The AMI(DA) system is a meeting room speech recognition system that has been developed and evaluated in the context of the NIST Rich Text (RT) evaluations. Recently, the ``Distant Access'' requirements of the AMIDA project have necessitated that the system operate in real-time. Another more difficult requirement is that the system fit into a live meeting transcription scenario. We describe an infrastructure that has allowed the AMI(DA) system to evolve into one that fulfils these extra requirements. We emphasise the components that address the live and real-time aspects.


The adaptation of techniques of molecular genetic analysis into clinical practice increased the possibilities of diagnostics of urinary bladder cancer at early stage of disease development. The article discusses the results of cytological and cytogenetic examination of urine cells in patients with diagnostics of urinary bladder cancer. The sampling consisted of 44 cytological and 25 cytogenetic tests. The results of both methods of diagnostics of urinary bladder cancer matched in 12 cases. Besides, in 2 tests the carcinoma of urinary bladder was confirmed only by using molecular genetic technique.


The main objective of the qualitative comparative analysis is to find solutions that display sufficient configurations of causal conditions leading to the presence of an outcome. These solutions should be less complex than the original observed configurations, as parsimonious as possible, without sacrificing the sufficiency requirement. Sufficiency and parsimony are two requirements that act in opposition, and an optimal solution is one that accommodates both. There are different search strategies that lead to different types of solutions, with an ongoing debate about which solution type is closest to the true, underlying causal structure. This article presents the different logics behind each simplification system in order to explain how and why they lead to different results and introduces the concept of "robust sufficiency" to clear the debate. It analyses the correctness ratios for the different solution type and provides an improved set of procedures to measure correctness that captures the best features from each system. Out of the competition between the conservative and the parsimonious search strategies, the intermediate solution emerges as the best hybrid that is suitable for causal analysis, outperforming the parsimonious solution in recovering a known (even parsimonious) causal structure.


Abstract The depletion systems defined by the general purpose evaluated nuclear data libraries are unnecessarily complex for most applications in nuclear reactor physics analysis. However, the corresponding compression methods are confronted with two difficulties. On one hand, the number of possible compressed depletion systems is excessively large. On the other hand, the complicated neutronic-depletion coupling effects should be properly considered. In spite of the legacy empirical-based or semi-empirical-based methods, a generalized depletion system compression method based on quantitative significance analysis is proposed in this paper. First, a quantitative significance pair was defined for each basic unit compression operation (BUCO) with respect to the neutron production density, neutron absorption density, and number densities of selected important nuclides. Second, a series of representative problems was composed according to the problem definition domain and simulated by using the original depletion system. Third, the significance pairs were evaluated based on the simulation results of the representative problems, and then employed as the quantitative guidance for accepting or rejecting each BUCO. The commpressed depletion systems have been obtained based on the newly proposed method, and typical pressurized water reactor problems were employed to verify the compresssed depletion systems. Numerical results demonstrated that by adopting the compressed depletion systems generated by the proposed method, significant computing time and storage savings can be achieved while maintaining demanded accuracy.


Intravascular ultrasound elastography is a method for measuring the local elastic properties of coronary atherosclerotic plaques using intravascular ultrasound (IVUS). Mechanical properties of the different tissues within a plaque are measured through strain. In the last decade, several groups have applied elastography intravascularly with various levels of success. In this paper, the approaches of the different research groups will be discussed and the focus will be on our approach to the application of intravascular elastography.


E. S., 3-year-old girl, a patient of Dr. O. T. Maynard's of Elyria, was referred to Dr. E. F. Cushing, who kindly referred her to me Oct. 10, 1905. History. —The family history showed nothing of importance. The mother was well developed and healthy and had several other normal children. Pregnancy was normal. The birth ran smoothly, but at delivery Dr. Maynard noticed that the legs were in a peculiar position. The right one was flexed with the knee pointing outward in the normal way and the lower leg placed across the abdomen, but the left leg, instead of being in a position symmetrical to the right, had its thigh adducted into approximation with the right thigh. The knee was sharply flexed and the lower leg ran parallel to the lower leg of the right side, the foot being turned outward at the ankle. This position having been noted, the


Australia and New Zealand have created a single civil judicial area, which gives all courts in each country a complete adjudicative jurisdiction and a barely qualified enforcement jurisdiction throughout the whole trans-Tasman market area. The risk of concurrent proceedings and incompatible judgments is minimised only by the power of courts to stay proceedings on the ground of forum non conveniens or when enforcing a choice-of-court agreement. The scheme rests on the 'strikingly similar' quality of the two countries' legal systems. However, New Zealand's Accident Compensation Act 2001 maintains a unique, comprehensive no-fault compensation scheme for accidents which also prohibits all court-based claims for compensation for personal injuries. It is 'strikingly dissimilar' to the common law systems of personal injuries compensation found in the Australian states. And, given that the Australian common law systems are often much more generous in the awards given for personal injuries, the New Zealand scheme has been a significant motivation for New Zealanders' forum shopping in Australia. This does not appear to have been addressed well by the new trans-Tasman scheme for civil jurisdiction. The article considers the confounding role that the Accident Compensation Act may continue to play in trans-Tasman civil jurisdiction, and its implications for the principles of forum conveniens, choice-of-law and the enforcement of personal injuries awards between Australia and New Zealand.


Here, we quantify relationships between wind farm efficiency and wind speed, direction, turbulence and atmospheric stability using power output from the large offshore wind farm at Nysted in Denmark. Wake losses are, as expected, most strongly related to wind speed variations through the turbine thrust coefficient; with direction, atmospheric stability and turbulence as important second order effects. While the wind farm efficiency is highly dependent on the distribution of wind speeds and wind direction, it is shown that the impact of turbine spacing on wake losses and turbine efficiency can be quantified, albeit with relatively large uncertainty due to stochastic effects in the data. There is evidence of the 'deep array effect' in that wake losses in the centre of the wind farm are under-estimated by the wind farm model WAsP, although overall efficiency of the wind farm is well predicted due to compensating edge effects. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


On February 23, 2011, the Obama Administration announced that it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Of great significance in this announcement was the Administration's position that classifications on the basis of sexual orientation warrant heightened judicial scrutiny. Notwithstanding this announcement, the level of review applied to sexual-orientation classifications — and the manner in which a court determines whether a particular type of classification deserves more searching review — is an open question, the answer to which typically dictates the outcome of challenges to government classifications. Apart from this outcome determinativeness, affording heightened scrutiny to some classifications but not others sends the message that, as a society, we value select groups more — or at least will treat certain classifications more skeptically than others — rather than developing a theory of equality qua equality. Equal protection doctrine need not function this way. By looking at comparative doctrine — specifically, the equality jurisprudence of Canada, South Africa, and the European Court of Human Rights — this Article shows how equality doctrine in the United States can be improved. By engaging in a two-stage review process, these other systems effectively control the floodgates of litigation challenging government classifications and provide guidance for when government actors may permissibly differentiate in a way that does not depend on the type of classification at issue. In addition to being a more principled approach to equality doctrine, the type of review in which Canada, South Africa, and the European Court of Human Rights engage both permits modern government to function and articulates a more holistic vision of equality qua equality.


This paper attempts to enhance the dynamic performance of a shunt-type active power filter. The predictive and adaptive properties of artificial neural networks (ANNs) are used for fast estimation of the compensating current. The dynamics of the dc-link voltage is utilized in a predictive controller to generate the first estimate followed by convergence of the algorithm by an adaptive ANN (adaline) based network. Weights in adaline are tuned to minimize the total harmonic distortion of the source current. Extensive simulations and experimentations confirm the validity of the proposed scheme for all kinds of load (balanced and unbalanced) for a three-phase three-wire system.


Absorption of sunlight by chromophoric dissolved natural organic matter (CDOM) is environmentally significant because it controls photic zone depth and causes photochemistry that affects elemental cycling and contaminant fate. Both the optics (absorbance and fluorescence) and photochemistry of CDOM display unusual properties that cannot easily be ascribed to a superposition of individual chromophores. These include (i) broad, unstructured absorbance that decreases monotonically well into the visible and near IR, (ii) fluorescence emission spectra that all fall into a single envelope regardless of the excitation wavelength, and (iii) photobleaching and photochemical quantum yields that decrease monotonically with increasing wavelength. In contrast to a simple superposition model, these phenomena and others can be reasonably well explained by a physical model in which charge-transfer interactions between electron donating and accepting chromophores within the CDOM control the optical and photophysical properties. This review summarizes current understanding of the processes underlying CDOM photophysics and photochemistry as well as their physical basis.


This study generalizes earlier calculations by the author [A. A. Doinikov, Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. A 447, 447–466 (1994); A. A. Doinikov, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 96, 3100–3105 (1994)] to cases where heat conduction of the host fluid and the sphere material is no longer negligible. Three types of an incident sound field were considered: a plane traveling wave, a plane standing wave, and a diverging spherical wave. Effects of heat conduction on the radiation force were found to be greatest for traveling and spherical waves and for spheres less dense than the host fluid. In particular, it is found that traveling waves can urge these spheres away both from and toward the sound transducer and diverging (not standing) spherical waves can cause them to levitate. These results are unusual from the standpoint of the theory of acoustic radiation forces for perfect fluids. [Work supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Belarus.]


Abstract : To determine the usage of XOR and the need to adapt additional tools, we analyzed 2,411 drive images from devices acquired around the world for the use of bytewise XOR as an obfuscation technique. Using a modified version of the open source digital forensics tool bulk extractor, evidence of XOR obfuscation was found on 698 drive images, with a maximum of 21,031 XOR-obfuscated features on a single drive. XOR usage in our corpus was observed in files with timestamps between the years 1995 and 2009, but the majority use was found in unallocated space. On the corpus tested, XOR obfuscation was used to circumvent malware detection and reverse engineering, to hide information that was apparently being exfiltrated, and by malware detection tools for their quarantine directory and to distribute malware signatures. We conclude that XOR obfuscation is important to consider when performing malware investigations.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a protocol designed to minimize the need for surgery in the management of severe blunt renal injury.

METHODS
Forty-six of 752 trauma patients had evidence of renal injury on computed tomographic (CT) scan. Two patients required emergency laparotomy, and the remaining 44 patients were classified by CT scan grade using the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma classification system. Patients with CT scan grade 3 or over underwent renal angiography.

RESULTS
Twenty-one patients had a high-grade injury on CT scan (> or =3). Eight had angiographic evidence of extravasation from renal arterial branches and underwent transarterial embolization. One patient with a grade 5 injury had extravasation from a main renal vein and underwent immediate laparotomy. This was the only patient who required surgery for renal injury.

CONCLUSION
Surgery can be avoided in most cases of blunt renal injury. Hemodynamic instability and injury to main renal veins remain indications for surgical exploration.


The diagnosis of pancreatic disease is gradually improving, largely as a result of increasing experience in correlating laboratory data reflecting normal and altered physiologic function and newer techniques for assessing the digestive capacity of pancreatic enzymes. Characteristic alterations of the quantity and constituents of the duodenal content have been established. These refinements have emphasized the importance of adequate understanding of the type, mechanism, and application of pancreatic function tests. In the present discussion these procedures are classified with respect to the moiety analyzed or the specific function evaluated (Table 1). Determinations of Blood or Serum Constituents A. Serum Amylase. —Since Elman and his associates, 9 in 1929, confirmed the presence of an increased serum amylase activity in inflammation or obstruction of the pancreatic duct, this analysis has become the most widely applied test of pancreatic disease. Although several biochemical systems have been employed, the saccharogenic method of Somogyi 10,11 is


Various mechanisms of obesity prevention have been identified; however, the roles of brown or beige fat as regulators of the energy balance are unclear. The effects of anthocyanin-rich black soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr., testa (ABS) extracts on the energy balance were investigated by comparing beige-like adipocytes (BLA) and white adipocytes (WAT). ABS extracts reduced peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma protein expression and triglyceride accumulation in WAT and BLA without inducing nuclear damage. The biomarkers of fat degradation (phospho-AMPKα and ATGL) or glycerol secretion in the medium and β-oxidation of fatty acids (CPT2) in the ABS-treated BLA were increased compared to those in WAT. ABS extracts significantly increased the expression of thermogenesis markers (UCP1 and CIDEA) and biomarkers related to mitochondrial activation (cytochrome c and NRF1) in BLA. In the primary cell culture of brown adipocytes (BAT) from rats fed ABS, the expression levels of PGC1-α, cytochrome c, and UCP1 proteins were increased compared to those in BAT from nonfed rats. A reduction in the NAD/NADH ratio was consistently associated with an increase in the oxygen consumption rate and basal/maximal respiration rate in ABS-treated BLA. Anthocyanins promote beiging in the body, contribute to the prevention of obesity, and are potentially useful functional materials.


This paper proposes a coordinated generation and transmission maintenance scheduling by incorporating network constraints. The main advantage of the proposed approach is that maintenance is scheduled at the optimal period of the lowest possible operating cost while satisfying all the specified constraints. In this approach, sensitivity factors (GGDFs and ODFs) which are based on DC approximation are applied to calculate the line flows in normal and maintenance conditions. They are applied due to their simplicity, linearity, physical comprehension and rapidity of computation. To simulate the effect of network constraint on maintenance schedule and operating cost, several cases are studied with and without transmission limit constraints. To ensure the accuracy of these sensitivity factors, power flows on each line are compared with the one obtained from a PSSE simulator. The result shows that generators and transmission lines are scheduled at periods that satisfy the transmission capacity limit.


Tidal flat,delta and lake deposition of Permo Carboniferous are well developed in the Ordos basin with an evolution sequence changed gradually from marine to continental facies upwards.In Carboniferous,the transgression was caused by North China Sea and Qilian sea in which the former was of the largest range. The Lower part of Benxi Fm.is tidal flat facies with very large distribution range but the Sandbody in it is relatively small.The Upper part of Benxi Fm.is the mixed deposition of turbidity and fresh water in epicontinental sea,in which formed some small bars and the delta front only distributes in the northeast of the basin.Most of elongated sandbodies from well S201 of the north to well Q1 of the south extend along NNE.Transgression range of the early period of Taiyuan Fm.in late Carboniferous is larger than that of Benxi Fm. At that time,under the influence of weak tectonic movement,subdued sea floor,weak hydrodynamism and less sediment supply,the study area mainly developed tidal flat and delta deposits.During late period of Taiyuan Fm.,the basin mainly developed tidal flat except the northeastern part of the basin where the submerged distrbutary channel of delta front prevailed .In Permian,Qinling trough began to contract again,and all north China Platform uplifted resylting in the rapid regression of sea water from east and west part of the Drdos basin.The great change of the palaeotopography and palaeoclimate led to the much wider deposition range than that of the Carboniferous. Delta plain was widespreed in the basin in the early period of Shanxi Fm.of Lower Permian.In depositional area,water became shallow and wide and the thickness of the deposits became thin.As a result of the palaeotopography,the shape of delta composed of several stacked sandbodies showed digitated,implying the obvious differential subsidence and sedimentary types between the north and south of the study area.In the north,Delta plain was well developed,and the delta frout prevailed in the south where the submerged distributary channel from Jingbian to Ansai is the largest sandbody which is also the major reservior in the study area.In the period of Shihezi Fm.,the climate changed from warm humid to dry and hot resulting in the rapid decrease of the plant,and a set of continental clastic deposits were formed.Along with the continuous rising of the prevenance area,the paleocurrent direction was always to the south.Delta plain composed of distributary channel and flood plain was formed in the north Shihezi Fm.and digitate delta front developed in the south where riversf flowed into the lake.Widespread lacustrine mudstone formed in the Upper Shihezi Fm.and Shiqianfeng Fm. of Upper Permian became the best regional caprocks in the study area. In Permo Carboniferou,the distributary channel sanbodies of deltaplain and submerged distributary channel sandbodies of delta front are the best reservoirs,and the tidal flat sandbody and fingered sandbody of delta front are also favorable are for exploration.


Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a widely prevalent herpes virus which establishes a state of chronic infection. The establishment of CMV‐specific immunity controls viral reactivation and leads to the accumulation of very large numbers of virus‐specific T cells which come to dominate the immune repertoire. There is concern that this may reduce the immune response to heterologous infections and HCMV infection has been associated with reduced survival in elderly people. Patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B‐CLL) suffer from a state of immune suppression but have a paradoxical increase in the magnitude of the CMV‐specific T cell and humoral immune response. As such, there is now considerable interest in how CMV infection impacts on the clinical outcome of patients with B‐CLL. Utilizing a large prospective cohort of patients with B‐CLL (n = 347) we evaluated the relationship between HCMV seropositivity and patient outcome. HCMV seropositive patients had significantly worse overall survival than HCMV negative patients in univariate analysis (HR = 2.28, 95% CI: 1.34–3.88; P = 0.002). However, CMV seropositive patients were 4 years older than seronegative donors and this survival difference was lost in multivariate modeling adjusted for age and other validated prognostic markers (P = 0.34). No significant difference was found in multivariate modeling between HCMV positive and negative patients in relation to the time to first treatment (HR = 1.12, 95% CI: 0.68–1.84; P = 0.65). These findings in a second independent cohort of 236 B‐CLL patients were validated. In conclusion no evidence that HCMV impacts on the clinical outcome of patients with B‐CLL was found. Am. J. Hematol. 91:776–781, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Many structural aspects of music, such as tonality, can be expressed using hierarchical representations. In music analysis, so-called keyscapes can be used to map a key estimate (e.g., C major, F minor) to each subsection of a piece of music, thus providing an intuitive visual representation of its tonality, in particular of the hierarchical organization of local and global keys. However, that approach is limited in that the mapping relies on assumptions that are specific to common-practice tonality, such as the existence of 24 major and minor keys. This limitation can be circumvented by applying the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) to the tonal space. The DFT does not rely on style-specific theoretical assumptions but only presupposes an encoding of the music as pitch classes in 12-tone equal temperament. We introduce wavescapes, a novel visualization method for tonal hierarchies that combines the visual representation of keyscapes with music analysis based on the DFT. Since wavescapes produce visual analyses deterministically, a number of potential subjective biases are removed. By concentrating on one or more Fourier coefficients, the role of the analyst is thus focused on the interpretation and contextualization of the results. We illustrate the usefulness of this method for computational music theory by analyzing eight compositions from different historical epochs and composers (Josquin, Bach, Liszt, Chopin, Scriabin, Webern, Coltrane, Ligeti) in terms of the phase and magnitude of several Fourier coefficients. We also provide a Python library that allows such visualizations to be easily generated for any piece of music for which a symbolic score or audio recording is available.


Identifying related entities and events within and across documents is fundamental to natural language understanding. We present an approach to entity and event coreference resolution utilizing contrastive representation learning. Earlier state-of-the-art methods have formulated this problem as a binary classification problem and leveraged large transformers in a cross-encoder architecture to achieve their results. For large collections of documents and corresponding set of n mentions, the necessity of performing n^{2} transformer computations in these earlier approaches can be computationally intensive. We show that it is possible to reduce this burden by applying contrastive learning techniques that only require n transformer computations at inference time. Our method achieves state-of-the-art results on a number of key metrics on the ECB+ corpus and is competitive on others.


The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has heretofore been a largely passive exercise, reliant on the pursuit of technosignatures. Still, there are those that advocate a more active approach. Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) has had a controversial history within the larger SETI project; it is claimed that the risks involved outweigh any potential benefits. These arguments are ultimately not compelling, result in absurd policy recommendations, and rest on a faulty appreciation of the nature of technosignatures, whose detectability implies intent to signal. Present technology is advancing quickly such that we will soon have great observational reach, to the point of reliably detecting such technosignatures and biosignatures: a capability that can be matched or exceeded elsewhere. To escape the SETI Paradox properly defined, at least one technological civilization must choose not to suppress its own continuum of astrobiological signals, of which METI is merely the most effective endmember. Passive SETI's low likelihood of success in the short-term is a serious obstacle to sustainable funding, alongside a 'giggle factor' enhanced by a pernicious fear of contact. The scientific community must integrate an active approach to better ensure both the continuity and eventual success of the SETI project.


One maxim that has been circulating among farmers is that most farmers sell in the lower third of the market. This maxim is soundly rejected using data from Oklahoma elevators. In fact, roughly half of producers sell in the upper third of the market. Thus, there does not seem to be a great need for producers to hire a market advisor to do their marketing for them. But, some farmers do store longer than is optimal and they could be encouraged to sell sooner after harvest. In the short run, farmers sold after price increases and held after price decreases. Price movements in the days after a large number of sales were no different than price movements after few sales. While farmers are noise traders in the short run, it does appear that they are responding to long-run market signals. Even though there may be room for improvement, it appears that farmers are doing a good job of deciding when to sell their wheat.


Experience-dependent synaptic plasticity is important for learning and memory and regulated by the functions of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) and α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) glutamate receptors. The stress hormone glucocorticoid, exerts effects on synaptic plasticity through functional modification of these receptors. In this study, we have investigated the mechanisms underlying synaptic potentiation during acute stress and glucocorticoid treatment. We report that stress-induced glucocorticoid increase augments the postsynaptic localisation and phosphorylation of calcium permeable AMPAR, GluA1 and enhances long-term potentiation (LTP) observed 60 minutes following high frequency stimulation. These effects could be reproduced in adrenalectomized rats by the administration of a stress-equivalent dose of corticosterone. The observed response was blocked by the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) antagonist RU-486, thus potentially mediated by the GR. Glucocorticoid treatment further increased expression of hippocampal adenylyl cyclases (ACs), AC1 and AC8, implicating this class of enzymes as mediators of hyper-glucocorticoid effect on synaptic plasticity. In support of this, selective pharmacological AC inhibition with SQ22536 ablated the glucocorticoid modulation of AMPA-dependent neuronal plasticity and enhancement of LTP. These data support a key role for calcium/calmodulin-sensitive adenylyl cyclase enzymes in facilitating the modulatory actions of glucocorticoid hormones on a substrate for cellular mechanism of learning and memory, via AMPA receptor activation.


The present study, a follow-up study for 669 aged examinees of a health check performed in July 1983 in a rural area in Fukushima Prefecture, was conducted to clarify the relationship between relative weight and mortality among aged individuals living in a Japanese rural area. Using the standard body weights calculated from Japanese mean body weights by sex, age class (60-69 and 70 or more) and height cited from the data of the Ministry of Health and Welfare from 1966, mortalities during the five year follow-up were compared among four groups different in relative weight at baseline. The results are as follows. 1) The mortalities in the group of 'Relative weight less than or equal to -10% the leanest group among the four groups, were highest in both sexes, 52.8 per 1000 person-years for males and 33.2 per 1000 person-years for females. On the other hand, those in the group of '+10% less than or equal to Relative weight less than +20%' were lowest in both sexes, 23. 1 per 1000 person-years for males and 7.0 per 1000 person-years for females. In females, the difference in the mortality between these two groups was statistically significant at the 0.05 level, provided age structures in both groups were taken into consideration. 2) In both sexes, the mortalities of cancer and cerebrovascular disease in the group of 'Relative weight less than or equal to -10%' were highest among the four groups, whereas such mortalities in the group of '+10% less than or equal to Relative weight less than +20%' were lowest.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


The reliable evaluation of the performance of watermarking algorithms is difficult. An important aspect in this process is the assessment of the visibility of the watermark. We address this issue and propose a methodology for evaluating the visual quality of watermarked video. Using a software tool that measures different types of perceptual video artifacts, we determine the most relevant impairments and design the corresponding objective metrics. We demonstrate their performance through subjective experiments on several different watermarking algorithms and video sequences.


Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is the main component of mammalian fetal serum. It is synthesized by visceral endoderm of the yolk sac and by fetal liver. Immediately after birth AFP level in blood decreases dramatically. AFP synthesis is reactivated in liver tumors and germinogeneous teratoblastomas, in a lesser degree after chemical and mechanical liver injuries followed by regeneration (i.e., acute viral hepatitis). AFP blood level change is an important marker for liver tumors that is widely used in clinical practice. Therefore, the study of the molecular and cellular mechanisms participating in regulation of the oncoembryonal protein AFP is an important task. On various experimental models it has been shown that the expression is regulated mainly on the transcriptional level, the AFP gene having a 7 kb regulatory region upstream. Within this region a tissue-specific promoter, three independent enhancers, and a silencer that is at least partially responsible for AFP gene expression decrease in adult liver have been defined. Some ubiquitous and some tissue-specific transcription factors, including hepatocyte nuclear factors (HNFs), which mediate the transcription of most of the liver-specific genes, have been shown to bind to the promoter. However, the mechanisms determining drastic changes of AFP synthesis level in the course of ontogenesis and carcinogenesis remain incompletely clarified. Also, little is known about negative regulators of AFP gene expression in cells of non-hepatic origin and in adult liver.


The authors have studied monthly the titres of specific IgE to Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus, by Phadebas RAST, in 8435 measurements, spread over 4 years. Significant seasonal and monthly variations were seen every year with a maximum level in the autumn or the beginning of winter, with a second peak at the end of winter in 3 years of the 4. There was no close superposition of pattern form one year to another. The domestic relative humidity had a significant effect on the seasonal variation with a mean shift of 2 months that could be explained by the length of the biological cycle of the mites. These data compare with those of the literature (sampling of mites in bedding, longitudinal studies...).


Over the years, hit song science has been a controversial topic within music information retrieval. Researchers have debated whether an unbiased dataset can be constructed to model song performance in a meaningful way. Often, classes for modelling are derived from one dimension of song performance, like for example, a songs peak position on some chart. We aim to develop target variables for modelling song performance as trajectory patterns that consider both a song's lasting power and its listener reach. We model our target variables over various datasets using a wide array of features across different domains, which include metadata, audio, and lyric features. We found that the metadata features, which act as baseline song attributes, oftentimes had the most power in distinguishing our proposed task classes. When modelling hits and flops along one dimension of song success, we observed that the dimensions carried contrasting information, thus justifying their fusion into a two-dimensional target variable, which could be useful for future researchers who want to better understand the relationships between song features and performance. We were unable to show that our target variables were all that useful for modelling more than two classes, but we believe that this is more a limitation of the features, which were often high level, rather than the target variables' separability. Along with our model analysis, we also carried out a re-implementation of a related study by Askin & Mauskapf and considered different applications of our data using methods from time series analysis.


Migratory routes, timing, and behavior are some of the least studied facets of bat biology, and possibly play roles in bat mortality rates observed at commercial wind energy facilities. We used acoustic detectors to record seasonal activity of silver-haired (Lasionycteris noctivagans), hoary (Lasiurus cinereus), and eastern red (Lasiurus borealis) bats above the forest canopy at one existing and 13 proposed wind energy facilities in seven eastern U.S. states between April and November 2007 and 2008. We correlated species detection rates between surveys located within three predetermined geographic regions, and correlated species detection rates from two survey locations with mortality reported from a nearby commercial wind facility. We identified 2,603 L. noctivagans, 1,908 L. cinereus, and 6,802 L. borealis calls during 6,153 detector-nights. We found a greater number of significant correlations between sites for silver-haired and hoary bat detection rates than in eastern red bat detection rates. Each species exhibited unique seasonal trends in detections among geographic regions. Previously reported mortality rates of L. noctivagans and L. cinereus from a wind energy facility were positively correlated with detection rates of those species at one of our survey locations within 50 km (r = 0.65, P < 0.001 and r = 0.28, P < 0.01, respectively; in both cases d.f. = 94) and with another location within 100 km (r = 0.44, P < 0.001 and r = 0.28, P < 0.01, respectively; in both cases d.f. = 81). These data indicate that seasonal detection rates of all three species under study reflect their different migratory patterns that may be useful in predicting the timing of mortality events at wind energy facilities.


We present a dynamic self-organizing design for a server cluster that dynamically allocates jobs to servers in a server cluster, while maintaining certain QoS objectives, mainly a guaranteed maximum response time. Our design is based upon providing autonomy for each node in the cluster by having the node maintain only partial information about the system and having a mechanism for each node to process jobs or redirect it to a neighbor node. We introduce a new technique for load balancing to be implemented by nodes with low utilization that drastically reduces the job rejection ratio as well as the average response time. The basic idea is for low-utilization nodes to aggressively advertise themselves to high-utilization nodes as candidate neighbors, and to attempt to ldquograbrdquo jobs from the job queues of more busy neighbors. Our new technique is compared to other techniques and it performed well in all metrics: rejection ratio, average job response time, average node utilization, and reaction to an overload situation.


The berth-allocation problem (BAP) aims to optimally schedule and assign vessels to berthing areas along a quay. The vessels arrive at the port over a period of time and normally request service and departure within a time window. These time windows are usually determined through contractual agreements between the port operator and the carrier, in terms of time of departure after the vessel's arrival at the port. Formulations presented in the current literature, reduce the time window to a point in time. In this paper the discrete dynamic BAP (DDBAP) is formulated as a linear MIP problem with the objective to simultaneously minimize the cost from vessels' late departures (departure past the time window) and maximize the benefits from vessels' early departures and timely departures (departure before and within the requested time window). Two different models along with numerical examples and a comparison to other BAP models are presented to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed berth scheduling formulation.


Single-crystalline La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 nanowires have been successfully prepared by a hydrothermal method at low temperature. X-Ray diffraction (XRD) results show that the La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 nanowires have an orthorhombic perovskite structure without any other impurity phase. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images demonstrate that the as-synthesized samples are made up of a large quantity of nanowires with lengths ranging from several to several tens of micrometers and uniform diameter (∼80 nm). High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images reveal that the nanowires with very clean surfaces grow along [100]. The result of magnetic measurements indicates that the nanowires have an enhanced Tc due to the shrinkage of the unit cell volume.


The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Glenn Research Center (GRC) is investigating current and anticipated wireless communications concepts and technologies that the National Airspace System (NAS) may need in the next 50 years. NASA has awarded three NASA Research Announcements (NAR) studies with the objective to determine the most promising candidate technologies for air-to-air and air-to-ground data exchange and analyze their suitability in a post-NextGen NAS environment. This paper will present the final results describing the communications challenges and opportunities that have been identified as part of the study.


The process of cultivating obroshyno gray geese improved their meat qualities. In particular, we determined by our researches that, based on the indicators of live weight, the males of the II group (4726 g) prevailed geese of the I and II groups (1.02%), while females of the ІІ group (4153 g) prevailed all groups by 4.19%. The weight of non-eviscerated males of the II group was 4116 g, which is 3.78% higher than that of males of the group I, while females of the group ІІ (3461 g) surpassed other geese by this indicator by 5.10%. The weight of eviscerated of carcasses of males of the II group was 3211 g, which is 3.5% higher than that of males of group I, while females of the second group (2738 g) surpassed others by 6.6%. The outcome of edible parts in the young geese of experimental groups was quite high, but the highest was the young in the second group. In males of the second group, this inicator was 61.5%, and females – 58.9%. The weight of the chilled carcasses of males of the II group was 3120 g, which was 3.93% higher than that of the males of the group I, while the females of the second group (2691 g) surpassed others by 7.04%. The weight of the skin with subcutaneous fat in males of the second group was 706 g, which is 3.67% higher than that of male of the group I (681 g), while females of group II (632 g) surpassed others by 4.64%. The mass of internal fat in males of the ІІ group was 111 g, which is 15.62% higher than that of male of the I group (95 g), while females of ІІ group (72 g) exceeded others by 12.5%. The weight of the muscles in the males of the second group was 1695 g, which is 8.58% higher than that of the male of the group I (1561 g), and the females of the second group (1399 g) surpassed others by this indicator – by 7.6%. The obtained data indicate that the most intense accumulation of dry matter in the chest muscles up to 9 weeks of age occurs in geese of the II group. A similar situation is observed in the femoral muscles. At 9 weeks of age, the males of the second group had 29.74% of the dry matter in the breast muscle of the crude mass, females – 27.35% of the crude mass, and in males of the I group – 27.74%, of females – 27.30%. The same regularity in the content of dry matter is noted in the femoral muscle. The accumulation of protein in the studied muscles of geese, as the main indicator of meat quality, was in accordance with the general laws. The highest rate was in the thoracic and femoral muscles of males and females of the II group. The highest level of total nitrogen content in the muscles was found in males of the second group. In experimental geese, the accumulation of protein nitrogen in the chest muscle is higher than in the muscles of the legs. This indicator is higher in males than females. According to the content of albuminous nitrogen in the chest muscle, the highest rate was observed in males II group (3425 mg%). Non-protein nitrogen in the chest muscles and leg muscles increased to 9 weeks of age.


In this study, we propose textual summarization for scientific publications and mobile phone usage patterns. Textual summarization is a process that takes a source document or set of related documents, identifying the most salient information and conveying it in less space than the original text. The increasing availability of information has necessitated deep research for textual summarization within Information Retrieval and the Natural Language Processing (NLP) area because textual summaries are easier to read, and provide to access to large repositories of content data in an efficient way. For example, snippets in web search are helpful for users as textual summaries. While there exists summarization tools for textual summarization, either they are not adapted to scientific collection of documents or they summarize short form of text such as news. In the first part of this study, we adapt the MEAD 3.11 summarization tool [19] to propose a method for building summaries of a set of related scientific articles by exploiting the structure of scientific publications in order to focus on some parts that are known to be the most informative in such documents. In the second part, we generate a natural language statement that describes a more readable form of a given symbolic pattern extracted from Nokia Challenge data. The reason is that the availability of mobile phone usage details enables new opportunities to provide a better understanding of the interest of user populations in mobile phone applications. For evaluating the first part of study, we make use of Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) to validate summarization output.


Rice cultivated areas and yield information is indispensable for sustainable management and economic policy making for this strategic food crop. Introduction of high spectral and special resolution satellite data has enabled production of such information in a timely and accurate manner. Knowledge of the spectral reflectance of various land covers is a prerequisite for their identification and study. Evaluation of the spectral reflectance of plants using field spectroradiometry provides the possibility to identify and map different rice varieties especially while using hyperspectral remote sensing. This paper reports the results of the first attempt to evaluate spectral signatures of seven north Iranian rice varieties (Fajr, Hybrid, Khazar, Nemat, Neda, Shiroudi and Tarom plots) in the experimental station of the Iranian Rice Research Institute (main station in Amol, Mazanderan Province). Measurements were carried out using a field spectroradiometer in the range of 350-2,500 nm under natural light and environmental conditions. In order to eliminate erroneous data and also experimental errors in spectral reflectance curves, all curves were individually quality controlled. A set of important vegetation indices sensitive to canopy chlorophyll content, photosynthesis intensity, nitrogen and water content were employed to enhance probable differences in spectral reflectance among various rice varieties. Analysis of variance and Tukey's paired test were then used to compare rice varieties. Using Datt and PRI1 indices, significant differences ( α α α α= 0.01) were found among rice varieties reflectances in 19 out of 21 cases. This promises the possibility of accurate mapping of rice varieties cultivated areas based on hyperspectral remotely sensed data.


Abstract. Digital camera systems are a key component in the production of reliable, geometrically accurate, high-resolution geospatial products. These systems have replaced film imaging in photogrammetric data capturing. Today, we see a proliferation of imaging sensors collecting photographs in different ground resolutions, spectral bands, swath sizes, radiometric characteristics, accuracies and carried on different mobile platforms. In addition, these imaging sensors are combined with navigational tools (such as GPS and IMU), active sensors such as laser scanning and powerful processing tools to obtain high quality geospatial products. The quality (accuracy, completeness, consistency, etc.) of these geospatial products is based on the use of calibrated, high-quality digital camera systems. The new survey regulations of the state of Israel specify the quality requirements for each geospatial product including: maps at different scales and for different purposes, elevation models, orthophotographs, three-dimensional models at different levels of details (LOD) and more. In addition, the regulations require that digital camera systems used for mapping purposes should be certified using a rigorous mapping systems certification and validation process which is specified in the Director General Instructions. The Director General Instructions for digital camera systems certification specify a two-step process as follows: 1. Theoretical analysis of system components that includes: study of the accuracy of each component and an integrative error propagation evaluation, examination of the radiometric and spectral response curves for the imaging sensors, the calibration requirements, and the working procedures. 2. Empirical study of the digital mapping system that examines a typical project (product scale, flight height, number and configuration of ground control points and process). The study examine all the aspects of the final product including; its accuracy, the product pixels size on the ground (spatial resolution), its completeness (missing pixels and striping affect), its radiometric properties (e.g., relative edge response) and its spectral characteristics (e.g., histogram spread, bands misalignment). This methodology was tested on a number of medium to large format digital cameras. The certification process is a basic stage in the mapping chain in Israel. This article provides the details of the Director General Instructions for digital camera systems certification, the methodology for certification and the tests that were carried out.


Monthly runoff and soil loss simulated by WEPP (Water Erosion Prediction Project) were compared with field observations on a pineapple farm in south-east Queensland for a 3-year period. The soil at the site is sandy. Slope length and steepness are 36m and 5.5%, respectively. Three treatments, namely bare, farmers' conventional practice, and mulching of the furrows, were used. Infiltration and erodibility parameters were determined using WEPP-recommended equations and measurable soil properties. These parameters were also calibrated using the runoff and soil loss data for the bare plot only. Apart from the soil loss prediction for the mulching treatment, for which WEPP did not perform well, the average coefficient of efficiency in runoff and soil loss predictions was –0.02 using soil property-based parameter values and 0.66 using calibrated parameter values. The corresponding r 2 values are 0.57 and 0.81, respectively. On the whole, WEPP is able to reproduce the trend and variations in runoff and soil loss among different treatments for the site. Parameter values based on measurable soil properties would greatly under-estimate the runoff and soil loss for the site. Thus, use of WEPP outside its US database requires calibration with locally obtained data. It was also found that WEPP does not seem to model effectively the situation where there is considerable flow impediment with the furrows covered with mulch. We are unable to reject WEPP because the statistical performance indicators are reasonable for the site, and because the model is so complex that it is nearly impossible to pinpoint the source of discrepancy and articulate the model deficiency on physical grounds.


2'-C-Cyano-2'-deoxy-1-beta-D-arabinofuranosylcytosine (CNDAC) is a novel 2'-deoxycytidine (dCyd) analogue with potent antitumor activity. To elucidate the determinants of chemosensitivity to CNDAC, the intracellular accumulation of CNDAC and the activities of dCyd kinase and cytidine deaminase were investigated in transformed NIH 3T3 cells with different genetic bases. The results indicate that the primary determinants of chemosensitivity to CNDAC are different in each cell type, but membrane transportation and the enzyme activities of dCyd kinase and cytidine deaminase are critical factors underlying the antitumor action of CNDAC. Moreover, the expression or function of these factors appears to be influenced by the activation of various oncogenes.


Background Concept maps are considered not only as a powerful method of meaningful learning, but also as an instrument for evaluating the efficiency of learning. Different inquiries suggest that concept maps by promoting critical thinking and clinical reasoning may play a significant role in increasing adherence to infection prevention methods and therefore reduce healthcare-associated infections. Methods In January 2015, Mashhad Medical Microbiology Student Research Group (MMMSRG) invited all academics from all over Iran to design concept maps trying to answer this focus question: "How can we reduce the Healthcare-associated Infections?" We received about 40 concept maps, from which 29 met our inclusion criteria. All the C-maps were judged based on the designed rubrics, adapted from Novak and Cronin's scoring criteria with some modifications. Results Among the accepted concept maps, four, which had achieved the most scores and proposed some new ideas in infection prevention and control were chosen as the best concept maps. All the C-maps are available from https://goo.gl/8IEA7i. Conclusion In conclusion, our experience indicates a promising role for concept mapping in IPC. We suggest using C-maps as a method for faster and easier learning of infection prevention and control.


Software is being applied in an ever-increasing number of areas. Computer programs and systems are becoming more complex and consisting of more delicately interconnected components. Errors surfacing in programs are still a conspicuous and costly problem. It's about time we employ some techniques that guide us toward higher reliability of practical programs. The goal of this thesis is just that.
This thesis presents a theory for verifying programs based on Dijkstra's weakest-precondition calculus. A variety of program paradigms used in practice, such as exceptions, procedures, object orientation, and modularity, are dealt with.
The thesis sheds new light on the theory behind programs with exceptions. It develops an elegant algebra, and shows it to be the foundation on which the semantics of exceptions rests. It develops a trace semantics for programs with exceptions, from which the weakest-precondition semantics is derived. It also proves a theorem on programming methodology relating to exceptions, and applies this theorem in the novel derivation of a simple program.
The thesis presents a simple model for object-oriented data types, in which concerns have been separated, resulting in the simplicity of the model.
To deal with large programs, this thesis takes a practical look at modularity and abstraction. It reveals a problem that arises in writing specifications for modular programs where previous techniques fail. The thesis introduces a new specification construct that solves that problem, and gives a formal proof of soundness for modular verification using that construct. The model is a generalization of Hoare's classical data refinement. However, there are more problems to be solved. The thesis reports on some of these problems and suggests some future directions toward more reliable modular programs.


This dissertation seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the roles that universities currently play in economic development. This topic is particularly relevant in the current situation, in the aftermath of the world financial crisis, when the leading industrial nations are increasing their support for universities and for scientific research in particular (Hughes and Mina, 2012). The main questions that this dissertation will deal with are therefore the following: How do universities affect economic development? To what extent do universities generate impacts on economic development that would otherwise not occur? These are big questions. We can start by answering smaller questions: What happens in a region in terms of firm creation when a university is created? What is the role of the universities in terms of creating of human capital? What are the effects of the universities on industrial innovation? After the general introduction of the dissertation, the second chapter evaluates the effects of the establishment of new universities by measuring its impact on the formation of new firms. I study this effect making use of the differences-in-differences methodology. I create a quasi-experimental design based on the enacting of the Spain's 1983 University Reform Act (LRU), which opened the door to the foundation of new universities and faculties. The results indicate that the establishment of a new university has a positive and significant effect on new firm start-ups. When the analysis is carried out at faculty level, the findings indicate that the foundation of science and social science faculties has had a marked impact on the creation of firms. The third chapter aims to analyse university characteristics that affect the graduation rate, and to determine whether regional characteristics influence university performance in terms of graduation. The results show that university expenditure has been a key determinant of the graduation rate in Spain over the last decade. Moreover, results obtained through quantile regression analysis show that a policy of increasing university expenditure only makes sense for universities with low graduation rates. However, universities whose graduation rates do not belong to the 20th percentile can improve their ranking by raising financial-aid to students. The universities' roles in industrial innovation are tested in chapter fourth. Four different roles of universities are analysed: 1) as source of information, 2) as a partner of cooperation, 3) as an agent helping to enhance absorptive capacity and, 4) as a supplier of R&D services. The main findings can be summarised as follows. Firstly, the role of universities as a source of information and knowledge is found to be a very important channel in enhancing firms' innovative performance. Secondly, carrying out formal collaboration with universities in order to perform research is a very effective mechanism for improving firms' innovation outcomes. Moreover, the effect of collaborating with universities over four years is found to have a strong and positive impact on firm innovative performance. Thirdly, universities as a creator of highly skilled workers are found to be one of the natural and most important mechanisms through which they boost innovation. Finally, universities play another role in the innovation process as suppliers of R&D services. It is confirmed that firms that undertake the development of complex innovations buy R&D services from universities. In a nutshell, the dissertation's chapters are concerned with questions of universities and economic development. The first two of them with a regional perspective - firm location and creation of human capital - and the other deals with the links between universities and industry. Overall, this dissertation provides strong evidence for the importance of universities and demonstrates the wide range of mechanisms by which universities influence economic development.


Background: Body mass index (BMI) is used for the assessment of obesity and overweight worldwide. When body fat is increased BMI is also increased. Ultrasound is a reliable method to assess body fat. We have selected only one suprapubic region for the assessment of fat which is very easy to measure even in routine pelvic and abdominal ultrasound examination. During our routine examination, we can measure abdominal fat and inform the patient about his/her health state regarding obesity. It was a hypothesis that increases in abdominal subcutaneous fat will increase in BMI. Objective: The objective is to correlate subcutaneous fats measured on ultrasound with BMI. Materials and Methods: It was a cross-sectional study, which was performed in Gilani ultrasound center, Lahore, Pakistan. A total of 384 participants were included with simple random sampling technique. Individuals of 16–60 years age of both genders were included in that study. Pregnant ladies, athletes, children, and elderly participants were not included in that study. Toshiba (Xario) and Mindray (Z5) ultrasound machine were used for subcutaneous fats measurement. Participants were scanned in the supine position. Subcutaneous fats were measured on the suprapubic region in three different trials. Compression was avoided. Compression artifacts were avoided by applying more quantity of gel between transducer and skin. Stadiometer was used for the measurement of weight and height. To calculate BMI, Quetelet index was used. BMI was calculated with that formula BMI = weight (kg) divided by height (m2). Results: The result was made by calculation of mean and standard deviation. We calculated Pearson correlation between BMI and subcutaneous fats measured on ultrasound at the suprapubic region. It showed a significant high correlation between BMI and subcutaneous fat (P = 0.0000 which is < 0.001). Conclusion: There is a significantly high correlation between BMI and subcutaneous fat measured on ultrasound. Ultrasound is a reliable method to assess subcutaneous fat. It can be a predictor of obesity like BMI.


The effects of the emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs), aerosols, and natural forcing on the summer-mean surface air temperature (TAS) in the East Asia (EA) land surface in the 20th century are analyzed using six-member coupled model inter-comparison project 5 (CMIP5) general circulation model (GCM) ensembles from five single-forcing simulations. The simulation with the observed GHG concentrations and aerosol emissions reproduces well the land-mean EA TAS trend characterized by warming periods in the early (1911–1940; P1) and late (1971–2000; P3) 20th century separated by a cooling period (1941–1970; P2). The warming in P1 is mainly due to the natural variability related to GHG increases and the long-term recovery from volcanic activities in late-19th/early-20th century. The cooling in P2 occurs as the combined cooling by anthropogenic aerosols and increased volcanic eruptions in the 1960s exceeds the warming by the GHG increases and the nonlinear interaction term. In P3, the combined warming by GHGs and the interaction term exceeds the cooling by anthropogenic aerosols to result in the warming. The SW forcing is not driving the TAS increase in P1/P3 as the shortwave (SW) forcing is heavily affected by the increased cloudiness and the longwave (LW) forcing dominates the SW forcing. The LW forcing to TAS cannot be separated from the LW response to TAS, preventing further analyses. The interaction among these forcing affects TAS via largely modifying the atmospheric water cycle, especially in P2 and P3. Key forcing terms on TAS such as the temperature advection related to large-scale circulation changes cannot be analyzed due to the lack of model data.


To the Editor:

I read with great interest a recent article concerning recommendations for the management of unruptured intracranial aneurysms, published both in Stroke and in Circulation .1 The authors state, "Thus far, all natural history studies have been performed on patients selected for conservative management [italics added]." The reason for this seems to be that the recommendations are based almost exclusively on the results obtained from the International Study of Unruptured Intracranial Aneurysms (ISUIA). However, it is well known that the results of the ISUIA are in conflict with those of other studies.

The above-quoted statement is not true. In Helsinki, patients with unruptured aneurysms diagnosed before 1979 were not treated surgically.2 3 4 5 This gave us the possibility for a long-term follow-up of patients with unruptured aneurysms but without surgical selection of cases, and thus there was no bias caused by surgery. Our first cases have been reported as case reports, but the results of patient series have been repeatedly published with improved use of statistics since 1970, as the number of patients and follow-up years increased.2 3 4 5 The follow-up has been prospective, without loss of cases during the follow-up.

For my detailed opinions for potential …


The Darwin Plateau, in the southwestern Great Basin of California, is underlain by upper Cenozoic basalt flows, pyroclastic rocks, and alluvial deposits. Many of the volcanic units are laterally extensive and can be correlated across the study area, using hand-sample characteristics and magneto-stratigraphy. The age of the section, from potassium-argon dating and magnetic polarities, is largely 5.3 to 5.7 m.y., although the oldest basalt flow is 7-8 m.y. old. Structural, radiometric, and sedimentologic data all suggest that basin-range crustal extension was underway locally by 7-8 Ma, and the earliest high-angle normal faulting predates 5.8 Ma. This chronology is consistent with westward migration of tectonism in the southwestern Great Basin. Additionally, structural data suggest two extension directions, the current west-northwest-east-southeast direction and an earlier west-southwest-east-northeast one. The change in extension direction occurred after 5.7 Ma. Local and regional data also indicate that the maximum compressive and intermediate stresses in the latest stress regime have been approximately equal in magnitude. Paleomagnetic data do not indicate significant rotation of the Darwin Plateau between the many large strike-slip faults in the area.


Multi-robot task allocation is an important problem for heterogeneous mobile robots. Simultaneous allocations with which multiple tasks are being allocated concurrently tend to lead to more efficient allocations than online or single task allocations. However, the simultaneous allocation also increases the complexity in the winner determination process, especially when robots are required to collaborate in order to accomplish certain tasks. This paper presents a winner determination algorithm for the simultaneous allocation of multirobot tasks. The complete approach layers a low-level coalition formation algorithm for solving one multi-robot task with a high-level simultaneous task allocation approach. We implement a tree-based winner determination algorithm with an iterative deepening A* (IDA*) search and show that the algorithm is able to generate the optimal task-coalition mapping in the initial round and the IDA* performs efficiently based on time and space complexities.


Crack propagation tests on a bulk metallic glass, Zr55Cu30Ni5Al10, were conducted either in aqueous sodium chloride (NaCl) solutions or deionized water. Crack growth experiments were conducted under cyclic loading at a stress ratio of 0.1 or 0.5 under a loading frequency of 20 or 1.0 Hz. The experiments were also conducted under a sustained load. Although the crack growth rate in deionized water was almost identical to that in air, the rate in NaCl solution was much higher than that in air even in a very low concentration of NaCl such as 0.01%. In 3.5% NaCl solution, the time-based crack propagation rate during cyclic loading, da/dt, was determined by the maximum stress intensity factor, Kmax, but was independent of the loading frequency and the stress ratio, and the rate was almost identical to that of environment-assisted cracking under a sustained load.


In this paper, a new efficiency-optimized space-vector-modulation direct torque control (DTC) scheme is proposed and implemented for induction motor drives. Different from the traditional DTC, in which the flux linkage reference value is set as the rated value, the flux linkage reference value in the proposed DTC is online updated according to the instantaneous load torque and rotational speed by the optimum efficiency unit. Also, the space vector modulation is incorporated to achieve constant switching frequency regulation as well as reduced torque ripple. Simulation and experimental results are given to verify that the proposed scheme can successfully minimize the total power loss, while retaining good dynamic performance.


Both predator and prey have evolved to maximise reproductive success by balancing food intake with risk. There has been a bias in predator-prey studies, where prey
behaviour has been examined in detail, yet predators are assumed to follow simplistic rules. I use three-spined sticklebacks predating upon invertebrate prey to test a range of ways in which prey risk was hypothesised to be affected by predator behaviour.

The relationship between encounter rate and prey density has been recently shown not to be directly proportional, and theoretical arguments have been made that predator search behaviour can explain this trend. I test these arguments, and show acceleration of a predator's search path can in fact lead to the observed less-than-directly proportional relationship between prey density and encounter rate.

The perceptual constraints of predators can have major impacts on prey risk. Once encountered, an attack was more likely when prey were encountered late in a search, probably due to a decrease in anti-predator vigilance as the fish became more habituated to the arena. In a subsequent study, larger groups of prey were more quickly found, as were larger numbers of groups. This led to the conclusion that the field of attention is a subset of the total visual field, and this is also supported by denser prey being more conspicuous.

Although the predator responded to increased prey group size and density with a reduced time to detect and attack prey, attacks on such groups were less successful due to the confusion effect. Interestingly, I show the effect of prey density to be sensitive to spatial scale, where a large-scale measure of density affected conspicuousness and a small-scale measure affected attack success. This was
explained by a reduction in the total number of prey in the visual field as a group of prey is approached and attacked.

In the final chapter, I turn my attention to differences in temperament within a predator population, and how this affects prey risk. As expected, bolder fish represented a greater risk to the prey. However, as larger fish tended to be more bold, suggesting boldness was driven by their perception of predation risk, a within community behaviourally-mediated trophic cascade may occur. where the risk to prey is driven by their predators' own perceived risk of predation. This shows that optimal foraging decisions under the threat of predation, as well as perceptual constraints, can mediate the effect of predator behaviour on prey risk.


Silent sinus syndrome (SSS) is a rare condition presenting with spontaneous enophthalmos and hypoglobus caused by volume reduction of maxillary sinus due to centripetal collapse of its walls. A case of SSS manifested during pregnancy in 43 years old patient is presented. In 16 months after manifestation of symptoms endoscopic sinus surgery was performed with no postoperative improvement of ocular symptoms. Intraorbital injection of stabilized hyaluronic acid gel was performed for correction of globe position. In control ultrasound examination color Doppler mapping revealed improvement of regional blood flow on the side of injection.


Net hepatic glycogenolysis and gluconeogenesis were examined in normal (n = 4) and cirrhotic (n = 8) subjects using two independent methods [13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and a 2H2O method]. Rates of net hepatic glycogenolysis were calculated by the change in hepatic glycogen content before ( approximately 11:00 PM) and after ( approximately 7:00 AM) an overnight fast using 13C NMR and magnetic resonance imaging. Gluconeogenesis was calculated as the difference between the rates of glucose production determined with an infusion of [6,6-2H2]glucose and net hepatic glycogenolysis. In addition, the contribution of gluconeogenesis to glucose production was determined by the 2H enrichment in C-5/C-2 of blood glucose after intake of 2H2O (5 ml/kg body water). Plasma levels of total and free insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) and IGF-I binding proteins-1 and -3 were significantly decreased in the cirrhotic subjects (P < 0.01 vs. controls). Postprandial hepatic glycogen concentrations were 34% lower in the cirrhotic subjects (P = 0.007). Rates of glucose production were similar between the cirrhotic and healthy subjects [9.0 +/- 0.9 and 10.0 +/- 0.8 micromol. kg body wt-1. min-1, respectively]. Net hepatic glycogenolysis was 3.5-fold lower in the cirrhotic subjects (P = 0.01) and accounted for only 13 +/- 6% of glucose production compared with 40 +/- 10% (P = 0.03) in the control subjects. Gluconeogenesis was markedly increased in the cirrhotic subjects and accounted for 87 +/- 6% of glucose production vs. controls: 60 +/- 10% (P = 0.03). Gluconeogenesis in the cirrhotic subjects, as determined from the 2H enrichment in glucose C-5/C-2, was also increased and accounted for 68 +/- 3% of glucose production compared with 54 +/- 2% (P = 0.02) in the control subjects. In conclusion, cirrhotic subjects have increased rates of gluconeogenesis and decreased rates of net hepatic glycogenolysis compared with control subjects. These alterations are likely important contributing factors to their altered carbohydrate metabolism.


Within an ESA funded development project, fiber optical sensors were integrated into a dry wound composite booster demonstrator (L=2.5 m, D=0.8 m, t=12 mm) for the Ariane 6 launcher. The aim was to detect the resin flow front during the vacuum assisted infusion of the carbon fiber preform. Furthermore, the strains during the subsequent burst test were measured with the same sensors. Therefore 16 optical fibers with 98 inscribed fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) were manually placed into the preform within specific layers and positions. The optical fibers were successfully guided through the infusion and vacuum assembly and connected to a Micron Optics Si255 interrogator which was mounted directly at the mandrel. During the infusion and curing process the demonstrator tank and the entire measurement equipment rotated in an oven and was heated up to a temperature of 125° C during curing. Therefore a special air cooled box was designed to keep the equipment's environmental temperature below its maximum operational temperature of 60 °C and thus guarantee its function during the whole process. The gained resin flow front data was compared with an infusion simulation carried out by the Institut fur Verbundwerkstoffe GmbH, Kaiserslautern. The comparison of the results showed the potential of this measurement method for the flow front detection in thick-walled laminates. Following the manufacturing, a burst test of the demonstrator was performed. The strains were measured with the same FBGs while the demonstrator was pressurized with water until its burst pressure of approx. 450 bar.


Fatigue tests were carried out at different stress levels on cruciform welded joints made from mastensitic stainless steel. The purpose of the present paper was to verify the validity of the thermographic method and to extend its capability on welded structural evaluation, considering the real operating situations. Due to limitations of the traditional fatigue test, the infrared thermographic technique was developed to predict and assess the fatigue limit and the entire S-N (Stress-Life) curve of cruciform welded joints. Through the comparison, the predictions of the fatigue behavior by the thermographic method (TM) manifested good agreement with the traditional method. The present research paper concludes that the TM as a promising method enables us to rapidly obtain reliable fatigue characteristics of welded structural components.


Young individuals (below 35 years) comprise an estimated 60% of the global population. Not only are these individuals currently experiencing chronic, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), either living with or at risk for these conditions, but will also experience the long-term repercussions of the current NCD policy implementations. It is thus imperative that they meaningfully contribute to the global discourse and responses for NCDs at the local level. Here, we profile one example of meaningful engagement: the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network (YPCDN). The YPCDN is a global online network that provides a platform for young professionals to deliberate new and innovative methods of approaching the NCD challenges facing our societies. We provide a case study of the 2-year experiences of a country chapter (Kenya) of the YPCDN to demonstrate the significance and impact of emerging leaders in addressing the new global health agenda of the 21st century.


Reaction of tricarbonyl(η-2-alkylpyridine)chromium(0) complexes with lithium diisopropylamide at –40 °C generates the resonance stabilised carbanions at the α-position which undergo completely stereoselective electrophilic quench with alkyl halides to generate the corresponding α-branched tricarbonyl(η-2-alkylpyridine)chromium (0) complexes. These complexes can then be subjected to nucleophilic additions with methyllithium followed by methyl iodide quench to afford the tricarbonyl(η-exo-6-alkyl-1,2-dimethyl-1,2-dihydropyridine)chromium (0) complexes. Treatment of the resonance stabilised α-carbanion derived from tricarbonyl(η-2-ethylpyridine)chromium (0) with the non-enolisable aldehydes benzaldehyde or pivalaldehyde affords the erythro-aldol-type products with complete control of stereochemistry at both the newly formed α-and carbinol centres. X-Ray crystal structures of SR(RS)-tricarbonyl[η-exo-1,2-dimethyl-6-(2-pent-4-enyl)-1,2-dihydropyridine)-chromium (0) and RSS(SRR)-tricarbonyl[erythro-2-η-(2-pyridyl)-1-phenylpropanol]chromium (0) are reported.


Background: In order to promote aging to modify their lifestyle for enhance their health status, information related to their activities of daily living (ADL) should be in-depth describe. Information are values for develop intervention with the aim to maintain and extend their good health status; especially for the setting that have different index of aging (IOA). Objectives: The aims of this study were to describe activity of daily living in elderly among two group of index of aging, One Region of Thailand. Methodology: This study was a descriptive study. Setting were 6 provinces in One Region of Thailand and one-two village was simple random from province with the IOA between 60.79.9 and two villages were simple random from province with the IOA between 80-99.9. Total were 8 villages. 1,609 cases were purposive selected from elderly who were age from 60 years old. Data were collected by geriatric screening form which was developed by Elderly Medicine Institute. Descriptive study was used to describe the findings. Results: The finding revealed that mean age was 70.59 (SD. = 7.59) and 61.8 % were female. Most of elderly were well elder (97.20%) with 2.10% were home bound and were 0.70% were bed bound. The mean score of ADL for lower IOA province was 19.32 while the mean score for higher IOA province was 18.67 with the statistically different at p<.05. Conclusion and Recommendation: The findings revealed that the older the higher score of ADL. The higher IOA the lower score of ADL; therefore, any intervention with the aims to promote their good health study should be developed; especially for the home bound group in province with the higher IOA. Moreover, since the major of elderly have a good connection with the communities, therefore social capitol should be integrated into that intervention.


This paper deals with a mixture of H2 and H8 in the following way: We have two inputs and one output. One input signal is a white-noise stochastic process, and represents errors e.g. resulting from measurement noise. The other input has a more deterministic character. If one has a reference signal (e.g. a step) as input, one cannot model this as white noise, but it fits nicely into this new class of inputs. The objective is to minimize the effect of these signals on the output of the system. We define a cost function which enables us to combine these two exogenous inputs, even though they are structurally different. The analysis of this function leads to a standard H8 Riccati equation. We motivate this cost function by looking at two theoretical applications: the derivation of robust performance bounds and a tracking problem.


For tsunami risk analysis information about thenumber of exposed people and about the land-use inthe endangered areas are important inputparameters. Data on people distribution could helpto manage the evacuation planning and mitigate thepeople loss by tsunami. Land-use and potentialdamages are relevant for rehabilitation managementThe aim of the paper is to presentmethodologies and tools to generate the abovementioned missing information before a disasterhappens. Based on this, governmental authoritiescan prepare and calculate how many people areliving in the affected area, how many people couldbe evacuated, and how to perform adequate landuse planning to mitigate the disaster impact. For thedisaster response phase, the local government willbe supported to plan and manage the evacuationprocess more efficiently. For the recovery phase,government will be provided by estimates on theamount and type of potential damages.This research analyzes the estimation of peopleat risk and potential land-use damage estimation bytsunamis in the South Coast of Java, Indonesia.Combinations of numerical modelling andGeographic Information System (GIS) approacheshave been applied in this research. There are threescenarios for tsunami simulations generated byearthquake magnitude Mw 8.5 with differentlocations of the epicentres.TUNAMI-N1 model has been applied todetermine the tsunami wave height in the coastalarea. Validation of tsunami modelling has beenperformed using Aceh Tsunami 2004 data.Inundation modelling was applied to the studyarea and the results were combined with the peopledistribution map and land-use data to estimatepeople at risk and land-use damage by tsunami.People distribution maps during day time andnight time were derived.The results of this research will be integrated inan information system, which in future can beapplied on the level of the local government tobetter mitigate the impact of tsunami disaster andprovide tools for an improved tsunami riskassessment for decision makers at the local level.


The association between coeliac disease (CD) and dermatitis herpetiformis (DH) is well known. Moreover, this cutaneous disease may be the only sign of an otherwise asymptomatic CD. Subjects presenting with both CD and DH generally show an HLA pattern in which A1, B8, DR2, DR7, DQw2 are the most frequent antigens one can find. We report about 2 brothers presenting with DH, clinically asymptomatic, without antigliadin serum antibodies (AGA), but positive to the research of antiendomysial (EMA) ones. The biopsy performed by digestive endoscopy showed a complete atrophy of duodenal villi and the diagnosis of CD was confirmed according to the European Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition (ESPGAN) criteria. The diet without gluten caused the DH to recovery and the duodenal villi microscopic aspect to normalize as well. Both the brothers had the same HLA pattern: A1, B8, DR3-DR2, DQw2. Our clinical study suggests that it is very important, especially for the general practitioner, to recognize a DH and in every child presenting with a dermatitis like that it will be mandatory to perform a laboratory research of both AGA and EMA.


Lakes are vital components of the global biosphere, supporting complex ecosystems and playing important roles in the global biogeochemical cycle. However, they are vulnerable to the threat from climate change and their responses to climate forcing, eutrophication and other pressures, and their possibly confounding interactions, are not yet well understood. Monitoring lake health is therefore essential, in order to understand the changing patterns over space and time.

Traditionally, in-situ data, which are collected directly from within lakes and analysed in laboratories, have been available for analysis. However, although these data are assumed to be accurate within measurement error, they are expensive to collect, so that few, if any, in-situ sampling locations are available for each lake, often with infrequent sampling at each location. On the other hand, remotely-sensed data, which are derived from reflectance measurements of the Earth's surface, obtained from satellites, have recently become widely available. These data have good spatial coverage of up to 300 metre resolution, covering entire lakes, often with a monthly-average time-scale, but they must firstly be calibrated with the in-situ data to ensure accuracy, before inferences are made.

The data for this research were provided by the GloboLakes project (www.globolakes.ac.uk), which is a consortium research project that is investigating the state of lakes and their responses to environmental drivers on a global scale. The research primarily focusses on log(chlorophyll-a) data for Lake Balaton, in Hungary, and for the Great Lakes of North America.

The key question of interest for this research is: ``How can data fusion be performed for in-situ and remotely-sensed lake water quality data, accounting for the spatiotemporal change of support between the point-location, point-time in-situ data and the grid-cell-scale, monthly-averaged remotely-sensed data, producing a fused dataset that takes accuracy from the in-situ data and spatial and temporal information from the remotely-sensed data?"

In order to answer this question, this thesis presents the following work:

An initial analysis of the data for Lake Balaton motivates the following work, by demonstrating the spatial and temporal patterns in the data, using mixed-effects models, generalised additive models, kriging and principal components analysis.

Following the identification of statistical downscaling as an appropriate method for fusion of the data, statistical downscaling models are developed, specifically in the framework of Bayesian hierarchical models with spatially-varying coefficients, for the novel application to data for log(chlorophyll-a), producing fully calibrated maps of fused data across lake surfaces, with associated comprehensive uncertainty measures.

Bivariate and multiple-lakes statistical downscaling models are developed and applied, motivated by the assumption that sharing information between variables and between lakes can improve the accuracy of model predictions.

The statistically novel method of nonparametric statistical downscaling is developed, to account for both the spatial and temporal aspects of the change of support between the in-situ and remotely-sensed data. Using methodology from both functional data analysis and statistical downscaling, the model treats in-situ and remotely-sensed data at each location as observations of smooth functions over time, estimated using bases, with the basis coefficients related via a spatially-varying coefficient regression. This is computed within a Bayesian hierarchical model, enabling the calculation of comprehensive uncertainties.

This thesis presents the background, motivation, model development and application of the novel method of nonparametric statistical downscaling, filling the gap in the literature of accounting for changing temporal support in statistical downscaling modelling. Results are presented throughout this thesis, to demonstrate the utility of the method for real lake water quality data.


This study investigated the interactions between cable insulating oil and the soil microflora and macrofauna in freshly-spiked and in aged soils in the laboratory. Studies were carried out at two levels: (i) The impact of varying concentrations (1-10% w/w) of the non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) on soil microbial respiration using [1-C-14]glucose and (ii) The impact of the NAPL on the survival of earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris) in soil. In terms of soil-microbial respiration, [1-C-14]glucose mineralization was found to be enhanced by 32% over a range of oil-soil concentrations and contact times. In freshly spiked soils, all of the earthworms died after 14 d. However, in the 300 d aged soils, survival was significantly increased at lower concentrations of NAPL. If low concentrations (less than or equal to 1%) of NAPL are released to the soil environment from underground power cables it is postulated that a shift in the balance of the soil microflora from autochthonous to zymogenous microflora may occur. Additionally, the bioavailability of the NAPL to the soil macrofauna decreased with increased soil NAPL contact time.}


ABSTRACT Composite powders comprising 95 wt% boron and 5 wt% metal additives including Fe, Co, Ni, Hf, and Zr, were prepared by high energy mechanical milling in a planetary mill using hexane as a process control agent (PCA). Additionally, composites with Fe were prepared using acetonitrile and stearic acid as PCA. Single particles of boron and all prepared materials were fed into the combustion products of a pre-mixed air-acetylene flame, in a diffusion air-hydrogen flame, and ignited in air using a CO2 laser beam. Infrared emission pulses of burning particles were recorded. Distribution of burn times for each powder was obtained based on the durations of these pulses. Correlating the time distributions with measured particle size distributions yielded trends showing the effect of particle size on its burn time for all materials. Color temperatures were also recovered from the recorded emission signals. Additionally, constant volume explosion experiments were performed with all materials aerosolized in air. Results show that the morphology of the prepared composite powders is similar to that of boron. Single particle combustion experiments show that adding Hf leads to the most significant acceleration of combustion compared to boron. A positive effect of Hf as an additive is noted in different oxidizing environments. Adding Fe leads to an improved burn rate in air; however, there is no clear advantage in other oxidizing environments. No clear improvement is observed when other metal additives are used. Preparing B-Fe composites using different PCAs suggests that both a greater refinement of iron and a stronger acceleration in the burn rates of the prepared powders particles in air occur when acetonitrile and stearic acid are used as PCA. The results of the present cloud combustion experiments were found to be affected by multiple parameters and processes making it difficult to offer their meaningful interpretation.


Background:
 Candida auris, within the last decade, has emerged as a multidrug resistant public health threat that can lead to hospital outbreaks. It is an invasive fungal yeast resistant to multiple antifungal agents. The mode of transmission is through contaminated hospital items (including clothes and furniture) and interventions by staff. Two Candida auris outbreaks occurred in Qatar. The first outbreak was in Al Wakra Hospital (AWH), which is a facility of Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), the principal public healthcare provider in the State of Qatar. As concluded by Eyre DW, et al. (2018), a series of interventions and environmental screening program may reduce the Candida auris outbreak. A screening toolkit that includes a checklist based on an existing protocol and operationally defined criteria is a key preventive measure for Candida auris identification. We aim to attain 100% compliance with screening suspected patients and preventing further outbreaks. Methods: A screening protocol toolkit was created for eligible patients that allowed early identification and prompt intervention therefore enhancing the provision of high-quality, efficient, cost effective, and safe patient care. Furthermore, implementation of an Outbreak Prevention Bundle had been proven effective in preventing the spread and comprised: (1) prophylactic contact precautions, (2) blanket screening of at risk/exposed patients, (3) environmental sampling, and (4) hydrogen peroxide disinfection. Results/Findings/Recommendations: In 2020, continuous screening was maintained for patients fitting the HMC criteria. The protocol for the management of outbreaks was implemented. The number of COVID-19 positive cases peaked during July - August 2020 when COVID-19 patients were transferred to AWH . Overall, AWH reached 407 cumulative days without Candida auris outbreak . Conclusion:
 Candida auris outbreak is preventable through early identification via screening and implementation of an Outbreak Prevention Bundle. This method has led to no active outbreak in AWH since August 2019 until October 2020.


OBJECTIVE: To review the progress in the research of the pharmacological activities of active ingredients and extracts of Epimedium. METHOD: Effects of Epimedium on cardiovascular system, circulatory system, immune system, genital system and bone marrow system, etc were reviewed, based on the recent 10 years pharmacological experimental studies. CONCLUSION: The results provided a rational foundation for the further development and utilization of Epimedium.


Expanded successions of marine black shale provide important proxy records to test climatic teleconnections across ocean basins and paleo-latitudes. The causal and generic relationships controlling the timing, composition, and internal variability of marine organic carbon (OC)-rich shale over large distances and during variable global climate states are, however, far from understood but relevant for hydrocarbon generation potential. Despite detailed documentation of the processes operating in individual ocean settings and under specific climatic conditions, it remains a challenge to present a unifying concept that explains the generic and far field interconnections between climate zones and ocean basins at multiple temporal and spatial scales. Progress towards such a unifying model has been made for the Cretaceous Atlantic providing an important step forward to simulate the location and internal heterogeneity of black shale formation more reliably, especially for areas where limited field data exist due to harsh or remote conditions, such as the Mesozoic Arctic. In this study we combine new, high resolution geochemical and sedimentological records from the Jurassic boreal seaway, where widespread deposition of the Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay Formation (KFC) is well documented with large scale climate and biogeochemical modelling, placing the seaway into a global climatic context.


Starting with the seminal work of Klima & Bellugi (1966) and Bellugi (1967), young English-speaking children have been observed to pass through a stage at which their negative utterances differ from those of adults. Children initially use not or no, whereas adults use negative auxiliary verbs (don't, can't, etc.). To explain the observed mismatches between child and adult language, the present study adopts Zeijlstra's (2004, 2007, 2008a, b) Negative Concord Parameter, which divides languages according to whether they interpret negation directly in the semantics with an adverb, or license it in the syntactic component, in which case the negative marker is a head and the language is a negative concord language. Our proposal is that children first hypothesize that negation is expressed with an adverb, in keeping with the more economical parameter value. Because English is exceptional in having both an adverb and a head form of negation, children must also add a negative head (i.e. n't) to their grammar. This takes considerable time as the positive input that triggers syntactic negation and negative concord is absent in the input for standard English, and children must find alternative evidence. The Negative Concord Parameter accounts for an intricate longitudinal pattern of development in child English, as non-adult structures are eliminated and a new range of structures are licensed by the grammar.


Synthesis of novel broader rim calix[4]arene derivatives has been carried out, initially, using palladium coupling reactions. Further derivatisation and investigation into host-guest chemistry of these novel compounds has also been accomplished. Conditions have been optimised for the coupling of both aromatic and aliphatic acrylates. Stereospecific formation of the all trans coupled product of an exclusively beta Heck coupling has been observed throughout. All compounds (of the type II) have been obtained in good yield. Synthetic methodology for the generation of receptor libraries (be they static or dynamic) via the coupling of both tertiary and secondary aciylamide species using a palladium catalyst has been accomplished. Some of the secondary aciylamides possess the capacity (by virtue of pre-arrangement of amidic hydrogen bonding motifs) to form dimers via H-bonding in non-polar solution. The binding of a commercial pesticide (TMTD) by an acrylamidocalix[4]arene is reported and corroborated by NMR and ESI-MS data. The ability to couple formyl functionalised acrylates to the broader rim has allowed the preparation of a small library of deep cavity receptors in the form of tetra-transimines. These deep cavity calix[4]arene receptors could be obtained and are folly characterised. In the case of dynamic combinatorial libraries the principle of utilising a guest molecule to template or at least effect a specific outcome of imine forming reactions at four aldehydic sites on the broader rim of the calix[4]arene has also been illustrated. This provides support for the principles of formation of dynamic combinatorial libraries and further proposes calix[4]arene building blocks as being useful in their construction.


We present a new version of ProbDiVinE - a parallel tool for verification of probabilistic systems against properties formulated in linear temporal logic. Unlike the previous release, the new version of the tool allows for both quantitative and qualitative model-checking. It is also strictly multi-threaded, therefore, protects users from unwanted burden of parallel computing in a distributed-memory environment.