Numerous studies have recognized collaboration as an effective way of learning. When collaboration involves students from different cultural backgrounds, a question arises: Will cultural differences influence the manner in which roles are adopted within collaborative learning? In this study, a correlation analysis was used to explore the relationship between cultural factors and emerging roles among collaborating students from two universities in different countries (China and USA). The cultural factors that might hypothetically affect their collaboration were approximated to thinking styles by using Sternberg's thinking styles inventory. The roles that students adopted according to preferences were coded with an adapted coding scheme. The results indicate a significant relationship between student thinking styles and the adopted roles of students. This finding implies that cultural factors, exhibited as thinking styles, could explain the emerging roles that are adopted in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). The results could guide teachers in assigning appropriate roles to students with different backgrounds to improve the efficiency of collaboration during cross-cultural CSCL.


INTRODUCTIONIn Islam, marriage is defined as a social bond or agreement between two parties; it is not applicable unless both husband and wife approve of it. Consequently, no woman is obligated to get married to a married man or even to a single one, who is not of her choice. Thus, why is polygamy permitted according to the Islamic teachings? The reason is that it is an open alternative for both the husband and the first wife, if the first wife suffers from serious health conditions such as infertility, sexual chaos, severe, or rigorous illness, and perceives in polygamy a healthier way out than divorce. Second, the first wife has the right to divorce her husband if he gets married to another woman, provided that the marriage agreement grants her the right of unilateral divorce (Obaidat, 2001, Alsbaei, 2001, & Momani, 1990).Marriage type in Jordan is the same as in all Muslim countries, but differs from marriages in the Non-Muslim world. For example, polygamous marriages exist and are socially as well as legally acceptable in addition to monogamous marriages. The purpose of this study is to identify the most important educational reflections and consequences of polygamy on children in particular and society in general, as well as evaluating the community acceptance to it. The second purpose of this study is to examine whether polygamous marital structures are beneficial or harmful to children. To this end, the following primary questions will be addressed: (1) what are the most important educational reflections of polygamy on children in particular and society in general? (2) Are polygamous marital structures beneficial or harmful to children?According to the religion of Islam, all commands are from Allah Almighty, the Wise, and the Knowledgeable; therefore, one infers that all things which are acceptable and suitable are due to the fact that their benefit to the person and the public overshadows their troubles. When the reasons and results of the permissibility of polygamy are analyzed, it is found that without doubt the verdicts of the religion of Islam are beyond doubt those which outfit all times and places, as their source is the Divine Being (Garni, 1984; Qudah, 1984; Badawi, 1998).Polygamy is officially and broadly practiced in more than eight hundred societies worldwide. It has been the focus of a substantial augmentation in public, political, and academic awareness throughout the last two decades. A number of research papers came out all through this time, primarily focusing on the influence of polygamy onbehavioral, emotional, and educational alteration of children (Elbedour, Onwuegbuzie, Caridine, & Abu-Saad, 2002). Similar to Judaism and Christianity, Islam does not present a clear prevention of the condition or practice of having more than one wife at one time. Contrasting to both Judaism and Christianity, Islam deals with the matter more plainly and offers definite authorized requirements and restraints that quantity to the opposition of such a practice. The reason for not prohibiting polygamy emphatically is possibly is that there are certain circumstances which face individuals and societies in diverse places and at different periods, which construct the limited practice of polygamy a healthier resolution than either separation or the hypocritical pretence of decency (Badawi, 1998; Abdel Azim, 2004).It is obvious that the association of polygamy with Islam is not unfair or biased but based on serious misunderstanding. Polygamy was practiced, often without limitations, in some cultures (Elbedour, Onwuegbuzie, Caridine, & Abu-Saad, 2002). Itwas authorized by various religions, and practiced before Islam and for many centuries from then on. It is presently practiced, though secretly by the Mormons, and it is allowed by Christian missionaries in Africa and other areas where polygamy is a social necessity (Obaidat, 2001, Badawi, 1998, Al-Attar, 1977).The condition of fairness rules out the desire that man can possess as many wives as he desires. …


This ethnographic study in medical anthropology is a critically interpretative analysis of fieldwork documentation I recorded during field research conducted in the mining city of Mount Isa in the far northwest of Queensland during the 1980s. Eighteen months of participant observation research was undertaken over four fieldtrips (1981-82, 1983, 1985 and 1988) at inter-connected locations: two urban reserves for Aborigines and the people I refer to as the Reserve Dwellers, as well as the local hospital and a group of hospital resident medical officers who I refer to as the Residents. During the field research I found that both Reserve Dwellers and the Residents experienced a difficult relationship during their interactions in medical consultations in the hospital clinics. Now in this dissertation I ask an overarching question of my time-lag field data. It is How can we understand the problematic relationship between indigenous reserve-dwelling help-seekers and biomedical practitioners at their local hospital clinics in the 1980s. To describe this problematic relationship I analyse time-lag data from my diaried participant observation at both the reserves and the hospital; semi-structured interviews with the hospital Residents; case studies and case histories of consenting help-seekers from the Reserves; and illustrative transcriptions of consultations between Residents and Reserve Dwellers that were tape recorded by the Residents during hospital clinics. The contemporary ethnomedical system of the Reserve Dwellers was inclusive of biomedicalized clinics and the Residents as clinicians at this remote hospital in the 1980s. I provide an ethnographic account of a changing contemporary indigenous ethnomedical system and describe the lifeways of the Reserve Dwellers in the 1980s; their pattern of help-seeking at their local hospital including grievous happenings; and their experiences in outpatients clinics and the emergency section of the local non-indigenous hospital. Their lifeways and help-seeking were in many ways defined by the collective sociality of Kalkadunga and other regional indigenous cultures as impoverished, very sick survivors of a genocidal contact history less than 100 years before. This local history is also reconstructed. The Residents view of local indigenous illness, help-seeking, and experiences of biomedicalised hospital clinics further describe the socio-cultural reality of the time. I found that the Residents had an insightful, even predictive assessment of local illness burden. At the same time, they held strong views about a pattern of help-seeking in the outpatients and emergency clinics that was considered disruptive of hospital routines. I also describe how they expressed their difficulties interacting with Aboriginal help-seekers including the taking of biomedical histories. My thesis is that a localized socio-clinical reality was shaped by a synchronic, coeval relationship between Reserve Dwellers enculturated within a changing, contemporary ethnomedical belief system that incorporated biomedicalized hospital clinics, and the Residents as clinicians enculturated within a culture of biomedical science at a remote hospital. I argue that the lifeways and pattern of help-seeking of the Reserve Dwellers, as well as the Residents' views about sick indigenous help-seekers, formed this particular socio-clinical reality. It was then consistently replicated by problematic socio-clinical interaction and biomedicalized praxis that inhibited investigation and curative outcomes for the Reserve Dwellers and other indigenous help-seekers.


The data of a comprehensive study of 86 children aged 6 to 14 years, who were examined and treated at the Research Institute of Phthisiology for various manifestations of tuberculous infection: 25.6% with infected Mycobacterium tuberculosis with varying specific sensitization; 34.9% with minor forms of intrathoracic lymph node tuberculosis (ILNT), and 39.5% with disseminated processes into the intrathoracic lymph nodes. RM V, VI, VII, and VIII dilutions are of the greatest informative value in the determination of the activity of tuberculous infection. Most children with ILNT showed a significant cellular response to PPD in the LBT test, The LCT test revealed that neutrophilic granulocytes were functionally inadequate in all the children. The currently available immunological tests used in combination with the existing methods adequately evaluate the activity of tuberculous infection in children.


A 8-wheel forwarder was observed while transporting pinyon pine ( P. edulis ) and Utah juniper (J. osteosperma ) from woods to landing in southern Utah. The forwarder was part of a 2-machine system used to treat pinyon-juniper stands. Trees were felled using a rubber tracked skid steer with a shear head, then transported to a collection point with a Ponsse Buffalo King 20-ton forwarder. A total of 47 cycles of the forwarder operating were captured on video and evaluated using time-and-motion study methods. The forwarder averaged 25.8 minutes per cycle at a mean total distance of 786 feet. Total travel distance ranged from 349 to 1851 feet. Total in-woods travel between stops while loading averaged 312 feet per cycle with 7.3 stops. Mean load size was 54.6 trees per load which translated into a payload of 5.08 green tons. The forwarder treated approximately 0.42 acres per hour and had a fuel consumption rate of 3.3 gallons per hour. Forwarding costs and productivity are compared to other alternative methods of off-road transport of pinyon and juniper.


Urbanization, including land use changes, building developments, emission of heat and human activities, has a significant impact to our environment and would also contributions to urban heat island (UHI) effect. UHI effect means the cooling rates in the urban space is slower than rural space. Provision of greenery, water feature, ventilation and high albedo material could reduce UHI effect and improve the thermal comfort of the outdoor
environment. However, the lack of quantitative understanding about the UHI effect has prevented us systematically implement mitgrtion strategy during urban planning in Hong Kong.
Traditional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach is often used to study the microclimate of a small-scale area. The large domain size of the UHI modelling would induce
problem of high computational power, long simulation time and complex setting. Therefore, traditional CFD approach is rarely used to study the UHI phenomenon. This research has
developed a simplified CFD approach to quantify the UHI effect. The new approach used volume averaging approach on the Navies-Stoke equation and developed sets of sub-models
for simplification. The new approach is able to simulate the thermal effect through radiation, conduction, convection, evaporation and etc, to re-create the thermal flow effect within the urban space under coarse grid model.
Hong Kong local weather data has been analysed to understand the impact of the urban characteristic to the thermal environment. Based on the analysis, Ta Kwu Ling is selected for the reference rural weather station for calculating UHI Intensity. A database has been created
using GIS data, which stored the local urban characteristic of Hong Kong, including the greenery area, road area, construction area, building area, sea area, average building and terrain height.
The new approach has reduced the input requirement, modelling complexly, simulation time and computational power for simulating UHI effect in an urban space. The Tsim Sha Tsui Case study has shown the new approach can reduce the number of required grid cells 4000 times and reduce the required CPU time from 50,000 hours (CPU × 1) to 0.1 hour (CPU × 1) as compared with the traditional CFD approach. Thus, the new UHI modelling approach is more practical to be applied during the urban planning process as compared to the traditional.
This thesis lays a foundation to predict the outdoor thermal environment and the UHI impact and to guide a sustainable urban design and planning through a performance-based approach.


Several studies examining Italian have shown that morphemes are effective processing units in reading aloud. Faster naming times and greater accuracy have been found in the reading of pseudowords consisting of real root + real suffix, than for matched pseudowords not made up of such morphemes. The results of this study suggest that the root is of primary importance in the reading aloud of Italian pseudowords. Faster naming times were found both for real root + real suffix pseudowords and for real root + non-suffix pseudowords than for pseudowords which did not include any morpheme. This held true for a stimulus list consisting mostly of words (Experiment 1), and for one consisting of pseudowords only (Experiment 2). Real root + non-suffix pseudowords were read as fast as pseudowords that were fully parsable into morphemes (root + suffix), suggesting that a headstart to a morphemic route can be provided by the root only. However, root + non-suffix pseudowords were pronounced less accurately than root + suffix combinations, indicating that the identification of a root before initiating pronunciation may conflict with the full elaboration of vocal output. Experiment 3 investigated the roles of root and suffix. An effect of suffix on naming latencies was observed, but it was not as strong as the root effect. Taken together, the results suggest that roots and suffixes are accessed and activated in a cascaded manner during the reading aloud of Italian.


Population-based disease registers identify and characterize all cases of disease, including those that might otherwise be neglected. Prospective population-based registers in neurodegeneration are necessary to provide comprehensive data on the whole phenotypic spectrum and can guide planning of health services. With the exception of the rare disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, few complete population-based registers exist for neurodegenerative conditions. Incomplete ascertainment, limitations and uncertainty in diagnostic categorization, and failure to recognize sources of bias reduce the accuracy and usefulness of many registers. Common biases include population stratification, the use of prevalent rather than incident cases in earlier years, changes in disease understanding and diagnostic criteria, and changing demographics over time. Future registers are at risk of funding shortfalls and changes to privacy legislation. Notwithstanding, as heterogeneities of clinical phenotype and disease pathogenesis are increasingly recognized in the neurodegenerations, well-designed longitudinal population-based disease registers will be an essential requirement to complete clinical understanding of neurodegenerative diseases.


Introduction: With increasing life expectancy, the number of endoscopic procedures in the elderly and specifi cally, in patients over the age of 100, has dramatically increased in the United States. Potential benefi ts of these procedures need to be balanced against the competing risks of morbidity and mortality from other diseases in this age group. Studies have shown that endoscopy is feasible and safe in elderly patients. However, no study to date has looked at endoscopic outcomes in the centenarian (> 100 year old) patients. Th e aim of this study was to assess the diagnostic yield, complication rates, and procedural success rates of these endoscopic procedures. As a secondary outcome the study will look at anesthesia outcomes (i.e. length of procedure, sedation complications, etc. ) in these patients. Methods: In a retrospective review, we studied data from all patients over the age of 100 undergoing endoscopic procedures at Maimonides Medical Center over a fi ve year period. Primary outcomes including indications, procedure related mortality, and therapeutic success were reviewed. As a secondary outcome peri-procedure anesthesia records were reviewed. Results: A total of 50 patients over the age of the 100 were included in the study. Th e mean age was 100.6 (Max 104 Min 100), with 40 female patients and 10 males in the study. 44 of the patients were admitted patients and 6 were outpatient. Average ASA score was 4. 47 endoscopies and 2 colonoscopies were performed. 30 of the patients underwent a PEG or PEG replacement for dysphagia or failure to thrive. Th ere were 9 GI bleeds (7 upper 2 lower) and 2 food impactions. All the patients tolerated the procedures well with a single episode hypotension and bradycardia. Conclusion: Gastrointestinal endoscopy is safe and well tolerated in the extremely elderly. Extreme age should not be the only factor infl uencing the decision to proceed with endoscopy in this population.


There is consensus that an optimized cancer vaccine will have to induce not only CD8+ cytotoxic but also CD4+ T helper (Th) cells, particularly interferon (IFN)-γ–producing, type 1 Th cells. The induction of strong, ex vivo detectable type 1 Th cell responses has not been reported to date. We demonstrate now that the subcutaneous injection of cryopreserved, mature, antigen-loaded, monocyte-derived dendritic cells (DCs) rapidly induces unequivocal Th1 responses (ex vivo detectable IFN-γ–producing effectors as well as proliferating precursors) both to the control antigen KLH and to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II–restricted tumor peptides (melanoma-antigen [Mage]-3.DP4 and Mage-3.DR13) in the majority of 16 evaluable patients with metastatic melanoma. These Th1 cells recognized not only peptides, but also DCs loaded with Mage-3 protein, and in case of Mage-3DP4–specific Th1 cells IFN-γ was released even after direct recognition of viable, Mage-3–expressing HLA-DP4+ melanoma cells. The capacity of DCs to rapidly induce Th1 cells should be valuable to evaluate whether Th1 cells are instrumental in targeting human cancer and chronic infections.


The effect of melt treatment on the microstructure and creep-rupture behavior of M963 superalloy at 1248K under 225MPa has been investigated. The microstructure of the as-cast superalloy without melt treatment consists of γ solid solution matrix, γ´precipitate, coarse blocky MC carbide and (γ+γ´)eutectic. The striking difference in microstructure is that the melt treatment changes the MC carbide from the coarse blocky morphology into the fine script-like morphology. After heat-treated at 1483K for 4h followed by air-cooling, both the creep life and rupture elongation of the melt-treated alloy are all doubled those of the alloy without melt treatment. The mechanism of the melt treatment on the creep-rupture behavior of the M963 superalloy is discussed.


In this paper we consider the role of nonmodal instabilities in the dynamics of atmospheric tornadoes. For this purpose we consider the Euler equation, continuity equation and the equation of state and linearise them. As an example we study several different velocity profiles: the so-called Rankine vortex model; the Burgers-Rott vortex model; Sullivan and modified Sullivan vortex models. It has been shown that in the two dimensional Rankine vortex model no instability appears in the inner region of a tornado. On the contrary, outside this area the physical system undergoes strong exponential instability. We have found that initially perturbed velocity components lead to amplified sound wave excitations. The similar results have been shown in Burgers-Rott vortex model as well. As it was numerically estimated, in this case, the unstable wave increases its energy by a factor of $400$ only in $\sim 0.5$min. According to the numerical study, in Sullivan and modified Sullivan models, the instability does not differ much by the growth. Despite the fact that in the inner area the exponential instability does not appear in a purely two dimensional case, we have found that in the modified Sullivan vortex even a small contribution from vertical velocities can drive unstable nonmodal waves.


This paper presents a highly linear optically reconfigurable microwave switch with high power handling ability. A silicon superstrate with bottom illumination is employed. A transparent substrate is used and two different microstrip gap distances are characterized by two-tone nonlinearity measurement with different tone spacings and optical powers. A maximum third order intercept point referred to input power of +78.5dBm has been obtained and the maximum microwave power tested was over 30W per tone close to 2 GHz. Thermal imaging has been used to observe the device hot-spots as a function of RF power.


BACKGROUND
Long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids are thought to be important for fetal neurodevelopment. Animal studies suggest that a deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids may lead to behavioural or cognitive deficits. As oily fish is a major dietary source of omega-3 fatty acids, it is possible that low intake of fish during pregnancy may have adverse effects on the developing fetal brain.

METHODS
We used the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence to assess behavioural problems and intelligence in 217 nine-year-old children. The mothers of these children had participated in a study of nutrition during pregnancy during which fish intake was assessed in early and late gestation.

RESULTS
Children whose mothers had eaten oily fish in early pregnancy had a reduced risk of hyperactivity compared to those whose mothers did not eat oily fish: OR .34, 95% CI .15 to .78, after adjustment for potential confounding factors. Children whose mothers had eaten fish (whether oily or non-oily) in late pregnancy had a verbal IQ that was 7.55 points higher (95% CI .75 to 14.4) than those whose mothers did not eat fish. There were, however, no significant associations between fish intake in pregnancy and other behavioural problems or full-scale and performance intelligence, after adjustment for potential confounding factors.

CONCLUSIONS
Although maternal fish intake in pregnancy was associated with hyperactivity scores and verbal IQ in children, in general, how much fish women ate during pregnancy appeared to have little long-term relation with neurodevelopmental outcomes in their child.


ABSTRACT Coastal barrier systems around the world are experiencing higher rates of flooding and shoreline erosion. Property owners on barriers have made significant financial investments in physical protections that shield their nearby properties from these hazards, constituting a type of adaptation to shoreline change. Factors that contribute to adaptation on Plum Island, a developed beach and dune system on the North Shore of Massachusetts, are investigated here. Plum Island experiences patterns of shoreline change that may be representative of many inlet-associated beaches, encompassing an equivocal and dynamically shifting mix of erosion and accretion. In the face of episodic floods and fleeting erosive events, and driven by a combination of strong northeast storms and cycles of erosion and accretion, the value of the average Plum Island residence increases by 34% for properties on the oceanfront where protection comprises a publicly constructed soft structure. Even in the face of state policies that ostensibly discourage physical protection as a means of adaptation, coastal communities face significant political and financial pressures to maintain existing protective structures or to allow contiguous groups of property owners to build new ones through collective action. These factors mitigate against adapting to shoreline change by retreating from the coast, thereby potentially increasing the adverse effects of coastal hazards.


The air flow analysis of considering heat-generating components in a three dimensional desktop computer was investigated in this paper. A well known computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was employed to simulate the desktop computer chassis enclosure. The CFD software that used is the ANSYS Workbench and ANSYS CFX 10.0. The parameters are focused on the outlet air velocity and inlet velocity. The
CFD analysis result will confirm by the experiment. This paper describes the methodology of CFD analysis for the desktop computer design, and describes the experimental details to predictions. The comparison result for both methods will be discussed in this paper.


The succession of some markers on the chromosomes of Actinomadura carminata was shown with the method of successive mutagenesis based on the preferable effect of the mutagen on DNA in the site of replication. The spore germination was synchronized by selection of the spores of the definite size and maintenance at a temperature of 0 degrees. The periods of formation of the highest numbers of morphological and auxotrophic mutants were compared with the time of DNA replication.


The diatomite-cellulose composite (DCC) was used to modified asphalt for pavement in the study, and then the high temperature performance, low temperature performance and temperature susceptibility of asphalt were studied. The results showed that these performances of asphalt were all improved after modified by DCC, and the performance of modified asphalt significantly associated with the ash content of DCC, and H-3 DCC was the best. The performance of modified asphalt by DCC was obviously better than using diatomite and cellulose directly. The improving properties of modified asphalt by DCC were caused by synergistic effect of diatomite and cellulose.


The aim of compressed sensing is to recover attributes of sparse signals using very few measurements. Given an overall bit budget for quantization, this paper demonstrates that there is value to redundant measurement. The measurement matrices considered here are required to have the property that signal recovery is still possible even after dropping certain subsets of D measurements. It introduces the concept of a measurement matrix that is weakly democratic in the sense that the amount of information about the signal carried by each of the designated D-subsets is the same. Examples of deterministic measurement matrices that are weakly democratic are constructed by exponentiating codewords from the binary second order Reed Muller code. The value in rejecting D measurements that are on average larger, is to be able to provide a finer grid for vector quantization of the remaining measurements, even after discounting the original budget by the bits used to identify the reject set. Simulation results demonstrate that redundancy improves recovery SNR, sometimes by a wide margin. Optimum performance occurs when a significant fraction of measurements are rejected.


The Coronavirus pandemic is a crisis that has fundamentally changed the fabric of school leadership globally. School leaders are required to work to mitigate the effects of this crisis through their demonstration of effective leadership attributes. Currently, a few western studies highlight the attributes of school leader's desirable in a time of disruption, but their findings have little relevance to middle-eastern contexts. This study addresses such gap by focusing on the exploration of leadership attributes of Saudi Arabian school leaders demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on the importance of human leadership as a part of school crisis leadership. Using an exploratory case study approach, a qualitative open-ended questionnaire was administered to a sample of Saudi Arabian school principals to explore their school leadership attributes exercised during the crisis. It was found that the circumstances imposed by the pandemic had a strong influence on their leadership attributes and their responses to the crisis. Nine leadership attributes found that leaders have: become more eager for development, learnt to remain calm, endured stress and difficulties, become more compassionate, supportive, strategic, emotionally intelligent, intuitive and better communicators. They found that these attributes helped them succeed in managing the crisis by better understanding micro and macro aspects of their schools. The findings highlight leadership qualities required for stronger school leadership within Saudi Arabian schools during periods of rapid change, and may benefit those involved in school leadership development and principal preparation in Middle-eastern contexts.


The varied treatments, introductions and conclusions receive in technical writing textbooks are explored from the dual perspective of the students who must incorporate the advice into their work and the professors who must present the material to students. The books attempt to focus on specific techniques for generating clear, concise writing, delineate methods of authorial analysis and offer student and professional examples of technical reports. It is concluded that these textbooks are successful when the structure of introductions and conclusions is tied closely to the context of the actual report. >


BACKGROUND
The use of microplates in mandible fractures is not widely accepted, although microplate systems are commonly used for treatment of maxillofacial fractures. This study evaluated the use of microplates for internal fixation of mandibular fractures with no comminution or bony defects.

METHODS
Thirty-five patients with mandibular fractures (26 double and nine single) were treated. Of the 61 fractures, 54 were stabilized using 0.55-mm-thick microplates and 1.2-mm monocortical microscrews. The fractures were exposed through either an intraoral or a percutaneous approach. In general, two-point fixation with two microplates or one microplate and wires was performed. Interdental wiring was added for symphyseal or body fractures to confer further stability onto the dental arch. No intermaxillary fixation was used.

RESULTS
During a follow-up period ranging from 3 to 29 months, all fractures showed complete bone healing. There were eight complications in seven patients with a double fracture, including mild malocclusion (n = 3), paresthesia (n = 3), asymptomatic delayed union (n = 1), and asymptomatic plate fracture (n = 1). No further orthodontic or surgical treatment was performed as a result of these complications. No other complications requiring further treatment occurred. There were three residual complications of mild malocclusion, paresthesia, and asymptomatic plate fracture at final follow-up.

CONCLUSIONS
These results indicate that two-point fixation with microplates is appropriate for the internal fixation of simple, isolated mandibular fractures. Its advantages include a high adaptability to the fracture site, occlusal self-adjustment, a minimal mass effect, and a relatively strong holding power of two-point fixation.


This paper examines the mode identification and presents pulsation models for FG Vir, for which 24 frequen- cies have been detected. Histograms of the frequency spacings show peaks which are identified with adjacent radial orders and rotational splitting. Pulsational ' values are deduced for eight modes by com- paring the observed photometric phase lags between v and y variations with calculated values. The dominant pulsation mode at 12.72 c/d can be identified with ' =1 , while the 12.15 c/d mode is the radial fundamental. These results are in agreement with identifications published by Viskum et al. (1998). Based on the observational mode identifications and the Hip- parcos distance, new models were computed with the constraint that the mode at 12.15 c/d is the radial fundamental mode. It is shown that with standard opacities, models in the appropriate Te , log L and log g ranges cannot reproduce the identification in the literature of 23.40 c/d as the third radial overtone. How- ever, we show that observationally an ' = 1 (rather than radial) identification is equally probable. A large number of pulsation models were computed for FG Vir. A comparison between the observed frequencies and mode identifications and pulsation models leads to a mean den- sity of = =0 :156 0:002 depending on the opacity and chemical composition choice and on the possible overshooting from the convective core. The models also correctly predict the observed region of instability between 9 and 34 c/d. The effect of rotational coupling on the pulsation frequen- cies is estimated.


It is reasonable to expect that the number of aftershocks following a large earthquake should reflect the degree of heterogeneity on and near the fault plane. To investigate this question, we plot N , the number of aftershocks with mb ≧ 5.0 occurring within the next 30 days after large, subduction-zone, thrust-faulting earthquakes ( Mw ≧ 7.0), versus the magnitude ( Mw ) of the main shock. Only earthquakes that occurred after the installation of the World-Wide Standard Seismographic Network stations are considered. Because the detection threshold of aftershocks in many regions is greater than mb = 5.0, N is obtained by fitting the data to Gutenberg and Richter's relation (log N = a − b · mb ). For the same Mw , N varies by a factor of about 40 in different regions. N is less than expected in the eastern Pacific (including Alaska) and is greater than expected in the western Pacific. Relative lack and excess of N correlates well with regions of supposedly strong and weak coupling, respectively. While small and large N also show some correlation with the expansion rate of aftershock area with time, the variation in N is much larger than would be expected from the mere increase of aftershock areas. In some cases, it appears that the number of aftershocks, N , for earthquakes of similar Mw , may also reflect the complexity and enrichment of the P -wave amplitude spectra from 1 to 10 sec. For example, the Valparaiso, Chile, earthquake of 1985 ( Mw = 8.0) generated N = 46 earthquakes, whereas for the Michoacan, Mexico, event of 1985 ( Mw = 8.1), N is only equal to 5. Furthermore, for the Valparaiso earthquake, P waveforms are much more complex, and the spectra are more energetic at 1 to 10 sec as compared to the 1985 Michoacan event.


Fast swelling strategies for constructing functional particle materials are currently being pursued. Herein, we report an efficient swelling procedure by regulating the glass transition temperature Tg of poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA) seed particles via copolymerization with n-butyl acrylate (nBA). Single-hole swollen seed particles are formed within 30 min. Moreover, diverse Janus-like monomer-swollen seed particles (MSSs) can also be obtained by adjusting the weight ratio of nBA, with a controlled swelling rate. Moreover, flower-like colloidal microparticles with tunable patches are fabricated after the polymerization of Janus MSSs. Miraculously, these flower-like microparticles are capable of being employed as colloidal surfactants to stabilize not only oil-in-water but also water-in-oil emulsions without any modification. More importantly, it further enriches the species of colloidal surfactants and promotes technological advance of fast swelling systems for constructing advanced functional materials on a large scale and at low cost.


The eccentricity errors of each piece in the planet gear train set are described. This paper has made a tentative study on the determination of load-sharing displacement with formulas of equivalent errors. It takes the flexible pin roll as the load-sharing piece and LevelⅡ planet gear drive in the speed-increasing gearbox of some wind power generator for the case study. The results show i) that the radial error of each piece does not influence the operation of the planet gear train, but the tangential error does influence the load-sharing among the planet gears; and ii) that the load sharing displacement is determined by the centering tangential equivalent error of the flexible pin roll, which may provide reference to projects.


The present paper outlines and analyzes Australia's welfare reform policies as they have been implemented over the past decade. While there have been numerous social policy initiatives over this period, welfare reform provides an interesting site for analysis and review. This suite of policies and programs is of particular importance from several standpoints. First, its target groups - those needing income security assistance, including the unemployed, people with disabilities, and single parents - are historically and traditionally of concern to social work and social welfare. Second, welfare reform policies have had significant impact on social welfare agencies, and the social workers and welfare workers employed in them. Finally, welfare reform has had a wider impact on inequality in Australia and our attitudes to those in need. This paper first provides a brief overview of the context of Australian social policy and welfare, its origins and current situation. It then outlines the key operational elements of welfare reform and how it has been implemented. The third section of the paper offers a critical analysis of these policies and programs and finally poses some questions and issues requiring further discussion and research.


The knowledge regarding the function of proteins is necessary as it gives a clear picture of biological processes. Nevertheless, there are many protein sequences found and added to the databases but lacks functional annotation. The laboratory experiments take a considerable amount of time for annotation of the sequences. This arises the need to use computational techniques to classify proteins based on their functions. In our work, we have collected the data from Swiss-Prot containing 40433 proteins which is grouped into 30 families. We pass it to recurrent neural network(RNN), long short term memory(LSTM) and gated recurrent unit(GRU) model and compare it by applying trigram with deep neural network and shallow neural network on the same dataset. Through this approach, we could achieve maximum of around 78% accuracy for the classification of protein families.


Tree planting in the tropics is conducted for a number of reasons including carbon sequestration, but often competes with increasingly scarce water resources. The basics of forest and water relations are frequently said to be well understood but there is a pressing need to better understand and predict the hydrological effects of land‐use and climate change in the complex and dynamic landscapes of the tropics. This will remain elusive without the empirical data required to feed hydrological process models. It is argued that the current state of knowledge is confused by too broad a use of the terms 'forest' and '(af)forestation', as well as by a bias towards using data generated mostly outside the tropics and for nondegraded soil conditions. Definitions of forest, afforestation and reforestation as used in the climate change community and their application by land and water managers need to be reconciled.


Abstract Conceptual modeling languages are used for among other things sensemaking and analysis of information systems. In the field of mobile information systems, there is a lack of modeling notations that cover the specific components which are common in this domain. This thesis explores creating a conceptual modeling notation suited for modeling the main components of interest for mobile systems. Particularly the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor networks have been covered in the notation.Conceptual modeling languages are used for among other things sensemaking and analysis of information systems. In the field of mobile information systems, there is a lack of modeling notations that cover the specific components which are common in this domain. This thesis explores creating a conceptual modeling notation suited for modeling the main components of interest for mobile systems. Particularly the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor networks have been covered in the notation. The approach used in this thesis has been a theoretical review of existing modeling notations to use as a base notation, which were further extended with constructs specifically targeting the mobile domain. Testing was conducted on an actual case to evaluate and improve the relevancy and usefulness of the notation.The result is a notation that is capable of representing a variety of IoT and sensor-related objects while maintaining best practices for visual modeling notations. The notation could readily be extended in the future to support other types of systems as well. In practice it still needs to be further tested and applied to other real cases, in order to accurately determine the domain appropriateness of the notation as well as whether it is comprehensible and useful for organizational needs.


In this work, exfoliated molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) modified by a metal oxide (MoS2/MxOy) was prepared by a hydrothermal method and characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM), Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The samples were used in polymer composite (polyethylene) preparation by using an extruder blending method. Nanocomposites of polyethylene (PE) with MoS2/MxOy were obtained. The morphology, thermal properties, fire resistant properties and thermal conductivity of the PE nanocomposites were studied. We observed an excellent flame retardance for all PE composites. The peak of heat release rate (pHRR) was reduced by 40% for PE_MoS2 with respect to pristine PE. The lowest CO emission was observed for the PE/MoS2 composite containing 2% Fe3O4. All composites with exfoliated MoS2 exhibit greater potential for preparation of smart and functional nanomaterials with good thermal and fire resistant properties.


The basic concept of reversible circuits is to save energy dissipation in the form of both power and heat in lieu of some additional circuitry. Its use leads to compensating for the garbage bits that will be necessarily generated. Designing a multiplexer can prove to be a very useful block in many complex circuits. A Fredkin gate based multiplexer has been proposed for 180nm, 90nm and 45nm channel lengths. The designed circuit is expected to be fault-tolerant. The W/L ratio has been varied to find the least possible value of power dissipation of the circuit. Substrate-bias voltage of MOSFET can be varied in order to change the threshold voltage value of transistor which helps us in finding the optimum values of driving voltage, input voltage and substrate to bias voltage. Its use is most prominent in an inverter block where tenfold decrease is observed in bulk-driven supply compared to conventional CMOS technology. The value of the bias voltage is found out to be increasing for decreasing channel lengths but bulk-driven voltage supply is not useful in 45nm technology because of increase in transconductance owing to its fixed minimum (W/L) ratio. Delay and power-delay product are also important parameters that have been taken into account. Other important figures of merit like quantum cost, number of garbage outputs, number of gates and quantum depth have also been studied. All the simulations have been done on Cadence tool.


This article presents the results of comparative fieldwork on the huerta of Valencia in Spain, a successful community‐managed irrigation system of medium scale, one governed collectively by thousands of small farmers organized into 10 autonomous but highly interdependent irrigator groups. The study tested a model identified previously in research on successful systems of much smaller scale in Peru, a set of principles of operation that, when affirmed by farmers and obeyed as collective‐choice rules, interact to create equity among water rights and transparency in water use in an unusual way. The authors show that a nearly identical set are at work in all 10 communities of Valencia, revealing the unique manner in which these work together to promote successful and sustainable cooperation, both within and between the user groups, and arguing that their presence in Spain and the Andes is indicative, not of diffusion from one continent to another, but of independent invention. These principles together laid the foundations for separate Andean and Islamic hydraulic traditions, which were often manifested locally in robust and equitable systems of the same general type, here called the moral economy of water. This kind of communal system appears to have emerged repeatedly, and often independently, in a great many other locales and settings throughout the world; its adaptive dynamics are shown to be of great relevance to small farmers today as they face the growing scarcity of water being induced by population growth and by climate change. WIREs Water 2014, 1:87–110. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1008


Recent efforts to reconstruct the phylogeny of brittle stars (ophiuroids) have shown the need for more objective and reproducible data collection methods than the traditional visual examination and verbal description of morphological characters. Complex skeletal structures may be better understood in three dimensions than in two dimensions obtained from techniques like scanning electron microscopy (SEM). We test this hypothesis using three types of three-dimensional tomographic imaging methods—lab-based micro-CT, X-ray microscopy and synchrotron-based tomography—to examine the morphology of ophiuroid arms, and compare them with two-dimensional data obtained from SEM. We describe the advantages and disadvantages of each instrument and set of parameters in terms of the ease and efficiency of data collection for morphometric analyses. We present new morphological observations obtained by digital sectioning of three-dimensional images that could not be achieved with SEM. Overall, our findings suggest that three-dimensional imaging has a high potential to address the gaps in knowledge of the internal ophiuroid skeleton, which will be pivotal to providing morphological characters that will aid in phylogenetic reconstructions.


We present a detailed dynamical model of the behavior of transcription-translation circuits in vitro that makes explicit the roles played by essential molecular resources. A set of simple two-gene test circuits operating in a cell-free biochemical `breadboard' validate this model and highlight the consequences of limited resource availability. In particular, we are able to confirm the existence of biomolecular `crosstalk' and isolate its individual sources. The implications of crosstalk for biomolecular circuit design and function are discussed.


Deep equilibrium networks (DEQs) are a promising way to construct models which trade off memory for compute. However, theoretical understanding of these models is still lacking compared to traditional networks, in part because of the repeated application of a single set of weights. We show that DEQs are sensitive to the higher order statistics of the matrix families from which they are initialized. In particular, initializing with orthogonal or symmetric matrices allows for greater stability in training. This gives us a practical prescription for initializations which allow for training with a broader range of initial weight scales.


A novel direct integration technique of the Manakov-PMD equation for the simulation of polarisation mode dispersion (PMD) in optical communication systems is demonstrated and shown to be numerically as efficient as the commonly used coarse-step method. The main advantage of using a direct integration of the Manakov-PMD equation over the coarse-step method is a higher accuracy of the PMD model. The new algorithm uses precomputed M(w) matrices to increase the computational speed compared to a full integration without loss of accuracy. The simulation results for the probability distribution function (PDF) of the differential group delay (DGD) and the autocorrelation function (ACF) of the polarisation dispersion vector for varying numbers of precomputed M(w) matrices are compared to analytical models and results from the coarse-step method. It is shown that the coarse-step method achieves a significantly inferior reproduction of the statistical properties of PMD in optical fibres compared to a direct integration of the Manakov-PMD equation.


Background Hybrid weakness, a phenomenon opposite to heterosis, refers to inferior growth and development in a hybrid relative to its pure-line parents. Little attention has been paid to the phenomenological or mechanistic aspect of hybrid weakness, probably due to its rare occurrence. Methodology/Principal findings Here, using a set of interspecific triploid F1 hybrids between Oryza sativa, ssp. japonica (genome AA) and a tetraploid wild rice species, O. alta (genome, CCDD), we investigated the phenotypic and physiological differences between the F1 hybrids and their parents under normal and nitrogen-limiting conditions. We quantified the expression levels of 21 key genes involved in three important pathways pertinent to the assayed phenotypic and physiological traits by real-time qRT-PCR. Further, we assayed expression partitioning of parental alleles for eight genes in the F1 hybrids relative to the in silico "hybrids" (parental cDNA mixture) under both normal and N-limiting conditions by using locus-specific cDNA pyrosequencing. Conclusions/Significance We report that the F1 hybrids showed weakness in several phenotypic traits at the final seedling-stage compared with their corresponding mid-parent values (MPVs). Nine of the 21 studied genes showed contrasted expression levels between hybrids and parents (MPVs) under normal vs. N-limiting conditions. Interestingly, under N-limiting conditions, the overtly enhanced partitioning of maternal allele expression in the hybrids for eight assayed genes echo their attenuated hybrid weakness in phenotypes, an observation further bolstered by more resemblance of hybrids to the maternal parent under N-limiting conditions compared to normal conditions in a suite of measured physiological traits. Our observations suggest that both overall expression level and differential partitioning of parental alleles of critical genes contribute to condition-specific hybrid weakness.


ABSTRACT Capirona decorticans (Rubiaceae) is popularly used to treat warts, wounds, mycoses and scabies, and is also a component of the Ayahuasca tea. Despite its popular use, the phytochemical and pharmacological research on this species is limited. Therefore, this work quantified phenolic compounds in the ethanolic extract (EE) and hydromethanolic fraction (FM) (406, 293 mgEAG g-1, respectively) from leaves of C. decorticans. We identified flavonoids by LC-MS/MS-MMR-ESI (apigenin, rutin, luteolin, miricetin, quercetin, quercetin-3-β-D-glucoside, quercetrin), and evaluated oxidative stress and mutagenic/antimutagenic effect of EE and FM through an in vivo experiment using Swiss mice and cyclophosphamide (CP) as an inducer of DNA damage and oxidative stress. Mice were pretreated for 15 consecutive days with EE or FM (250 mg kg-1) and then intraperitoneally injected with CP (25 mg kg-1). Carbonylated proteins, ascorbic acid, catalase and thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances were measured in hepatic and renal tissues. The mutagenic/antimutagenic effect was evaluated through the Micronucleus Test. Protein carbonylation in the liver of animals exposed to CP was reduced by FM. There was no significant effect on other markers of oxidative stress. The groups treated with the extracts showed a significant percentage reduction (EE = 96% and FM = 71%) in the frequency of micronucleated polychromatic erythrocytes induced by CP. EE showed mutagenicity when used alone. The EE and FM of C. decorticans leaves showed antioxidant potential equivalent to that observed in other species, did not cause oxidative stress, nor toxicity, and had a protective and antimutagenic effect, although the EE showed signs of mutagenicity.


Test-time adaptation is a special setting of unsupervised domain adaptation where a trained model on the source domain has to adapt to the target domain without accessing source data. We propose a novel way to leverage self-supervised contrastive learning to facilitate target feature learning, along with an online pseudo labeling scheme with refinement that significantly denoises pseudo labels. The contrastive learning task is applied jointly with pseudo labeling, contrasting positive and negative pairs constructed similarly as MoCo but with source-initialized encoder, and excluding same-class negative pairs indicated by pseudo labels. Meanwhile, we produce pseudo labels online and refine them via soft voting among their nearest neighbors in the target feature space, enabled by maintaining a memory queue. Our method, AdaContrast, achieves state-of-the-art performance on major benchmarks while having several desirable properties compared to existing works, including memory efficiency, insensitivity to hyper-parameters, and better model calibration. Code is released at https://github.com/DianCh/AdaContrast.


In recent years, cities from various parts of the world have faced with uncontrolled physical expansion due to inappropriate policies. Together with different solutions against urban sprawl, the dominant sustainable cure is the so-called 'Urban Consolidation' (UC). The goal of sustainable development would be fulfilled at all levels of spatial organization, the urban level has attracted much attention because of a continuously growing focus on people and economic activities in urban centers, especially in the developing countries. Transformations and quick changes have shown that the preparation and implementation of urban development projects, which led to the adoption of the process approach to sustainable urban planning, at the first need to identify requirements, opportunities, and objectives, and afterward, strategies, policies and the approach. Furthermore, during the time social relationships become more complex in this area, thus, knowledge and urbanization have led to the design of new topics. Among the subjects for getting people's opinions, urban management participation, understanding the main challenges and bottlenecks can be mentioned. In terms of sustainable urban development, energy consumption is another important problem in cities. Fortunately, recently reduction of energy demand is feasible through modern technologies and criteria in building construction. Therefore, this information and knowledge make it possible to achieve one integrated and sustainable urban planning. Shiraz as a metropolitan is confronted with immense urban problems including environmental pollution, ecological degradation endangering carrying capacity, resource depletion, and administrative system and incapable urban management. Problems are well justified by the existence of UN sustainable ecologic. The present research has sought to identify the features and capabilities of the sustainable smart city and their status "in a part of Shiraz that already mentioned", identifying the strengths and weaknesses of this city in comparison with the smart city. lack of a long-term plan for Shiraz is a huge problem. The relationship between people and government and the authorities is not related to partnership and cooperation. "Urban Planning is traditionally seen as an expert discipline with little room for 'soft' values and concerns based on feelings rather than fact". Furthermore, the final product of the planning process, the built environment, is a habitat for a wide variety of people with equally diverse wants and needs. The question is, how does planning incorporate the needs, wants and visions of existing and future inhabitants while at the same time raising awareness of the often complex issues and wicked problems involved in urban development? This research is mostly dealing with the needs and requirements for sustainable urban scale and sprawl green network of the city of Shiraz in district 1th (Western Qodoosi) and offers a solution for the energy-saving utilizing Architectural design/Architectural energy efficiency and implementing of solar power systems which can provides net-zero energy buildings, and also adequate urban services and a more active social life for residents and offering them comfortable modern life. Moreover, introducing opportunities and possibilities for energy saving and sustainable smart planning projects in the cities of Iran.


Strengthening links between school and community is critical for improving people's participation in environmental issues. However, Mexican education programmes are generally unrelated to rural students' life experience and are planned without considering either teachers' or students' opinions. This article describes the participatory construction of a preparatory school environmental education (EE) programme in Ixtlan de Juarez, a Mexican indigenous community internationally recognised for sustainable forest management. The qualitative research methods used are based on the action research methodology. Results from interviews conducted with the preparatory school's headmaster, the coordinator, and nine teachers provided the needed documentation of the school site for contextualising learning activities. Feedback during focus groups with six students, three teachers, five local communal authorities, and two researchers highlighted that all participants perceived the need for creating an educational programme focused on local forest management. The contents and activities of the programme were designed by the focus group's participants. The programme has been continuously taught by teachers and forest workers since 2005 and was officially integrated with the preparatory school science curriculum in 2006. This participative educational experience has thus transformed the mandatory school curriculum in Ixtlan.


Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the main type of esophageal cancer, and is the sixth leading cause of cancer-related mortality among all types of cancers. Previously, we found that the homeobox A13 gene (HOXA13) plays a crucial role in the carcinogenesis of ESCC and both Annexin A2 (ANXA2) and superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2) were its potential targets. Samples from 258 patients from two independent cohorts were collected. RT-qPCR and immunohistochemistry (IHC) were used to detect the expression levels of HOXA13, ANXA2 and SOD2. Kaplan‑Meier survival curve analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression model were employed to determine their prognostic significance. Results showed that ESCC tissues had higher ANXA2 and SOD2 mRNA and protein levels than the non-cancerous tissues. ANXA2 and SOD2 were found to be positively correlated with HOXA13 expression not only at the mRNA level but also at the protein level. In both the study cohort and the validation cohort, the median overall survival time of patients with high expression of HOXA13, ANXA2 and SOD2 was shorter than the survival time of the patients with low expression. The Cox proportional hazards model revealed that both TNM stage and coexpression of HOXA13/ANXA2/SOD2 are independent predictors of overall survival of ESCC patients. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that ANXA2 and SOD2 are potential target genes of HOXA13 and their coexpression predicts the poor prognosis of ESCC patients.


Research consistently demonstrates that males – beginning when they are just young boys – externalize oppositional behavior to a markedly higher degree than females. In a school setting, this typically translates to male students being disciplined for even marginally unacceptable behavior more frequently, including frequent loss of educational days due to out-of-school suspensions. Yet it is likely that many of these same male students have identified disabilities under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), with Individualized Education Programs that can be personalized with sound, peer-reviewed behavioral services that can make a real difference.

Behavior – and its impact on educational outcomes and eventually society – remains the forgotten child in efforts to meet the needs of these most emotionally vulnerable students. A lack of specifics in the behavior provisions of IDEA create an unhealthy tension, too limited either to serve our students or to inform educational practice. While states could remedy this problem, most do not. In an era when the federal government is moving to deregulate many industries – education among them – it is critical for state legislatures to clarify and expand their own requirements.

This paper examines current law and proposes constructive change to deal with inequities for students with behavior challenges. Part I examines the IDEA provisions. Part II of this paper reviews the behavior provisions in IDEA. Part III focuses on state statutes and rules, identifying which states have taken the lead and including a determination of where the fifty states and the District of Columbia fall. Part IV analyzes similarities and differences in appellate court decisions of the eleven federal circuits from 2011 through 2016, when a major issue included a factual or legal determination of the Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) and Behavior Intervention Program (BIP) requirements. Finally, Part V, Rethinking IDEA, summarizes the impact on these forgotten children of IDEA, and recommends an approach for a model provision for Congress to adopt when IDEA is reauthorized.


Abstract Drawing on earlier work of the author that is both clarified and amplified here, this article explores the question: what is it for two or more people to intend to do something in the future? In short, what is it for people to share an intention? It argues for three criteria of adequacy for an account of shared intention (the disjunction, concurrence, and obligation criteria) and offers an account that satisfies them. According to this account, in technical terms explained in the paper, people share an intention when and only when they are jointly committed to intend as a body to do such-and-such in the future. This account is compared and contrasted with the common approach that treats shared intention as a matter of the correlative personal intentions, with particular reference to the work of Michael Bratman.


Containing ileostomy has been a permanent aim of researchers. Different technics for containing in the ileal derivations has been proposed, very little filled the requisites, but no one reached the desired aim, and the problem continues unsolved. The authors, based in experimental study in two groups of dogs submitted to ileostomy, with and without preservation of ileal pylorus, observed the following parameters: weight dog clinical evaluation of animals (diarrhea, infection of surgical wound and malnutrition) volume of ileal excretions electrolytes (Na+, Cl- and K+) pH of ileal excretions and deaths. After sacrificing the animals we analyzed on scanning electronic microscopy, the presence of mucus, clearness of mucosa surface, general aspect of terminal ileum mucosa, and on optic microscopy, neutrophilic infiltration, increasing of number of goblet cells, hypotrophy of villosities and determination of ileal villosities height. After statistic analysis of results we concluded that ileostomy with preservation of ileal pylorus, markedly attenuated the variable of control in the experiment. Conservation of ileal pylorus, consequently has an effective action on the control of ileal leakage, protecting its mucosa from serious histopathologic changes.


Production supply chains are undergoing several paradigm changes, in various vectors such as increasing focus on operating costs reduction, core business specialization, increased level of product customization, shortage of specialized technical workers, the emergence of innovation networking models, among others. So, developing and producing in partnership has been a main issue in new product developing and innovation contexts. Several models have been proposed for the development of these chains, from ones, more focused on internal competencies, to others completely based on external production, using licensing based business models. For organizations that follow a network innovation model there are difficulties and risks that need to be managed, in order to aim the potential benefits expected from a partnership. In the present paper, the production process of an automatic toll payment machine for Brisa, a Portuguese highway company, is presented. The production process of this product was all based on strong collaborative work between Brisa and its suppliers/partners. The case study shows how innovation networks can be applied to the production phase and reveals some of the difficulties and solutions that appear on a production partnership.


Optical parameters of simulated ambient individual ammonium sulfate and soot-mixed particles were calculated using the discrete-dipole approximation method with different model geometries. Knowledge of the mixing state and the approximation by a suited idealized geometry reduces the errors of the optical properties by +/-50% to +/-10%. The influence of the soot content and the mixing state on the optical properties of the total aerosol was estimated. For the total aerosol population, the size distribution and the absolute soot content had the largest influence. The exact geometry of the ammonium sulfate and soot-mixed particles can be neglected.


It is a great privilege for me to have to propose the toast of our guests, though I am very sorry that the time has come to do it, for it means that our celebrations are coming to an end. But fortunately we do not have to say good-bye to all our guests. After all, some of them live almost next door, within the sound of Big Ben, and they are here as the representatives of our own Government, of our friends in this City, or as the representatives of whole nations. We are greatly honoured to have the Ambassadors of so many countries and it would cause us not merely sorrow but consternation if we thought that any of them had to contemplate an immediate departure. 'But some of our guests must leave us soon to get back home and they live so far away that the journey may take them thousands of miles in space and quite a few hours in time. They have come as the representatives of only one section of their people but it is the one we are proud to belong to ourselves, for we naturally regard it as the most intelligent and the most progressive. In fact they are the delegates of the Universities and Scientific Academies of the world: and they are the guests who have had to stand up to the full impact of our celebrations. They have made us very happy and we have worked them very hard. We have made them go to lectures and laboratories and museums, we have sent them on long journeys into the country and we have shown them why we are so continuously interested in the weather and the London traffic. It is time the Royal Society thanked them for making our celebrations such an international event.


Background: The course of match actions is definitely gaining pace and dynamics because offensive and aggressive styles of the game are preferred. So there is no doubt that an appropriate level of competitors' physical preparation has a fundamental meaning. The goal of the research was to determine changes in special fitness efficiency. Material/Methods: The research was based on a group of 16 tennis players aged 10 training tennis in the annual training cycle. In order to evaluate the level of special fitness efficiency, two tests reflecting physical fitness were used: "The game against the wall" and "The test of 100 balls". Results: Results of the examination showed a significant difference in the fitness level, and the analysis points out an influence of sports training on changes in special fitness efficiency. Conclusions: Significant differences in the level of special fitness efficiency in the study group of tennis players can be a result of an individual rate of assimilation of motor skills and the development of the motor skills level. A balanced and dynamic growth of the pace of development in special fitness efficiency of young tennis players can testify to the proper achievement of the program content that is favorable to the proper mastery of technical skills in tennis. In the tests of "The game against the wall" and "The test of 100 balls" the significance of differences between average results of the first and fourth term of the test was found, which means that sport training influences special fitness efficiency.


This article deals with the consequences of a prime broker's insolvency in the case of a security financial collateral arrangement. In Re Lehman Brothers International (Europe), Briggs J had to deal with the proprietary rights of a custody client in respect of securities initially transferred to a prime broker and securities substituted for those original securities by the prime broker. In addition, issues arose as to the prime broker's beneficial ownership of cash generated by securities after the prime broker went into administration and as to whether a duty on the part of administrators to account to the custody client for that cash was an expense of the administration.


Most massive stars experience binary interactions in their lifetimes that can alter both the surface and core structure of the stripped star with significant effects on their ultimate fate as core-collapse supernovae. However, core-collapse supernovae simulations to date have focused almost exclusively on the evolution of single stars. We present a systematic simulation study of single and binary-stripped stars with the same initial mass as candidates for core-collapse supernovae (11–21 M ⊙). Generally, we find that binary-stripped stars core tend to have a smaller compactness parameter, with a more prominent, deeper silicon/oxygen interface, and explode preferentially to the corresponding single stars of the same initial mass. Such a dichotomy of behavior between these two modes of evolution would have important implications for supernovae statistics, including the final neutron star masses, explosion energies, and nucleosynthetic yields. Binary-stripped remnants are also well poised to populate the possible mass gap between the heaviest neutron stars and the lightest black holes. Our work presents an improvement along two fronts, as we self-consistently account for the pre-collapse stellar evolution and the subsequent explosion outcome. Even so, our results emphasize the need for more detailed stellar evolutionary models to capture the sensitive nature of explosion outcome.


According to Levinas, answering the question concerning the relation between recognition and intersubjectivity implies a critique of ontology. Indeed, from an ontological perspective, recognition reduces alterity to the self. The whole philosophical research undertaken by Levinas consists in investigating what ontology presupposes, that is to say an inquiry on what transcends ontology as well as constitutes its condition of possibility. This paper seeks to show how Levinas, through the critic of ontology, tries to solve the contradiction between the recognition of the other as singularity and the other as identity, and how this attempt implies a reflection on the concept of forgiveness.


Abstract In China, there exist various regional sediments of the Quaternary such as loess soils of the Yellow River in northern China, lateritic soils in southern China and expansive soils in the broad plains of the Yangtze River. In the past, these Quaternary Sediments were often treated as special soils and their engineering properties tended to be studied accordingly. However, not much attention was given to relationships that may exist between these regional soils and, so far, the distribution and formation of regional Sediments have not been systematically studied. Only when it was found that regional classifications of soils (their names and their engineering properties) were in disagreement with each other for adjacent areas was the subject of relationship considered. Recently, the author has tested and studied a number of samples of various Quaternary regional Sediments. The relationship of their composition and microstructural features to their engineering properties has first been analysed on the basis of their basic properties. The distribution of regional sediments has then been studied in detail according to geographical environment and climatic conditions. Finally, formation and development processes for the various regional Sediments of the Quaternary in China have been postulated.


: Guidance is provided for geotechnical engineers designing civil engineering works in silty soils based on a detailed characterisation of a glaciomarine silt from Os in western Norway. It was found that these soils are susceptible to disturbance by good quality fixed piston tube sampling and care needs to be taken when using laboratory derived design parameters, particularly for consolidation and shear strength properties. A technique for assessing sample disturbance using shear wave velocity and suction measurements proved promising. Conventional techniques for determining soil strength from triaxial tests in silt are inappropriate due to the dilational nature of the material and more reliable and logical strength estimates can be made from a limiting strain criterion. Field vane data should be used with caution as measured strength, particularly remoulded values, may be high and it seems more reliable parameters can be derived from CPTU tests. One dimensional consolidation and creep of these silts can be modelled successfully by the well-known Janbu formulation. The behaviour of the Os silts does not fit easily into classical soil mechanics and published frameworks for soft soils. It seems the material is of "transitional" type and this work adds to the database of such soils which includes other natural silts and gap graded soils. For future work it is recommended that larger sample tubes (say 75 mm) with a very sharp cutting edge should be used in parallel with in situ CPTU testing.


Molecular mechanisms are not fully known for the inhibitory effect of chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs) on axonal outgrowth. The present study investigated the effect of CSPGs on miRNA expression and the role of Argonaute 2 (Ago2) in mediating Sildenafil-induced axonal outgrowth under CSPG conditions.
 Primary rat embryonic cortical neurons were cultured in a microfluidic chamber which separates somata and axons. Selective application of CSPGs within the axonal compartment markedly inhibited axonal outgrowth (567±15 μm vs 688 ± 21 μm in control, n=5, p<0.05). Axonal application of Sildenafil, a PDE5 inhibitor, completely reversed the inhibitory effect of CSPG on axonal outgrowth (671±17 μm, n=5). Analysis of miRNA PCR array showed that axonal application of CSPGs robustly changed miRNA profiles not only in axons but also in somata, indicating that axonal signals regulate soma miRNAs. Sildenafil inversely altered miRNA up- and down-regulated by CSPGs, including miR-29c, miR-9a, miR-20b, miR-298 and miR-34a. Attenuation of Ago2, a regulator of miRNA activity, in neurons by siRNA abolished Sildenafil-increased axonal outgrowth under CSPG conditions, suggesting that miRNAs are required for Sildenafil-enhanced axonal outgrowth. One of putative targets of miR-29c is integrin β1. Western blot analysis showed that CSPGs and Sildenafil reduced and increased, respectively, axonal integrin β1 and its downstream protein, focal adhesion kinase, suggesting that miR-29c regulates these protein levels. To examine cause-effect of integrin β1, we applied a neutralizing antibody against integrin β1 into the axonal compartment and found that the antibody attenuated the Sildenafil-reversed inhibitor effect of CSPGs on axonal outgrowth (523±34 μm vs 671±17 μm in Sildenafil, n=5, p<0.01).
 In conclusion, the present study indicates that axonal signals induced by CSPGs and Sildenafil change miRNA profiles in the entire neuron and that Sildenafil abolishes the CSPG inhibitory effect on axons via Ago2.


This paper owes its origins to the formation of an innovative and ground breaking foundation degree in police studies which was established at the University of Huddersfield in early 2005 and was run in conjunction with West Yorkshire Police Service. {2]

This course was one of the first of its kind in the U.K. and was, in its way, the culmination of a significant review of police training which began in 1999 with a HMIC report in the way police constables were trained. It was the first major review since the Second World War and made several recommendations which were also developed in the review of 2002 Training Matters. Between them these reviews had acknowledged that although the existing Probationer Constable Training Programme{ P.T.P} had certain strengths, a new model needed to be implemented which would, inter alia, embed the values of life-long learning, the need for police training to be 'outward' looking i.e. away from the physical and cultural confines of police training schools and increase the professionalization of the police service. It was in effect , a training programme designed to meet the more complex demands of modern policing by introducing an educational element to training.


'QUIET PLEASE: Flies are breeding'… reads the sign displayed on the factory breeding room. A female black soldier fly (BSF) is laying around 1500 tiny white eggs onto an industrially designed grid. Over 21 days, one kilogram of her eggs will hatch into eight tonnes of larvae, which will initiate a natural process of waste nutrient recycling as they feed on containers of organic consumer waste that would otherwise go to landfill. In a factory in one of Cape Town's rapidly developing post-apartheid townships, larvae are thus recycling some 250 tonnes of 'pre' and 'post' consumer waste every day, transforming negative value waste products into highly valuable insect protein, an alternative to fishmeal – an unsustainably ocean sourced protein. Ethnographic research in this factory explored this biomimically inspired innovation, which uses nature's purification agents – fly larvae – to revalorise a potentially harmful waste product into a critically important food source for the 21st Century. This paper argues that these industrially designed insect farms produce specific technologies and violent acts of reproductive enclosure. By incorporating debates about the role of naturally inspired solutions that use biological labour to accumulate value, it makes plain the ethical implications that emerge from mimicking and enclosing nature in this way. It contends that the ambition of the discipline of biomimicry to reunite human economies with natural ecologies is overshadowed by the logics of capitalism. While the outcomes of biomimicry may indeed be ecologically sustainable, capitalism's drive to privatise and profit from the knowledge and labour of nonhuman life means not only controlling animals and their products, but also controlling the processes of life through a constellation of scientific, bureaucratic and legal techniques.


A 24-year-old male professional soccer player sustained a right ankle contusion due to blunt kick toward the medial malleolus level during a soccer game. He stopped playing due to pain, coldness, and paresthesia on his right foot. Computed tomography angiography revealed a 4.5 cm occlusion on the posterior tibial artery at the right ankle level of which the distal segment was filled with collateral arteries. After the diagnosis of the traumatic occlusion, the patient underwent angiography for recanalization with thrombolysis in an external center, which was unsuccessful. Crural artery injuries after blunt sport traumas are very rare. In knee and ankle traumas with ischemic symptoms, vascular injuries should be excluded with prompt examination.


textabstractUntil recently, the Semantic Web was little more than a name for the next generation Web infrastructure as envisioned by its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. Now, with the introduction of XML and RDF, and new developments such as RDF Schema and DAML+OIL, the Semantic Web is rapidly taking shape. In this paper, we first give an overview of the state-of-the-art in Semantic Web technology, the key relationships with traditional hypermedia research, and a comprehensive reference list to various sets of literature (Hypertext, Web and Semantic Web). The core of the paper presents a research agenda by describing the open research issues in the development of the Semantic Web from the perspective of hypermedia research.


&NA; Ocean acidification (OA) and other climate change induced environmental alterations are resulting in unprecedented rates of environmental deterioration. This environmental change is generally thought to be too fast for adaptation using typical evolutionary processes, and thus sensitivity may be dependent on the presence of existing tolerant genotypes and species. Estuaries undergo natural pCO2 fluctuations over a variety of time scales, and levels regularly exceed the predicted end of the century values. Interestingly, estuarine fish species have been overlooked in reference to the impacts of OA. Here, we use the estuarine red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) as a model to explore the hypothesis that early life stages of estuarine species have intrinsic tolerance to elevated pCO2. Our sensitivity endpoints included: survival, growth, yolk consumption, heart rate, and scototaxis. Survival was significantly decreased when exposed to 1300 &mgr;atm and 3000 &mgr;atm, and coincided with a significant increase in heart rate at the 3000 &mgr;atm exposure. However, these effects were less pronounced than the findings of previous studies on other marine fish species. Yolk depletion rate and standard length were not significantly affected by pCO2. Scototaxis behaviour was also not significantly affected by exposure to elevated levels of pCO2 under both acute and acclimated exposure scenarios. Overall, these results support the hypothesis that estuarine life history and habitat usage may play a critical role in determining sensitivity of fish species to OA. Furthermore, estuarine species may provide present‐day insight into the physiological and ecological foundation of OA tolerance.


We study policy gradient (PG) for reinforcement learning in continuous time and space under the regularized exploratory formulation developed by Wang et al. (2020). We represent the gradient of the value function with respect to a given parameterized stochastic policy as the expected integration of an auxiliary running reward function that can be evaluated using samples and the current value function. This effectively turns PG into a policy evaluation (PE) problem, enabling us to apply the martingale approach recently developed by Jia and Zhou (2021) for PE to solve our PG problem. Based on this analysis, we propose two types of the actor-critic algorithms for RL, where we learn and update value functions and policies simultaneously and alternatingly. The first type is based directly on the aforementioned representation which involves future trajectories and hence is offline. The second type, designed for online learning, employs the first-order condition of the policy gradient and turns it into martingale orthogonality conditions. These conditions are then incorporated using stochastic approximation when updating policies. Finally, we demonstrate the algorithms by simulations in two concrete examples.


OBJECTIVE
To detect neuropsychological differences between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VAD).

DESIGN
Neuropsychological measures were compared in clinically defined AD and VAD patient groups.

SETTING
Ambulatory and hospitalized patients were referred to a behavioral neurology clinic and to the neuropsychology department of a teaching hospital.

PATIENTS
Consecutive, referred patients who fulfilled National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke/Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Revised Third Edition, criteria for AD and VAD were selected to participate in the study based on the history and clinical findings. A modified ischemic score of 3 or less was an independent selection criterion for AD (n = 103) and a score of 4 or more for VAD (n = 25). Computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging was used to exclude other structural causes. Patients with cognitive changes related directly to a stroke were excluded. Patients were matched for age, education, age at onset, and severity of dementia.

MEASURES
The variable measures were the subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised, Mattis Dementia Rating Scale (MDRS), and Western Aphasia Battery (WAB). Patients were further stratified into mild and severe dementia categories, based on their performance on the MDRS.

RESULTS
Variables that were significantly different were selected for discriminant function analysis. The Writing subtest of the WAB, the Picture Arrangement subtest of the WAIS-R, and the Motor Performance subtest of the MDRS were the best discriminators of AD and VAD in the overall and severely affected populations. Patients with VAD performed significantly worse on the MDRS Motor Performance subtest, the WAIS-R Picture Arrangement subtest, the WAB Writing subtest, the WAIS-R Object Assembly subtest, and the WAB Block Design subtest. The AD group performed significantly worse on the WAB Repetition subtest, and patients with severe AD performed significantly worse on the Story Recall test.

CONCLUSIONS
Patients with VAD performed worse on tests that are influenced by frontal and subcortical mechanisms. Patients with AD performed worse on memory and some language subtests.


Background Current Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) exception points provided to patients with hepatocellular cancer (HCC) are not based on outcome data and advantage these patients compared to those listed based on laboratory values (LABMELD). We sought to develop a data-based assignment for exception points for patients with HCC that equalizes outcomes among HCC and LABMELD patients. Methods We used Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients data to compare patients listed with HCC who received exception points versus patients listed with LABMELD. Nation- and region-specific data were examined for (1) a composite outcome for adverse events of death, delisting, or becoming ineligible for transplant; and (2) transplant rate. We also determined MELD progression rates for LABMELD patients. Candidates listed with LABMELD scores were compared with those listed with 22 exception points for HCC (HCC22) to determine the LABMELD for which statistical parity was achieved for our composite outcome. Results HCC22 candidates time to adverse event were comparable to LABMELD scores of 16 (LABMELD16) candidates (range, 15-19), whereas time to transplant was comparable to LABMELD22 candidates (range, 21-23). LABMELD22 candidates had 2.1 times greater risk of adverse event compared with HCC22 (95% confidence interval, 1.9-2.4; range, 1.5-2.4). Progression among LABMELD16 candidates whose scores did not improve was similar across regions and averaged 0.94 points/month (95% confidence interval, 0.88-0.99, range 0.80-1.04). Conclusions To equalize the occurrence of an adverse outcome, the proper listing MELD for patients with HCC is 16, with approximately 1 additional point/month. These results provide a data-driven algorithm to increase fairness in listing priority.


Bayesian inference allows expressing the uncertainty of posterior belief under a probabilistic model given prior information and the likelihood of the evidence. Predominantly, the likelihood function is only implicitly established by a simulator posing the need for simulation-based inference (SBI). However, the existing algorithms can yield overconfident posteriors (Hermans *et al.*, 2022) defeating the whole purpose of credibility if the uncertainty quantification is inaccurate. We propose to include a calibration term directly into the training objective of the neural model in selected amortized SBI techniques. By introducing a relaxation of the classical formulation of calibration error we enable end-to-end backpropagation. The proposed method is not tied to any particular neural model and brings moderate computational overhead compared to the profits it introduces. It is directly applicable to existing computational pipelines allowing reliable black-box posterior inference. We empirically show on six benchmark problems that the proposed method achieves competitive or better results in terms of coverage and expected posterior density than the previously existing approaches.


We describe here the results from an extensive series of tests and observations that we carried out with WFPC2 as part of the Observatory Verification program during March to April 2002, after SM3B. These tests included UV monitoring of possible contamination, performance checks of the biases, darks and other internal calibrations, as well as PSF and flatfield verification. The results from these tests show that there are no significant changes in the characteristics of the camera with respect to its pre-SM3B performance.


We present a novel method for computing correspondences across 3D shapes using unsupervised learning. Our method computes a non-linear transformation of given descriptor functions, while optimizing for global structural properties of the resulting maps, such as their bijectivity or approximate isometry. To this end, we use the functional maps framework, and build upon the recent FMNet architecture for descriptor learning. Unlike that approach, however, we show that learning can be done in a purely \emph{unsupervised setting}, without having access to any ground truth correspondences. This results in a very general shape matching method that we call SURFMNet for Spectral Unsupervised FMNet, and which can be used to establish correspondences within 3D shape collections without any prior information. We demonstrate on a wide range of challenging benchmarks, that our approach leads to state-of-the-art results compared to the existing unsupervised methods and achieves results that are comparable even to the supervised learning techniques. Moreover, our framework is an order of magnitude faster, and does not rely on geodesic distance computation or expensive post-processing.


Recent trends in language modeling have focused on increasing performance through scaling, and have resulted in an environment where training language models is out of reach for most researchers and practitioners. While most in the community are asking how to push the limits of extreme computation, we ask the opposite question: How far can we get with a single GPU in just one day? We investigate the downstream performance achievable with a transformer-based language model trained completely from scratch with masked language modeling for a single day on a single consumer GPU. Aside from re-analyzing nearly all components of the pretraining pipeline for this scenario and providing a modified pipeline with performance close to BERT, we investigate why scaling down is hard, and which modifications actually improve performance in this scenario. We provide evidence that even in this constrained setting, performance closely follows scaling laws observed in large-compute settings. Through the lens of scaling laws, we categorize a range of recent improvements to training and architecture and discuss their merit and practical applicability (or lack thereof) for the limited compute setting.


A case is presented of melanoma located at the distal urethra in a 74-year-old patient who underwent local surgery. At present the survival rate is 5 years and local relapse and metastases of one inguinal ganglion has been observed. The different clinical, diagnostic and therapeutic aspects of this neoplasia are discussed.


Objectives: An outpatient department(OPD) serves a vital role in providing health care services. Identification of patient characteristics and their relationship with presenting complaints is important in improving quality of care. Objective of this study was to describe characteristics of patients utilizing OPD at Colombo South Teaching Hospital (CSTH) and their association with presenting complaints. Methods: Cross sectional study was conducted by recruiting 850 subjects who attended OPD by systematic sampling. A pre-tested interviewer administered questionnaire was used. Relevant descriptive statistics were calculated and comparisons were done to elicit statistical significance using p value. Results: Total sample was consisted of 801 subjects giving a non response rate of 5.8%. Mean age was 32.4 (SD+/- 18.5) and highest age group was 26-35. Majority were females (53.6%), were Sinhala (88.6%) Buddhists (79.5%), had secondary education (55.5%), were employed (52.6%) and were married (77.4%). Majority were presented with acute illnesses (75.2%) and also conditions related to respiratory system (48.2%) Cough was the commonest main presenting complaint (18.8%) followed by fever (16.7%) and backache (10.1%). More patients were in younger age group who complained cough as the major problem (p=0.0001). Among those who came with back ache, majority were females (p=0.0003) and from elder age group (p=0.0180). Conclusions: Among patients utilizing OPD of CSTH majority were females, from 26-35 age group, Sinhala, Buddhist, had secondary education and married. Acute respiratory related medical problems were the commonest and cough was the top presenting complaint and most of them were from younger age group.


The authors report a case of bilateral arytenoid subluxation after thyroid surgery. The diagnosis of arytenoid subluxation or dislocation remains contentious in the otolaryngology literature. There is a lack of evidence distinguishing this entity clinically from unilateral vocal fold paralysis. The cricoarytenoid joint has great stability and cadaveric studies have shown significant force beyond normal intubation is required to overcome its structural supports. Interpretation of the facts presented in this case suggests a difficult view of the glottis requiring intubation over a stylet causing subluxation of both arytenoid cartilages. In considering the aetiology of vocal fold immobility after thyroid surgery, vocal fold palsy due to altered neurological input remains by far the most common cause. Reduced vocal fold movement and anterior displacement (hooding) of the arytenoid cartilage can be characteristic findings in this setting. Even in the presence of intact recurrent and superior laryngeal nerves at the completion of thyroid surgery, vocal fold paresis (reduced mobility) can occur acutely due to neuropraxia and is usually self-limiting. Laryngeal electromyography (EMG) is an essential tool in distinguishing between vocal fold palsy and arytenoid dislocation/ subluxation. If the EMG suggests neural denervation pattern then the diagnosis is palsy. Computed tomography imaging and manual palpation of the cartilage under anaesthetic may also provide some diagnostic information. The correct treatment for confirmed arytenoid dislocation should be direct microlaryngoscopy with arytenoid reduction and repositioning which should result in an immediate improvement in voice.


High-field W-band (95 GHz) electron spin resonance spectroscopy of various spin probes was used to study the structure of highly cross-linked porous polymer resins based on a styrenedivinylbenzene matrix. The pores of these resins were created by template imprinting with reverse micelles solubilized in the mixture of monomers and cross-linkers prior to the polymerization. Functional groups in the resins were introduced by the use of polymerizable cosurfactants in the reverse micelles. Sufficiently large unpolar spin probes exhibit a distribution of mobilities that can be attributed to regions with different degrees of cross-linking in the polymer. The dynamics of a surfactant spin probe is sensitive to the presence of pores and the functionalization of the pore surface with highly polar groups. This effect disappears when the headgroup of the surfactant spin probe is esterified. It can be considered as a structural memory effect related to the use of reverse micelles as templates for imprinting. The result indicates that the pores can be filled or washed selectively.


Abstract Lecce stone is a fine bio-calcarenite, widely used in the Salento region (southern Italy) as a constituent material of the large-scale built cultural heritage. This stone is affected by serious deterioration problems, such as alveolization and biological attack. The extensive conservation work carried out over the last few decades has promoted large-scale studies of various aspects related to the stone's characteristics, its resources, and associated decay and conservation problems. The paper reviews the main features of 'Lecce stone', addressing the following points: distribution of the quarries, including quarrying and carving techniques; mineralogical–petrographical and physical–mechanical characteristics of the extracted materials; use of the stone from antiquity until modern times; morphology of decay and, most importantly, decay factors; conservation treatments (products, tools and techniques), with particular reference to case studies of Baroque monuments; and systematic monitoring of monuments treated in the last 20 years. Given the wide spectrum of activities conducted in connection with Lecce monuments, and the stone from which they are built, they may be regarded as a suitable model for the study and management of monumental heritage in terms of its preservation.