Power Trading Agent Competition (Power TAC) is a rich, competitive, open-source simulation platform for future retail power markets built on real-world data and state-of-the-art customer models. Its purpose is to help researchers understand the dynamics of customer and retailer decision-making as well as the robustness of proposed market designs. Power TAC invites researchers to develop autonomous electricity broker agents and to pit them against best-in-class strategies in global competitions, the first of which will be held at AAAI 2013. Power TAC competitions provide compelling, actionable information for policy makers and industry leaders. We describe the competition scenario, demonstrate the realism of the Power TAC platform, and analyze key characteristics of successful brokers in one of our 2012 pilot competitions between seven research groups from five different countries.


Summary Introduction: Blood brain barrier and multidrug resistance phenomenon are subjects of many investigations. Mainly, because of their functions in protecting the central nervous system (CNS) by blocking the delivery of toxic substances to the brain. This special function has some disadvantages, like drug delivery to the brain in neurodegenerative diseases Objective: The aim of this study was to examine how natural and synthetic substances affect the expression levels of genes (Mdr1a, Mdr1b, Mrp1, Mrp2, Oatp1a4, Oatp1a5 and Oatp1c1) that encode transporters in the blood-brain barrier. Methods: cDNA was synthesized from total RNA isolated from rat hippocampus. The expression level of genes was determined using real-time PCR (RT-PCR) method. Results: Our findings showed that verapamil, as a synthetic substance, caused the greatest reduction of mRNA level of genes studied. The standardized extract of Curcuma longa reduced the expression level for Mrp1 and Mrp2, whereas the increase of mRNA level was observed for Mdr1b, Oatp1a5 and Oatp1c1. Conclusions: These results suggests that herbal extracts may play an important role in overcoming the blood brain barrier during pharmacotherapy.


When integrating an industrial robot to its working cell, an integrator often builds up the scene including the machines surrounding the robot in a virtual environment and performs the programming online. By introducing a precise and correct 3D model of the surroundings of the robot, the integrator must no longer go through the process of building up the environment. Using a low cost Kinect sensor mounted on an industrial robot, a series of 3D scans of the working environmentcan be acquired. By registering the 3D scans, the working environment can be mapped and the integrator can take advantage of the mapping to better adapt the robot to the environment and make the integration more flexible. The resulting 3D model can then be used as a basis for collision free path planning, better recognition and localization of static objects in the scene as workbenches and non-movable machines. This thesis investigates how well the Kinect sensor is suited for building a 3D model of the industrial robot's surroundings, that could be used for industrial robot programming and integration. The point clouds obtained using Kinect were registered together by an initial coarse registration followed by a fine registration. By doing a hand-eye calibration, the pose of Kinect relative to the robot base was obtained, and a transformation for the initial registration could be acquired from the robot itself. The fine registration was done with help of the Iterative Closest Point, which was applied to a set of keypoints extracted from the pair of point clouds to be registered by using the SIFT3D keypoint detector. As the depth data of Kinect is noisy, the data was smoothed out using the Fast Bilateral Filter. The evaluation of this mapping was done both visually and by a comparison to ground-truth data gathered with the industrial robot itself. The results showed that the error of the models obtained varied between negative and positive values, reaching values from approximately -0.5 cm to approximately 1.9 cm. It was concluded that the resulting models could be used for integrating an industrial robot and is suited when a rougher representation of the surroundings is needed where mm precision is not required.


Abstract This study assesses the impact of COVID‐19 on household consumption poverty. To predict changes in income and the associated effects on poverty, we rely on existing estimated macroeconomic impacts. We assume two main impact channels: direct income/wage and employment losses. Our simulations suggest that consumption decreased by 7.1%–14.4% and that poverty increased by 4.3–9.9 percentage points in 2020. This points to a reversal of the positive poverty reduction trend observed in previous years. Poverty most certainly increased in the pre‐COVID period due to other shocks, so Mozambique finds itself in a deepening struggle against poverty.


How to organize and present search results plays a critical role in the utility of search engines. Due to the unprecedented scale of the Web and diversity of search results, the common strategy of ranked lists has become increasingly inadequate, and clustering has been considered as a promising alternative. Clustering divides a long list of disparate search results into a few topic-coherent clusters, allowing the user to quickly locate relevant results by topic navigation. While many clustering algorithms have been proposed that innovate on the automatic clustering procedure, we introduce ClusteringWiki, the first prototype and framework for personalized clustering that allows direct user editing of the clustering results. Through a Wiki interface, the user can edit and annotate the membership, structure and labels of clusters for a personalized presentation. In addition, the edits and annotations can be shared among users as a mass-collaborative way of improving search result organization and search engine utility.


The structure of the demersal fish assemblages of the Gulf of Salamanca, Colombian Caribbean Sea, was studied based on 4 trawl surveys carried out in December 1995, April and August 1996, and February 1997. Multivariate analysis revealed the presence of 2 distinct assemblages, one belonging to the continental shelf (150 m depth) and the other belonging to the upper slope (>50 m depth). The continental shelf assen~blage showed significantly more biomass per tow but not more individuals or species It is typified by specles of interest for the artisanal fishery, like Lutjanus analis and Calamuspenna. Lutjanus synagris, however, also of interest for the fishery, typlfies the upper slope assemblage. No temporal change was detected in the assemblage structure, at least for the samphng dates in this study, but many species in the assemblages were scarce and rare, Indicating high spatial and temporal patchiness. The assemblages found do not fully adjust to existing zonation schemes or assemblages defined in neighboring areas, probably due to the effect of the spatial scale of the studies and the width of the shelf in the Gulf of Salamanca.


To the Editor.— Muehrcke's lines 1 are characterized by two transverse white nail bed bands parallel to the lunula associated with nephrotic syndrome. In our experience, these bands are uncommon. Their cause is unknown. We present a case of unilateral Muehrcke's lines that developed after trauma. Unilateral Muehrcke's lines have not been previously described, and their existence in this case points to edema as the likely cause of white nail bed lines. We further propose that edema could effect this change by inducing microscopic separation of the normally tightly adherent nail from its bed. Report of a Case.— An otherwise healthy 30-year-old man was injured in a fall from a steel structure. He suffered fractures of the left humerus, avulsion of much of the left forearm requiring arterial grafting, and a crush injury resulting in fasciotomy. The wounds healed within one month, but much edema and decreased range of motion


Multi-agent systems (MAS) differ from non-agent based systems because agents are intended to be autonomous units of intelligent functionality. As a consequence, agent-based software engineering methods must complement standard design activities and representations with models of the agent society. Some methods coming from artificial intelligence community address social knowledge and relationships but have high-level design abstractions as their end points. This paper describes PASSI a step-by-step requirement-to-code method for developing multiagent software that integrates design models and philosophies from both object-oriented software engineering and MAS using UML notation. The method has evolved through several stages; it has been previously applied in the synthesis of embedded robotics software and we are currently exploring its applications to the design of various agent-based information systems.


Even the most routine engineering design projects generate large volumes of formal and informal information by virtue of an ever-increasing variety of tools and systems. During the design process, the efficient creation and transformation of this information is critical to the success of the project. However, at the end of the design process there is a requirement to prepare formal project documentation necessary to support manufacturers and customers, and conform to legislation. This includes elements such as CAD models, performance and manufacturing data. In the process of preparing this documentation, only a small proportion of the information generated can be captured - if only because of limited resources. It is therefore unclear as to whether potentially valuable design information could be omitted from this formal record and eventually lost. In order to explore this issue, a comparative study of documentation from a design project has been undertaken. The study analyses the difference in information types and content of a complete set of formal and informal documentation. The results are then discussed with respect to the creation of more complete design records.


The evolvability of a software artifact is its capacity for producing heritable or reusable variants; the inverse quality is the artifact's inertia or resistance to evolutionary change. Evolvability in software systems may arise from engineering and/or self-organising processes. We describe our 'conditional growth' simulation model of software evolution and show how it can be used to investigate evolvability from a self-organisation perspective. The model is derived from the Bak-Sneppen family of 'self-organised criticality' simulations. It shows good qualitative agreement with Lehman's 'laws of software evolution' and reproduces phenomena that have been observed empirically. The model suggests interesting predictions about the dynamics of evolvability and implies that much of the observed variability in software evolution can be accounted for by comparatively simple self-organising processes.


Opposite changes occur in the intensity of UV-fluorescence (UVF) in irradiated (0.1 Gy and 5.0 Gy) HeLa cells. The radiometric study has demonstrated that there is a correlation between the number of tryptophan-containing proteins and UVF intensity in nonirradiated and irradiated (5.0 Gy) cells during culture growth. Such a correlation was absent in cells exposed to 0.1 Gy radiation. Low radiation doses (0.1 Gy) have maximum action on cytoplasm membrane fluorescence. Low-level radiation changes the intensity of the ANS probe fluorescence connected with cell membranes, and the intensity of the cell protein UVF. High radiation doses increase and low doses decrease the probe fluorescence.


CD22 is a plasma membrane protein that inhibits B cell signaling. Chen et al. report that CD22 inhibited calcium signaling through a mechanism that could be inhibited by blocking the activity of the plasma membrane calcium pump (PMCA) in two B cell lines that had been engineered to express CD22. Activation of the cells with antibodies to immunoglobulin M (IgM) produced an increase in calcium efflux in CD22-expressing cells compared with that in CD22-deficient cells. The presence of PMCAs in B cells was confirmed by immunoblotting, and the abundance of PMCA was unchanged by the presence or absence of CD22. In activated B cells, PMCA and CD22 coimmunoprecipitated. This interaction, and negative regulation of B cell signaling, was blocked in cells expressing a mutant of CD22 lacking the phosphorylatable tyrosine residues or in cells deficient in PMCA4. The negative regulation of B cell signaling by CD22 also required the phosphatase SHIP-1, because cells deficient in SHIP-1 did not exhibit increased calcium efflux or decreased calcium signaling by CD22. Thus, CD22 appears to recruit SHIP-1 and interact with PMCA to limit calcium signaling by enhancing calcium efflux through the plasma membrane. J. Chen, P. A. McClean, B. G. Neel, G. Okunade, G. E. Shull, H. H. Wortis, CD22 attenuates calcium signaling by potentiating plasma membrane calcium-ATPase activity. Nat. Immunol. 5, 651-657 (2004). [Online Journal]


Abstract
In this paper we appraise the ways in which use of closed-system proprietary product architectures versus open-system modular product architectures is likely to influence the dynamics and trajectory of new product market formation. We compare the evolutions of new markets in China for gas-powered two-wheeled vehicles (G2WVs) based (initially) on closed-system proprietary architectures and for electric-powered two-wheeled vehicles (E2WVs) based on open-system modular architectures. We draw on this comparison to suggest ways in which the use of the two different kinds of architectures as the basis for new kinds of products may result in very different patterns and speeds of new market formation. We then suggest some key implications of the different dynamics of market formation associated with open-system modular architectures for both the competence-based strategic management (CBSM) of firms and for technology and economic development policies of governments.

Specifically, we suggest how the use of open-system modular product architectures as the basis for new products is likely to result in dynamics of new market formation that call for new approaches to the strategic management of innovation and product creation. We also suggest technology and economic development policies favoring use of open-system modular architectures may stimulate new market formation and related economic development by providing platforms for accelerating technology development and dissemination, facilitating the formation of an industrial base of assemblers and component suppliers, assisting new firms in building customer relationships, enabling more geographically diffused economic development within countries, and facilitating development of export markets. We also suggest directions for further research into the potential for open-system modular product architectures to enable bottom-of-the-pyramid innovation processes, frugal engineering in developing economies, and development of low-cost product variations more generally.


The correct operation and control of an HVDC system greatly depends on the quality of voltage and current measurements. The feasibility and benefits of high-speed measurements (process bus) are analysed from three perspectives: voltage and current sensor technologies, data communication structure, and various HVDC applications. It is found that the recommended sampling frequency of 96 kHz by IEC 61896-9 is adequate for most HVDC protection and valve controls. However, for fault location applications, a higher sampling frequency beyond 200 kHz is preferred. In this paper, a high-speed process bus technique is presented. An HVDC control system testbed is developed using the high-speed process bus technique, featuring 250 kHz Sampled Value (SV) communication, which is more than double the highest sampling rate from the standard. An in-service HVDC control and protection scheme associated with an offshore to onshore wind connection, rated at 900 MW, is investigated on the testbed with a Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS). HVDC protection and control applications are studied. The results indicate that the high sampling rate allows some protections to act faster, ensuring that expensive primary equipment can be better protected leading to a reduction in size, providing further cost and installation benefits.


Artificial Intelligence techniques powered by deep neural nets have achieved much success in several application domains, most significantly and notably in the Computer Vision applications and Natural Language Processing tasks. Surpassing human-level performance propelled the research in the applications where different modalities amongst language, vision, sensory, text play an important role in accurate predictions and identification. Several multimodal fusion methods employing deep learning models are proposed in the literature. Despite their outstanding performance, the complex, opaque and black-box nature of the deep neural nets limits their social acceptance and usability. This has given rise to the quest for model interpretability and explainability, more so in the complex tasks involving multimodal AI methods. This paper extensively reviews the present literature to present a comprehensive survey and commentary on the explainability in multimodal deep neural nets, especially for the vision and language tasks. Several topics on multimodal AI and its applications for generic domains have been covered in this paper, including the significance, datasets, fundamental building blocks of the methods and techniques, challenges, applications, and future trends in this domain.


The Fourth Industrial Revolution(or The Industry 4.0) is "a revolutionary change due to artificial intelligence in science, technology, economic activity, social structure, and political form as well as human daily life."
In this paper, we focused on two changes in the automobile industry that will emerge due to the 4th Industrial Revolution. The changes are widespread of smart factories and emerging self-driving cars. The potential of automobile companies that can lead the era of such changes will be ① financial affordability, ② R&D capability, ③ modularization and parts sharing, and ④ national policies. Hyundai Motor Company is compared with Toyota Motor Company in the four aspects.
First, the financial strength is compared with the amount of retained earnings of the company, compared with $ 576 million for Hyundai Motor, Toyota has $ 1,574 million. Second, R&D capabilities were measured through R&D achievements. Comparing the number of patents related to self-driving technologies (autonomous driving, driver assistance, telematics) between January 2010 and October 2015, Toyota has overwhelmingly more patents than Hyundai. The number of patents of Toyota is about twice that of Hyundai Motors, excluding the Toyota affiliated Denso. US companies tend to acquire technology through mergers and acquisitions of companies rather than developing their own technologies, and Japanese and Korean companies tend to develop their own technologies. And the most innovative company to develop self-driving cars in German is the parts company, Bosch. It means German auto makers solve the R&D in supply chain.
In addition, Toyota has already shifted from development of advanced driver assistance systems to autonomous driving functions. Hyundai Motor is, however, still in the stage of developing advanced driver assistance system technologies and tends to focus on connectivity technologies (telematics). And the initiative to support the Fourth Industry Revolution at the national level of Korea does not seem to be better than Japan.
Taken together above mentioned information, Toyota's potential for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is estimated to be two to three times higher than Hyundai Motor's.


The effects of tail-vein insulin injection (2 U/kg) on the regulation of protein-serine kinases in hindlimb skeletal muscle were investigated in hyperinsulinemic hypertensive fructose-fed (FF) animals that had been fasted overnight. Basal protein kinase B (PKB) activity was elevated about twofold in FF rats and was not further stimulated by insulin. Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), which lies upstream of PKB, was increased ∼3.5-fold within 2-5 min by insulin in control rats. Basal and insulin-activated PI3K activities were further enhanced up to 2-fold and 1.3-fold, respectively, in FF rats. The 70-kDa S6 kinase (S6K) was stimulated about twofold by insulin in control rats. Both basal and insulin-stimulated S6K activity was further enhanced up to 1.5-fold and 3.5-fold, respectively, in FF rats. In control rats, insulin caused a 40-50% reduction of the phosphotransferase activity of the β-isoform of glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK-3β), which is a PKB target in vitro. Basal GSK-3β activity was decreased by ∼40% in FF rats and remained unchanged after insulin treatment. In summary, 1) the PI3K → PKB → S6K pathway was upregulated under basal conditions, and 2) insulin stimulation of PI3K and S6K activities was enhanced, but both PKB and GSK-3 were refractory to the effects of insulin in FF rats.


Abstract:
 Molluscs constitute the second largest phylum in terms of the number of described species and possess a wide array of characteristics and adaptations for living in marine, terrestrial, and freshwater habitats. They are morphologically diverse and appear in the fossil record as far back as the early Cambrian (∼560 mybp). Despite their high diversity and long evolutionary history, molluscs are often underused as models for the study of general aspects of evolutionary biology. Freshwater snails in the family Ampullariidae have a global tropical and subtropical distribution and high diversity with more than 150 species in nine currently recognized genera, making them an ideal group to address questions of historical biogeography and some of the underlying mechanisms of speciation. They exhibit a wide range of morphological, behavioral, and physiological adaptations that have probably played a role in the processes of diversification. Here we review some of the salient aspects of ampullariid evolution and present some early results from ongoing research in order to illustrate the excellent opportunity that this group provides as a system for addressing numerous questions in evolutionary biology, particularly with regard to the generation of biodiversity and its distribution around the globe. Specifically, we suggest that ampullariids have great potential to inform (1) biogeography, both on a global scale and a smaller intra-continental scale, (2) speciation and the generation of biodiversity, through analysis of trophic relations and habitat partitioning, and addressing issues such as Rapoport's Rule and the latitudinal biodiversity gradient, and (3) the evolution of physiological and behavioral adaptations. Also, a number of species in the family have become highly successful invasives, providing unintentional experiments that may offer insights into rapid evolutionary changes that often accompany introductions, as well as illuminating invasion biology in general.


In this paper, we propose a corpus-based lip-sync algorithm for natural face animation. Audio-visual (AV) corpus was constructed from the video-recorded announcer's facial shot, speaking the given texts selected from newspapers. To obtain lip parameters, we attached 19 markers on the speaker's face, and we extracted the marker positions by the color filtering followed by the center-of-gravity methods. Also, the spoken utterances were labeled with HTK and such prosodic information as duration, pitch and intensity was extracted as parameters. By combining the audio information with the lip parameters, we constructed audio-visual corpus. Based on this AV corpus, we propose a concatenating method of AV units, which is similar to corpus-based Text-tospeech. For an AV unit search, we used a CVC-syllable unit as a basic synthetic unit. There are two procedures to get lip parameters for given texts and speech. First, top-N candidates for necessary CVC units are selected by two proposed distance measures. The one measure is a phonetic environment distance and the other is a prosodic distance. Second, the best path is estimated from the top-N AV unit sequence and Viterbi search algorithm is used for it. From the computer simulation results, we found that the information not only about duration but also about pitch and intensity is useful to enhance the lip-sync performance. And the reconstructed lip parameters are almost equal to the original parameters.


The Factored Policy-Gradient planner (FPG) (Buffet & Aberdeen 2006) was a successful competitor in the probabilistic track of the 2006 International Planning Competition (IPC). FPG is innovative because it scales to large planning domains through the use of Reinforcement Learning. It essentially performs a stochastic local search in policy space. FPG's weakness is potentially long learning times, as it initially acts randomly and progressively improves its policy each time the goal is reached. This paper shows how to use an external teacher to guide FPG's exploration. While any teacher can be used, we concentrate on the actions suggested by FF's heuristic (Hoffmann 2001), as FF-replan has proved efficient for probabilistic re-planning. To achieve this, FPG must learn its own policy while following another. We thus extend FPG to off-policy learning using importance sampling (Glynn & Iglehart 1989; Peshkin & Shelton 2002). The resulting algorithm is presented and evaluated on IPC benchmarks.


Too many health and social care services are failing to meet people's complex needs. In this paper, 'complex needs' is presented as a framework to help understand multiple interlocking needs that span health and social issues. The concept encompasses mental health problems, combined with substance misuse and/or disability, including learning disability, as well as social exclusion. The paper outlines a strategy for promoting the well‐being and inclusion of people with complex needs. At the heart of this strategy is a new kind of delivery model: connected care centres, a type of bespoke social care service, a model which has been endorsed by the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU). In addition, the paper describes how new responses from existing services can promote better support for people with complex needs, such as a reformed commissioning process and a new 'navigational' role for the social care worker.


In this paper, flexural wave propagation, attenuation and reflection through finite number of rigid elastic combined meta-beam (RECM) elements sandwiched between two Euler Bernoulli beams has been studied, implementing the spectral element, inverse Fourier transform and transfer matrix method. Spectral element has been formulated for the unit representative cell of RECM employing the rigid-body dynamics. Governing dimensionless parameters are identified. Further, the sensitivity analysis has been carried out to comprehend the influence of non-dimensional parameters such as mass ratio, length ratio, and rotary inertia ratio on the attenuation profile. Rotary inertia of rigid body produces Local resonance(LR) band, which may abridge the gap between the two Bragg Scattering(BS) bands and results in an ultra-wide stop-band for the specific combination of governing non-dimensional parameters. 164% normalized attenuation band is possible to obtain in RECM. Natural frequencies for the finite RECM have also been evaluated from the global spectral element matrix and observed that some natural frequencies lies in the attenuation band. Therefore, the level of attenuation near that natural frequencies is significantly less and cannot be identified from the dispersion diagram of the infinite RECM.


Nowadays, the human immunodeficiency virus infection (HIV) is a chronic disease. In the frequent clinical situations with fever, lymph nodes and loss weight it is necessary to determine their etiology, for establishing a specific treatment. Gastrointestinal opportunistic infections or gastric lymphomatous or sarcomatous process, which can accumulate Ga67, may be present in the patient with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. We report 2 cases with gastric uptake in which endoscopy and biopsy was obtained. In the first one, with previous treatment with omeprazol and almalgate for gastroesophagic reflux, endoscopy and biopsy were normal and in the second patient an Helicobacter pylori infection was diagnosed. We think that gastric uptake of Ga67 in HIV patients, must indicate to the clinician to rule out associated pathologies.


The ActorSpace model is based on message passing, but allows the user to specify a more abstract destination of messages. This decouples individual actors from each other and makes ActorSpace well suited for expressing open distributed systems, which may run on different architectures. ActorSpace supports heterogeneous computing by using the message passing facilities as an encapsulation of the individual actor's state. ActorSpace supports an open system by using a pattern as a specification of the receiving group of actors. By using the ActorSpace communication primitives, executing actors will not be aware that other actors may be executing on different architectures. The result of this is that actors can join and later leave an ongoing computation or make use of an available service without a specific connection to a set of computing actors or a server.<<ETX>>


This article is an attempt to review 50 years of high-energy cosmic particle physics at the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is written by an outsider whose scientific career, to a large part, was formed by collaborating with INR scientists in the late 1980s and 1990s. The review covers the fields of cosmic-ray, gamma-ray and high-energy neutrino physics. The main focus will be on INR's large infrastructures in the Baksan Valley and at Lake Baikal. Research at these infrastructures is flanked by participation in top experiments at different places around the world, recently the Telescope Array in the USA and the LHAASO detector in China.


The development of high performance non-platinum electrocatalysts is highly desirable for the commercialization of fuel cells. Herein, we present a facile and effective strategy for the synthesis of ultrafine PdCo bimetallic nanoparticles (NPs, diameter ≈ 4.1 nm) encapsulated in N-doped porous carbon nanocapsules (PdCo@NPNCs) by a one-pot PdCl42− and Co2+-mediated polymerization of dopamine on SiO2 nanospheres, followed by carbonization and chemical etching. The N-doped porous carbon shell that is formed in situ from a dopamine coating could effectively prevent the coalescence of NPs during the carbonization process. Also the carbon shell protects the NPs from detachment and agglomeration as well as dissolution during fuel cell operation. Benefiting from the synergistic effect from their unique structures and chemical compositions, the optimized PdCo@NPNCs exhibit better electrocatalytic activity and enhanced durability for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR) in alkaline solution than those of commercial Pt/C (20 wt%) and Pd/C (10 wt%) catalysts, even though the content of PdCo is as low as 3.68 wt%. Furthermore, the synthetic method described here can be generalized to other bimetallic NPs confined in NPNCs that can be used in a broad range of applications such as catalysis, environmental protection, drug delivery, chemical and biological sensing, and so forth.


Background: The background of this research encompasses contemporary cultural policy issues and their factors of influence, with a special focus on cultural participation processes. The sphere of culture provides the fundamental base for reading and changing the paradigmatic paths through the contents and acts of formal and informal stakeholders. Culture is deeply interlinked with other departments of the entire economy by connections with feedback loops. The impacts of culture on the socio-economic and natural environment, as the "fourth pillar" of sustainable development, are recognized on the international level by theory, expert groups, and practice. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to bring about a deeper understanding of participatory processes and their importance for strategic priority areas of cultural policy development. Study design/methodology/approach: Our study design included institutional analysis, starting from the regulatory framework that reflects cultural policy and its strategic goals, by involving previous relevant theoretical research including the ICET model. Another objective of the paper is to answer a range of questions. What are participation processes' main characteristics and challenges in culture and cultural policy development? Is there a relationship between these challenges? How to achieve desirable cultural and institutional integrative transformations in order to accomplish the strategic priority areas of cultural policy? We bring the conclusions based on theoretic and empirical overview of new empirical research findings based on the survey conducted in 2022 for the need of EPICA research project Findings/conclusions: The findings of this research lead us to recognition, conceptualization and understanding of the existing participatory processes in culture, towards inspiring the future modelling of more integrative strategic and systemic solutions to reflect desirable and harmonized development. Limitations/future research: The limitations of research reflect future endeavour to contribute to reforming the field of culture (by formal and informal means) through more robust horizontal integration with other departments, to achieve sustainable and coherent effects through linking strategies, new forms of participation, decentralization, arm's length principle, and degrowth policy.


Abstract Hypothesis: Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) find that the death of patients in their care is stressful. Population: Random sample of certified EMTs in one state (Levels I–IV). Methods: A blinded, self-administered survey was sent to a random sample of 2,500 EMTs. Demographic data obtained were: level of training; hours worked each month; population of area served; age; gender; number of deaths per year; training for coping prehospital deaths; and availability of protocols and on-line medical advice for out-of-hospital deaths. A five-point, Likert scale was used to rate the frequency of perceived stress experienced by EMTs in specific situations and the routine practice for notification of survivors. Univariable analysis was performed using Spearman's Rank correlation, Kruskal-Wallis test, and Mann-Whitney U-test. Multivariable correlations were performed using forward and backward step-wise logistic regression analysis. A significance level of 0.05 was used throughout. Results: There were 654 respondents with a mean age of 35.5±8.3 yr; 83% were men. Their highest level of training was: 4% EMT-I, 43% EMT-II, 18% EMT-III, 33% EMT-IV. They saw an average of 9.6 deaths/year and spent an average of 20±17 minutes with survivors. 62 % found treatment of a patient that was dying or died in their care was commonly a stressful experience. Factors that made notification of the family about the prehospital death emotionally difficult included: fewer hours worked/month; working in a smaller community; lower level of EMT training; female gender; and fewer deaths seen during the previous year. The same factors were associated with general emotional difficulty in treatment of a patient who died during prehospital care. Online [direct] medical direction by physicians was common (73%), but did not lessen the difficulty of notification. It did reduce the emotional difficulty for specific clinical situations. Written protocols for not attempting resuscitation were common (66%), but only 44% had protocols for termination of resuscitation. Resuscitation of the clearly dead for the benefit of the family (10%) or for the EMT (5%) was practiced infrequently. Most (67%) respondents had some formal training in dealing with death and the dying patient. Such training did not correlate with less difficulty in notification of survivors or in coping with the deaths of patients in their care. Conclusion: EMTs perceive they have emotional difficulty when prehospital deaths occur and survivors must be notified. Less experience and a lower level of EMT training correlate with more difficulty in coping with patient death. Protocols and on-line [direct] medical control can provide support for the EMT in coping with out-of-hospital deaths. Most notification of survivors is handled by EMTs with formal training to cope with patients that are dying or who die during prehospital care.


We consider a cross-layer design approach for CDMA mobile wireless networks supporting heterogeneous compressed video. By considering the resource requirements as the aggregate of the products of source coding rates and the energy per information bit to noise ratio, we propose a cross-layer optimization approach for video delivery over CDMA cellular networks. In particular, we describe a joint source coding-power control (JSCPC) strategy used in conjunction with joint source-channel coding (JSCC) and employing the class of rate-compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) codes to provide forward error correction (FEC) coding. We show that this cross-layer approach can simultaneously maximize the quality of the delivered video while minimizing the total resource consumption, thereby providing higher spectral efficiency and improved network utilization. We demonstrate the efficacy of this approach using the ITU-T H.263+ video coder.


Proper mathematical description of multiphase fluid displacement in porous media requires specification of appropriate constitutive relations, including the relationship between capillary pressure and saturation. This pressure-saturation relationship may be measured at the laboratory core scale, but extension to larger scales is difficult in heterogeneous materials. To date, stochastic and volume averaging methods have been used to estimate the "effective" pressure-saturation relation in heterogeneous media. A third method, based on network percolation models, may be developed and used to define effective relationships. This last method is appealing in that pore scale physics are directly incorporated into the model, assumptions are clear, and numerical tests are most similar to those performed in the laboratory. Numerical results based on network models indicate that heterogeneities have a significant impact on the effective relationship. In addition, these results indicate that application of any sort of linear averaging of the individual small-scale relationships to define an effective relationship may provide incorrect results.


Summary form only given. In the paper, the Tellegen's theorem and adjoint networks are used to derive a new, local voltage-stability index. The new approach makes it possible to determine the Thevenin's parameters in a different way than adaptive curve-fitting techniques, from two consecutive phasor measurements. The new index was rigorously tested on different test systems. The results were obtained on a static two-bus test system and on the dynamic Belgian- French 32-bus test system that includes full dynamic models of all power-system components crucial to the voltage instability analysis. The results show advantages of the proposed index: it is simple, computationally very fast, and easy to implement in the wide-area monitoring and control center or locally in a numerical relay.


Since 1 930, maize (Zea mays L.) yields in the United States have increased more than four-fold. Previous studies examining maize cultivars grown during that period have documented changes in yield, leaf angle, tassel size, drought tolerance, and insect resistance, but none have examined changes in vegetative phase change or resistance to common rust (Puccinia sorghi Schwein.). Vegetative phase change has been shown to affect both disease and insect resistance, and common rust can reduce yields in maize especially east of the Mississippi River. Thirty-six widely used northern Corn Belt cultivars spanning the years of pre-1930 to 2006 were evaluated for phase change traits and rust resistance. Cultivars were divided into early and late maturity groups from different eras and planted at two locations with two planting dates per location for 2 yr. Timing of vegetative phase change has not changed linearly over the eras examined. There was, however, a significant linear increase in rust resistance over that time. In the early maturity group, percentage of leaf area infected by rust was found to decrease at a rate of 0.1% yr -1 . Whole-plant rust resistance in the late maturity group was found to increase at a rate of 0.05% yr -1 .


A new approach to improve the electrical and thermal contacts between multi-walled carbon nanotubes and metallic electrodes was developed by using spatially localized laser heating coupled with a micro Raman equipment. After the deposition by dielectrophoresis, the nanotubes were heated in ambient atmosphere by a focused laser beam in order to improve the electrical contacts of the nanostructures with different electrodes (W, Ti and Au) and also to excite the Raman signal of the nanotubes. The changes in the vibrational frequencies of the Raman bands of the nanotubes provides a real time feedback of the treatment conditions allowing to estimate the local temperature, which is used for adjusting the parameters of treatment. Laser treatment tests were performed in a single step (single exposition of the sample to laser) or gradually (successive expositions of the sample to laser, with gradual increase of the used laser power density) and better results were obtained for the gradual treatment tests. Laser treatment of contacts carried out after the calibration of the treatment parameters, showed a reduction of up to three orders of magnitude in the electrical resistance of the devices. The main advantage of this method, when compared with traditional and rapid thermal annealing, is that the thermal treatment is localized in a small region, thus allowing the processing of circuits composed of different materials, whereby each process can be individually controlled.


Objectives: To assess patients with different types of mutations of the β myosin heavy chain (β MHC) gene causing hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and to determine the prognosis of patients according to the affected functional domain of β MHC. Design and setting: Cohort study of subjects referred to an HCM clinic at an academic hospital. Patients: 70 probands from the HCM clinic were screened for mutations of the β MHC gene and 148 family members of the genotype positive probands were further assessed. The control group for the genetic studies consisted of 106 healthy subjects. Main outcome measures: Direct DNA sequencing was used to screen 70 probands for mutations of the β MHC gene. Family members underwent genotypic and detailed clinical, ECG, and echocardiographic assessments. The survival of genotype positive subjects was evaluated according to the type of functional domain affected by the missense mutation and according to phenotypic characteristics. Results: A mutation of the β MHC gene was detected in 15 of 70 probands (21%). Of 148 family members studied in these 15 families, 74 were identified with a β MHC defect. Eleven mutations were detected, including four novel mutations: Ala196Thr, Pro211Leu, Val404Leu, and Arg870Cys. Median survival was 66 years (95% confidence interval (CI) 64 to 77 years) in all affected subjects. There was a significant difference in survival between subjects according to the affected functional domain (p = 0.02). Significant independent predictors of decreased survival were the non-conservative (that is, associated with a change in the amino acid charge) missense mutations that affected the actin binding site (hazard ratio 4.4, 95% CI 1.6 to 11.8; p = 0.003) and those that affected the rod portion of β MHC (hazard ratio 4.8, 95% CI 1.2 to 19.4; p = 0.03). No phenotypic characteristics were associated with decreased survival or cardiovascular morbidity. Conclusions: The type of β MHC functional domain affected by the missense mutation is predictive of overall prognosis in HCM.


Abstract A 1.5-dimensional time-dependent transport analysis has been carried out to investigate steady-state operation scenarios with a central current hole by off-axis current drive schemes consistent with a high bootstrap current fraction for the JT-60SC large superconducting tokamak. A steady-state operation scenario with HH y2 = 1.4 and β N = 3.7 has been obtained at Ip = 1.5 MA, Bt = 2 T, and q 95 = 5, where noninductive currents are developed during the discharge to form a current hole with beam-driven currents by tangential off-axis beams in combination with bootstrap currents by additional on-axis perpendicular beams. The bootstrap fraction increases up to ~75% of the plasma current, and the current hole region is enlarged up to ~30% of the minor radius at 35 s from the discharge initiation. The current hole is confirmed to be sustained afterward for a long duration of 60 s. The present transport simulation shows that heating equipment designed for JT-60SC is capable of forming and sustaining the current hole only by using off-axis beam-driven currents and bootstrap currents. The stability analysis shows that the beta limit with the conducting wall can be ~β N = 4.5, which is substantially above the no-wall ideal magnetohydrodynamic limit.


Pretraining a model to learn transferable video-text representation for retrieval has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. Previous dominant works mainly adopt two separate encoders for efficient retrieval, but ignore local associations between videos and texts. Another line of research uses a joint encoder to interact video with texts, but results in low efficiency since each text-video pair needs to be fed into the model. In this work, we enable fine-grained video-text interactions while maintaining high efficiency for retrieval via a novel pretext task, dubbed as Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ), where a parametric module BridgeFormer is trained to answer the "questions" constructed by the text features via resorting to the video features. Specifically, we exploit the rich semantics of text (i.e., nouns and verbs) to build questions, with which the video encoder can be trained to capture more regional content and temporal dynamics. In the form of questions and answers, the semantic associations between local video-text features can be properly established. BridgeFormer is able to be removed for downstream retrieval, rendering an efficient and flexible model with only two encoders. Our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods on the popular text-to-video retrieval task in five datasets with different experimental setups (i.e., zero-shot andfine-tune), including HowTo100M (one million videos). We further conduct zero-shot action recognition, which can be cast as video-to-text retrieval, and our approach also significantly surpasses its counterparts. As an additional benefit, our method achieves competitive results with much shorter pre-training videos on single-modality downstream tasks, e.g., action recognition with linear evaluation.


An infrared temperature-jump (T-jump) study by Huang et al. (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A., 2002, 99, 2788-2793) showed that the conformational relaxation kinetics of an alanine-based α-helical peptide depend not only on the final temperature (Tf) but also on the initial temperature (Ti) when Tf is fixed. Their finding indicates that the folding free energy landscape of this peptide is non-two-state like, allowing for the population of conformational ensembles with different helical lengths and relaxation times in the temperature range of the experiment. Because α-helix folding involves two fundamental events, nucleation and propagation, the results of Huang et al. thus present a unique opportunity to determine their rate constants - a long-sought goal in the study of the helix-coil transition dynamics. Herein, we capitalize on this notion and develop a coarse-grained kinetic model to globally fit the thermal unfolding curve and T-jump kinetic traces of this peptide. Using this strategy, we are able to explicitly determine the microscopic rate constants of the kinetic steps encountered in the nucleation and propagation processes. Our results reveal that the time taken to form one α-helical turn (i.e., an α-helical segment with one helical hydrogen bond) is about 315 ns, whereas the time taken to elongate this nucleus by one residue (or backbone unit) is 5.9 ns, depending on the position of the residue.


The paper presents novel structures of Nano gas sensor arrays by using ZnO and doped with aluminum . ZnO Nanomaterial are successfully prepared using sol-gel technique . These include, similar and dissimilar structures. All used sensors are composed of zinc oxide doped with aluminum at different concentrations for dissimilar structures, and with the same concentration for similar structures. The first array (double sensor array) based on doping with percentages of 5% and 1%, while the second array (quadrature sensor array) uses 5% doping only. The resulting Nano array characterization is carried out using the scanning electron microscopy (SEM). This characterization determines the structure of the Nano element (dot, rod or wire). This is followed by the X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) characterization which indicates the purity and intensity of the Nano element within the structure. The electrical characteristic of the sensor is determined by measuring the two terminal sensor's resistance at different concentrations of the gas, for different temperature ranges. More than order of magnitude change in the resistance is found to occur in response more than 100% change in temperature for different doping concentration, which indicates that arraying results in a more than unity array factor. This is a good measure for pollution in industrial applications.


Nursing and Midwifery organizations have been building capacity to utilize virtual electronic communications systems to support collaborative projects since 2005 when the Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery became a reality. The Nursing and Midwifery Community of Practice for Making Pregnancy Safer has grown from 55 members in 18 countries at the end of the first year to 382 members from 79 countries by the end of 2009. The Spanish-language community created in 2007 has 187 members from 32 countries. We will present background information on developing communities of practice, strategies for building capacity and lessons learned over the past four years. We will present our findings from a simultaneous discussion held in Spanish and English on traditional midwifery and active management of the third stage of labor-applying the evidence, discussing the challenges and rewards of a bilingual discussion. Additionally, findings from an on-line survey to elicit feedback on the discussions and recommendations for future direction will be discussed. https://doi.org/10.34105/j.kmel.2010.02.010


The effect of retroreflecting the pump in discrete Raman amplifiers is investigated. Simulations are used to estimate the increase in gain and efficiency and decrease in multipath interference due to double Rayleigh backscatter for typical module configurations. The effect of reflecting only a portion of the pump spectrum is considered. Experimental measurements confirm the expected increase in gain. Finally, the effect of pump-signal relative intensity noise transfer is investigated experimentally.


Based on a large number of researches, in according with the actual situation in geography and geology environment in Henan Province, this paper summed up the evaluation methods of soil erosion for Henan. Based on RUSLE mode, first of all, soil erosion model needed to get rainfall erosivity factor, soil erodibility factor, terrain factor, vegetation cover and soil and water conservation measures factor. Henan soil erosion intensity distribution was obtained according to soil erosion prediction formula In the Raster Calculator module of ARCGIS. Then to be Henan soil erosion strength grade distribution according to sl190-96 classification standard. Results show that low-level is the main soil erosion level. High-level, ultra-high-level and acute also happen, but their percentages are relative low. The high-level, ultra-high-level and acute soil erosion distribute mainly in southland region. The soil erosion situation would become clear, and provide a scientific reference for the government decision-making and provides a theoretical basis for future research.


The effects of several variables on the column bioleaching of copper sulphide ore have been investigated. The copper ore contained chalcopyrite as the main sulfide minerals and bornite and chalcocite as the minor minerals. The experiment was carried out using bench-scale column leach reactors designed in Key Lab of Biometallurgy of Ministry of Education, which were inoculated with the pure mesophile bacteria (Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans) and thermophile bacteria (Sulfobacillus), respectively, and the mixed bacteria which contain both iron- and sulfur-oxidizing bacteria. The results show that the mixed cultures were more efficient than the pure cultures alone and the maximum copper recovery 53.64% was achieved using the mixed cultures after 85 days. The leaching rate of chalcopyrite tended to increase with the increased dissolved ferric iron concentration. The effect of particle size on the rate of the copper leaching was also investigated, and it was shown that the copper bioleaching rate decreases as the amount of fines increase, which limits the permeability, thus decreases leaching rate. Jarosite and elemental sulphur formed in the column were characterized by the X-ray and EDS.


Sugaring and teaching are not projects for the impatient, Ms. Ohanian reminds us. Even in these days of instant everything, you can't hurry maple syrup - or third-graders or seventh-graders. Essayist Will Cuppy once noted that penguins are dignified, they get their names in the newspaper, and only an expert can tell a live penguin from a stuffed one. I feel the same way about plans for revamping the schools. Curriculum reform must be at the heart of any substantive change, but too many people who talk the talk of reform can't tell a live curriculum from a stuffed one. And, as every teacher knows, it is easier to move a graveyard than to change a district's existing curriculum. For people who plan the school curriculum, God is in charge of the SAT, and Santa Claus presides over Title I. Now, with the chancellor of the New York City Public Schools joining the crowd that declares every third-grader will read on grade level and every 12th-grader will take calculus, schools need a direct line to the fairy godmother, too. Because I'm the kind of teacher who focuses on what I'm doing this minute with this kid, when curriculum reform stalks the corridors I try to duck, but more often than not I weep. My husband asks how anybody can possibly cry over curriculum, but he's never tried to obey the mandate of teaching Silas Marner to ninth-graders. Nor has he ever tried to convince a primary teacher not to teach the comma in apposition. Saying she had "no time for supplementary reading" when I offered to lend her my collection of rhyming books, my colleague insisted that, to "maintain standards" and "get students ready" for the rigors of third grade (well, every third grade but mine), she had to teach commas in all their exotica. Being no greenhorn, I knew that in the schoolhouse mythical standards invariably win out over sense or sensibility. Nonetheless, I somehow became involved in this comma confrontation. My colleague stood safe and secure behind her teacher's manual. I ended up in tears. My husband did get involved in a curricular dispute that cuts to the heart of the university territorialism that undermines every attempt to bring about significant reform in the schools. At the time, he was teaching physics at a liberal arts college. When the English Department suggested revamping freshman English, he volunteered to teach a new course in which students would fulfill the composition requirement in the department of their major instead of in the English Department. My husband and I prepared a great reading list for science majors. "Oh, no," protested the English Department. "We still want everybody to read Plato and Gulliver's Travels. We just want you to teach them." Why was I surprised? I guess I thought professors might be collegial toward their colleagues, even though, when dealing with teachers, they typically make all the choices from the safety of the Cave, where there are few teachers and no children. Then, the choices made, the mandates passed, the certifications issued, they'll leave us to teach the kids. I once spent several years being retrained as part of a big National Endowment for the Humanities grant, administered by a prestigious university. I'm a dutiful, even good, student; I do all the reading and write all the papers. And so I was considered an asset to the course. The only problem was I taught the wrong kind of kids. The good professors did not regard seventh- and eighth-grade rotten readers as worthy of being included in a sophisticated NEH project. And so, caught up in the esoteric intellectualism of the endeavor, early every morning, before our school began, I went next door to the high school and taught humanities to a ninth-grade honors class. I loved that honors class, but I loved my rotten readers, too, and after a while I was troubled by the exclusionary zone imposed by the university. If a humanities approach to teaching literature was good for honors students, why wasn't it good for rotten readers? …


Abstract More than two hundred years after its publication, David Hume's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is still widely regarded as either a footnote to the more philosophically interesting third book of the Treatise, or an abbreviated, more stylish, version of that earlier work. These standard interpretations are rather difficult to square with Hume's own assessment of the second Enquiry. Are we to think that Hume called the EPM "incomparably the best" of all his writings only because he preferred that later style of exposition? Or worse, should we take his preference for the second Enquiry as a sign of aging literary vanity? Does Hume's stated preference for the EPM in no way speak to its philosophical content?


PURPOSE
To test the remineralisation potential of a single application of self-assembling peptides or acidic fluoride solution using quantitative light-induced fluorescence (QLF) in vitro.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Bovine enamel disks were prepared, and white spot lesions were created on one half of the disk with an acidic buffer solution. After demineralisation, disks were allocated into three groups of 11 specimens each. Group A served as a control group and received no treatment. Group B had a single application of fluoride, and group C was treated once with self-assembling peptides. All disks were embedded in a plastic mold (diameter 15 mm, height 9 mm) with an a-silicone, and remineralisation was initiated using a pH-cycling protocol for five days. Four experimental regions on each disk were measured prior to the start of the study (T0), after demineralisation (T1) and after the remineralisation process (T2) using QLF.

RESULTS
After demineralisation, all areas showed a distinct loss of fluorescence, with no statistically significant difference between the groups (ΔF from -69.3 to -10.2). After remineralisation, samples of group B (treated with fluoride) showed a statistically significant fluorescence increase (ΔF from T1 to T2 15.2 ± 7.3) indicating remineralisation, whereas the samples of control group A and group C (treated with self-assembling peptides) showed no significant changes in ΔF of 1.1 ± 1.9 and 2.5 ± 1.9, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
Application of self-assembling peptides on demineralised bovine enamel did not lead to increased fluorescence using QLF, indicating either lack of remineralisation or irregular crystals. Increased fluorescence using QLF indicated mineral gain following a single application of a highly concentrated fluoride.


MOTIVATION
Competitive gene set analysis intends to assess whether a specific set of genes is more associated with a trait than the remaining genes. However, the statistical models assumed to date to underly these methods do not enable a clear cut formulation of the competitive null hypothesis. This is a major handicap to the interpretation of results obtained from a gene set analysis.

RESULTS
This work presents a hierarchical statistical model based on the notion of dependence measures, which overcomes this problem. The two levels of the model naturally reflect the modular structure of many gene set analysis methods. We apply the model to show that the popular GSEA method, which recently has been claimed to test the self-contained null hypothesis, actually tests the competitive null if the weight parameter is zero. However, for this result to hold strictly, the choice of the dependence measures underlying GSEA and the estimators used for it is crucial.

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Background : The evidence-based medicine movement has extended its influence to other fields. In the area of quality improvement, the evidence-based approach stimulated the diffusion of practice guidelines as a relevant policy tool. Concurrently guidelines have become the object of a large body of research, including systematic reviews. Objective : To explore to what extent systematic reviews on guideline implementation strategies support health policy decisions in this area. Methods : The use of systematic reviews in terms of influencing decisions concerning quality of care will be examined by focusing, in particular on two dimensions – guidelines as policy tools and guidelines as an object of research - and finally to what extent these two dimensions match. Results/Discussion : We highlight three aspects of mismatching between research and policy: the characteristics of guidelines, the relationship between guideline development and implementation and the type of research question addressed. These aspects represent conceptual obstacles that further challenge the adoption of an evidence based approach and limit the use of systematic reviews in supporting policy decisions in the area of quality improvement.


Der Bandscheibenvorfall (Nucleus Pulposus und DiscusHermie). By Felix Jaeger. 1951. Pp. 150, 66 illus. Walther de Gruyter, Berlin. (DM 16.80; 30s.) In this monograph, the author, a neurosurgeon, intends to bring the prolapse of intervertebral disks to the notice of surgeons and practitioners in Germany. His own experience appears to be very limited-only statistics taken from the predominantly American and British literature are given-and it is often not easy to discern whether he describes his own or quoted material and experience. The book takes the form of a collection of lectures, beginning with a chapter on the pathology and physiology of the disk, followed by discussions of the diagnosis, indications for, and technique of the operation, and the results as shown in the work of others. He admits that German surgeons lag some years, behind American, British, and French operators, and of necessity confines himself on most points to cautious consent to or doubt of the opinions of these authors. On one point he tends to be more radical than most. He considers a true traumatic rupture of the annulus fibrosus to be an extreme rarity and believes that degeneration has to precede most, if not all, cases of prolapse. To the British reader the book will appear naive and about 10 years out of date. That German research into this sector of " rheumatism unmasked " should have been content with pathology-where Schmorl and Junghanns provided an ample basis-without advancing into surgery and therapy is the more surprising as a German surgeon, Fedor Krause, actually removed a prolapsed disk in 1909, only to misinterpret it as a chondroma. The list of references once more shows how completely Germany, before and during the recent war, was shut off from the main stream of medical advance in the western world. L. MICHAELIS.


The early history of Van Diemen's Land has suffered from the perception that it was
merely an outpost of New South Wales. While this may have been true in an
administrative sense, there is an assumption that the lives of those in early Van
Diemen's Land paralleled those of the inhabitants of early Port Jackson and that
studies of that colony can be assumed to apply to Hobart Town. Most historians
writing about the early settlements have lumped disparate groups together or have
concentrated on · noteworthy individuals, or on those who arrived on a particular
ship. 1 While much has been gained from these studies, less has been written on the
detailed experience of the inhabitants as a community.
The concept that the Van Diemen's Land convicts comprised the worst of the
secondary offenders is an attitude that has been difficult to overcome. Historians
have written about the early settlement and tended to gloss over the next decades
until the 1820s, seeing the Bigge Report as the major catalyst in bringing major
adaptations to the economy. In 1852 West wrote of the early years:
The first annals of the settlement offer few events worthy of record.
The transactions of a community, which in 1810 did not comprehend
more than thirteen hundred and twenty one persons, - the greater part
subject to penal control - could not, unassociated with the present,
detain attention for a moment.
It is only recently that some historians have started to pay more attention to
individuals and their contributions to the development of Van Diemen' s Land.
The decision to transplant a segment of British society into another new setting was
one fraught with problems. This period of Australian settlement fell within the time
covered by the Napoleonic wars, and immediately following the French and Industrial
revolutions, all of which influenced the decisions made in the establishment and
expansion of Britain's Australian colonial possessions. Many of the problems faced
were similar to those that had been faced by Port Jackson earlier. Even in times of
great need there appears to have been little, if any, attempt to utilize native plants as
food except in the direst necessity, although kangaroo and swan were rapidly utilized
in a move that quickly impacted upon the Aboriginal inhabitants. Later self-styled
'agricultural experts' added to the illusion of a ramshackle and haphazard settlement
which depended upon slovenly and outmoded farming practices.
In order to consider whether the criticisms leveled against the early settlers were
justified, this thesis makes a detailed study of the Clarence Plains and Cambridge
areas of Van Diemen's Land during the period 1810 - 1820. This period covers the
time from three months after the first land grants were made in the area through to the
eve of the publication of the Bigge report, which changed Government policy on land
grants. The land grantees in this area ranged from small emancipist farmers who were
granted 30 acre blocks, through marines and free settlers, to large landowner
businessmen and civil administrators who controlled land of up to several thousand
acres spread across several districts. Only the grants made up to December 1820
have been included in the study, although there were people living and working land
in the district who did not receive their grants until a later date. This investigation
covers the use that grantees made of the land, and their wider economic and social
relations.
As much of the work on early Australian history categorises people into distinct
groups of free settler, ex-military, emancipist and colonial born, the settlers have been
examined in these groups in order to discover if there was an overwhelming advantage
given to any group. This is particularly important as there is a presumption within
the existing literature that the ex-military and free settlers had a distinct advantage
over the emancipist and colonial born segments of society. In examining the
relationships between the different groups, and the reasons why grants may have
been sold or given up, the work aims to show that a variety of factors contributed to
colonial failure other than the oft decried laziness or lack of ability.
In order to explore these issues this thesis has made extensive use of the existing land
grants and muster lists, which cover the study area. In the course of this research
several problems were encountered. The major one has been the scarcity of evidence
particularly in the period up until 1817. Many of the documents that do remain are
government dispatches reproduced in the Historical Records of Australia series.
These rarely mention small landholders by name. Records of land sales, differing land
practice and evidence of other occupations is also scarce.
In order to fill the gap, an extensive examination was made of the Hobart Town
Gazette and the few remaining copies of the Van Diemen 's Land Gazette and General
Advertiser and The Derwent Star and Van Diemen 's Land Intelligencer for any
mention of the settlers from the Clarence Plains and Cambridge area. A detailed
analysis of the Register of Judgements in Civil Cases, 1817-1821 has been undertaken
to discover the level of indebtedness within the community. It has also been
necessary to study records of births, deaths and marriages in order to find the
relationships and family ties amongst the settlers.


High pedagogical quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is related to developmental outcomes in young children. This review summarizes findings from (quasi)-experimental studies that evaluated in-service training effects for ECEC professionals on external quality ratings and child development. The aggregation of findings at teacher level (including 36 studies with 2,891 teachers) revealed a medium in-service training effect on process quality (effect size [ES] = 0.68, SE = 0.07, p < .001). Furthermore, a subset of nine studies (including 486 teachers and 4,504 children) that provided data on both quality ratings and child development were analyzed, and they showed a small effect at child level (ES = 0.14; SE = 0.02, p < .001) and a medium effect at the corresponding classroom level (ES = 0.45, SE = 0.11, p < .001). Variance in effect sizes at child level was significantly related to in-service effects on quality ratings (53% explained variance). The results show that quality improvement is a key mechanism to accelerate the development of young children.


We conducted a retrospective review of nosocomial outbreak investigations conducted by the Hospital Infections Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from January 1991 through March 1994. Selected outbreaks have demonstrated the utility of molecular methods such as plasmid analysis, plasmid restriction endonuclease analysis, ribotyping, restriction fragment polymorphism, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, and polymerase chain reaction in confirming the clonality of the outbreak and in confirming the source of the outbreak implicated in the epidemiologic investigation. These data show that molecular typing of isolates is particularly useful when combined with epidemiologic investigations of nosocomial outbreaks.


The 2020 Solarwinds attack was a tipping point that caused a heightened awareness about the security of the software supply chain and in particular the large amount of trust placed in build systems. Reproducible Builds (R-Bs) provide a strong foundation to build defenses for arbitrary attacks against build systems by ensuring that given the same source code, build environment, and build instructions, bitwise-identical artifacts are created. Unfortunately, much of the software industry believes R-Bs are too far out of reach for most projects. The goal of this paper is to help identify a path for R-Bs to become a commonplace property.To this end, we conducted a series of 24 semi-structured expert interviews with participants from the Reproducible-Builds.org project, finding that self-effective work by highly motivated developers and collaborative communication with upstream projects are key contributors to R-Bs. We identified a range of motivations that can encourage open source developers to strive for R-Bs, including indicators of quality, security benefits, and more efficient caching of artifacts. We also identify experiences that help and hinder adoption, which often revolves around communication with upstream projects. We conclude with recommendations on how to better integrate R-Bs with the efforts of the open source and free software community.


Urban basin investigation is crucial for seismic hazard assessment and mitigation. Recent advances in robust nodal‐type sensors facilitate the deployment of large‐N arrays in urban areas for high‐resolution basin imaging. However, arrays typically operate for only one month due to the instruments' battery life, and hence, only record a few teleseismic events. This limits the number of available teleseismic events for traditional receiver function (RF) analysis‐the primary method used in sediment‐basement interface imaging in passive source seismology. Insufficient stacking of RFs from a limited number of earthquakes could, however, introduce significant biases to the results. In this study, we present a novel Bayesian array‐based Coherent Receiver Function (CRF) method that can leverage datasets from short‐term dense arrays to constrain basin geometry. We cast the RF deconvolution as a sparsity‐promoted inverse problem, in which the deconvolution at a single‐station involves the constraints from neighboring stations and multiple events. We solve the inverse problem using a trans‐dimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo Bayesian algorithm to find an ensemble of RF solutions, which provides a quantitative way of deciding which features are well resolved and warrant geological interpretation. An application in the northern Los Angeles basin demonstrates the ability of our method to produce reliable and easy‐to‐interpret RF images. The use of dense seismic networks and the state‐of‐the‐art Bayesian array‐based CRF method can provide a robust approach for subsurface structure imaging.


Background: Nitraria sibirica fruit is a kind of folk medicine widely used in Northwest China. It contains diverse kinds of bioactive constituents such as flavonoids, alkaloids, and phenols. Objectives: The research was performed to develop an efficient separation method for the bioactive constituents of N. sibirica fruit and evaluate the isolated compounds bioactivities. Materials and Methods: An optimized method of high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC) combined with preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was established and applied to prepare the bioactive compounds from the ethyl acetate extract of N. sibirica fruit. The antioxidant and anticomplement activities of the isolated fractions and compounds were evaluated in vitro. Results: Ethyl acetate extract was the predominant antioxidant and anticomplement fraction of N. sibirica fruit, which yielded 18 compounds including six phenols, three flavonoids, and five alkaloids. Seven compounds (2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, and 17) were first isolated from genus Nitraria. Furthermore, under the optimized chromatography conditions, one anticomplement alkaloid (1) could be achieved directly by one-step HSCCC with high purity (92.34%), the other seventeen compounds were further purified with preparative HPLC. Ten compounds (3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14) exhibited significant antioxidant activities. Five compounds (1, 2, 7, 10, and 16) showed anticomplement activities and targeted different components in the complement system. Conclusion: The study provided an efficient method to prepare antioxidant and anticomplement compounds and the activities of the compounds were deeply investigated. Abbreviations used: HSCCC: High-speed counter-current chromatography; DPPH: 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl; FRAP: Ferric reducing antioxidant power; ABTS: 2,2'-azino-bis-(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid); BBS: Barbiturate buffer solution; ASEA: Anti-sheep erythrocyte antibody; NHS: Normal human serum; 2% SRBC: 2% sheep red blood cells.


Frontotemporal dementia: a case presentation Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is, next to Alzheimer disease, the most frequently encountered form of primary degenerative dementia among middle-aged subjects. It generally begins insidiously between the ages of 45 and 65 years, and is seen in both genders with equal frequency. It is characterized by changes in personality, behavior, and affect, in addition to loss of insight, perseverative and stereotypical behaviours, and changes in eating habits. These patients appear normal upon neurological examination and routine electroencephalography (EEG), but brain imaging reveals focal abnormalities in the frontotemporal lobes. There is significant deficiency in executive functions. This study describes a male patient with FTD that had began insidiously in his fifties, and in whom the changes in personality and impairment in behavior were the striking symptoms (loss of insight, hyperorality, and dietary changes; compulsive and stereotypical behaviours; blunted affect, decrease in the amount of speech and retardation in expressional behaviours; impairment in personal hygiene; urinary and fecal incontinence) along with a family history of dementia. The neurological examination and routine electroencephalogram (EEG) of the patient were normal. His cranial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed asymmetric atrophy, particularly in the right hemisphere at the dorsolateral and orbitofrontal regions. Tc-99 HMPAO single photon emission tomography (SPECT) detected asymmetric hypoperfusion within an extended region, including the right frontal and parietal lobes. There was deficiency in frontal executive functions. Partial improvement in behavioral symptoms was achieved by treating the patient with quetiapine 300 mg/day. The present case study showed that detailed history, as well as medical examination including physical and neurological examination and brain imaging, must be performed in the case of middle-aged patients with insidious onset of psychiatric symptoms.


The present work is focused on ion exchange recovery of platinum (II, IV) and rhodium (III) from acidic chloride solutions in presence of some non-ferrous metal ions and iron (III). It was found out that 10-fold excesses of nickel (II), cobalt (II), copper (II) and zinc (II) have no interfering effect on sorption of noble metals, whereas 3-fold excesses of iron (III) can hinder this process and should be removed from the system. It was determined that platinum and rhodium can be separated and isolated from accompanying ions of non-ferrous metals and iron (III) by means of simultaneous sorption with subsequent selective elution by 2 M ammonium thiocyanate and 2 M hydrochloric acid solutions in columns.


The economic impact of limited fossil fuel resources plus themandatory limit for carbon dioxide (CO2)emissions become important factors to developing alternative fuels for
internal combustion engines. Ethanol blends
are considered as alternative fuels due to their ability to reduce the greenhouse exhaust
emissions. This study highlights the effects of unleaded gasoline (E0) and ethanol -
unleaded gasoline blend E30 (with 30% volume of
ethanol) on engine performance and exhaust emissions experimentally using a 1.4 litre four cylinder four stroke SI engine with a compression ratio of 9:1 , for a variety of load and engine speed conditions . The results indicate that the blend E30 slightly increases the engine's torque and power after mid - engine speeds together with
fuel consumption. However , exhaust emissions
at 25% open throttle sees a reduction of carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrocarbons(HC)whilst nitrogen oxide (NOX)emissions increase at the lower speeds.
At full throttle , E30 reduces the CO
considerably whilst CO2 and NOX increase. Similar quantities of HC are produced.


Objective To determine the effect of repeated antenatal corticosteroids on postnatal changes in weight, linear growth and head circumference. Methods Mothers who entered the repeated dose of antenatal steroids (ACTORDS) trial were randomised to additional weekly steroid or placebo. Infant occipital-frontal head circumference, weight and crown-heel length were measured at birth and weekly for 4 weeks or until discharge, whichever was later. Lower leg length was measured using a knemometer daily for the first week, then thrice weekly. Results Of 145 babies studied (77.5% of the ACTORDS study infants from this centre), 70 were exposed to repeated antenatal steroids and 75 to placebo. There were no significant differences in prerandomisation demographic and pregnancy data. The mean gestational age at ACTORDS entry was 28.7 weeks and at birth was 31.4 weeks. The mean birth weight was 1618 g. There were no significant differences in postmenstrual age, weight, length or head circumference, nor in z-scores for these measurements, at birth, 4 weeks or discharge. In the first 2 weeks after birth, babies in both groups showed a decrease in z-scores for weight and length. After week 2, growth improved in both groups but babies exposed to repeat antenatal corticosteroids grew more rapidly, as measured by weight gain, increasing head circumference and increasing lower leg length knemometry. This rapid growth was most apparent around weeks 3–5 after birth. Conclusion Babies exposed to weekly doses of repeat antenatal corticosteroids demonstrate postnatal growth acceleration 3–5 weeks after birth.