CLIMATE
To investigate the temporal relationship between climate changes in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the ages of climate events recorded in ice cores from near the two poles are often compared. However, there is a large inherent uncertainty in this technique because it is difficult to date ice cores absolutely. Caillon et al . describe a possible way around this problem by measuring the isotopic compositions of Ar and N2 and the concentration of methane trapped in the bubbles of ice cores from Antarctica. When the local temperature change is fast and large enough, the resulting thermal gradient in the developing ice causes measurable isotopic fractionation of Ar and N2, thereby recording the temperature change event at the site. Methane is well mixed in the atmosphere on a global scale, and atmospheric methane levels increased when wetlands expanded because of Northern Hemispheric warming. Thus, by comparing the two signals, a robust estimate of the relative timing of warming in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres can be made. This technique, applied to 108,000-year-old ice from Vostok in Antarctica, indicates that the South warmed approximately 2000 years before the North, consistent with the popular idea of a climatological "bipolar seesaw." — HJS

Geophys. Res. Lett. 30 , 1899 (2003).


Background and Purpose: Aim is to evaluate the antibacterial activity and physical properties of Biodentine containing chlorhexidine (CHX)/cetrimide (CT) mixtures at 24 h. Materials and Methods: Powder formulations of CHX (2.5%) and CT (2.5%) were added to the powder of Biodentine and served as experimental groups (EXP). Antibacterial free groups were designed as control (CNT). The antibacterial acitivity (AB) (n = 5; for each) of disc-shaped specimens against Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillius casei and compressive strength (CS) (n = 10; for each) tests used both for groups after 24 h after polymerization. Statistical Analysis Used: Normality of data were tested with the Shapiro–Wilk test. Significant differences were analyzed with the Mann–Whintey U test for both the methods (agar disk diffusion and compressive strength) at a significance level of P < 0.05. Results: Significantly higher antibacterial effects were obtained in EXP groups compared to the CNTs for both bacteria after 24 h, distinctly (P < 0.01). No differences were found between groups regarding the CS values (P > 0.05). Conclusion: Since the incorporation of 5% CHX/CT to the Biodentine exhibited acceptable antibacterial activity without hampering compressive strength values at 24 h, this combination could be a promising alternative for eliminating the residual bacteria for indirect pulp-capping therapies.


This study used the age-sex register of a group medical practice as the population base for a postal and follow-up interview enquiry to locate handicapped people and examined the possibility of the combined use of a practice diagnostic index and the patients' medical records for the same purpose. The age-sex register was found to contain deficiencies and inaccuracies despite the substantial efforts of members of the practice team to maintain it, for example, 13.5 per cent of the forms were returned as the addressee was unknown at the address.The 81.5 per cent of householders who responded identified 353 impaired people who were subsequently interviewed about the nature of their impairment, the underlying condition, and the range of their activities. Depending upon the answers to these questions, a proportion of these people were classified as handicapped and were asked further questions. The number of impaired people and their distribution in sex and age-groups were broadly similar to the findings from other surveys. The diagnoses of the underlying conditions given by the impaired people were discussed with the general practitioners and confirmed or otherwise by the use of the patients' notes or the recollections of the general practitioners.It was concluded that while the use of a diagnostic index would be helpful for some conditions, there would remain a substantial number of people with a disease that is potentially disabling who would have to be approached for further screening and also a substantial number of people who are handicapped, but who would be missed.


Effects of various types and amounts of plasticizer on the moisture sorption and mechanical properties of gelatin-chitosan composite films were investigated. The films were plasticized with glycerol, polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG 400), polyethylene glycol 800 (PEG 800), and sorbitol, respectively. With increasig the amount of plasticizers in the composite films plasticized with the fromer three plastizers, the equilibrium moisture sorption ratio increases. For the last one, however, it decreases with increasing the plastizers content. Increasing the plasticizer content decreases the tension strength and increases the elongation at break of the samples, and the type and amount of the plasticizers affect the mechanical properties of the composite films. PEG 400 is the most effective plasticizer in the plastizers studied.


We have prepared W/O/W-type microcapsules with polyureaurethane wall membrane and aqueous core containing methylene blue by means of the double emulsification method and the effect of the rate of agitation at the twice emulsification on the release of methylene blue to dispersing methanol was examined. The release curve was expressed fairly well by the streched exponential form: where C(t) and Ceq are the concentrations of methylene blue in the dispersing methanol at time t and at the equilibrium state, respectively. The time constant τ increased and the exponent α decreased with increasing the rate of agitation at the second emulsification, whereas τ decreased and α was constant with increasing the rate of agitation at the first emulsification. These differences are discussed from a viewpoint of inhomogeneity of the microcapsule wall membrane.


Recent growth in the use of photovoltaic technology and a rapid reduction in its cost confirms the potential of solar power on a large scale. In this context, planning for the deployment of smart grids is among the most important challenges to support the increased penetration of solar energy in urban areas and to ensure the resilience of the electricity system. As part this effort, the present paper describes a cellular approach to a Net-Zero energy concept, based on the balance between the potential solar energy supply and the existing consumption patterns at the urban unit scale. To do that, the Geographical Urban Units Delimitation model (GUUD) has been developed and tested on a case study. By applying the GUUD model, which combines Geographic Information Systems (GIS), parametric modelling, and solar dynamic analysis, the whole area of the city was divided into urban cells, categorized as solar producers and energy consumers. The discussion around three theoretical scenarios permits us to explore how smart grids can be approached and promoted from an urban planning perspective. The paper provides insights into how urban planning can be a driver to optimize and manage energy balance across the city if the deployment of smart grids is correctly integrated in its operative process.


In developing a wrist blood pressure monitor of high and reliable accuracy, the effect of different pressurization methods on the accuracy of blood pressure measurement at the wrist using oscillometry is investigated in this paper. 30 volunteers are recruited and blood pressure readings are taken with three different methods of pressurizing the wrist. It was found that measurement of mean arterial pressure (MAP) is more accurate when the wrist is locally compressed directly over the radial artery (−2.6 ± 11.4 mmHg) or with a region of surrounding tissue (10.3 ± 6.0 mmHg) than when the whole wrist is compressed by a conventional, constricting cuff (−11.4 ± 16.4 mmHg). Characteristics of accuracy, however, differ between the two local pressurization methods. While a square airbag that compresses the wrist directly over the radial artery may measure the most accurate MAP on average, the range of errors among individuals is large. Contrarily, measurements taken by pressurizing a region over the radial artery with a bladder are least affected by individual variability. In order to measure blood pressure accurately at the wrist while unbiased by the population-based algorithmic compensation to ensure accuracy among different individuals, therefore, the use of local pressurization method may be the most appropriate.


This volume includes two major explanations of the meltdown that I critically discuss. The first is a "normal accident theory" arguing that the complexity and coupling of the financial system caused the failure. Although these structural characteristics were evident, I argue that the case does not fit the theory because the cause was not the system, but behavior by key agents who were aware of the great risks they were exposing their firms, clients, and society to. The second interpretation is a neoinstitutional one, emphasizing that ideologies, worldviews, cognitive frames, mimicry, and norms were the source of behaviors that turned out to be disastrous for the elites and others. The implication is that elites were victims, not perpetrators. I argue that while ideologies, etc., can have real effects on the behavior of many firm members and society in general, in this case financial elites, to serve personal ends, crafted the ideologies and changed institutions, fully aware that this could harm their firms, clients, and the public. Complexity and coupling only made deception easier and the consequences more extensive. For anecdotal evidence I examine a decade of deregulation, examples of elected representative, regulatory officials, firms, and the plentiful warnings.


tors Which Affect Cerebral Uptake and Retention of 13 NH 3 " (Stroke 8: 694, 1977) with considerable interest, because of my own concern with cerebral ammonia metabolism. There are several questions that I would like to ask concerning their paper. What was the concentration of the ammonia in the test bolus? If it was 10 4 moles per ml, the ammonia concentration would be 100 times greater than the highest concentrations usually associated with the most severe cases of hyperammonemia. The method used to make this measurement was not specified. The authors cited earlier reports by Raichle et al. (Am J Physiol 230(2): 543, 1976) in order to validate their methods. The validity of the authors' data depends on complete mixing of the test bolus with the blood flowing through the internal carotid artery before it reaches the cerebral capillary bed. Furthermore, 'the addition of the test bolus must not alter the concentration of ammonia or the pH of the blood as they mix. The study of Raichle el al. did not require these assumptions. The authors have not discussed this in their paper. The similarity of the time course for the passage of the test bolus through the brain to that reported by Oldendorf (Brain Res 24: 372, 1970), where complete clearing of the blood from the cerebral vessels has been observed, suggests that, in fact, little mixing occurred. Although the literature concerning the effect of pH on ammonia extraction is conflicting, earlier studies by Carter et al., who did their work at the same institution as the authors, as well as more recent unpublished studies by my colleagues and me, have shown major effects on brain ammonia uptake after changes in pH. Their negative finding is easily explained by a lack of mixing of the test bolus. This effect could also produce erroneous results concerning the effect of different ammonia concentrations. Finally, in the discussion, the authors speak of an ammonia turnover rate of 75% per second. The reference they cite is a textbook. Consultation of the primary reference cited in the text indicates that the data from which that calculation was made were the result of applying methods that were not consistent from observation to observation, and are no longer believed to be valid in studies of labile brain metabolites. For the reasons that 1 have mentioned, 1 have considerable doubt about the validity of their …


A novel treatment for persons who have both schizophrenia and substance abuse was evaluated by incorporating cognitive-behavioral drug relapse prevention strategies into a skills training method originally developed to teach social and independent living skills to patients with schizophrenia. Thirty-four of 56 patients completed treatment and a three-month follow-up assessment. Participants learned substance abuse management skills and reported that they found the treatment relevant, useful, and satisfying, and their drug use decreased. Improvements were noted in medication adherence, psychiatric symptoms, and quality of life. This manual-driven therapy may play an important role in the treatment of substance abuse among patients with schizophrenia.


We study a class of online convex optimization problems with long-term budget constraints that arise naturally as reliability guarantees or total consumption constraints. In this general setting, prior work by Mannor et al. (2009) has shown that achieving no regret is impossible if the functions defining the agent's budget are chosen by an adversary. To overcome this obstacle, we refine the agent's regret metric by introducing the notion of a "K-benchmark", i.e., a comparator which meets the problem's allotted budget over any window of length K. The impossibility analysis of Mannor et al. (2009) is recovered when K = T ; however, for K = o(T), we show that it is possible to minimize regret while still meeting the problem's long-term budget constraints. We achieve this via an online learning algorithm based on cautious online Lagrangian descent (COLD) for which we derive explicit bounds, in terms of both the incurred regret and the residual budget violations.


A study aimed at establishing feeding management and performances of dairy goats in arable pockets of Marsabit County in arid lands of northern Kenya was conducted in six sites.  Semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from randomly selected individual dairy goats keepers, dairy goats rearing groups and development agents who supported dairy goats production. The data was entered and analyzed using the SPSS version 10.5.  The study established that, 93.3% of farmers rely on natural forages to feed their dairy goats and about 50% of dairy goats keepers lacked appropriate management skills. The study further established that about 70% of the farmers on Mt. Marsabit and 64.3% in Kalacha owned conserved fodder plots, of natural pastures, lack of storage sheds was noted among key constraint to storage. Mineral supplements were provided by all farmers on Mt. Marsabit and only 14.3% in Kalacha. The age of  reproductive  maturity for female  Alpine was  is 10.7±2.3mo and 10.5±1.7mo was comparable to young cross breeds at 10.5± 2.01mo and 13.2± 2.1mo in the oases and mountain areas, respectively. Crosses had shorter kidding intervals (7.13± 1.47mo in Kalacha and 6.54±1.19moon Mount Marsabit) than Alpines (8mo in Kalacha and 7.77± 1.03mo in the mountain). The average milk yields for alpine, crosses and local goats were 2.62, 1.43, and 0.64 kg/day, respectively. In conclusion, Alpine and crossbreed goats have high milk yield than the local goats. This implies that dairy goats production in arable pockets is a viable project which can be integrated with crops. Unlike other indigenous goats and livestock which move from place to place in search of pasture and water, dairy goats are kept in intensive or semi-intensive systems in farms i.e. the keepers would always access milk from daily goats and by extension households' food security is increased. Children in sedentarized pastoral farming households would feed on this milk and thus their nutritional status enhanced. The household food and nutrition security is also increased as households keeping dairy get income from sale of milk and breeding stock. Keywords : Dairy goats, Marsabit, arable pockets, northern Kenya, feeding management, performances .


Simarouba versicolor wood was evaluated relative to its kraft pulping ability and compared with Eucalyptus urograndis wood. Comprehensive chemical analysis of wood and milled wood lignin (MWL) was performed, aiming to correlate wood and lignin structural features with kraft pulping response. Wood characterization of S. versicolor revealed higher lignin content (37.3%) and lower cellulose content (45.1%) than E. urograndis. 13C NMR spectroscopy was performed to characterize MWL, and the results showed a lower syringyl to guaiacyl ratio (S/G), higher degree of condensation, and lower β-O-4 linkages for S. versicolor. The gross heating value of S. versicolor was slightly higher than that for E. urograndis. Significant variations were observed in chemical charge demand and in pulping yield for the two species. This behavior was attributed mainly to the S/G ratio and degree of condensation of the lignin, although total and insoluble lignin, as well as cellulose contents may have affected pulping efficiency too.


ABSTRACT Dppa4 (developmental pluripotency-associated 4) has been identified in several high-profile screens as a gene that is expressed exclusively in pluripotent cells. It encodes a nuclear protein with an SAP-like domain and appears to be associated preferentially with transcriptionally active chromatin. Its exquisite expression pattern and results of RNA interference experiments have led to speculation that Dppa4, as well as its nearby homolog Dppa2, might play essential roles in embryonic stem (ES) cell function and/or germ cell development. To rigorously assess suggested roles, we have generated Dppa4-deficient and Dppa4/Dppa2 doubly deficient ES cells, as well as mice lacking Dppa4. Contrary to predictions, we find that Dppa4 is completely dispensable for ES cell identity and germ cell development. Instead, loss of Dppa4 in mice results in late embryonic/perinatal death and striking skeletal defects with partial penetrance. Thus, surprisingly, Dppa4-deficiency affects tissues that apparently never transcribed the gene, and at least some loss-of-function defects manifest phenotypically at an embryonic stage long after physiologic Dppa4 expression has ceased. Concomitant with targeted gene inactivation, we have introduced into the Dppa4 locus a red fluorescent marker (tandem-dimer red fluorescent protein) that is compatible with green fluorescent proteins and allows noninvasive visualization of pluripotent cells and reprogramming events.


Wikipedia, rich in entities and events, is an invaluable resource for various knowledge harvesting, extraction and mining tasks. Numerous resources like DBpedia, YAGO and other knowledge bases are based on extracting entity and event based knowledge from it. Online news, on the other hand, is an authoritative and rich source for emerging entities, events and facts relating to existing entities. In this work, we study the creation of entities in Wikipedia with respect to news by studying how entity and event based information flows from news to Wikipedia. We analyze the lag of Wikipedia (based on the revision history of the English Wikipedia) with 20 years of The New York Times dataset (NYT). We model and analyze the lag of entities and events, namely their first appearance in Wikipedia and in NYT, respectively. In our extensive experimental analysis, we find that almost 20% of the external references in entity pages are news articles encoding the importance of news to Wikipedia. Second, we observe that the entity-based lag follows a normal distribution with a high standard deviation, whereas the lag for news-based events is typically very low. Finally, we find that events are responsible for creation of emergent entities with as many as 12% of the entities mentioned in the event page are created after the creation of the event page.


For purposes of a high range resolution radar, it is desirable to transmit signals with wide overall bandwidth. Frequency stepping is one of the known and well-studied techniques that can be used to achieve this goal. The autocorrelation function of a uniform stepped-frequency pulse train suffers from relatively high range sidelobes and grating lobes. The purpose of this paper is to present a new algorithm for designing stepped-frequency waveforms whose sidelobes are suppressed below a desired threshold level.


Distributed systems today are ubiquitous and enable many applications, including client-server systems, transaction processing, World Wide Web, and scientific computing, among many others. Distributed systems are not fault-tolerant and the vast computing potential of these systems is often hampered by their susceptibility to failures. Many techniques, like transactions, group communication, and rollback recovery, have been developed to add reliability and high availability to distributed systems. This talk deals with rollback recovery protocols which restore the system back to a consistent state after a failure. Fault tolerance is achieved by periodically saving the state of a process during the failure-free execution, and restarting from a saved state upon a failure to reduce the amount of lost work. The speaker will present his recent results in checkpointing and failure recovery in distributed systems and wireless networks. Specifically, he will present results in a classification of checkpointing algorithms, present a communication-induced checkpointing algorithm that prevents useless checkpoints by tracking and preventing potential Z-cycles, and present the concept of mutable checkpoints for efficient checkpointing in wireless networks. He will conclude the talk with some open problems.


The article summarizes the 3-year (1998-2000) consulting and treatment experience of a psychotherapeutic unit in one Moscow general hospital. Psychiatrists realized emergent and planned consultations of the mentally-ill patients in all hospital departments, conducted, in addition to general treatment, psychopharmacotherapy and psychotherapy or directed them, on demand, to psychiatric hospitals. For the 3-year period, the psychiatrists have consulted 4685 somatic patients with comorbid mental diseases (5% of the total amount of the patients admitted to the hospital at that period), 1360 patients (29%) being affected with psychotic disorders. One hundred eighty two patients were diagnosed to have schizophrenia, 784--arteriosclerosis and old-age psychosis and dementia, 45--reactive psychosis, 16--epilepsy (disphoria and psychotic episodes), 67--mental retardation with inadequate behavior, 266--delirium of alcoholic and drug addiction genesis. In some cases, usage of psychotropics, in combination with psychotherapy, has resulted in recovery or considerable psychic state improvement in 9.1% of the patients, improvement in 52% ones, insignificant improvement in 36%. In 2.9% of the cases, the effect of treatment has not been achieved.


This explanatory note is intended to accompany the map included in this issue. The map is on a scale of 1:30,000,000 (1 cm = 300 km) and shows regional-scale 'ecosystem' units, or ecoregions, differentiated according to a scheme modified from J.M. Crowley (1967), and using climate and vegetation as indicators of the extent of each unit. The units are similar in concept to 'ecobiomes' as proposed by Polunin (1984). The map was developed following a proposal by Bailey & Hogg (1986) to supplement the Udvardy (1975) system of biogeographical provinces with a treatment of higher resolution. Three levels or categories of this hierarchy are shown. Of these the broadest, domains, and within them divisions, are based largely on the broad ecological climate zones following the Koppen system as modified by Trewartha (1968), and summarized in our Tables I and II. Climate is emphasized at the broadest levels because of its overriding effect on the composition and productivity of ecosystems etc. from region to region.


In times of social isolation, as it may occur due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are problems such as those regarding lack of regular exercising, socializing outside the home, all that can lead to poor sleep quality. According to the circadian rhythm, behavioral and physiological processes occur at the ideal times of the day and in the correct time order. However, circadian rhythms misalignment, as can result in confinement situations, can result in inadequate times for sleeping. All these constraints may result in metabolic and cognitive- -behavioral negative consequences, at least. Consequently, healthy sleep hygiene indoors is necessary to avoid risk factors for insomnia and physical/psychological disorders. Besides, stress should be avoided by reducing exposure to a large amount of information on COVID-19 and its related negative consequences. This paper raises issues about the circadian rhythms and their ideal alignment, besides insomnia risk factors related to the disrupted environment and personal characteristics. In the end, some tips are presented regarding sleep hygiene at social isolation time


The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) model ensemble projects climate change emerging soonest and most strongly at low latitudes, regardless of the emissions pathway taken. In terms of signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios of average annual temperatures, these models project earlier and stronger emergence under the Shared Socio-economic Pathways than the previous generation did under corresponding Representative Concentration Pathways. Spatial patterns of emergence also change between generations of models; under a high emissions scenario, mid-century S/N is lower than previous studies indicated in Central Africa, South Asia, and parts of South America, West Africa, East Asia, and Western Europe, but higher in most other populated areas. We show that these global and regional changes are caused by a combination of higher effective climate sensitivity in the CMIP6 ensemble, as well as changes to emissions pathways, component-wise effective radiative forcing, and region-scale climate responses between model generations. We also present the first population-weighted calculation of climate change emergence for the CMIP6 ensemble, quantifying the number of people exposed to increasing degrees of abnormal temperatures now and into the future. Our results confirm the expected inequity of climate change-related impacts in the decades between now and the 2050 target for net-zero emissions held by many countries. These findings underscore the importance of concurrent investments in both mitigation and adaptation.


Developing an industrial LiMnPO4 cathode, featuring a high rate capability, is still a huge challenge because of its slow Li+ diffusion speed as well as low electronic conductivity. Here, we expect to address these inherent obstacles by controlling its morphology in a well-dispersed way. The effects of the added amounts of Li2SO4·H2O on the morphologies of the LiMnPO4 samples prepared via the hydrothermal method were studied using structural and morphological characterizations. Based on the additional independent experiments, a two-step reaction was tentatively proposed to understand the formation of the LiMnPO4 samples and the dual functions of Li2SO4·H2O. For synthesizing LiMnPO4 samples, a high SO42− concentration may be helpful for a fast nucleation rate, while a high Li+ concentration can be beneficial for a rapid growth rate. The results showed that the LiMnPO4 sample prepared with 40 mmol Li2SO4·H2O (denoted as the S4) exhibited the best electrochemical performances in terms of the discharge capacity, the rate capability and the cycling stability among all the LiMnPO4 samples, which was reasonably attributed to its well-dispersed characteristics.


The problem of estimating position and orientation (pose) of an object in real time constitutes an important issue for vision-based control of robots. Many vision-based pose-estimation schemes in robot control rely on an extended Kalman filter (EKF) that requires tuning of filter parameters. To obtain satisfactory results, EKF-based techniques rely on "known" noise statistics, initial object pose, and sufficiently high sampling rates for good approximation of measurement-function linearization. Deviations from such assumptions usually lead to degraded pose estimation during visual servoing. In this paper, a new algorithm, namely iterative adaptive EKF (IAEKF), is proposed by integrating mechanisms for noise adaptation and iterative-measurement linearization. The experimental results are provided to demonstrate the superiority of IAEKF in dealing with erroneous a priori statistics, poor pose initialization, variations in the sampling rate, and trajectory dynamics.


Conventional methods of DNA sequence insertion into plants, using Agrobacterium-mediated transformation or microprojectile bombardment, result in the integration of the DNA at random sites in the genome. These plants may exhibit altered agronomic traits as a consequence of disruption or silencing of genes that serve a critical function. Also, genes of interest inserted at random sites are often not expressed at the desired level. For these reasons, targeted DNA insertion at suitable genomic sites in plants is a desirable alternative. In this paper we review approaches of targeted DNA insertion in plant genomes, discuss current technical challenges, and describe promising applications of targeted DNA insertion for crop genetic improvement.


The regulatory programs driving early organogenesis in human is complex and still poorly understood. We performed parallel profiling of gene expression and chromatin accessibility to 28 human fetal tissue samples representing 14 organs in the first trimester. Collectively, we have generated 415,793 single-cell profiles. By integration analysis of transcriptome and chromatin accessibility, we detected 225 distinct cell types and 848,475 candidate accessible cis-regulatory elements (aCREs). By linking regulatory elements to their putative target genes, we identified not only 108,699 enhancers, but also 23,392 silencers elements. We uncovered thousands of genes regulated by both enhancers and silencers in an organ or cell-type-specific manner. Furthermore, our unique approach revealed a substantial proportion of distal DNA elements are transcribed CREs (tCREs), which show both open chromatin signal and transcription initiation activity of non-coding transcript. The landscape of fetal cis-regulatory elements facilitates the interpretation of the genetic variant of complex disease and infer the cell type of origin for cancer. Overall, our data provide a comprehensive map of the fetal cis-regulatory elements at single-cell resolution and a valuable resource for future study of human development and disease.


Two-dimensional iron polyphthalocyanine(PPcFe) was synthesized by heating iron (II) phthalocyanine tetracarboxylic acids at 400°C in argon atmosphere. The polymer was characterized and analyzed by UV-Vis, FT-IR, XRD and TG. UV-Vis absorption spectra of iron phthalocyanine showed that absorption bands appeared at higher wavelengths than monomer phthalocyanine. The result of IR indicated that the absorption peaks corresponding to the carboxylic acid groups decreased and the characteristic phthalocyanine ring absorption bands were observed. The DTA data for PPcFe showed exceptional thermal stability. PPcFe, monomer phthalocyanine(PcFe) and dinuclear iron phthalocyanine(DPcFe) were adsorbed on the Vulcan XC-72 carbon and then heat-treated at 400°C in argon atmosphere to prepare catalyst. The electrocatalytic activity was investigated using linear scan voltammetry(LSV) in 0.5M H2SO4. The polarisation curve of oxygen reduction on the FePPc/C catalyst in O2-saturated H2SO4 was compared to that obtained on PcFe, DPcFe and platinum catalysts. Results showed that it possessed higher catalytic activity than PcFe and DPcFe catalysts. LSV at different electrode rotation rates led to determine the Koutecky-Levich plots from which it was shown that the kinetic parameters for the ORR at FePPc/C electrodes are similar to those obtained at 30wt% Pt/C.


: Transcatheter arterial embolization (TAE) is widely used as an effective palliative treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and can prolong survival time. However, the high incidence of tumor recurrence and metastasis after TAE is still a major problem. Recent studies demonstrated that circulating tumor cells (CTCs) contribute to tumor metastasis. In this study, we tried to clarify whether the residual HCC after TAE can increase metastasis by increasing the number of CTCs. An orthotopic liver tumor model in the Buffalo rat was established using green fluorescent protein (GFP)-transfected HCC cell line, McA-RH7777. Two weeks after orthotopic liver tumor implantation, the rats underwent TAE treatment from the gastroduodenal artery. Iodized oil or saline was injected intra-arterially. Blood samples were taken on day 0, 1, 3, 7, 14, and 21 for detection of CTCs after TAE treatment. We analyzed the number of CTCs and assessed the metastatic potential of surviving tumor cells in rats between TAE and control groups. Our results demonstrated that the metastatic colonies in the lung were significantly increased by TAE treatment. The number of CTCs was also significantly increased by TAE treatment from day 7 to day 21. The expression of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1 α and epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) marker proteins (N-cadherin and vimentin) was upregulated, but E-cadherin was downregulated after TAE treatment. In conclusion, the metastatic potential of residual HCC can be induced by TAE treatment in a rat liver tumor model, which involves the acquisition of EMT features and an increased number of CTCs. were examined by h&e staining to identify the presence of metastasis and count the number of lung nodules under an optical microscope.


Author(s): Chalasani, Sravan; Johnson, Clayton; Morabito, Molly; Newkirk, Alexander; Wang, Liyang; Hoffman, Ian; Payne, Christopher | Abstract: Currently, five legal authorities require U.S. federal agencies to purchase energy-efficient products. However, compliance with these requirements has consistently been low (~55%). Recent surveys indicate that energy efficiency requirements are not communicated properly within federal agencies and energy-efficiency is not a top priority. In the constantly evolving energy industry, with many solutions for a clean energy future, effective communication methods are vital for widespread adoption of energy efficiency. We have been conducting experiments within the U.S. federal sector that test the effectiveness of messaging strategies developed by using behavioral science principles like loss aversion, framing, and herd behavior. This will identify effective communications methods that encourage energy efficiency adoption. In this study, we measure the effectiveness of different communication strategies by monitoring the web traffic of hyperlinks placed within our digital communications and outreach materials. To determine effective strategies that influence federal buyer behavior, the web traffic from subjects that received the behavioral science-based messaging (treatment group) is compared to that from subjects that received regular messaging (control group) for each of the strategies. This paper provides an overview of the behavioral science principles that we applied, data collection methods, and results of our analysis. Since the lack of effective communication of energy-efficiency policies is also a common problem in the private sector, the messaging strategies developed in this study can be applicable to other large private sector institutions


The European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has recently finished ERA-40, a reanalysis covering the period September 1957 to August 2002. One of the products of ERA-40 consists of 6-hourly global fields of wave parameters like significant wave height and wave period. These data have been generated with the Centre's WAM wave model. From these results the authors have derived climatologies of important wave parameters, including significant wave height, mean wave period, and extreme significant wave heights. Particular emphasis is on the variability of these parameters, both in space and time. Besides for scientists studying climate change, these results are also important for engineers who have to design maritime constructions. This paper describes the ERA-40 data and gives an overview of the results derived. The results are available on a global 1.5° × 1.5° grid. They are accessible from the web-based KNMI/ERA-40 Wave Atlas at http://www.knmi.nl/waveatlas.© 2006 ASME


ABSTRACT The vertical and lateral variability in grain-size distributions and mineralogy of sandstone turbidites in the Oligocene Krosno Formation suggests that two different relationships between grain-size sorting and mineralogical sorting result during transport by turbidity currents. In one relationship, mineralogical sorting is associated with size sorting. The two sorting processes operate simultaneously and each of the mineral constituents has its individual grain-size distribution within the rock's composite grain-size distribution. In the second relationship, mineralogical sorting is independent of size sorting. This suggests that in granulometrically homogeneous source materials, the grains are fractionated according to settling velocities determined by their density and dynamic shap factors.


Total alkalinity (AT) is an important variable in the regulation of the seawater carbonate chemistry system, determining the capacity to buffer changes in pH. In the coastal oceans, carbonate system dynamics are controlled by numerous processes such as land-derived inputs, biological activity, and coastal water dynamics, and seasonal alkalinity variations can play an important role in the regional carbon cycle. However, our understanding of these variations on the East China Sea (ECS) shelf remains poor due to limited observations. In order to estimate and investigate the seasonal variability of AT on the ECS shelf, an artificial neural network (ANN) model was developed using five cruise datasets from 2008 to 2018. The model used temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen to estimate AT with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of ∼7 umol kg–1, and was applied to calculate AT for eight cruises during 2013–2016. In addition, monthly water column AT for the period 2000–2016 was obtained using temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen from the Changjiang Biology Finite-Volume Coastal Ocean Model (FVCOM) Data. Spatial distributions, seasonal cycles and correlations of surface AT indicated that the seasonal fluctuation of the Changjiang River discharge is the major factor affecting seasonal variation of surface AT on the ECS shelf. The largest seasonal fluctuations of surface AT were found on the inner shelf near the Changjiang Estuary, which is under the influence of the Changjiang River discharge.


The infusion of digital technology into contemporary society has had significant effects for everyday life and for everyday crimes. Digital Criminology: Crime and Justice in Digital Society is the first interdisciplinary scholarly investigation extending beyond traditional topics of cybercrime, policing and the law to consider the implications of digital society for public engagement with crime and justice movements. This book seeks to connect the disparate fields of criminology, sociology, legal studies, politics, media and cultural studies in the study of crime and justice. Drawing together intersecting conceptual frameworks, Digital Criminology examines conceptual, legal, political and cultural framings of crime, formal justice responses and informal citizen-led justice movements in our increasingly connected global and digital society.

Building on case study examples from across Australia, Canada, Europe, China, the UK and the United States, Digital Criminology explores key questions including: What are the implications of an increasingly digital society for crime and justice? What effects will emergent technologies have for how we respond to crime and participate in crime debates? What will be the foundational shifts in criminological research and frameworks for understanding crime and justice in this technologically mediated context? What does it mean to be a 'just' digital citizen? How will digital communications and social networks enable new forms of justice and justice movements? Ultimately, the book advances the case for an emerging digital criminology: extending the practical and conceptual analyses of 'cyber' or 'e' crime beyond a focus foremost on the novelty, pathology and illegality of technology-enabled crimes, to understandings of online crime as inherently social.


NOTE: A PDF methods document is attached in the supplementary materials.SCOPE OF APPLICATION (LIMITATIONS)This method describes the culture and differentiation of primary human tracheobronchial epithelial cells (pHBEC). Cells used for this method can be obtained by brush biopsy during clinical bronchoscopy or purchased commercially. This method replaces the previous version described in (Dailey and McCullough, 2021a; b). Disclaimer: The contents of this article have been reviewed by the US Environmental Protection Agency and approved for publication and do not necessarily represent Agency policy. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendations for use.


In this paper the authors describe a project undertaken to implement ABET protocols of defining educational outcomes, making definitive assessment of the outcomes, and providing remedial improvement based on the results of the assessment. The project incorporates the results obtained from teaching a basic introductory course in circuit theory over the past three years at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Arizona. The methodology developed in the project includes the use of web-based educational material.


Findings of research work into the use of buried pipe distribution systems for surface
irrigation are detailed, based on a literature review, field evaluation of existing systems in
south Asia and field work on existing buried pipe systems in Bangladesh.
The extent and history of the use of buried pipe distribution systems is detailed in
chapter two, along with trends in the upgrading and development of buried pipe systems.
The comparative performance of buried pipe systems and open channel alternatives is
discussed. Measurable benefits from buried pipe systems include reductions in seepage
losses and a lower land take by the distribution system. Systems which are lower in cost
than most lined channels are documented for some south Asian systems.
Although low pressure pipe systems vary widely in design they can be classified as
open, closed or semi-closed with regard to the method of pressure control, and as gravity or
pumped supply with regard to the source of the driving head. These definitions along with
consideration of the methods of regulating pipe distribution systems and the choice of the
operating and control system, form part of the framework and classification for buried pipe
systems presented in chapter three. Pipe systems in India, Bangladesh and Thailand, visited
as part of the research work, are described and evaluated within the individual case studies
set out in chapter four, along with summaries of the standard features of each of the pipe
systems. [Continues.]


The following paper presents a simple, low-cost, and repeatable manufacturing process for fabricating conductive, elastic carbon-elastomer nanocomposite fibers for applications in the textile industry and beyond. The presented method allows for the manufacturing of fibers with a diameter of 0.2 mm, containing up to 50 vol. % of graphite powder, 10 vol. % of CNT, and a mix of both fillers. As a result, resistivity below 0.2 Ωm for the 0.2 mm-diameter fibers was achieved. Additionally, conductive fibers are highly elastic, which makes them suitable for use in the textile industry as an element of circuits. The effect of strain on the change in resistance was also tested. Researches have shown that highly conductive fibers can withstand strain of up to 40%, with resistivity increasing nearly five times compared to the unstretched fiber. This research shows that the developed composites can also be used as strain sensors in textronic systems. Finally, functional demonstrators were made by directly sewing the developed fibers into a cotton fabric. First, the non-quantitative tests indicate the feasibility of using the composites as conductive fibers to power components in textronic systems and for bending detection.


A brief overview of present
electricity demand, supply, projection of them and renewable energy generation
and progress has been presented in this paper. Electricity is the major source
of power for most of the country's economic activities. According to the Bangladesh
Power Development Board in July 2018, 90 percent of the population had access
to electricity. However per capita energy consumption in Bangladesh is
considered low. The country has a very limited energy reserve; small amounts of
oil, coal and countable natural gas reserves. The country suffers an internal
energy struggle, as about 88% of the country's power producing thermal plants
are gas-based. To solve this problem, renewable energy is being used.


The rare case of a spontaneous rupture of the uterine vein is reported. The diagnosis and the etiology are discussed from a review of the literature and the report of a new case. The case is reported to alert to the possibility of rupture of an uterine vein when acute abdominal symptoms and signs are found during pregnancy and present diagnostic problems of an unclear nature. Early laparotomy is necessary to improve the treatment of the haemorrhagic shock and the maternal mortality. In most cases of antepartum of intrapartum rupture of the uterine vein a Caesarean section and suture ligation of the ruptured vein is adequate treatment. Without prior knowledge of this syndrome a Caesarean hysterectomy was performed in our case.


This study determines the comparative antimicrobial potentials of omidun "supernatant solution of fermented maize mash" from yellow and white maize varieties on some diarrhoea causing microorganisms. The pH of the two omidun varieties were determined, their antimicrobial activities was also determined using agar well diffusion. Disc diffusion assay was also done using commercially produced antibiotics. Generally, omidun from the two maize varieties had acidic pH, with mean value of 3.6 for omidun from white maize and 4.0 for omidun from yellow maize. Both maize varieties inhibited growth of the tested microorganisms but at slightly different concentrations. The mean zones of inhibition of omidun from white maize varieties (9.5 mm) was higher than zones of inhibition by yellow maize varieties (9.2 mm) on Salmonella abaetetuba ATCC 35460, but with no significant (p>0.05) difference. Zones of inhibitions given by omidun from the two maize varieties were the same (9 to12 mm) on Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 and S. abaetetuba ATCC 35460 (7 to 12 mm). Although, the highest concentration obtained was not as high as what was observed with commercial antibiotics. This study showed that the effect produced by omidun from the two maize varieties is not significantly different (p>0.05). Hence, the variety of maize used in this study had no significant (p>0.05) effect on the antimicrobial activity of omidun

 Key words: Antimicrobial, omidun, agar well, antimicrobial assay.


In this article I offer a dynamic account of the relations between values in Dumont's theory. I then suggest that we can use this account to reframe the recent debate surrounding the extent to which Christianity sometimes introduces the value of individualism into the social formations created by recent converts from religions in which it was not important. Scholars who are skeptical of the importance of individualism among converts assert either that Christianity is not individualist or that it fosters various kinds of relationships as much as or more than it fosters a focus on the individual. I suggest that on my dynamic reading of Dumont we can draw on his theory to develop an understanding of individualism as a value that allows us recognize the role of relationships in some Christian traditions without having to underplay their individualist components. I develop my argument through a discussion of ethnographic materials from Papua New Guinea and, comparatively, from Africa and Amazonia.


The universe is molecularly rich, comprising from the simplest molecule (H2) to complex organic molecules (e.g., CH3CHO and NH2CHO), some of which of biological relevance (e.g., amino acids). This chemical richness is intimately linked to the different physical phases forming Solar-like planetary systems, in which at each phase, molecules of increasing complexity form. Interestingly, synthesis of some of these compounds only takes place in the presence of interstellar (IS) grains, i.e., solid-state sub-micron sized particles consisting of naked dust of silicates or carbonaceous materials that can be covered by water-dominated ice mantles. Surfaces of IS grains exhibit particular characteristics that allow the occurrence of pivotal chemical reactions, such as the presence of binding/catalytic sites and the capability to dissipate energy excesses through the grain phonons. The present know-how on the physicochemical features of IS grains has been obtained by the fruitful synergy of astronomical observational with astrochemical modelling and laboratory experiments. However, current limitations of these disciplines prevent us from having a full understanding of the IS grain surface chemistry as they cannot provide fundamental atomic-scale of grain surface elementary steps (i.e., adsorption, diffusion, reaction and desorption). This essential information can be obtained by means of simulations based on computational chemistry methods. One capability of these simulations deals with the construction of atom-based structural models mimicking the surfaces of IS grains, the very first step to investigate on the grain surface chemistry. This perspective aims to present the current state-of-the-art methods, techniques and strategies available in computational chemistry to model (i.e., construct and simulate) surfaces present in IS grains. Although we focus on water ice mantles and olivinic silicates as IS test case materials to exemplify the modelling procedures, a final discussion on the applicability of these approaches to simulate surfaces of other cosmic grain materials (e.g., cometary and meteoritic) is given.


Researchers have proposed that the contradictions observed between past group support system (GSS) laboratory and field research may be partially accounted for by the ad-hoc nature of the groups that are often used in the laboratory. To examine this, a laboratory experiment examining the influence of group history (i.e., established versus ad-hoc groups) and the level of computer support (i.e., communicating via a computer-mediated system versus face-to-face) was conducted. Dependent variables examined in the research include information-sharing performance, decision quality, and member perceptions. Subjects completed a hidden profile task--a task where some information is held by all group members prior to the meeting, while other information is held only by a subset of the group. As expected, established groups discussed less unique information than ad-hoc groups. In addition, information sharing was positively related to the quality of group decisions. Members of established groups were more satisfied than members of ad-hoc groups; members using the computer-mediated system were less satisfied than those communicating face-to-face. In addition, group cohesion was positively related to satisfaction and decision quality. The results are discussed in the context of prior theory and research. Opportunities for future research are also described.


A new paedophagous species of Protomelas , P. krampus sp. nov., is described from Lake Malawi. It has been found in Lukoma Bay in Tanzania, near Mara Point in Mozambique, and at Otter Point, Chizumulu, the Likoma Islands and Mazinzi Reef in Malawi. This species is placed in the genus Protomelas based on its melanin pattern, which comprises a continuous midlateral stripe. A morphometric study was done to compare this species with its congeners and similar species of Hemitaeniochromis and Caprichromis . It differs from most congeners by having only one inner tooth row. Furthermore, P. krampus sp. nov. differs from P. insignis , P. spilopterus , H. brachyrhynchus , H. urotaenia , Caprichromis liemi and C. orthognathus by its shorter premaxillary pedicel, shorter prepectoral distances and dentition. It also differs largely in its melanin pattern from the paedophagous species C. liemi , C. orthognathus , Diplotaxodon greenwoodi and Naevochromis chrysogaster , as well as H. brachyrhynchus and H. urotaenia . Protomelas krampus sp. nov. has been observed to ram mouth-brooding cichlids from above to feed on their eggs or larvae.


Police Academy in Szczytno as a university applies for grants for scientific projects and education activities under national and international calls for proposals. To a large extent, the Academy, as part of national resources, participates in competitions of the National Centre for Research and Development, but also in national and regional operational programmes. The research carried out primarily has the nature of applied and industrial research carried out for the benefit of industry or development works for specific recipients from the area of generally understood security. The obtained European funds are primarily projects implemented under the 7th Framework Program, and currently mainly within the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme in the area of security. Police Academy in Szczytno is an active recipient of financial resources from European sources, mainly under the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme. Police Academy in Szczytno is a member of scientific and industrial consortia implementing projects mainly in the fields of security, cybersecurity, organized crime and terrorism, and education of law enforcement officers. Police Academy in Szczytno has a highly qualified scientific and teaching staff and modern infrastructure, which enables the Academy to apply for funds under European programmes. This article presents five projects carried out by the Police Academy in Szczytno as part of European Union research programmes. The authors of the article provide overview of the characteristics of projects implemented in international consortia, discuss their goals and assumptions and indicate the potential ways of utilizing the developed solutions and project results.


That one should never take observations too seriously until they have been tested by theory – a sentiment attributed to Sir Arthur Eddington in the context of general relativity – has almost been taken as a dictum in this finely written history of global warm- ing. The only difference here would be to substitute the word "theory"for "models". Written by Spencer Weart – director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics – the book provides a useful background to present-day climate studies. The author weaves a very readable tale of a discipline driven by observations and by often fiercely held opinions or, at the very least, working hypotheses.


The physics potential of high intensity conventional beams is explored. We consider a low energy super beam which could be produced by a proposed new accelerator at CERN, the Super Proton Linac. Water Cherenkov and liquid oil scintillator detectors are studied as possible candidates for a neutrino oscillation experiment which could improve our current knowledge of the atmospheric parameters and measure or severely constrain the parameter connecting the atmospheric and solar realms. It is also shown that a very large water detector could eventually observe leptonic CP violation. The reach of such an experiment to the neutrino mixing parameters would lie in-between the next generation of neutrino experiments (MINOS, OPERA, etc) and a future neutrino factory.


Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields play growing roles in national and international economies by driving innovation and generating high salary jobs. Yet, the US is lagging behind other highly industrialized nations in terms of STEM education and training. Furthermore, many economic forecasts predict a rising shortage of domestic STEM-trained professions in the US for years to come. One potential solution to this deficit is to decrease the rates at which students leave STEM-related fields in higher education, as currently over half of all students intending to graduate with a STEM degree eventually attrite. However, little quantitative research at scale has looked at causes of STEM attrition, let alone the use of machine learning to examine how well this phenomenon can be predicted. In this paper, we detail our efforts to model and predict dropout from STEM fields using one of the largest known datasets used for research on students at a traditional campus setting. Our results suggest that attrition from STEM fields can be accurately predicted with data that is routinely collected at universities using only information on students' first academic year. We also propose a method to model student STEM intentions for each academic term to better understand the timing of STEM attrition events. We believe these results show great promise in using machine learning to improve STEM retention in traditional and non-traditional campus settings.


Multi-chamber tools have enabled significant technical breakthroughs in wafer processing in the last decade. Expenditures for these tools are increasing as a percentage of the total capital base. Fully one-third of the capital dollars invested in 0.4 /spl mu/m technology processing equipment will be spent on multi-chamber tools. These tools also present some special productivity problems, as a significant portion of the tool can fail to produce wafers while the remaining portions of the tool still are able to do so at a reduced run rate. Classical measures of tool availability and run rates are insufficient to account for reduced output when part of the tool is down. This paper presents measurements, operating scenarios and operating guidelines to maximize multi-chamber tool productivity in a volume manufacturing environment.


Decisions made in setting up and running search programs bias the searches that they perform. Search bias refers to the definition of a search space and the definition of the program that navigates the space. This paper addresses the problem of using knowledge regarding the complexity of various syntactic search biases to form a policy for selecting bias. In particular, this paper shows that a simple policy, iterative weakening, is optimal or nearly optimal in cases where the biases can be ordered by computational complexity and certain relationships hold between the complexity of the various biases. The results are obtained by viewing bias selection as a (higher-level) search problem. Iterative weakening evaluates the states in order of increasing complexity. An offshoot of this work is the formation of a near-optimal policy for selecting both breadth and depth bounds for depth-fist search with very large (possibly unbounded) breadth and depth.


Text steganography usually modifies the cover-text (where secrets are embedded) in some meaning-preserving ways to conceal secret messages, while steganalysis does the opposite - detects or extracts the secrets. A lot of work has been done on steganography, but only a little on steganalysis. In this paper, we analyze one kind of text steganography that use synonym substitution. We try to distinguish between modified articles and unmodified articles using context information. We evaluate the suitability of words for their context, and then the suitability sequence of words leads to the final judgment made by a SVM (support vector machine) classifier. IDF (inverse document frequency) is used to weight words¿ suitability in order to balance common words and rare ones. This scheme is evaluated on internet instead of in a specific corpus, with the help of Google. Experimental results show that classification accuracy achieves 90.0%.


The need for new therapeutic targets in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) prompted us to investigate the putative involvement of the norepinephrine system by means of platelet α2-adrenoreceptors in a group of 20 OCD patients and healthy control subjects, matched for sex and age. Platelet membranes were prepared according to standard protocols, and the α2-adrenoreceptors were measured by means of the specific binding of [3H]rauwolscine, a highy selective antagonist for this receptor subtype. The results, which showed no difference between patients and controls in the binding parameters of [3H]rauwolscine, suggest that the role of α2-adrenoreceptors, as reflected by the platelet model, is quite limited in OCD and may, perhaps, be restricted purely to some symptoms or dimensions such as motricity, as suggested by the higher density of α2-adrenoreceptors found in patients concomitantly affected by motor tics.


In his attacks against Asclepiades and his followers, Galen did not only criticize a different theoretical approach on healing. The issue was more fundamental. In their definition of medicine, Methodists could be seen as the advocates of a rather 'light' version of medicine, which made it popular and easy to understand. According to Methodists themselves, practitioners could be trained in a very short period of time. Such a view on medicine could make the basics of the art of healing affordable to everyone. Galen, who had a very ambitious conception of his art, was promoting a strong intellectual and philosophical approach to medicine as well as the idea that medical practitioners are thoroughly educated specialists. He was defending the social legitimacy of his profession. Key words: Galen - Asclepiades - Methodists - Polemics


This paper traces the shifts in treatments of intermediate groups among some liberal and democratic political theorists in the 18th and 19th centuries. The decades of the late 18th and early 19th centuries are traditionally understood to encompass the emergence of fully liberal political and social theory, and an early version of liberal political practice, in France, the UK, and the US; they have lately been identified by North, Wallis, and Weingast as the decades when those three societies substantially made the transition to "open access" political, economic, and legal orders. This transition consists in part in the democratization of organizational tools that had previously been open only to members of the elite, such as the shift from specially chartered monopolistic corporations to general incorporation laws, and that from parliamentary oligopolistic party competition to modern parties competing in wide-suffrage elections. Although the early liberal theorists did not fully perceive the changes happening around them, their analyses and reactions can help us see things about the shift to open-access orders that might not be fully visible in retrospect. To varying degrees they looked forward to the possibility of a pluralism without privilege, but they also had doubts about its possibility. They offered some reasons to prefer pluralism with privilege to the absence of both. They worried that centralization, democratic or otherwise, might be the preeminent fact of modern state consolidation, and that purely voluntary, equal, associational pluralism might not be powerful enough to check it. The kinds of pluralism grounded in ancient regime privilege and status, in entrenched jurisdictional pluralism within the constitutional order, or in pre-political cultural and customary ties might be needed to motivate the oppositional political action that could protect pluralism and freedom.


INTRODUCTION
Passive energy storage and return (ESR) feet are the current performance standard in lower limb prostheses. A recently developed semi-active variable-stiffness foot (VSF) prosthesis balances the simplicity of a passive ESR device with the adaptability of a powered design. The purpose of this study was to model and simulate the ESR properties of the VSF prosthesis.

METHODS
The ESR properties of the VSF were modeled as a lumped parameter overhung beam. The overhung length is variable, allowing the model to exhibit variable ESR stiffness. Foot-ground contact was modeled using sphere-to-plane contact models. Contact parameters were optimized to represent the geometry and dynamics of the VSF and its foam base. Static compression tests and gait were simulated. Simulation outcomes were compared to corresponding experimental data.

RESULTS
Stiffness of the model matched that of the physical VSF (R2: 0.98, RMSE: 1.37 N/mm). Model-predicted resultant ground reaction force (GRFR) matched well under optimized parameter conditions (R2: 0.98, RMSE: 5.3% body weight,) and unoptimized parameter conditions (R2: 0.90, mean RMSE: 13% body weight). Anterior-posterior center of pressure matched well with R2 > 0.94 and RMSE < 9.5% foot length in all conditions.

CONCLUSIONS
The ESR properties of the VSF were accurately simulated under benchtop testing and dynamic gait conditions. These methods may be useful for predicting GRFR arising from gait with novel prostheses. Such data are useful to optimize prosthesis design parameters on a user-specific basis.


Based on the literature on the relationship between culture, emotion, and loss aversion, we derive that culture can influence the degree of loss aversion. To test our hypotheses, we conduct a standardized survey in 53 countries worldwide that includes the questions from the Hofstede survey on cultural dimensions as well as lottery questions on loss aversion. The results show that individualism, power distance, and masculinity increase loss aversion as predicted, whereas the impact of uncertainty avoidance is less significant. Moreover, we also find a relation between the distribution of major religions in a country and loss aversion. In comparison, the connection of loss aversion to macroeconomic variables seems to be much smaller.


This article uses the concept of "anti-intellectualism" to explain surprising overlaps in rhetoric between American food activists and the manufacturers they criticize. It shows anti-intellectual elements in the language of, in turn: Sylvester Graham, an influential lecturer during the 1830s; the Natural Food Company, maker of Shredded Wheat and an advocate for "natural food" in the early 1900s; and Michael Pollan, a leading figure in contemporary American food politics. These activists and manufacturers have spoken in an anti-intellectual style about nature and food, arguing that certain forms of knowledge and evidence are more natural than others. Each has favored similar ways of understanding nature, rejecting professionalized expertise for tradition, intuition, and the wisdom of more "natural" peoples. While disagreeing on the proper structure of food production and distribution, activists and manufacturers have both sought authority to tell people how to live by evoking similar visions of the American past. This shared ideal romanticizes a time in which women did more work at home, immigrants and indigenous people were even more marginalized, and custom and tradition more fully guided people's food choices. With different politics and intentions, manufacturers and activists belong to the same lineage of food discourse and have both furthered an American tradition of anti-intellectualism.


OBJECTIVE
This study investigates whether General Practice placement experience or locations (urban/metropolitan vs non-metropolitan) promote student interest in pursuing general practice.

DESIGN
SurveyMonkey was used in the design of the survey.

SETTING
The study was conducted online.

PARTICIPANTS
A total of 520 and 705 clinical-year students were surveyed in 2009 and 2019, respectively. The study was conducted online, using SurveyMonkey, and the participants were mostly non-indigenous Australian medical students, between the ages of 18 and 30.

INTERVENTIONS
Students were recruited from the General Practice Students' Network membership database to complete the survey online. Chi-squared testing, Pearson's correlation and a multivariate logistic regression analysis were used to investigate the correlation between general practice placements and intention to become a general practice.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The association and causation between general practice placement location, student experience and students' intended career outcomes.

RESULTS
In 2009, majority of students rated their general practice experience 'mostly positive' while most metropolitan participants and majority of non-metropolitan placement participants in the 2019 survey responded with 'mostly positive' in 2019. Based on 2009 and 2019 data, general practice placement location had no association with the likelihood of pursuing general practice as a career, while student experience had a stronger positive correlation with the likelihood of pursuing general practice as a career.

CONCLUSION
Our study shows that students' overall experience with their general practice placements significantly encourages medical students to pursue the general practice pathway. As such, increasing both metropolitan and non-metropolitan placement experiences can potentially overcome general practice shortage.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the introduction of a medicine information programme by the Pharmacy Service and to evaluate this programme, analysing the usefulness of the information supplied.

SETTING
"12 de Octubre" University Hospital, Health Area 11, Madrid.

PATIENTS
Patients discharged by the Internal Medicine Service over a six-month period, with patients with HIV or palliative treatment being excluded.

INTERVENTIONS
On their hospital discharge, patients were informed orally and in writing on the medicine's dosage, action and side-effects, as well as general considerations during treatment. After 30 days the patients concerned were polled by telephone.

RESULTS
Information was supplied to 163 patients. The average number of medicines prescribed on discharge was 4.6. Average age was 65 +/- 15 years. 141 patients were interviewed. 8.5% did not answer the telephone interview. 90.8% consulted the written information received and 10% had difficulty in understanding them. 77% wished to receive oral and written information. 95% found the information useful. When questioned on the number of medicines they took, 88.6% of the patients gave a reply which coincided with the medicines prescribed on discharge. 88.4% understood the indication of the treatment and 35% remembered the commercial names. 93% knew the intervals between doses and 76% knew what to do if they forgot a dose.

CONCLUSIONS
In the group of patients under study, a high demand for information on medication was identified. The great majority considered useful the information provided by the Pharmacy Service.


In recent years language teachers generally have accepted the guiding principles of the "aural-oral," "audio-lingual" or the "new" approach to second language learning. In practice, this approach, whatever it may be labelled, frequently produces rapid progress in the spoken language in the early years, and enthusiasm, with a slowing down and disenchantment when the learner begings to grapple with the complexities of the written form of the language. Observation and experience suggest that there is a dearth of good programmes for developing the skills of reading and writing. Furthermore, too few teachers have an understanding of the differences between the morphology and syntax of the spoken and the written language and the contribution of linguistic science to the development of effective procedures in teaching a second language.


Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease that although primarily affecting the joints is recognised as a systemic disease with a variety of co-morbidities. One such co-morbidity is cardiovascular disease (CVD) and patients with RA are at a two-fold increased risk of developing CVD compared to the general population. Indeed, CVD, principally as a result of atherosclerosis, is recognised as the leading cause of death in RA patients. In this study the vascular adventitia and serum samples from patients with co-existing RA and CVD were investigated to identify factors that could explain the increased CVD morbidity observed in RA patients. This involved culture-independent identification of bacterial signatures and histological evaluation for pro-inflammatory molecules and potential RA-associated autoantigens in the aortic adventitia. Additionally, serum samples from healthy controls, patients with RA or CVD alone, and patients with co-existing RA and CVD, were screened for a broad range of cytokines, chemokines and growth factors. These data provided the basis for further studies into the effect of cytokines on foam cell formation.
Histological evaluation of the aortic adventitia revealed that pronounced inflammatory infiltrates were detectable in all patients with CVD, regardless of rheumatic disease. To assess whether or not the inflammatory composition of the aortic adventitia differed between patients with or without RA, sections were examined using immunohistochemistry for a markers including TNFα, CD21 and heat shock proteins (HSP) 47 and 60, both of which have been implicated in the pathogenesis of RA and CVD. TNFα and HSP47 were confirmed in the aortic adventitia; however, neither CD21 nor HSP60 were detected. The expression of total TNFα was significantly elevated in RA+CVD compared to non-RA CVD patients. These data demonstrate that the aortic adventitia is a site of considerable immunological function and suggest a possible role for TNFα overexpression in the pathogenesis of CVD in RA.
Bacterial infection has been implicated as a causative agent for both RA and CVD. The present study used culture-independent methods to identify bacteria in the aortic adventitia of RA+CVD and non-RA CVD patients. The presence of bacterial DNA was confirmed in three of 11 RA+CVD and four of 11 non-RA CVD patients. The bacterial flora of RA+CVD patients was significantly less heterogeneous compared to non-RA CVD patients. Methylobacterium oryzae was detected in every RA+CVD patient positive for the presence of bacterial DNA. Subsequent in vitro characterisation demonstrated that M.oryzae stimulates mild Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2), but not TLR4, signalling and, upon challenge of primary human macrophages, produces a robust pro-inflammatory response. Importantly, these findings implicate M. oryzae infection as playing a potential role in the pathogenesis of CVD in RA patients.
Previous studies have argued that the persistently high levels of systemic inflammation exhibited by RA patients are critical to elevated CVD risk. In the current study it was demonstrated that RA patients exhibit an altered systemic immune profile compared to non-RA CVD patients and healthy controls. The pro-inflammatory phenotype in co-morbind CVD and RA is suggestive of an environment that may promote atherosclerosis. Furthermore, RA+CVD patients were shown to possess an altered systemic immune phenotype compared to both RA and CVD patients. Notably, IL-1β, IL-2, IL-5, IL-8, IL-13, IL-17, Monokine induced by gamma interferon (MIG), Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) and Granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) expression was greater in the serum of RA+CVD patients compared to the additive values of the RA and CVD patients.
The formation of lipid-rich foam cells is a major feature of atherosclerosis pathogenesis and is partially dependent on the inflammatory environment. The present study demonstrated that GM-CSF stimulation significantly decreased the rate at which human primary macrophages could endocytose oxLDL and form foam cells. The effect of dextran sulphate, a known competitive inhibitor of scavenger receptors, on the ability of GM-CSF stimulated macrophages to differentiate into foam cells revealed that GM-CSF decreases the concentration of dextran sulphate required to successfully inhibit scavenger receptor-mediated ox-LDL uptake; suggesting that GM-CSF-stimulated macrophages express less scavenger receptors on the cell surface. However, subsequent investigation demonstrated that GM-CSF stimulation did not decrease expression of the currently recognised scavenger receptors that are capable of oxLDL recognition (SR-A1, SR-B1, CD36 and MARCO). These data imply that the overexpression of GM-CSF observed in RA and RA+CVD patients may provide some atheroprotective benefit. This has clinical implications for future anti-RA drugs which target GM-CSF function.
In summary, the data presented in this thesis demonstrate that RA+CVD patients exhibit immunological and pathological alterations both in the aortic adventitia and systemically. Further research will, over time, provide insight into the mechanisms underlying increased CVD burden in RA.


Our paper investigates what forms the knowledge work design on a corporate level in the future. The future might be 2025, 2030, or 2035. The methodology includes interviews with researchers working with these issues in Telia and Telenor. These companies make their living from understanding the future of work both on a corporate and societal level. The main finding is that AI and robotics will be more advanced, but management and organizational structure will be the main changes. The work will be done more as distance work and through virtual teams. The management and organization of work through the coronavirus have opened for more work done independent of time and the workplace and in virtual teams. There is also predicted a lack of professionals and all types of employees in the years to come, leading both to compete for talent and increased importance in keeping the employed knowledge workers through internal career pipelines. AI and robotics will not reduce the need for professionals and employees. The steps will be taken towards an integrated digitalization that makes new opportunities for collaboration, communication, and knowledge work. The fundamental knowledge worker will be using more of his working time on significant business issues. The skills needed are technical, information management, knowledge management, project management, collaboration, communication, rhetoric, virtual team, creativity, and green problem-solving skills. There is a corporate need for ethical, cultural, tolerating, and sexual awareness. We may summarize the requirements as creative, sustainable, social, and perception manipulation intelligence. The future knowledge will be complex, and the knowledge worker will handle multiple skills in different situations. The future knowledge work will be dominated by increasingly autonomous workers co-opting automated digital systems to create and capture value. The education might be revamped into a more task-focused education offered through the work-life cycles. The revamping of education will also increase the overall employment, and we will not experience the mass unemployment described in the literature as the result of AI, robotics, and digitalization. We have identified that the literature uses the unit occupation and not the unit tasks for the predicted higher unemployment and gets the misinterpretation of negative consequences. The environmental issues and the climate crisis will be taken very seriously in the years to come. There will be cooperation between the political and corporate economies to do whatever is possible for sustainability in all internal and external processes to work greener and smarter. We will experience sustainability in action driven by a green leadership through a green strategy and green business models giving green services and products, reusing as much as possible, and using as few as possible resources to reduce the CO2 gases. This study concludes that there will be many small positive corporate and societal steps for each year towards 2030, improving the way of living and working together with environmental improvements. The reconstruction of the middle class is also emerging — neither a perfect nor an imperfect world.


Why do people make deontological decisions, although they often lead to overall unfavorable outcomes? One account is receiving considerable attention: deontological judgments may signal commitment to prosociality and thus may increase people's chances of being selected as social partners–which carries obvious long-term benefits. Here we test this framework by experimentally exploring whether people making deontological judgments are expected to be more prosocial than those making consequentialist judgments and whether they are actually so. In line with previous studies, we identified deontological choices using the Trapdoor dilemma. Using economic games, we take two measures of general prosociality towards strangers: trustworthiness and altruism. Our results procure converging evidence for a perception gap according to which Trapdoor-deontologists are believed to be more trustworthy and more altruistic towards strangers than Trapdoor-consequentialists, but actually they are not so. These results show that deontological judgments are not universal, reliable signals of prosociality.


LiFePO4 is one of the most promising cathode materials for lithium ion battery, especially those used in electrical vehicles and hybrid electrical vehicles. However, its very poor rate performance caused by its low electronic and ionic conductivity limits the wide utilization in high power lithium ion battery. Iron phosphides, such as FeP and Fe2P, were reported to have positive effect on the improvement of the rate performance. In order to improve the electrochemical properties, LiFe1+xPO4/C (x = 0-0.1) composite with various contents of iron phosphides was synthesized by adding different amount of iron source during a sol-gel process. The amount of iron phosphides increased with the increase of iron source. Electrochemical performance showed that the samples with 1% iron source in excess had better rate performance than the LiFePO4/C sample synthesized with stoichiometric iron source. However, the overall samples with excessive iron source showed relatively low specific discharge capacity. Hence, some balance between the rate capability and discharge capacity should be found and the amount of the in-situ formed iron phosphides should be optimized.


Ferroelectricity has been time-honored subject in terms of various electronic, electro-mechanical, and optical functions. Developing organic ferroelectrics with advantages of light-weight, flexible, low-cost, and environmentally benign characteristics is surely in demand, yet needs elaborate chemical designs of objective functions. This review describes modern chemical approach to improved dielectric, ferroelectric and/or thermal properties, based on the charge-transfer complexes and hydrogen-bonded compounds.


Spoken intent detection has become a popular approach to interface with various smart devices with ease. However, such systems are limited to the preset list of intents-terms or commands, which restricts the quick customization of personal devices to new intents. This paper presents a few-shot spoken intent classification approach with task-agnostic representations via meta-learning paradigm. Specifically, we leverage the popular representation-based meta-learning learning to build a task-agnostic representation of utterances, that then use a linear classifier for prediction. We evaluate three such approaches on our novel experimental protocol developed on two popular spoken intent classification datasets: Google Commands and the Fluent Speech Commands dataset. For a 5-shot (1-shot) classification of novel classes, the proposed framework provides an average classification accuracy of 88.6% (76.3%) on the Google Commands dataset, and 78.5% (64.2%) on the Fluent Speech Commands dataset. The performance is comparable to traditionally supervised classification models with abundant training samples.


This paper considers the localization problem in mobile sensor networks. Such a problem is a challenging task, especially when measurements exchanged between sensors may contain outliers, that is, data not matching the observation model. This paper proposes two algorithms robust to outliers. These algorithms perform a set-membership estimation, where only the maximal number of outliers is required to be known. Using these algorithms, estimates consist of sets of boxes whose union surely contains the correct location of the sensor, provided that the considered hypotheses are satisfied. This paper proposes as well a technique for evaluating the number of outliers to be robust to. In order to corroborate the efficiency of both algorithms, a comparison of their performances is performed in simulations using Matlab.


Standard neural network architectures are non-linear only by virtue of a simple element-wise activation function, making them both brittle and excessively large. In this paper, we consider methods for making the feed-forward layer more flexible while preserving its basic structure. We develop simple drop-in replacements that learn to adapt their parameterization conditional on the input, thereby increasing statistical efficiency significantly. We present an adaptive LSTM that advances the state of the art for the Penn Treebank and WikiText-2 word-modeling tasks while using fewer parameters and converging in less than half as many iterations.


In this paper we analyse the interactions between fire severity (plant damage) and plant regeneration after fire by means of remote sensing imagery and a field fire severity map. A severity map was constructed over a large fire (2692 ha) occurring in July 1994 in the Barcelona province (north-east of Spain). Seven severity classes were assigned to the apparent plant damage as a function of burning intensity. Several Landsat TM and MSS images from dates immediately before and after the fire were employed to monitor plant regeneration processes as well as to evaluate the relationship with fire severity observed in situ . Plant regeneration was monitored using NDVI measurements (average class values standardized with neighbour unburned control plots). Pre-fire NDVI measurements were extracted for every plant cover category (7), field fire severity class (7), and spatial cross-tabulation of both layers (33) and compared to post-fire values. NDVI decline due to fire was positively correlated with field fire severity class. Results show different patterns of recovery for each dominant species, severity class and combination of both factors. For all cases a significant negative correlation was found between damage and regeneration ability. This work leads to a better understanding of the influence of severity, a major fire regime parameter on plant regeneration, and may aid to manage restoration on areas burned under different fire severity levels.


In the summer of 1925, a revolt erupted in the French mandated territories of Syria and Lebanon and rapidly spread throughout the area. The French army of the Levant seemed powerless to halt it. By autumn, no part of Syria or Lebanon was secure against sudden disruption of life and property. Stories of French incompetence, impotence, and arrogance were widely circulated in the Syrian and European press. The Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, in a rare exercise of its limited powers, refused to accept the French report for 1925, which covered only the comparatively calm period preceding the revolt, and demanded instead a full account of the disturbances, as well as the restoration of peace in the mandate. In October, when rebels infiltrated Damascus, the French military administration took a drastic step to end the revolt. Without warning, General Sarrail, the high commissioner, ordered the ancient city bombarded continuously for nearly twenty-four hours. When the smoke lifted, much of Damascus was in ruins; the reported loss of life and property appalled world opinion and galvanized Arab dissidents. A torrent of violent and emotional criticism was unleashed. In some quarters it was even hinted that the League of Nations would remove the mandate from French control. Yet less than a year later, the revolt had been quashed and France's hold on the mandate was so secured internationally that it survived into World War II.


(1) Jorga and coworkers investigate nighttime secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation in urban ambient air using a dual chamber; one is used for SOA experiments and the other is used as a control reactor. This measurement approach allows for improved understanding of the oxidation chemistry and the secondary pollutant formation in the actual ambient conditions. Specifically, this work is conducted at night during the period when high biomass burning impact is observed. As nighttime oxidation of biomass burning emissions and its impact on secondary organic aerosol formation is relatively less studied compared to the photochemical oxidation, the results in Jorga et al. can potentially help improve our understanding in secondary organic aerosol formation from biomass burning emissions, especially their interaction with urban air during nighttime. One of the major findings in this study is that the ambient chamber experiment reproduced the mass spectra of biomass burning oxygenated organic aerosol (BBOOA) reported in Kodros et al. (2020), where the AMS mass spectra of BBOOA was retrieved from flame chamber experiments and parameterized for simulation application. Further, this study quantified the secondary organic nitrate formation from biomass burning, which is less understood compared to organic nitrate generated from the other sources such as biogenic emissions.


A columnar data representation is known to be an efficient way for data storage, specifically in cases when the analysis is often done based only on a small fragment of the available data structures. A data representation like Apache Parquet is a step forward from a columnar representation, which splits data horizontally to allow for easy parallelization of data analysis. Based on the general idea of columnar data storage, working on the FNAL LDRD Project FNAL-LDRD-2016-032, we have developed a striped data representation, which, we believe, is better suited to the needs of High Energy Physics data analysis. A traditional columnar approach allows for efficient data analysis of complex structures. While keeping all the benefits of columnar data representations, the striped mechanism goes further by enabling easy parallelization of computations without requiring special hardware. We will present an implementation and some performance characteristics of such a data representation mechanism using a distributed no-SQL database or a local file system, unified under the same API and data representation model. The representation is efficient and at the same time simple so that it allows for a common data model and APIs for wide range of underlying storage mechanisms such as distributed no-SQL databases and local file systems. Striped storage adopts Numpy arrays as its basic data representation format, which makes it easy and efficient to use in Python applications. The Striped Data Server is a web service, which allows to hide the server implementation details from the end user, easily exposes data to WAN users, and allows to utilize well known and developed data caching solutions to further increase data access efficiency. We are considering the Striped Data Server as the core of an enterprise scale data analysis platform for High Energy Physics and similar areas of data processing. We have been testing this architecture with a 2TB dataset from a CMS dark matter search and plan to expand it to multiple 100 TB or even PB scale. We will present the striped format, Striped Data Server architecture and performance test results.


New methods to improve the bone response to metallic implants are still emerging, ranging from surface modifications of the metal to coatings and drug delivery. One further development of coatings on implants is to incorporate bioactive ions in order to stimulate the bone response without the need of drug delivery. The aim of the current study is to prepare apatite coatings containing Sr and Si using a solution method, for the purpose of further optimising the bone response to metal implants. Titanium substrates were activated to induce the formation of coatings in modified PBS solutions. Soaking in PBS solutions with different concentrations of strontium and silicate at 37℃ or 60℃ produced coatings with different morphologies, thicknesses and compositions. Ion release experiments showed simultaneous release of Sr and Si from the coatings both in PBS and Tris-HCl. Analysis of the results using the Korsmeyer-Peppas model indicate that the release of ions from the coatings was a combination of Fickian diffusion and degradation of the coatings. This study shows that it is possible to coat Ti substrates with modified apatite with ion release functionality and thereby increase the possibilities for a tailored bone response in vivo.


Surprisal analysis is increasingly being applied for the examination of transcription levels in cellular processes, towards revealing inner network structures and predicting response. But to achieve its full potential, surprisal analysis should be integrated into a wider range computational tool. The purposes of this paper are to combine surprisal analysis with other important computation procedures, such as easy manipulation of the analysis results – e.g. to choose desirable result sub-sets for further inspection –, retrieval and comparison with relevant datasets from public databases, and flexible graphical displays for heuristic thinking. The whole set of computation procedures integrated into a single practical tool is what we call Computational Surprisal Analysis. This combined kind of analysis should facilitate significantly quantitative understanding of different cellular processes for researchers, including applications in proteomics and metabolomics. Beyond that, our vision is that Computational Surprisal Analysis has the potential to reach the status of a routine method of analysis for practitioners. The resolving power of Computational Surprisal Analysis is here demonstrated by its application to a variety of cellular cancer process transcription datasets, ours and from the literature. The results provide a compact biological picture of the thermodynamic significance of the leading gene expression phenotypes in every stage of the disease. For each transcript we characterize both its inherent steady state weight, its correlation with the other transcripts and its variation due to the disease. We present a dedicated website to facilitate the analysis for researchers and practitioners.


A differential electronic Susceptible-Infectious-Removed- Susceptible (e-SIRS) epidemic model of virus and worms in a computer network has been formulated. Latent period, immune period and time for self replication have been considered. Stability of the result is stated in terms of the threshold parameter. We have derived an explicit formula for the reproductive number and have shown that the virus-worm- infection-free equilibrium, whose component of infective is zero, is globally asymptotically stable if threshold number is less than one, and unstable if it is greater than one. Numerical method is employed to solve the system of equations developed and interpretation of the model yields interesting revelations.


A Thesis Submitted to the Institute of Distance Learning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MSc. Industrial Mathematics.2013


Abstract. Increasing the corrosion resistance of low-alloy steels containing less than 2.5% of doping components (except carbon), which are actively used in the construction of various buildings and structures, is one of the priorities in the development of the modern construction industry. This problem becomes especially urgent during operation of stressed elements of various structures, which are used in the conditions of possible surface exposure to moisture. As part of the research, the results of which are presented in this article, we have examined the possible reduction in the rate of electrochemical corrosion of low-alloy steels in a natural corrosive environment. The purpose of the study was to establish the effect of the composition of steels on their corrosive properties. The main method chosen was a method of thermodynamic potentials, used in conjunction with model ideas about ideal gas and free energy of diffusion of liquid, solid and gaseous solutions. The present study analyzes the process of formation of ideal binary alloy, based on which the relationship between the thermodynamic characteristics of its original components and the corrosive behavior of the alloy was established. In order to verify the detected corrosion mechanism, the process of amalgam anode dissolution was considered, which fully confirmed the results obtained earlier. Based on the analysis conducted, it can be concluded that the equilibrium potential of the ideal binary alloy in the electrolyte in no way depends on the process of its formation from the pure original components. It is determined solely by the ratio of energy characteristics of metal ions actually in the alloy, as well as the energy characteristics of the same ions in the solution of electrolyte, which comes into contact with the alloy.