We present a geological model of an unconventional siliciclastic reservoir projected for CO2 sequestration near Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The reservoir is characterized by a substantial sub-hydrostatic pressure regime, very low matrix porosity and –permeability values, extensive natural fracturing and the presence of igneous dykes and sills. Due to the poor reservoir properties of the matrix, flow in the reservoir is largely governed by fracture properties. Input data to the model includes four boreholes, partly or completely penetrating the reservoir section, offshore and onshore 2D seismic profiles and structural and sedimentological data collected from nearby outcrops of the target formation. Combined, these datasets provide firm modeling constraints with respect to the regional geometry, sedimentology and fracture patterns. Previous work has shown that the observed fractures can be grouped into five distinct litho-structural units (LSUs), each exhibiting a characteristic set of properties (fracture density, orientation etc.). The spatial distribution of these LSUs is incorporated into the model. Initial first-order water injection tests using a commercial streamline simulator validate the applicability of this model for further fluid injection tests, including the long-term monitoring of injected CO2.


The geometry of the railway track is degraded under traffic load, and must be maintained periodically. This degradation is due to the arrangement of ballast particles under loads and vibrations, which results into irreversible plastic settlements. Tamping is a procedure of maintenance, used to restore the correct geometrical position of the ballasted tracks. However, the penetration of the vibrating tines into the ballast causes an increase in the fine particles content by rupture of the edges of the grains and leads to a progressive degradation of the ballast and thus to a loss of its mechanical properties. The main consequence is that the interval between two tamping operations decreases, along with the long-term effectiveness of the process. This vicious circle can be broken only by ballast renewal. Ballast and geometry maintenance represent 40 to 50% of the total railway maintenance budget during lifetime. The goal of this research is a better understanding of ballast degradation and the development of a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the track tamping, according to the ballast condition and the infrastructure stiffness. This knowledge will make it possible to decrease the destroying effects of tamping over ballast and, consequently, increase the durability of track geometry and ballast. A full-scale laboratory study has been done on ballasts and infrastructures of different qualities. The dynamic loading of freight trains is simulated with a big hydraulic actuator, while the deformations of the track and his infrastructure are continuously measured. The accelerated loading corresponds to a period of 20 years of traffic operation on a high loaded line. Empirical settlement laws are written, based on the traffic results. Tamping process is performed with a special machine, which was built by purpose. The parameters to regulate tamping process can be controlled. The whole process and the equipment are completely instrumented, in order to control and measure several parameters in real time. The evolution of the ballast behaviour is analysed with the measurement of the bearing modulus. Plate load tests are performed under specially equipped sleepers, after each traffic cycle and tamping. The parameters of a new tamping are tested. The short and long-term effects on ballast are analysed and discussed. A two-dimensional finite element model has been applied to simulate the response of the ballast layer under traffic loading, and the development of settlements. Ballast at different degradation levels is studied. The influence of the subgrade stiffness is also taken in account. The elastoplastic Hujeux behaviour law is applied, in order to study the cyclic plasticity. Results are presented and the critical zones, which show the most plastic behaviour, are identified. A phenomenological model is also developed to analyse separately the effects of traffic loading and track tamping on ballast behaviour and degradation. This analysis is based on a backcalculation approach, and is performed on a 3-D finite elements model of the track. The Young modulus of the ballast and the infrastructure layers in situ is calculated by iteration. Along with the traffic simulation, the evolution of the ballast elastic modulus is measured. A comparison between two sections with different infrastructures is done.


Tourism industry growing rapidly nowadays is in culinary field which relates to food and beverage supply. The tourist trend recently is visiting a destination to look for or hunt for the local special food and do not hesitate to pay in high price to enjoy the cuisine. Special culinary tour of Yogyakarta becomes one of the tourism attractions of Special Region of Yogyakarta that be able to get great benefits toward community economy. Eel culinary business is potential to grow the local society economy.The aim of the research is to find out consumer attitude toward service center of Eel culinary at Godean Sleman Yogyakarta. Data collection technique used is questionnaire and sampling method used convenient sampling method.As for the research steps consisted of: 1) preparation step of the research instrument included literature review, research design setting and earlier observation, 2) step of data collection in the field is conducted by observation, questionnaire, interview, and secondary data collection, 3) step of data tabulation and analysis, consisted of: a) data component tabulation, including data reduction and data presentation, b) data verification including data validity, c) data analysis, using attitude index analysis method, 4) step of report writing as the final step of the research, where all results analyzed was presented in a structured written product. From the analysis using attitude index was obtained a value of 8,71 means the consumers have neutral attitude toward the service center of Eel culinary at Godean Sleman Yogyakarta. As for the attributes the best responded were access, credibility and tangible (parking are), and the worst responded attribute was (religious service).


We consider an opportunistic content sharing system designed to store and distribute local spatio-temporal "floating" information in uncoordinated P2P fashion relying solely on the mobile nodes passing through the area of interest, referred to as the anchor zone. Nodes within the anchor zone exchange the information in opportunistic manner, i.e., whenever two nodes come within each others' transmission range. Outside the anchor zone, the nodes are free to delete the information, since it is deemed relevant only for the nodes residing inside the anchor zone. Due to the random nature of the operation, there are no guarantees, e.g., for the information availability. By means of analytical models, we show that such a system, without any supporting infrastructure, can be a viable and surprisingly reliable option for content sharing as long as a certain criterion, referred to as the criticality condition, is met. The important quantity is the average number of encounters a randomly chosen node experiences during its sojourn time in the anchor zone, which again depends on the communication range and the mobility pattern. The theoretical studies are complemented with simulation experiments with various mobility models showing good agreement with the analytical results.


Background This study surveyed all residents in a hostel for homeless women. Demographic data, and information on past and present psychiatric and social morbidity and current and premorbid cognitive functioning were collected. Method A four week prevalence study using: SCID–PD; a semi-structured interview; GHQ; SBS; Manchester Scale; MMSE; and NART; the data were analysed using SPSS. Results The women originated from across the social spectrum and disruption of early family life was common. Fifty per cent had a 'severe mental illness' and most were not receiving drug treatment. High levels of active psychotic symptoms were present. Women with psychosis had suffered a greater intellectual decline from their premorbid levels of functioning than those without psychosis. Conclusions The study affirmed findings of earlier studies employing case-series methodology. Women with high levels of psychiatric morbidity and social dysfunction were being managed by care workers in a way that may promote stability rather than a drift into street-life.


We have used spectra of hot stars from the RAVE Survey in order to investigate the visibility and properties of five diffuse interstellar bands previously reported in the literature. The RAVE spectroscopic survey for Galactic structure and kinematics records CCD spectra covering the 8400–8800 A wavelength region at 7500 resolving power. The spectra are obtained with the UK Schmidt at the AAO, equipped with the 6dF multi-fiber positioner. The DIB at 8620.4 A is by far the strongest and cleanest of all DIBs occurring within the RAVE wavelength range, with no interference by underlying absorption stellar lines in hot stars. It correlates so tightly with reddening that it turns out to be a reliable tool to measure it, following the relation EB−V = 2.72(±0.03) × EW (A), valid throughout the general interstellar medium of our Galaxy. The presence of a DIB at 8648 A is confirmed. Its intensity appears unrelated to reddening, in agreement with scanty and preliminary reports available in the literature, and its measurability is strongly compromised by severe blending with underlying stellar He I doublet at 8649 A. The two weak DIBs at 8531 and 8572 A do not appear real and should actually be blends of underlying stellar lines. The very weak DIB at 8439 A cannot be resolved within the profile of the much stronger underlying hydrogen Paschen 18 stellar line.


ABSTRACT Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) are an effective approach to improve care quality and delay institutional admissions especially for Black and Hispanic older adults who have seen a disproportionate rise in nursing home use. Guided by Andersen's Behavioral Model of Health Services Use and employing focus groups and one-on-one interviews, we qualitatively examined factors influencing access to and use of PACE by Black and Hispanic older adults. The study sample consisted of thirty-two PACE enrollees, six marketing-team members, and four family-caregivers from three PACE sites in a northeast urban city. Informed knowledge, cultural beliefs, and attitudes toward PACE were found to affect access. Community resources, available services, and care quality facilitated enrollment/participation. Barriers identified included poor dissemination of information and inadequate emphasis on staff's sensitivity to enrollees' cultural and disability differences. Findings will help healthcare leaders capitalize on facilitators and address barriers to enhance access and use of PACE by racial and ethnic minority older adults.


Background and Objective : Length of stay in emergency department (ED LOS) is a key measurement of emergency department (ED) throughput and a marker of overcrowding. To clarify factors associated with ED LOS are a potentially useful tool to improve the quality of patient care and decrease emergency department overcrowding.  Methods : The study was cross-sectional analytical study. It was done in emergency department, Srinagarind hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, during 1-31 th May 2012. Investigator reviewed the records of 4068 data by using Accidental and Emergency department information system (AEIS). Multiple Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine which factors were most strongly associated with ED LOS more than four hours in Srinagarind hospital. Result :  There were a total of 4,678 patients in emergency department. The risk factors for spending over 4 hours in emergency department were patient disposition; requiring admission (OR 4.171,95% CI 3.314, 5.251), investigation (OR 2.447,95% CI 2.203, 2.944), Triage level; urgent  (OR 2.284) and less emergent (OR 2.210) Conclusion : Patient disposition especially admission, investigation and triage level were mainly factors leading to longer periods in emergency department. Further study should be done to explore in each factor to find appropriate solutions.


Breeding planning resp. planning of breeding measures as scientific discipline within animal breeding science has developed in close connection to quantitative genetics in the middle of the last century. From the beginning, breeding planning was mainly focussed on macroeconomic resp. national targets. This viewpoint has been maintained until today. This is in conflict with existing business oriented organisational structures in animal breeding. The present study gives an overview on the development of breeding planning. Based on five recent works on breeding planning it is shown that approaches have already been developed that allow for taking micro- and macroeconomic aspects into account when looking into the organisational structures. Building on these examples, the study aims at working out further approaches to breeding planning based on enterprise resource, supply chain and value added chain planning. Breeding planning combined with consideration of organisational structures and, where necessary, with organisational analysis allows to take the requirements of the private and the public sector into account. Thereto new research fields open up within animal breeding science.


Backward walking has a positive effect on gait ability. Action observational training is an effective treatment method for stroke neurological disorders. This randomised comparator-controlled pilot study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of backward walking observational training on the gait ability of chronic stroke patients. Fourteen chronic stroke participants were randomly allocated to the experimental group (backward walking observation; n = 7) and control group (landscape observation; n = 7). Both groups performed conventional therapy 5 days/week; then the backward walking observation and landscape observation + backward walking training groups performed the observational training 3 days/week for 4 weeks. The primary outcome was measured dynamic gait index, 10-m walking test, and timed up and go test time. Both groups showed significant increases in dynamic gait index, 10-m walking test, and timed up and go test time. The experimental group showed more significant improvements in dynamic gait index (P = 0.04, η = 0.336), 10-m walking test (P = 0.04, η = 0.306), and timed up and go test time (P = 0.03, η = 0.334) than the control group. This pilot study demonstrated that conventional therapy with backward walking observational training improves gait ability. Our findings suggest that observing an action may have a positive effect on chronic stroke patients.


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To review research on breast and cervical cancer screening practices among Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese Americans.

DATA SOURCES
MEDLINE and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature databases.

DATA SYNTHESIS
Of the 28 studies reviewed, 19 (68%) were descriptive and 9 (32%) were interventions. Instruments were developed or translated into the native language. Inconsistent operational definitions for positive facilitators and negative barriers made comparisons across studies difficult.

CONCLUSIONS
Research about breast and cervical cancer screening is limited in these groups. All of the studies reviewed indicated low adherence to cancer screening guidelines. Some interventions showed promising results. Poor awareness about cancer was reported; positive facilitators and negative barriers were identified.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
The rapidly increasing number of Asian Americans in the United States underscores the need for further research in this area. Future studies should focus on each population as a disaggregated subgroup. Cancer control interventions should be culturally competent.


Continually learning new skills is important for intelligent systems, yet standard deep learning methods suffer from catastrophic forgetting of the past. Recent works address this with weight regularisation. Functional regularisation, although computationally expensive, is expected to perform better, but rarely does so in practice. In this paper, we fix this issue by using a new functional-regularisation approach that utilises a few memorable past examples crucial to avoid forgetting. By using a Gaussian Process formulation of deep networks, our approach enables training in weight-space while identifying both the memorable past and a functional prior. Our method achieves state-of-the-art performance on standard benchmarks and opens a new direction for life-long learning where regularisation and memory-based methods are naturally combined.


Letter from Cromwell Anson Jones, son of the last president of the Republic of Texas. The original letter is housed in the University of North Texas Archives.


The purpose of this research was to examine the differences in cultural responsiveness between pre-service teachers and English major students from the United States, Russia and Algeria. The Cultural Diversity Awareness Inventory (Henry, 1991) was administered to 140 college students from two teacher preparation programs in Russia and the United States and an English language program in Algeria. A multiple regression test and a one-way between subjects ANOVA were conducted. Results revealed cultural responsiveness in education vary from a country to another. Results also showed that preservice teachers from the United States outperformed their counterparts from Russia.


The OSGi (open service gateway initiative) service platform specification is the most widely adopted technology for building a control system for the networked home. Three main features contribute to its success. First, it supports various well-known protocols, simplifying communication among home devices. In addition, it defines a cooperative model for applications to dynamically discover and use services provided by others. Finally, it allows flexible remote management of these applications and the services they provide. So, an OSGi solution supports decentralization, diversification, and ubiquity not only in smart homes but in pervasive environments generally.


Worldwide, dependency ratios are forecast to increase dramatically in the next 50 years. A great deal of attention has been devoted to understanding the changes in fiscal policies that must' take place to accommodate these changes. In contrast, less effort has been concentrated on studying the fiscal shifts that will endogenously result from demographic pressures. An example of particular interest is the degree to which a more elderly population will support public spending for education. We use an overlapping-generations model to investigate the effect of this demographic transition on the endogenous determination of public spending for education. A demographic transition alters the identity of the median voter, leading to a preference for less education spending. If the public sector is inefficiently small, demographic transition exacerbates the underprovision of human capital. Alternatively, such a shift may trim an inefficiently large government, reduce tax rates and raise capital per worker enough to raise education spending. Thus, there is no automatic link between demographic transition and reduced support for those programs whose benefits are concentrated among the young.


Pedestrian path forecasting is crucial in applications such as smart video surveillance. It is a challenging task because of the complex crowd movement patterns in the scenes. Most of existing state-of-the-art LSTM based prediction methods require rich context like labelled static obstacles, labelled entrance/exit regions and even the background scene. Furthermore, incorporating contextual information into trajectory prediction increases the computational overhead and decreases the generalization of the prediction models across different scenes. In this paper, we propose a joint Location-Velocity Attention LSTM based method to predict trajectories. Specifically, a module is designed to tweak the LSTM network and an attention mechanism is trained to learn to optimally combine the location and the velocity information of pedestrians in the prediction process. We have evaluated our approach against other baselines and state-of-the-art methods on several publicly available datasets. The results show that it not only outperforms other prediction methods but it also has a good generalization ability.


The results of the first search for long-lived gluinos produced in 7 TeV pp collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider are presented. The search looks for evidence of long-lived particles that stop in the CMS detector and decay in the quiescent periods between beam crossings. In a dataset with a peak instantaneous luminosity of 10^-32 /cm^2/s, an integrated luminosity of 10/pb, and a search interval corresponding to 62 hours of LHC operation, no significant excess above background was observed. Limits at the 95% confidence level on gluino pair production over 13 orders of magnitude of gluino lifetime are set. For a mass difference (m_gluino-m_neutralino)>100 GeV/c^2, and assuming BR(gluino-> g neutralino)=100%, m_gluino < 370 GeV/c^2 are excluded for lifetimes from 10^-6 s to 1000 s.


The property market in Central European Region countries share a number of common features among which privatization, restitution of property, massive regulation or underdeveloped financial market all of which contributed on persisting property market imbalances and continuous dynamic changes. These changes have recently been significantly exacerbated by the presence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and a significant increase in energy prices (heating of apartments and houses, production of building materials, etc.). It is currently difficult for investors and people looking for their own housing to predict the future development of housing prices and housing affordability. This article analyses the housing market trends in this region taking the example of the Czech Republic using unique primary statistical data. It offers a deeper insight into the trends present on this market, identifies significant determinants of housing prices and evaluates changes in housing affordability. Our research reveals why the property market trends may contribute to opening inequality scissors and thus economic stability. This research is based on primary statistical data mined by EVAL software which allows to gather information about the development of the real estate market from real estate advertising.


Purpose: To report the clinical and histopathological results of a novel autologous scaffold grafting, platelet-rich fibrin (PRF) membrane, in cases with descemetocele. Methods: Three patients with severe corneal stromal melting and central descemetocele caused by neurotrophic keratopathy and infective keratitis underwent PRF membrane grafting on the central cornea for the prevention of imminent corneal perforation. After a quiescent 3-month period, penetrating keratoplasty and cataract extraction were performed for visual rehabilitation in 1 patient and host corneal tissue was examined histopathologically. Results: Pain was significantly relieved, conjunctival inflammation was markedly resolved, and the central descemetocele area became thicker with scar formation in all patients. Histopathological examination revealed fibrosis formation over the descemetocele area without any tissue gap. Newly formed tissue containing irregular corneal lamellae covered the fibrosis formation and accounted for the prevention of perforation. Conclusions: Temporary PRF membrane grafting may be an alternative intervention to avoid impending corneal perforation in cases with severe descemetocele.


There is a critical need for preventing peri-implantitis as its prevalence has increased and dental implants lack features to prevent it. Research strategies to prevent peri-implantitis have focused on modifying dental implants to incorporate different antimicrobial agents. An alternative strategy consists of barring the expansion of the biofilm subgingivally by forming a long-lasting permucosal seal between the soft tissue and the implant surface. Here, we innovatively biofunctionalized titanium with bioinspired peptide coatings to strengthen biological interactions between epithelial cells and the titanium surface. We selected laminin 332- and ameloblastin-derived peptides (Lam, Ambn). Laminin 332 participates in the formation of hemidesmosomes by keratinocytes and promotes epithelial attachment around teeth; and ameloblastin, an enamel derived protein, is involved in tissue regeneration events following disruption of the periodontium. Lam, Ambn or combinations of both peptides were covalently immobilized on titanium discs. Successful immobilization of the peptides was confirmed by contact angle goniometry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and fluorescent labelling of the peptides. Additionally, we confirmed the mechanical and thermochemical stability of the peptides on Ti substrates. Proliferation and hemidesmosome formation of human keratinocytes (TERT-2/OKF-6) were assessed by immunofluorescence labelling. The peptide-coated surfaces increased cell proliferation for up to 48 h in culture compared to control surfaces. Most importantly, formation of hemidesmosomes by keratinocytes was significantly increased on surfaces coated with Ambn + Lam peptides compared to control (p < 0.01) and monopeptide coatings (p < 0.005). Together, these results support the Ambn + Lam multipeptide coating as a promising candidate for inducing a permucosal seal around dental implants.


Objective: To evaluate the incidence of abdominal tuberculosis at a teaching hospital and to review all the cases of abdominal tuberculosis and their symptomatology.
Study Design: It is a retrospective descriptive study.
Setting and duration: All the cases of abdominal tuberculosis presented from June 2008 till June 2011 in the age group from 8 to 80 years were included in this study.
Material and Methods: The details of all patients admitted with abdominal tuberculosis from June 2008 till june2011 were added on a prescribed proforma and put on SPSS.
Results: 41 cases were dealt by our surgical team during the above period. The highest proportion of our patients have peritoneal tuberculosis (12 out of 41). 11 patients were presented with iloeocaecal tuberculosis, 3 were presented with right hypochondrial pain, while doing laparoscopic cholecystectomy found to have tubercles in the peritoneal cavity, two cases had fibrous stricture in the ascending colon, four presented with peritonitis with perforation in the terminal ileum, two had caecal mass, two had gastric tuberculosis, one had tuberculosis of the gall bladder and one had tuberculosis of appendix; three patients presented with vague symptoms of weight loss, evening pyrexia, night sweats, a raised ESR, enlarged nodes on ultrasound, enlarged node with caeseation on CT scan of abdomen.
Conclusion: The diagnosis of Abdominal tuberculosis is not very easy due to its vague syptomatology. To diagnose abdominal tuberculosis in the countries like Pakistan, one should have high index of suspicion and a low threshold to perform diagnostic laparoscopy.


Nickel(II) phthalocyanine complexes encapsulated in X-type Zeolite were constructed by the 'Ship-in-bottle' synthesis, whose characterizations were performed by fluorescent X-ray, UV-vis, reflectance, and ESR spectroscopic methods. UV-vis and Reflectance spectra of NiPc-Na+-X suggested that the Pc ring was synthesized. Solid state ESR spectrum of NiPc-Na+-X gave characteristic pattern for organic radical species. Catalytic oxidation reactivity of the NiPc-Na+-X in homogeneous reaction have been studied for organic substrate in the presence of H2O2.


OBJECTIVES
We examined health-related quality of life in adults who became physically active at recommended levels over a 10-year period compared with adults with different physical activity patterns. Methods. We examined men and women aged 26 to 70 years (mean [SD] = 47.4 [10.1]) in the Doetinchem Cohort Study 3 times between 1995 and 2009. We distinguished participants who became physically active (n = 618), remained active (n = 1286), remained inactive (n = 727), became physically inactive (n = 535), or with varying activity levels (n = 455) over 10 years. We used multivariable linear regression analyses to determine differences in health-related quality of life (survey similar to the 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey) at 10-year follow-up. Results. Adults who became physically active reported better physical functioning, vitality, and general health after 10 years than did persistently inactive adults and adults who became inactive. They also reported less bodily pain and better social functioning than adults who became inactive. No differences were observed with adults who remained active or with varying activity levels. Conclusions. Adopting a physically active lifestyle may result in a better health-related quality of life, comparable to remaining physically active over 10 years.


Much of the recent literature on the evolution of political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa has debated the extent to which Islamist political parties have become "secularized" in their political goals and rhetoric. In these studies, a comparison between the political secularization of Islamism and Christian Democracy is often alluded to, but rarely explored in depth. The two political religious movements share much in common with regards to their historical encounter with political liberalism and their intuitions about an ideal religious society. An uncritical comparison, however, obscures significant differences in the relationship of either movement to democratic institutions, traditional sources of religious authority, and the religious citizens of their nations. This paper qualifies the historical, institutional, and theological similarities of political Islam and political Catholicism. In doing so, it emphasizes the importance of the legacies of Catholic Christendom and Muslim Dar al-Islam as transnational, pre-Westphalian religious political orders and the idea of religious authority found in either. After articulating these bases of comparison, the paper considers how these religious legacies remain present in the transition to Christian or Muslim Democracies by exploring the rhetoric of Catholic civilization or Muslim civilization found in Pope Pius XII and Rachid Ghannouchi's discourses on democracy.


Coma is frequently used as the archetype z ∼ 0 galaxy cluster to compare higher redshift work against. It is not clear, however, how representative the Coma cluster is for galaxy clusters of its mass or X-ray luminosity, and significantly, recent works have suggested that the galaxy population of Coma may be in some ways anomalous. In this work, we present a comparison of Coma to an X-ray-selected control sample of clusters. We show that although Coma is typical against the control sample in terms of its internal kinematics (sub-structure and velocity dispersion profile), it has a significantly high (∼3σ ) X-ray temperature set against clusters of comparable mass. By de-redshifting our control sample cluster galaxies star formation rates using a fit to the galaxy main-sequence evolution at z < 0.1, we determine that the typical star formation rate of Coma galaxies as a function of mass is higher than for galaxies in our control sample at a confidence level of >99 per cent. One way to alleviate this discrepancy and bring Coma in line with the control sample would be to have the distance to Coma to be slightly lower, perhaps through a non-negligible peculiar velocity with respect to the Hubble expansion, but we do not regard this as likely given precision measurements using a variety of approaches. Therefore, in summary, we urge caution in using Coma as a z ∼ 0 baseline cluster in galaxy evolution studies.


The design of motion controllers for wheeled mobile robots is often based only on the robot's kinematics. However, to reduce tracking error it is important to also consider the robot dynamics, especially when high-speed movements and/or heavy load transportation are required. Commercial mobile robots usually have internal controllers that accept velocity commands, but the control signals generated by most dynamic controllers in the literature are torques or voltages. In this chapter, we present a velocity-based dynamic model for differential-drive mobile robots that also includes the dynamics of the robot actuators. Such model can be used to design controllers that generate velocity commands, while compensating for the robot dynamics. We present an explanation on how to obtain the parameters of the dynamic model and show that motion controllers designed for the robot's kinematics can be easily integrated with the velocity-based dynamic compensation controller. We conclude the chapter with experimental results of a trajectory tracking controller that show a reduction of up to 50% in tracking error index IAE due to the application of the dynamic compensation controller.


In the early 2000s, the approach to perioperative fluid management in major abdominal surgery underwent a paradigm change in favor of restrictive, rather than standard or liberal, fluid regimens. The basis for this shift in philosophy was a result of randomized controlled trials such as one by Brandstrup et al ., which demonstrated improved morbidity and outcomes with perioperative fluid restriction (1). With similar results reported across a variety of other prospective trials, the practice of perioperative fluid restriction garnered more support and acceptance (2,3).


Workflow templates are necessary for various different Web Service related tasks such as encoding business rules in a B2B application, specifying domain knowledge in a scientific Grid application, and defining preferences for users that interact with Web Services. Abstract activities in templates can be used to specify the features of a required service and concretes service can be discovered and used to generate executable workflows. In this paper, we examine how Web ontologies can be used to write such template descriptions that will allow flexible matchmaking of services. We discuss the importance of expressing preferences in templates and provide a ranking algorithm based on DL inference services. We then present the HTN-DL formalism – an extension to the HTN planning formalism to generate compositions of Web Services based on these templates. Finally we present the experimental evaluation for the composition system we pro-


Axial chirality is a key feature of many important organic molecules, such as biologically active compounds, stereogenic ligands and optically pure materials. Significant efforts in the field of the atropisomeric synthesis of biaryls have hence been undertaken over the past decade. Several major improvements of the already known methods to build up such chiral backbones (e.g. oxidative couplings and stereoselective Suzuki-Miyaura arylations) have been achieved and, in parallel, novel concepts have emerged enabling unprecedented synthetic routes toward molecules of this kind. These outstanding steps further unlocked the door to the preparation of previously difficult-to-access precursors of privileged ligands like BINOL, BINAM, QUINAP and many other molecules of interest.


The objective of this study was to evaluate the ability to degrade organic matter by edaphic macrofauna (worms), carbon/nitrogen (C/N) ratio and hydrogenation potential (pH) during the vermicomposting process in different organic residues. The treatments were constituted by organic residues of animal origin (bovine, ovine and equine manure) and vegetable (herb-checkmate and coffee drag), which were conditioned in plastic pots with a capacity of 10 liters, comprising five treatments in a completely randomized experimental design, with five replications. Were inoculated 150 earthworms of the species Eisenia foetida, into each plot. After 87 days, the evaluation of the multiplication of the earthworms was carried out, through its manual count and its cocoons. At the beginning and at the end of the experiment, the samples were submitted to analysis of humidity at 60 °C, pH, volumetric density, chemical analysis of macronutrients and C/N ratio. There was a dominance of worms and cocoons in the process of vermicomposting in the residues of ovine manure and herb-checkmate. The macronutrients (P, K and Mg) and C/N ratio were higher in the vegetal residues, while for N higher values were found in ovine manure and coffee drag treatments, and for Ca higher value among treatments was observed in the coffee drag treatment at the end and the lowest value at initiation. The results obtained in this study demonstrate the importance of the edaphic macrofauna to the vermicomposting process, since it allows more information about its influence on the continuity of soil organic matter decomposition processes.


This paper describes ASF, a novel cell-level analog synthesis framework that can size and bias a given circuit topology subject to a set of performance objectives and a manufacturing process. To manage complexity and time-to-market, SoC designs require a high level of automation and reuse. Digital methodologies are inapplicable to analog IP, which relies on tight control of low-level device and circuit properties that vary widely across manufacturing processes. This analog synthesis solution automates these tedious, technology specific aspects of analog design. Unlike previously proposed approaches, ASF extends the prevalent "schematic and SPICE" methodology used to design analog and mixed-signal circuits. ASF is topology and technology independent and can be easily integrated into a commercial schematic capture design environment. Furthermore, ASF employs a novel numerical optimization formulation that incorporates classical downhill techniques into stochastic search. ASF consistently produces results comparable to expert manual design with 10/spl times/ fewer candidate solution evaluations than previously published approaches that rely on traditional stochastic optimization methods.


The recent integration of learning models in the learning process has become the focus of science education experts, especially in Indonesia, such as the adoption of the Reading-Concept Map Think Pair Share (Remap TPS) learning model. This study aims to improve the students' cognitive abilities, and scientific attitudes through the Reading-Concept Map Think Pair Share model. The study was conducted to junior high school students by employing Quasi-experimental with Non-equivalent Control Group Design. The instruments used were multiple choice tests and observation sheets. The result of the research shows that the students' cognitive ability is in the medium category with an N-gain value of 0.47. Based on this result, it can be concluded that the Remap TPS learning influences the students' cognitive ability. The obtained average percentage score of the students' scientific attitudes is 81.76% which belongs to the very good category. Thus, it can be concluded that this study provides important implications for educators to be more creative in designing learning models in order to improve the students' cognitive abilities and scientific attitudes.


Future chip multiprocessors (CMPs) may have hundreds to thousands of threads competing to access shared resources, and will require quality-of-service (QoS) support to improve system utilization. Although there has been significant work in QoS support within resources such as caches and memory controllers, there has been less attention paid to QoS support in the multi-hop on-chip networks that will form an important component in future systems. In this paper we introduce globally-synchronized frames (GSF), a framework for providing guaranteed QoS in on-chip networks in terms of minimum bandwidth and a maximum delay bound. The GSF framework can be easily integrated in a conventional virtual channel (VC) router without significantly increasing the hardware complexity. We rely on a fast barrier network, which is feasible in an on-chip environment, to efficiently implement GSF. Performance guarantees are verified by both analysis and simulation. According to our simulations, all concurrent flows receive their guaranteed minimum share of bandwidth in compliance with a given bandwidth allocation. The average throughput degradation of GSF on a 8times8 mesh network is within 10% compared to the conventional best-effort VC router in most cases.


Early detection of skin cancer, particularly melanoma, is crucial to enable advanced treatment. Due to the rapid growth in the number of skin cancers, there is a growing need of computerised analysis for skin lesions. The state-of-the-art public available datasets for skin lesions are often accompanied with a very limited amount of segmentation ground truth labeling. Also, the available segmentation datasets consist of noisy expert annotations reflecting the fact that precise annotations to represent the boundary of skin lesions are laborious and expensive. The lesion boundary segmentation is vital to locate the lesion accurately in dermoscopic images and lesion diagnosis of different skin lesion types. In this work, we propose the fully automated deep learning ensemble methods to achieve high sensitivity and high specificity in lesion boundary segmentation. We trained the ensemble methods based on Mask R-CNN and DeeplabV3+ methods on ISIC-2017 segmentation training set and evaluate the performance of the ensemble networks on ISIC-2017 testing set and PH2 dataset. Our results showed that the proposed ensemble methods segmented the skin lesions with Sensitivity of 89.93% and Specificity of 97.94% for the ISIC-2017 testing set. The proposed ensemble method Ensemble-A outperformed FrCN, FCNs, U-Net, and SegNet in Sensitivity by 4.4%, 8.8%, 22.7%, and 9.8% respectively. Furthermore, the proposed ensemble method Ensemble-S achieved a specificity score of 97.98% for clinically benign cases, 97.30% for the melanoma cases, and 98.58% for the seborrhoeic keratosis cases on ISIC-2017 testing set, exhibiting better performance than FrCN, FCNs, U-Net, and SegNet.


In the 1990s, Latin American countries introduced similar national gender equality policy reforms. The key policy areas in which this convergence took place were the criminalization of domestic violence, the introduction of state agencies for women, and the incorporation into law of candidate gender quotas for national parliamentary elections. This thesis evaluates the explanations offered in the existing literature, including both national and international level analyses that could explain this process of policy convergence.

The thesis uses a combination of methodological approaches drawn from the policy diffusion and policy transfer literatures. Drawing on the existing literature a number of hypotheses are constructed which could explain the observed pattern of policy change. These include: the number of women in parliament; the level of democracy; the level of economic development; measures of women's education; fertility rates; the strength of the national women's movement; the existence of relevant international norms; the state's involvement in transnational networks; the state's record of similar policy reform; and the degree of geographical proximity to earlier adopters of reforms. The macro study operationalises the external and internal independent variables that emerge from the hypotheses to facilitate an event history analysis. Drawing on the findings of the macro study a case study analysis was carried out on the reform of domestic violence legislation, and the failure to introduce candidate gender quotas in Chile.

The macro study confirms the importance of international norms and transnational networks as significant factors in the policy diffusion across the region, and confirms that international norms were mediated by domestic factors including the strength of the local women's movement, domestic political culture and institutional structures. Surprisingly, in contrast to dominant views in the literature, the macro study indicated that the level of economic development, the level of democracy or the status of women were not significant factors in explaining the adoption of reforms. In fact, the criminalisation of domestic violence was negatively correlated to women's status. The case studies confirmed the findings of the macro study at the micro level, in an analysis of
Chile's adoption of laws criminalising domestic violence, and its rejection of gender quotas.

The wave of gender equality policy reform in Latin America coincided with an increased global interest in women's rights, and the emergence of a global gender equality regime. The thesis demonstrates that the global diffusion of gender equality ideas is a feature of the conditions of national policy-making in a globalizing world.


The circular economy (CE) has caught the interest of different stakeholders recently as a response to many of the current 'grand challenges' exemplified by the UN sustainable development goals. Whilst CE research outputs have increased exponentially, microlevel studies focusing on the role of users in the CE are limited to date. A lack of understanding of consumers' attitudes is one of biggest challenges facing companies wishing to transition towards more circular production forms. This paper empirically examines consumer attitudes and perceptions towards renting everyday durable consumer goods (e.g., clothes, toys, baby clothes, leisure equipment) and explores online rental business owners' perspectives of the challenges linked to these circular business models. It comprises an online survey with a large UK sample of 18-54 years (n=1,300) and 10 semi-structured interviews with platform owners. Drawing on and extending two established key frameworks to explain pro-environmental behaviour, i.e. the Norm Activation Theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior, we demonstrate that personal norms (i.e. perceived moral obligation to choose renting consumer goods), perceived behavioural control (i.e. perceived ability to renting consumer goods) and outcome efficacy (i.e., perceived feeling to be able to address environmental problems) are the main direct predictors of the intention to rent consumer goods for a fee. We provide empirical support for the role of personal norms as mediator and further provide insights into how personal norms are activated in the context of access-based consumption. This study has important managerial and policy implications for the transition to circular economy.


The objective of this study was to determine whether the dual action of nitric oxide (NO) on cardiomyocyte cell viability is mediated through p38 mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK)‐induced cell death and extracellular signal‐regulated kinase (ERK1/2)‐mediated cell survival pathways, and whether either of these is mediated through a cGMP–protein kinase G (PKG) pathway. Cell viability of embryonic chick cardiomyocytes was assessed by the MTT assay, which is based on the ability of viable cells to reduce 3‐(4,5‐dimethylthiazol‐2‐yl)‐2,5‐diphenyl tetrazolium bromide. The NO donor sodium nitroprusside (SNP) produced a significant (P < 0.01) concentration‐dependent reduction in cell viability or increase in cell death. Sodium nitroprusside induced ERK1/2 phosphorylation, and the mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MEK1/2) inhibitor PD 98059 significantly increased cell death. In contrast, SB202190, a relatively selective inhibitor of p38 MAPK, did not affect SNP‐induced cell death. The cardioprotective effect of NO was prbably mediated in part via cGMP because 1H‐[1,2,4]oxadiazolo[4,3‐a]quinoxalin‐1‐one, a selective inhibitor of NO‐sensitive guanylyl cyclase, produced a significant enhancement of SNP‐induced cell death. In contrast, the PKG inhibitor KT5823 did not affect cell viability. In summary, these data suggest that NO, via stimulation of soluble guanylyl cyclase, activates MEK1/2 whose product, ERK1/2, protects against cell death. In contrast, SNP‐induced p38 MAPK activation does not modulate NO‐induced cardiomyocyte cell death. Not all cGMP targets affect NO‐induced cell death, since the PKG pathway does not enhance or suppress NO‐induced cardiomyocyte cell death. Enhancement of the ERK1/2 responses to NO may permit the beneficial effects of NO to predominate.


Important problems in causal inference, eco-nomics, and, more generally, robust machine learning can be expressed as conditional moment restrictions, but estimation becomes challenging as it requires solving a continuum of unconditional moment restrictions. Previous works ad-dressed this problem by extending the generalized method of moments (GMM) to continuum moment restrictions. In contrast, generalized empirical likelihood (GEL) provides a more general framework and has been shown to enjoy favorable small-sample properties compared to GMM-based estimators. To benefit from recent developments in machine learning, we provide a functional reformulation of GEL in which arbitrary models can be leveraged. Motivated by a dual formulation of the resulting infinite dimensional optimization problem, we devise a practical method and explore its asymptotic properties. Finally, we provide kernel- and neural network-based imple-mentations of the estimator, which achieve state-of-the-art empirical performance on two conditional moment restriction problems.


The space of potential drug-like molecules is vast, precluding "random-walk"-like searches from achieving any reasonable effectiveness. Active search techniques have been increasing in popularity in recent years as a method for accelerating the discovery of novel pharmaceutical molecules. By providing an effective method for prioritizing molecules within the discovery process, the efficiency of the discovery process can be dramatically improved. In this paper, we describe the use of Bayesian optimization, a method for iterative optimization of black-box functions for achieving this end, balancing the exploitation of current knowledge acquired from data, with the acquisition of new knowledge about which little is known.


In order to offer reference for the construction of energy transportation channels in China, we evaluated the existing system with the information entropy theory. By calculating the information entropy for the scale of construction of energy transportation channels with the data of annual investment in the fixed assets from 1986 to 2008, we analyzed the relation between transportation channels and the information entropy combined with the maximum entropy methods. Empirical results show that we should not let the rail transportation channels have excessive investment growth, and then secondly transfer some of the road investment to the transportation channels of waterway or pipeline while finally advance the construction step of the pipeline transportation channels. The quantitative evaluation of the construction scale of energy transportation channels is a important supplement to the traditional research and provide evidence for further development.


Whistles are acoustic signals produced particularly during social interactions. Here, we compare whistles by bottlenose dolphins from three Mediterranean areas (Croatia, Sicily and Sardinia) to investigate the presence of acoustic divergence and to discuss the possible causes of variability. Whistle parameters differ significantly between populations, but PCA highlights that the majority of variability is due to a limited number of frequency parameters. Cluster and DFA show that the Croatian population is acoustically divergent from the western populations of Sicily and Sardinia. This divergence could be consistent with geographical isolation, and a possible genetic differentiation between populations, and/or an adaptation to the acoustic environment. Moreover, in a comparison of whistle parameters of different Mediterranean populations with those of previously published Atlantic populations, it was revealed that the Sicilian population was acoustically closer to Atlantic populations. Our results represent a contribution to identifying acoustically differentiated populations of bottlenose dolphins in the Mediterranean.


Career and technical education could be an essential element in developing a work force capable of handling a new period in technical industries.America was built on the back of blue collar workers pursuing highly skilled careers in ever changing fields. Everything from the railroads to the modern day textile industry wouldn't have been possible without jobs in the career technology positions. Before the years between 1776-1826 regular schooling consisted of classroom learning and core academic subjects. However during the period of time known as The Awakening, apprenticeships were incorporated into regular schooling as an opportunity for students to have a hands on learning experience in a real trade.As time went on schools began to make this a regular part of the curriculum and bills were passed to support and further explore career and technical training. This set the foundation for modern CTE These courses are considered electives, not academic courses, but it may be time for America to consider these CTE courses as just as important if not more than regular required academic classes. Many people believe that career and technical education is nothing more than an elective with less important academic lessons than core subject, but despite these beliefs, career and technical education should be an essential and equal part of every school curriculum and deserves a more substantial amount of funding.The first nationwide acceptance of CTE did not come until after the first world war when citizens needed workforce training in order to re-enter the working world. This mass acceptance and necessity for adults built the bridge into adult education. Although technical skills grounded in academics, workplace skills, and personal skills are the most important aspects of obtaining and performing a career at peak proficiency, there is an enormous deficiency in these areas nationally and globally. This is known as the Skills Gap. A survey conducted by the Manpower Group and reported by the Harvard Business Review says "35% of 38,000 employers reported difficulty filling jobs due to lack of available talent; in the US., 39% of employers did." (Employers Aren't) This is especially true for middle-skill jobs.A prime example of the Skills Gap in the U.S. state of Colorado. Middle- skill jobs account for 50 percent of their labor market but only 40% of the state's workforce is properly trained to the level of proficiency required for the job (National Skills Coalition). A common solution to this problem is on the job training for new hires. This may sound like it would solve many issues but according to a Training Industry Report, in 2014 the annual training budgets for US. small businesses, each business having a minimum of 100 employees, was $308,000(Taylor, Tess). After all these costs, time training, and resources being poured into newly hired employees- they still don't meet the skill level and are terminated. This creates a cycle of hiring and firing costing small businesses time and money and halting them from expanding.It's recommended by the Automatic Data Processing Incorporation that "Recruiting only the most skilled employees, retaining them for as long as possible and using performance reviews to identify training needs early on,"(The Costs). This would be extremely logical and practical, if there were enough skilled workers to fill the jobs. One of the goals of modern high school education is to prepare graduates to enter a work force and be ready to be a working member of society. If this effort was successful


The use of Isolated lung perfusion (ILP), combined with medical imaging modalities such as positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET/CT), provides real-time visualization of tumors in ventilated and perfused vital lung tissue. This experiment intends to show the feasibility and benefits of using ILP combined with PET/CT imaging. Following lung surgery on a 49-year-old male, his left lower lobectomy specimen, which held a typical carcinoid tumor, was preserved on normothermic ILP. Gallium-68-Edotreotide ([68Ga]-DOTATOC) was administered into the ILP circuit, and dynamic emission data from PET/CT was acquired. ILP was carried out for 120 minutes. Near physiologic gas exchange and glucose metabolism were preserved throughout the experiment. The time activity curves (TAC) of 5 different volumes of interest (VOI) showed notable differences in tracer uptake over time. The peripheral area of the carcinoid exhibited delayed but high somatostatin receptor agonist uptake compared to the surrounding parenchyma and the intrapulmonary artery. However, the central area of the carcinoid showed very low [68Ga]-DOTATOC uptake. This experiment demonstrates the potential of ILP combined with PET/CT for kinetic modeling in experimental nuclear medicine imaging. By providing visualization of tracer uptake in perfused lung tissue, this model could potentially improve our understanding of tumor physiology and molecular imaging


Abstract Building on stakeholder management theory, this article examines the salience of Asian stakes in three key areas of Arctic governance: management and use of natural resources; shipping; and environmental protection. The Asian states that are now permanent observers in the Arctic Council have significant stakes in Arctic governance, but their salience varies considerably across these issue areas. Viewing stakeholder patterns in relation to the differentiated roles that the Arctic Council plays in Arctic governance makes it possible to derive some policy implications regarding the depth of Asian state involvement in that body.


In recent years, sharp or quantitative weighted inequalities have attracted considerable attention on account of $A_2$ conjecture solved by Hyt\"{o}nen. Advances have greatly improved conceptual understanding of classical objects such as Calder\'{o}n-Zygmund operators. However, plenty of operators do not fit into the class of Calder\'{o}n-Zygmund operators and fail to be bounded on all $L^p(w)$ spaces for $p \in (1, \infty)$ and $w \in A_p$. In this paper we develop Rubio de Francia extrapolation with quantitative bounds to investigate quantitative weighted inequalities for operators beyond the (multilinear) Calder\'{o}n-Zygmund theory. We mainly establish a quantitative multilinear limited range extrapolation in terms of exponents $p_i \in (\mathfrak{p}_i^-, \mathfrak{p}_i^+)$ and weights $w_i^{p_i} \in A_{p_i/\mathfrak{p}_i^-} \cap RH_{(\mathfrak{p}_i^+/p_i)'}$, $i=1, \ldots, m$, which refines a result of Cruz-Uribe and Martell. We also present an extrapolation from multilinear operators to the corresponding commutators. Additionally, our result is quantitative and allows us to extend special quantitative estimates in the Banach space setting to the quasi-Banach space setting. Our proof is based on an off-diagonal extrapolation result with quantitative bounds. Finally, we present various applications to illustrate the utility of extrapolation by concentrating on quantitative weighted estimates for some typical multilinear operators such as bilinear Bochner-Riesz means, bilinear rough singular integrals, and multilinear Fourier multipliers. In the linear case, based on the Littlewood-Paley theory, we include weighted jump and variational inequalities for rough singular integrals.


Molecular mechanical calculations were done on complexes of 4-nitroquinoline-N-oxide (NQO) with various dinucleoside phosphates [(ApT)2, (CpG)2, (GpC)2, and (TpA)2]. Models built using proflavine (uniform C3' endo sugar puckers) and acridine orange (mixed C3' endo (3'-5') C2' endo sugar puckers) dinucleoside phosphate X-ray structures were used in the calculations. Relative binding energies, complex geometries, and various intercalator orientations in the complexes were studied. The results suggest qualitatively different geometries for pyr-(3'-5')-pur and pur-(3'-5')-pyr sequences. Specifically, we find marked distortion in some of the complexes (i.e. there is not a parallel coplanar relationship between the base pairs and intercalator), distortion of the NQO nitro group from planarity in the complexes and mobility of NQO in the intercalation site. We suggest that experimental studies of NQO-dinucleoside phosphate complexes may reveal intercalation complexes which deviate substantially more from a nearly parallel coplanar arrangement of bases and intercalator than has been previously observed.


The chief advantages of sire evaluation based on five-month daughter records are: 1. Genetic progress is inversely proportional to the turnover rate in testing bulls so that if this interval is shortened by 10%, the rate of genetic progress will be increased by 11%. The turnover period can be shortened with the use of 5-month records from about 50 months to 45 months—a decrease of 10% in time. 2. Genetic progress is also related to how many top bulls are saved and how many poor ones are culled out of all those sampled. In other words, the more bulls tested with the same number saved for use, then the faster the progress which can be made. The shorter length of time which bulls have to be saved with five-month record evaluation can allow up to 10% more bulls to be tested with the same physical layout. 3. Returning a superior sire to service 5–6 months earlier will allow an increased service life for those sires. This could increase the service period by 15% and would also reduce the overhead costs to the stud as well as allow the dairyman the services of a superior bull for a few extra months. Some problems to be solved to enable bull studs to make practical use of five-month records are: 1. Suitable mature equivalent factors must be determined for all breeds for five-month records. 2. Breed averages for five-month records must be established. 3. The regression of daughter records on stablemate averages must be estimated. 4. Estimates of variance and covariance components used in the procedures must be confirmed from larger numbers of observations. 5. The importance of differential persistency between sire groups should


I Epstein JB, Pearsall NN, Truelove EL. Quantitative relationships between Candida albicans in saliva and clinical status of human subjects. J Clin Microbiol 1980;12(3):475-7. 2 Wade JC, Schimpft SC. Epidemiology and prevention of candida infections. In: Bodley GP, Fainstein V, eds. Candidiasis. New York: Raven Press, 1985:111-33. 3 Arendorf TM, Walker DM. Oral candidal populations in health and disease. BrDentJ 1979;147:267-72. 4 Odds FC, Evans EGV, Taylor MAR, Wales JK. Prevalence of pathogenic yeasts and humoral antibodies to candida in diabetic patients. J7 Clin Pathol 1978;31:840-4.


Objective: Diarrheal diseases are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, but the etiology of diarrhea and its relation to nutritional outcomes in resource-limited settings is poorly defined. We sought to determine the etiology of community-acquired diarrhea in Tanzanian infants and to assess the association with anthropometrics and novel intestinal biomarkers. Methods: A convenience sample of infants in a trial of zinc and/or multivitamin supplementation in Tanzania was selected. Subjects were enrolled at age 6 weeks and studied for 18 months. Stool samples were obtained from children with acute diarrhea. A novel, polymerase chain reaction-based TaqMan array was used to screen stool for 15 enteropathogens. A subset of subjects had serum gastrointestinal biomarkers measured. Results: One hundred twenty-three subjects with diarrhea were enrolled. The mean ± SD age at stool sample collection was 12.4 ± 3.9 months. Thirty-five enteropathogens were identified in 34 (27.6%) subjects: 11 rotavirus, 9 Cryptosporidium spp, 7 Shigella spp, 3 Campylobacter jejuni/coli, 3 heat stable-enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, and 2 enteropathogenic E coli. Subjects with any identified enteropathogen had significantly lower weight-for-length z scores (−0.55 ± 1.10 vs 0.03 ± 1.30, P = 0.03) at the final clinic visit than those without an identified pathogen. Fifty of the 123 subjects (40.7%) had serum analyzed for antibodies to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and flagellin. Subjects with any identified enteropathogen had lower immunoglobulin (IgA) antibodies to LPS (0.75 ± 0.27 vs 1.13 ± 0.77, P = 0.01) and flagellin (0.52 ± 0.16 vs 0.73 ± 0.47, P = 0.02) than those without an identified pathogen. Conclusions: This quantitative polymerase chain reaction method may allow identification of enteropathogens that place children at higher risk for suboptimal growth. IgA anti-LPS and flagellin antibodies hold promise as emerging intestinal biomarkers.


Patients with diabetes mellitus have a greater risk of dyslipidaemia. Abnormalities in lipid metabolism have been shown to be key risk factors for the development of diabetes-related complications. Lipids are the critical biomolecules for pathological and physiological processes in the human body and their examination is essential for diagnosing health and disease conditions such as diabetes mellitus, atherosclerosis and related complications. The objective of this study was to ascertain the diagnostic potential of saliva in the assessment of lipid profile as compared to that of serum lipid profile. The selected study area of Thiruporur conducted a Diabetic camp to collect the samples from 200 control subjects and 200 Type - II diabetic patients from different age groups. Total Cholesterol (TC), High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL), Triglycerides (TG), Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL), Very Low-Density Lipoprotein (VLDL), and the ratio of Total Cholesterol to High-Density Lipoprotein (TC/HDL) were analysed in the serum and saliva of the diabetic patients and the control subjects. When compared to the control group, patients with Type II diabetes have an abnormal blood lipid profile with elevated TC (246.8253.48mg/dl), high LDL (156.6253.484mg/dl), VLDL (42.36510.99mg/dl), TG (211.833 54.97 mg/dl), and TC/HDL ratio (5.471 1.239), but inadequate HDL (45.2793.199 mg/dl) levels were observed. According to the findings of this study, an increase in serum lipid profile values and corresponding increases in saliva lipid profile values were also observed. As per the outcome of the present study, saliva can be utilised as a non-invasive diagnostic tool for measuring lipid profile in diabetic patients


Ambient intelligence allows physical environments to become sensitive and responsive to the presence of people and objects. An environment endowed with ambient intelligence is able to analyse its contexts, adapt itself to the presence of people and objects residing in it, learn from their behaviour and recognise and express emotion. Ambient intelligence is realised via devices which blend into the background, while supporting social interaction and improving people's experience within the physical space (e.g., by increasing safety or comfort). Often physical spaces must be shared by various people: adapting devices' responses and behaviour to simultaneously suit a group of people is an important and not much explored issue. To complicate matters further, group membership may change continuously. In this paper, we propose an approach based on group adaptation and software agents, to manage shared devices in ambient intelligence solutions. We present a proof-of-concept implementation embedding our approach, which allows engineers to design and experiment with distinct ways of managing shared devices – software agents are associated with devices and people, and interact with each other to agree on how shared devices should change their behaviours in view of the people in their radius of action.


ABSTRACT We present an optical analogue of a central concept (not a specific relativistic effect) in Special Relativity (SR) that underlies many relativistic effects. This concept is the Einstein Velocity Addition (EVA) which plays a fundamental role in the development of SR. The photonic circuit analogue is between the EVA, and the complex electric field, through the output signal of the optical add-drop filter (OADF). The OADF is one of the key building blocks for wavelength filtering in photonic integrated circuits (PICs or photonic chip). This analogue strengthens the vision toward a Special-Relativity-on-a-Chip. The analogy is established by equating the two relativistic normalized velocities in EVA with the two transmission coupling coefficients of the two directional couplers in the OADF. Furthermore, the generating angle in the EVA is associated with the single-pass phase shift of the OADF. We analyze its magnitude and directional angle in detail. Lastly, other important consequences are also briefly discussed.


We study sequential bilateral trade where sellers and buyers valuations are completely arbitrary (i.e., determined by an adversary). Sellers and buyers are strategic agents with private valuations for the good and the goal is to design a mechanism that maximizes efficiency (or gain from trade) while being incentive compatible, individually rational and budget balanced. In this paper we consider gain from trade which is harder to approximate than social welfare. We consider a variety of feedback scenarios and distinguish the cases where the mechanism posts one price and when it can post different prices for buyer and seller. We show several surprising results about the separation between the different scenarios. In particular we show that (a) it is impossible to achieve sublinear $\alpha$-regret for any $\alpha<2$, (b) but with full feedback sublinear $2$-regret is achievable (c) with a single price and partial feedback one cannot get sublinear $\alpha$ regret for any constant $\alpha$ (d) nevertheless, posting two prices even with one-bit feedback achieves sublinear $2$-regret, and (e) there is a provable separation in the $2$-regret bounds between full and partial feedback.


Background: Diabetes mellitus is characterized by an increase in blood glucose levels, resulting in insufficiency of insulin secretion, insulin resistance, or both. Objective: The effects of hydroalcoholic extract of the Myrtus communis (myrtle) fruits on Wistar rats were investigated in two types of diabetes mellitus. Materials and Methods: Intraperitoneal administration of streptozotocin (60 mg/kg) was used to induce Type I diabetes. Type II diabetes was induced by subcutaneous injection of 1 mg/kg/day dexamethasone for 10 days. Two groups of the diabetic animals received the hydroalcoholic extract of the fruit by gavage (250 mg/kg and 500 mg/kg for 45 and 10 days) and the diabetic control groups receiving distilled water. Results: The hydroalcoholic extract of M. communis fruits reduced the serum levels of the glucose, triglyceride, urine volume, urine protein, and malondialdehyde at the end of the 45 day. In Type II diabetic rats, there was a significant effect on plasma glucose levels. On this day, blood glucose-lowering effect was significantly observed after insulin administration as C2>D2M500>D2M250>D2 (P ≤ 0.05). The plasma level of insulin was completely reversed. There were no differences in the other biochemical parameters. Conclusions: The hydroalcoholic extract of M. communis fruits has a significant effect on the improvement of diabetes mellitus complications especially Type II diabetic animals, which begins with insulin resistance.


Endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) are ubiquitous substances found in many industrial solvents, pesticides, household cleaners, and plastics. These chemicals have been shown to have adverse morphological and neurological effects on organisms such as rats, fish, aquatic frogs, and the developing human embryo. The most commonly observed results of in vivo EDC exposure are deleterious effects on neural crest cell derivatives. In preliminary studies, Xenopus laevis embryos were exposed to concentrations of nonylphenol, a well-known EDC, ranging from 500nM to 1μM for periods of three days to two weeks. Distinct spinal cord and cranio-facial deformities as well as enlargements of the head and gut were the most consistently observed effects of these exposures and were seen most prevalently in the lowest concentration doses. Exposure experiments were repeated at lower 1nM, 5nM, and 10nM nonylphenol concentrations. The results of these exposures were similar to the higher dose experiments, yielding spinal cord malformations, cranio-facial deformities, and behavioral abnormalities. It was then hypothesized that these compounds were disrupting hormone-transcription pathways involved in neural crest cell differentiation and migration. Recent studies have shown that a member of the forkhead box gene family, FoxD3, is intimately involved in early neural crest cell migration and differentiation in Xenopus laevis . Western Blot analyses probing for the mis- expression of FoxD3 were performed on embryo lysate exposed to nonylphenol at the low dose concentrations for 72 hours. Results of these analyses supported FoxD3 down-regulation at the 5nM and 1nM treatments in four replicate blots.


Images from walkaway VSP data are traditionally obtained by using either a VSP-CDP transform or a VSP Kirchhoff migration, which both heavily rely on the knowledge of a velocity model. The need for a velocity model is eliminated by using model-independent imaging methods, such as the common-reflection-surface (CRS) stack. The CRS stack is a data-driven time-domain stacking method that leads to images with a higher signal-to-noise ratio. Moreover, kinematic wavefield attributes (CRS attributes) determined in the process can be used for a variety of applications.


Software construction is the ultimate embodiment of the software development process. The art of programming lies in that nether region between the hopeful wishes of an elegant architecture and the hard grindstone of technical details. To prevent major catastrophic loss, we must focus on preventing the triggering mechanism from occurring. If we can fix the little problems as they occur, then we shall have fewer large problems with which to contend.


OBJECTIVEBoth cortical oxygen saturation (SaO2) and cortical blood volume (BV) are related to regional cerebral blood flow. Among a series of patients with cerebral arteriovenous malformations, we examined the problem of hyperemia after embolization/resection or resection with the intraoperative application of near-infrared spectroscopy. METHODSCortical SaO2 and BV (intracapillary total hemoglobin concentrations) were measured, with near-infrared spectroscopy, in areas adjacent to the arteriovenous malformation for 20 patients, before and after resection. The absolute values for both parameters and postexcision/preexcision ratios (P-P ratios) were determined. Data were correlated with multiple clinical and preoperative angiographic parameters. RESULTSBefore resection, the mean SaO2 was 49 ± 16% and the mean BV was 12.65 ± 7.41 mg/ml. After resection, SaO2 increased for 17 of 20 patients and BV increased for 18 of 20 patients. The differences between pre- and postexcision values for both parameters were observed to be statistically significant (P < 0.01). The average P-P ratios were 1.5 ± 0.4 for SaO2 and 1.7 ± 0.4 for BV. Correlation between the P-P ratios for the two parameters was good. The initial BV and the P-P ratios for both SaO2 and BV were exclusively dependent on the extent of preoperative embolization. Postoperatively, two patients developed intracerebral hemorrhage or severe edema. Both demonstrated high P-P ratios for SaO2 (2.3 and 2.1) and BV (1.6 and 2.1). CONCLUSIONIntraoperative near-infrared spectroscopy is able to detect the hyperemic status of adjacent cortex after arteriovenous malformation resection. However, staged therapy with embolization and surgery results in less hyperemia after resection. While two patients with hyperemic complications exhibited very large increases in SaO2 and BV, we cannot refute the normal-perfusion pressure breakthrough theory.


ABSTRACT This article examines how the Hong Kong government promoted and preserved Chinese culture through postage stamps and coins. It shows that colonial officials attempted to utilise these tangible forms of Chinese culture to win popular support from the 1960s on. This was an era when the British and colonial governments hoped to hold onto Hong Kong before discussing the colony's future with Chinese leaders. Colonial officials thus attempted to secure public trust and improve the government's image. This article analyses cultural policies of this era. It reveals how colonial administrators featured traditional Chinese culture in postage stamps and coins to showcase their 'imagination and sensibility to what appeals to Hong Kong people', a phrase used by Secretary for Chinese Affairs John Crichton McDouall in the 1960s. While previous studies have shown how colonial authorities utilised objects to reinforce imperial superiority and construct a sense of the Other, this article argues that political calculations made Hong Kong officials appear to respect how local people actually understood their culture. By cooperating with the Crown Agents and the Royal Mint, colonial administrators incorporated Chinese symbols in these everyday objects to demonstrate their care for the people's culture.


MADAM: The mumps virus is one of the less common causes of acute pancreatitis in our community. A 60-year-old male recently presented with a history of four discrete episodes of severe epigastric pain during the previous 16 months. The attacks were associated with sweating, pallor and nausea or vomiting, and they were consistent with episodes of relapsing pancreatitis. His serum amylase level during the recovery phase from the most recent episode was 676 U/L (normal range, 130 U/L to 390 U/L) and it fell to a normal level two weeks later. Abdominal X-ray examinations performed during oral cholecystography, after ingestion of barium meal and with attempted ERCP (endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography) all showed extensive parenchymal calcification throughout the head, body and tail of the pancreas. The gall bladder was normal and functioned well. The common bile duct also appeared normal when it opacified after gall bladder contraction. The barium-meal X-ray examination showed a small hiatus hernia which was confirmed by endoscopy at the time of the attempted ERCP. Cannulation of the ampulla of Vater was prevented by fibrotic stricturing of the ampullary orifice, no doubt a consequence of prior periampullary pancreatitis. The patient's alcohol intake has been very small. He gave no history of blunt abdominal trauma or exposure to drugs such as corticosteroids, thiazide diuretics etc. There was no abnormality of serum calcium or serum lipid levels or in the results of liver function tests. He did, however, give a very detailed history of an episode of mumps at the age of 34 years. During that episode he not only had parotid swelling, but he also had severe abdominal pain and vomiting for about one week, during which time he was bedridden. The illness lasted for three weeks in all.


Conventionally, agent-based models are specified in a combination of natural language and mathematical terms, and their implementation seen as an afterthought. I challenge this view and argue that it is the source code that represents the model best, with natural language and mathematical descriptions serving as documentation. This modeling paradigm is inspired by agile software development and adopting it leads to various - mostly beneficial - consequences. First, discrepancies between the specification documents and what the model actually does are eliminated by definition as the code becomes the specification. Second, replicability is greatly improved. Third, object-oriented programming is recognized as an integral part of a modeler?s skill set. Forth, tools and methods from software engineering can support the modeling process, making it more agile. Fifth, increased modularity allows to better manage complexity and enables the collaborative construction of large models. Sixth, the way models are published needs to be reconsidered, with source code ideally being part of the peer review. Seventh, the quality of source code in science is improved as it enjoys more importance, attention and scrutiny.


ABSTRACT Stratal geometry and lithofacies architecture from carbonate outcrops provide critical information for subsurface prediction of rock types, their spatial distribution, and reservoir quality. Such observations guide and support exploration, appraisal, development, and production strategies. The Pennsylvanian Sierra del Cuera (SDC) carbonate platform outcrop of the Cantabrian Mountains in north Spain offers such information through a seismic-scale cross section of a microbial, unrimmed, and high-relief platform to basin transect, deposited during an icehouse period. The SDC outcrops provide alternative platform margin models to those developed from coral–algal-dominated Neogene carbonate systems and serve as direct analogs for supergiant fields such as Tengiz, Kashagan, and Karachaganak in the Pricaspian Basin of Kazakhstan and potentially for other high-relief platforms with microbial margins. Key features of the SDC platform are (1) a flat-topped platform with a rollover into a steep (30°–40°) and high-relief (600–850 m [1960–2790 ft]) depositional slope and (2) the presence of a microbial boundstone factory from the platform break to nearly 300 m (984 ft) paleowater depth on the slope, stabilized by pervasive marine cementation. The SDC represents a nonactualistic type of carbonate platform margin where the microbial carbonate factory on the upper slope controlled the rate of progradation instead of the platform top–sourced sediment input. These features have significant implications for the interpretation of the evolution and controlling factors of carbonate depositional systems in outcrops and in the subsurface.


This article presents an interview with environmental economist Maureen L. Cropper. Maureen completed her Ph.D. at Cornell University and subsequently held positions at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Southern California. At Riverside, she moved from monetary economics to environmental economics. She then landed at the University of Maryland, where she is a still a professor. She has taken on leadership roles in numerous institutional settings, including the US National Academy of Sciences and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board. Her contributions to environmental economics have been groundbreaking and extensive. Together with many collaborators—including former students and colleagues at the University of Maryland, World Bank, EPA, and Resources for the Future—Maureen has produced a body of work that spans theory, methods, and empirical applied economics. Her work covers the environment, energy, climate change, and transportation in both the United States and developing countries.


We develop the formalism of the macroscopic monopolization-that is, the magnetoelectric monopole moment per unit volume-in periodic solids, and discuss its relationship to the magnetoelectric effect. For the series of lithium transition metal phosphate compounds, we use first-principles density functional theory to calculate the contributions to the macroscopic monopolization from the global distribution of magnetic moments within the unit cell, as well as from the distribution of magnetization around the atomic sites. We find one example within the series (LiMnPO4) that shows a macroscopic monopolization corresponding to a ferromonopolar ordering consistent with its diagonal magnetoelectric response. The other members of the series (LiMPO4, with M = Co, Fe, and Ni) have zero net monopolization but have antiferromonopolar orderings that should lead to q-dependent diagonal magnetoelectric effects.


An algorithm for the Kramers-Kronig analysis of the reflectivity spectra, based on an anchor-window technique is presented. The high-frequency asymptote, required for the Kramers-Kronig analysis, is determined by minimizing differences between the Kramers Kronig-deduced optical constants of a system under investigation and known optical constants measured in a small anchor-window. The algorithm is illustrated by applying it for a reconstruction of the optical conductivity sigma(omega) of the fci-ZnMgRE quasicrystals in the spectral range of 0.01-6.5 eV from the experimental IR Fourier-transform reflectivity data and the experimental spectral ellipsometry VIS-UV data. The reliability of the suggested Kramers-Kronig analysis technique is confirmed by independent infrared spectral ellipsometry sigma(omega) measurements for fci-ZnMgRE.


This paper aims to provide an analytical description of the nonprofit sector
in the Netherlands. We will review its historical and legal background, examine
its treatment and definition, and chart the sector's contributions to the Dutch
economy and society.

This working paper is the first version of the Dutch contribution to a final
international comparative publication about the second phase of the Johns
Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (working title: 'Civil Society in
the Advanced Democracies').
This publication may take a while and could require a more concise presentation
of national results. For this reason SCP is publishing this text at the same
time as the concluding Dutch publication 'Noch markt, noch staat'.

This publication cannot be ordered, only downloaded.


We have applied digital fluoroscopy technology to the radiation therapy environment, and developed a real-time fluorescent dosemeter (RFD). Our aim was to utilise this system as an on-line treatment verification device. We have found that the system behaves basically as a large array (512 X 512) of dosemeters. Using this device, instantaneous information about the actual treatment beam can be obtained simultaneously with the commencement of irradiation. As an array of dosemeters, it provides a detailed description of the dose distribution (exit dose) throughout the treatment. Furthermore, by applying image enhancement techniques to this measured information, good quality portal images are produced instantaneously and continuously during the entire irradiation for visual evaluation. The availability of this system should lead to improvements in precision in present dose delivery procedures.


This article presents the results of an investigation that sought to understand higher education students' relationship to knowledge, using Bernard Charlot's relationship to knowledge theory as a theoretical reference. The field studied was a community university in a mid-sized city in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and the subjects were 400 students at 24 undergraduate courses. The collection of data was performed using balances of knowledge, a tool proposed by Bernard Charlot, which consists of asking subjects to produce a written composition about their learnings. After presenting the quantitative aspects of the classification of learnings mentioned by students, the article discusses the predominance of learnings related to personal development, and uses the categories of mobilization and meaning to achieve deeper understanding of the accounts produced by students in their balances of knowledge. We concluded that the subjects' relationship to knowledge is based on the valuing of their personal development-related learnings also with regard to what they have learned in the university, and that some of them are able to recognize the specificities of that particular institution as a learning space. The study identified three core topics around which are organized the meanings attributed by students to undergraduate education: achievement of a better life, changes in their worldviews, and mobilization relating to knowledge itself.


Regional folklores of Pakistan like other folklores around the globe encompass poetry, songs, sonnets, tales, legends, myths, traditions, customs and proverbs. Being limitless and denying  boundaries they link regions to regions, provinces to provinces and countries to countries. They develop integrity and help making the people of Pakistan as one nation. Sufi practices all over the country shape a strong and significant indigenous force to unite. Along with other factors religion is an influential factor construing the identity of Pakistanis as a nation. Fortunately, Sufism has a firm religious basis. Additionally, its indignity has global links spreading from the sacred centers of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia through Central Asia to the provinces of Pakistan and further spreading deep into the heart and outskirts of the subcontinent. From Baghdad in Iraq and Konia in Turkey to Lahore in Pakistan and Delhi in India and to the remote parts of South Asia with the purest religious spirit the great Muslim saints put interlinked efforts to preach religion, humanity and conscience. It is peculiar that their expositions whether in prose, poetry or speech made extensive use of folklores. As mentioned earlier poetry, songs, sonnets, tales, legends, myths, traditions, customs and proverbs all were the tools of their expositions. All great saints took poetry as a basic source of their expositions. From Rumi in Konia to Amir Khusru in Delhi poetry sparkles to expose sincerity of their devotion to Islam, Allah (God) and the last Prophet (SAW). Most of such poetry is uplifting and hope-giving rather than dejection and gloom. Sufism has been a part of the fabric of life in the region comprising Pakistan for centuries. It is a symbol of peace in a country like Pakistan caught in deadly crossfire of controversial ideological and political controversies. This study explores the use of folklores in the poetry of some of the Sufi poets and also of that part of the poetry of such poets that is now itself the folklore. Four Sufi poets one from each province of Pakistan and their mystic poetry is considered and analyzed for the purpose. The poets selected are Sachal Sarmast, Baba Buleh Shah, Rahman Baba and Mast Tawakali. The focus of the study is the literary legacy of these poets and mention of ritual practices and the folklore in their poetry. It is well known that the basic perception of their poetry is love. They themselves were manyfaceted people indeed — humanists and preachers of peace, harmony and tranquility. The rhymes of these great Sufi poets are immersed in love, empathy and forbearance and are the reverse manifestation of the world view of the people of Pakistan. It will be useful to view this broad pool of resources to be active for exposing Islamic thoughts through Sufi methods to invoke a positive wave to create integrity in the ocean of current conflicting cultural and political scenario of Pakistan.


Colony size is an important characteristic for clonal modular organisms such as corals be- cause life-history processes, e.g. reproduction and mortality, are strongly related to size. These pro- cesses are affected by the environment, and size-frequency distributions of coral populations provide information on the responses of populations to environmental conditions. We hypothesised that the size-frequency structure of coral populations in degraded environments would differ from those in a more pristine environment. We used log-transformed colony-size data of 13 coral species from the fringing reefs of Curacao, Netherlands Antilles. Data were collected at 4 sites, representing 2 environ- ments: a heavily urbanised coastal area with degraded reefs, and an upstream control area. Population structure was dependent on species and site. Size-frequency distributions of the same species from dif- ferent sites were twice as similar as distributions of different species, indicating the strong effects of various life-history traits among species. Site effects were indicated by significant differences between distributions of 11 species at 4 sites. Mean colony size varied up to an order of magnitude between spe- cies, and much less between sites; however, in 10 species mean colony size was also significantly dif- ferent among the 4 sites. The pattern of the differences was not consistent among species, indicating that mean colony size in degraded sites was higher for some species and lower for others. Parameters describing the shape of the population appeared to reflect a general response to reef condition. In the degraded area, frequency distributions tended to show increased negative skewness, occasionally extreme positive kurtosis, and smaller standard deviations: 11 populations were generally more neg- atively skewed, with the bulk of the population concentrated in the larger size classes; kurtosis was on average higher and extremely peaked; and standard deviations indicated that colony size varied less. This evidence suggests lower recruitment and higher partial mortality in larger colonies in this area. Lower recruitment decreased the influx into the smaller size classes of the populations, and higher par- tial colony-mortality decreased the proportion of colonies in the higher size classes while simultane- ously increasing the proportion of colonies in the medium-sized classes. Species that attained large sizes (indicative of great age) appeared to have size-frequency distributions skewed to the left, while small species were more skewed to the right. The data indicate a general dichotomy in coral life- history strategies with respect to colony size, with small species generally having a shorter lifespan and reproduction being relatively frequent and successful. Thus, new input into smaller size classes occurs continuously. Species that attain large sizes live longer and are less dependent on frequent re- cruitment, and consequently populations tend to become 'impoverished' in small colonies, resulting in size-frequency distributions that are skewed to the left. Based on changes in population structure, this research indicates that some species, such as Colpophyllia natans and Diploria labyrinthiformis, are relatively sensitive to environmental conditions.


Epidural spinal cord stimulation (SCS) has recently been reported as a potential intervention to improve limb and autonomic functions, with lumbar stimulation improving locomotion and thoracic stimulation regulating blood pressure. We asked whether sacral SCS could be used to target the lower urinary tract. Here we show that high-density epidural SCS over the sacral spinal cord and cauda equina of anesthetized cats evokes responses in nerves innervating the bladder and urethra and that these nerves can be activated selectively. Sacral epidural SCS always recruited the pelvic and pudendal nerves and selectively recruited these nerves in all but one animal. Individual branches of the pudendal nerve were always recruited as well. Electrodes that selectively recruited specific peripheral nerves were spatially clustered on the arrays, suggesting anatomically organized sensory pathways. This selective recruitment demonstrates a mechanism to directly modulate bladder and urethral function through known reflex pathways, which could be used to restore bladder and urethral function after injury or disease.


In order to reach legal air quality limits, several municipalities in Germany have decided to take actions if concentrations of NO2 and Particulate Matter (PM) exceed certain thresholds. The decision for concrete measures is usually based on observations or use the Direct Model Output (DMO) of air quality models. However, due to large biases of state-of-the-art numerical air quality models, the skill of DMO forecasts to predict periods of polluted air up to four days ahead is very limited.

The project LQ-WARN aims to develop a system for warning of poor air quality based on Model Output Statistics (MOS). Therefore, air quality related observations, model results provided by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and meteorological parameters from the ECMWF numerical weather prediction model are used as predictors to forecast the air quality by applying Multiple Linear Regression (MLR). In this way MOS equations are calculated for four seasons. The final forecast product will comprise post-processed probabilistic as well as deterministic (e.g. mass concentration) parameters for the species NO2, O3, PM10 and PM2.5. Forecasts will be available for several hundred German locations and cover lead times up to 96 hours.

Here, we show first results of our phase 1 MOS prototype, for which observational, meteorological and empirical predictors are applied. Despite of the preliminary exclusion of CAMS predictors, the verifications of the MOS equations imply a considerable reduction of variance and a significant reduction of RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) compared to the climatological values for all four species. Hence, the MOS system can already provide a reasonably good air quality forecast. Furthermore, our analysis of used meteorological predictors, enables a detailed analysis of the importance of specific meteorological parameters for improved statistical air quality forecasts.  As an outlook we will provide detailed information about the final phase 2 LQ-WARN product, which will also include the MOS predictors of CAMS and is expected to be launched in pre-operational mode by 2022.