Background: In aphasia therapy, there has been a shift in focus from impairment-level intervention towards ones focusing on enhancing life participation. Within Canada and the United States there exist several weekend camps that provide examples of participation-level interventions for people with aphasia (PWA); however there is presently limited evidence for the efficacy of camp-based models. Purpose : The purpose of the Alberta Aphasia Camp (ABAC) was to provide PWA and their care partners (CPs) the opportunity to experience therapy, recreational activities, respite, and to create social connections in a supported communication environment. The purpose of this research project was to examine the efficacy of a retreat-based treatment model as a means of increasing the quality of life and life activity/participation in PWA. Methods : ABAC was held at YoWoChAs Outdoor Education Center on September 12-14, 2014. Data from nine PWA and five CPs are reported here. Three assessment tools were used to gather pre- and post-camp data: the Assessment for Living with Aphasia (ALA) , the Australian Therapy Outcome Measures (AusTOMs), and the Communicative Effectiveness Index (CETI). Outcomes & Results : Significant improvements were observed from pre- to post-camp on the ALA (participation domain, personal domain, composite score), the AusTOMS (expressive and receptive language impairment scales, cognitive-communication activity limitation scale) and the CETI. Conclusions : Attending ABAC was associated with significant positive effects for PWA across all measures, providing evidence to suggest that a weekend retreat is an efficacious intervention model for participation-level improvement for PWA and their CPs.


The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of fuzzy math strategy to calculate variability and uncertainty in quantitative risk assessment. We compared the propagation of uncertainty using fuzzy math simulation with Monte Carlo simulation. The risk far Listeria monocytogenes contamination was estimated for carcass and processed pork by fuzzy math and Monte Carlo simulations, respectively. The data used in these simulations were taken from a recent report on pork production. In carcass, the mean values for the risk from fuzzy math and Monte Carlo simulations were -4.393 log and -4.589 log , respectively; in processed pork, they were -4.185 log and -4.466 log respectively. The distribution of values obtained using the fuzzy math simulation included all of the results obtained using the Monte Carlo simulation. Consequently, fuzzy math simulation was found to be a good alternative to Monte Carlo simulation in quantitative risk assessment of pork production.


This paper charts the current evidence on effectiveness of different anti-corruption reforms, and identifies significant evidence gaps. Despite a substantial amount of literature on corruption, this review found very few studies focusing on anti-corruption reforms, and even fewer that credibly assess issues of effectiveness and impact.

The evidence was strong for only two types of interventions: public financial management (PFM) reforms and supreme audit institutions (SAIs). For PFM, the evidence in general showed positive results, whereas the effectiveness was mixed for SAIs. No strong evidence indicates that any of the interventions pursued have been ineffective, but there is fair evidence that anti-corruption authorities, civil service reforms and the use of corruption conditionality in aid allocation decisions in general have not been effective.

The paper advocates more operationally-relevant research and rigorous evaluations to build up the missing evidence base, particularly in conflict-afflicted states, in regards to the private sector, and on the interactions and interdependencies between different anti-corruption interventions.


Vertebrate fossils consisting of teeth and bones of large mammals from six limestone caves in Lenggong Valley, Perak and Batu Caves, Selangor, in Peninsular Malaysia are reported. This is the first detailed systematic study of a large number of vertebrate fossils found in this country. Samples of the matrix hosting the fossils indicated a Middle Pleistocene age of 500 ka for the Lenggong Valley site and a Late Pleistocene range of 66 - 33 ka for the Batu Caves site by using both the thermoluminescence (TL) and optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL) methods that are applied for the first time in Peninsular Malaysia and supported by the corresponding use of the U-series method.
The fauna composition is particularly interesting because of the discovery of taxa which had never before recorded in Peninsular Malaysia such as Orangutan (Pongo sp.), or any other country in the Sundaic subregion such as Asiatic Black Bear (Ursus thibetanus).
Other species that had not been recorded before in any cave in Peninsula Malaysia found are Hystrix brachyura, Atherurus macrourus, Viverra tangalunga, Panthera tigris, Sus barbatus, and Dicerorhinus sumatrensis. This new data from Peninsular Malaysia fills an important gap in the palaeobiogeographic distribution of fossil fauna in the region and allows for new biochronological and paleogeographical correlations between the Indochinese province in the north and the Sundaic province in the south. It also modifies the geographical distributions of some of the Southeast Asia fauna by extending the ranges of northern taxa further southwards.
The fauna analysis supports the hypothesis of a migration route from south China to the Indonesia islands and inversely across Peninsular Malaysia by the land bridge connections between the exposed Sundaland block during the Middle and Late Pleistocene when the sea level was low.The high diversity and new fauna collected from the caves studied together with the important chronological analysis of the samples from Badak Cave C in Lenggong Valley,
Perak of 500 ka makes it one of the few oldest dated sites known from the Sundaic province making this Malaysia fauna a good reference for the fossil study of such fauna in
Southeast Asia.


The development of agricultural productivity and the management of water along sustainable ecological, economic and social trajectories require an integrated approach. Integrated water management is knowledge intensive across multiple scales. As New Zealand moves to set limits on water quantity and quality and respond to changing environmental values, both of which have implications for agricultural productivity, it has become apparent that the links between knowledge, policy and on-ground action are often missing. As a potential means of reconnecting these missing connections, this paper outlines the theory and practice of knowledge-action systems and their potential role in the coproduction of knowledge and policy across organisational, knowledge and institutional boundaries.


Nowadays, even though many researchers continue to investigate and study about Parabolic Dish based on Concentration Solar Power (CSP), the findings are not conclusive and do not provide accurate evidence and proof on the potential of CSP development in Malaysia. The missing link in the Parabolic Dish (PD) Stirling Engine system modelled is the control systems, which vary the amount of working gas in the Stirling engine. The temperature of the heater in PD system which has been modelled is overheated and causes damage to the heater material, low output efficiency, high thermal losses and effect to the lifespan of the PD system. Therefore, the primary aim of this paper was to design a control system to maximize output efficiency during a normal operation by maintaining the heater/absorber temperature at the highest safe operating point and preventing excessive range of threshold to prevent damage to the heater material.


A simple highly versatile and efficient sonochemical synthesis of 1,2,4,5-tetrasubstituted and 2,4,5-trisubstituted imidazoles is achieved by condensation of 1,2-dicarbonyl compound, aldehyde, ammonium acetate and primary amine using antimony trichloride immobilized on silica gel (SiO2-OSbCl2) as a catalyst in ethanol at moderate temperature. Operational simplicity, practicability and applicability to various substrates make this method an interesting alternative to previously applied procedures. From the environmental standpoint, this eco-friendly green catalyst is stable, highly active, easy to prepare and handle.


In Iran, where males and females are kept separated in different spheres, Facebook may be used as an opportunity to bridge this gap between the genders. However, this study showed that Facebook, as a nonymous platform in which people are in contact with their already-made social ties, didn't seem to be liberating from the existing norms and rules within society. Facebook was a stage that became restricted with the involvement of social ties. The study's analysis of interviews with six young Iranians showed that social meanings and norms of self-presentation on Facebook are defined to a large degree in terms of gender. The informants used a variety of strategies when presenting themselves on Facebook. They used Facebook simply for gaining personal autonomy. Strategies were adopted especially when one's personal and community needs were in conflict. Efforts made to apply strategies were gendered and were used mainly by females. Males conformed to and women resisted societal norms and expectations.


Background and objectives Music and auditory beat stimulation (ABS) in the theta frequency range (4–7 Hz) are sound-based anxiety treatments that have been independently investigated in prior studies. Here, the anxiety-reducing potential of calm music combined with theta ABS was examined in a large sample of participants. Methods An open-label randomized controlled trial was conducted with participants taking anxiolytics (n = 163). Participants were randomly assigned using the Qualtrics randomizer algorithm, to a single session of sound-based treatment in one of four parallel arms: combined (music & ABS; n = 39), music-alone (n = 36), ABS-alone (n = 41), or pink noise (control; n = 47). Pre- and post-intervention somatic and cognitive state anxiety measures were collected along with trait anxiety, personality measures and musical preferences. The study was completed online using a custom application. Results Based on trait anxiety scores participants were separated into moderate and high trait anxiety sub-groups. Among participants with moderate trait anxiety, we observed reductions in somatic anxiety that were greater in combined and music-alone conditions than in the pink noise condition; and reductions in cognitive state anxiety that were greater in the combined condition than in the music-alone, ABS-alone, and pink noise conditions. While we also observed reductions in somatic and cognitive state anxiety in participants with high trait anxiety, the conditions were not well differentiated. Conclusions Sound-based treatments are effective in reducing somatic and cognitive state anxiety. For participants with moderate trait anxiety, combined conditions were most efficacious.


Young children occasionally draw rotated figures such as an inverted face; however, little is known about the details of this phenomenon. In this paper, we addressed when and how rotated drawing emerges in normal child development. Study 1 reported that rotated drawings appeared spontaneously in a longitudinal observation of 33 children. The rotation occurred in 6.3% of all representational figures in free drawing trials, whereas 12.5% of representational drawing occurred in imitation task trials, among children 2 years and 11 months to 4 years and 11 months old. To clarify the developmental process in which rotated figures emerge, Study 2 investigated the different ages of children as to whether triggering stimuli cause them to draw rotated images. Rotation occurred more frequently in younger children who begin to produce representational drawing, and they seem to be indifferent to the orientation used in drawing representations. We discuss the reflection of the devel- opment of the concept to represent an object as well as the development of spatial cognition by the "viewer-centered" and "viewpoint-independent" referential frame in representational space on a picture-plane.


An attempt has been made to examine the nature and extent of fiscal imbalances in India using the secondary data over a period of thirty years from 1980-81 to 2009-10 (BE). It has been established that there is persistence and growing vertical as well as horizontal fiscal imbalances even after a series of corrective fiscal measures. Efforts to reduce these imbalances found to be ineffective due to contradictions among different measures of fiscal correction. Methodologies adopted to maintain equity contradict with methodologies used to increase efficiency. The 14th finance commission may take initiative to resolve this paradox through a 'weight adjustment solution' which can be helpful in reducing the imbalances. In addition to it, adequate generations of revenue through increasing tax efforts on the part of states and reform in the transfer system are essential for maintaining fiscal balances.


Summary Text mining has been defined as "the discovery by computer of new, previously unknown information, by automatically extracting information from different written resources" [6]. Many other industries and areas can also benefit from the text mining tools that are being developed by a number of companies. This paper provides an overview of the text mining tools and technologies that are being developed and is intended to be a guide for organizations who are looking for the most appropriate text mining techniques for their situation. This paper also concentrates to design text and data mining tool to extract the valuable information from curriculum vitae according to concerned requirements. The tool clusters the curriculum vitae into several segments which will help the public and private concerns for their recruitment. Rule based approach is used to develop the algorithm for mining and also it is implemented to extract the valuable information from the curriculum vitae on the web. Analysis of Curriculum vitae is until now, a costly and manual activity. It is subject to all typical variations and limitations in its quality, depending of who is doing it. Automating this analysis using algorithms might deliver much more consistency and preciseness to support the human experts. The experiments involve cooperation with many people having their CV online, as well as several recruiters etc. The algorithms must be developed and improved for processing of existing sets of semi-structured documents information retrieval under uncertainity about quality of the sources.


The combined interaction of Coulomb interaction and ac fields with two electrons in a quantum dot molecule is studied respectively with numerical simulation, perturbation theory and the approximation of driven two-level model The dynamical localization occurs with the ac field whose ratio of the amplitude to the angular frequency is a root of n-order Bessel functions, where n is determined by the Coulomb interaction energy. Such results are explained with either the driven two-level approximation or the degenerated three-level model and verified by the numerical simulations.


This paper presents a new mechanics model for unidirectional notched-tube continuum wrists, a class of mechanisms frequently used to implement distal steering in needle-sized surgical robotic instruments. Existing kinematic models available for these devices are based on the simplifying assumption that, during actuation, all the notches undergo the same amount of deflection, so that the shape of a wrist can be approximated by an arc of constant curvature. This approach is analytically attractive, but, as we show in this paper, it can sometimes fail to provide good tracking accuracy. In this article, we provide a new model that relaxes the assumption above, and we report experimental evidence showing its superior accuracy. We model wrist deflection using Castigliano's second theorem, with the addition of a capstan friction term that accounts for frictional losses on the actuation tendon. Because notched-tube wrists are typically made of Nickel-Titanium (Nitinol), which has nonlinear stress-strain characteristics, we use a technique to obtain a local linearized approximation of the material modulus, suitable for use in the deflection model. The result of our modeling is a system of nonlinear equations that can be solved numerically to predict the wrist configuration based on the applied actuation force. Experimental results on physical specimens show that this improved model provides a more accurate estimate of wrist kinematics than prior models assuming constant curvature bending.


People interact differently with humans than they do with computers, but there is minimal research on what brings about these differences. Using agents labeled as either "another participant" or a "computer program", we investigated the differences in people's behavior and brain activity during the course of a negotiation paradigm. Our results indicate that people perceive human-labeled agents more human-like than computerlabeled agents, and the level of concession in the negotiations is dependent on agent type. We have also found that these differences can be captured in brain activation by showing that parts of the Theory of Mind neural correlates are activated in human-labeled agent conditions, but not in computer-labeled agent conditions. We further demonstrate that brain activity can predict whether the negotiation agent was introduced as a competing human player or a computer program. Overall, our study suggests that labeling an interaction partner as either another human or a computer program leads to significant impacts on one's decision making.


For manifolds, topological properties such as Poincare duality and invariants such as the signature and characteristic classes, results and techniques from complex algebraic geometry such as the Hirzebruch-Riemann-Roch theorem, and results from global analysis such as the Atiyah-Singer index theorem, worked hand in hand in the past to weave a tight web of knowledge. Individually, many of the above results are in the meantime available for singular stratified spaces as well. The 2011 Oberwolfach workshop "Stratified Spaces: Joining Analysis, Topology and Geometry" discussed these with the specific aim of cross-fertilization in the three contributing fields.


Summary. Horizontal starch gel electrophoresis and isozyme analysis of pinnule extracts proved to be an effective non-destructive method by which to determine the extent of individual plants of Pteridium aquilinum (bracken). Samples from all seven localities studied were found to contain several distinct genotypes, thereby confirming the heterogeneous nature of bracken stands. Individual plants were found to vary considerably in extent, both in Britain and the U.S.A. The maximum dimension measured for the most extensive individual sampled was 390 m. Individuals of this size must represent plants of considerable antiquity. The confident identification of very large plants of a single genotype has implications for control and management trials on bracken, where small plots have often been used.


This review focuses on some interesting and recent applications of transition metals towards the complexation of thiosemicarbazides, thiocarbohydrazides, and their corresponding carbazones. We started the review with a description of the chosen five metals, including Cu[Cu(I), Cu(II], Co(II), Ni(II), Pd(II), and Ag(I) and their electronic configurations. The stability of the assigned complexes was also discussed. We shed light on different routes describing the synthesis of these ligands. We also reported on different examples of the synthesis of Cu(I), Cu(II), Co(II), Ni(II), Ag(I), and Pd(II) of thiosemicarbazide and thiocarbohydrazide complexes (until 2022). This review also deals with a summary of the fruitful use of metal complexes of thiosemicarbazones and thiocarbazones ligands in the field of catalysis. Finally, this recent review focuses on the applications of these complexes related to their biological importance.


ABSTRACT This paper presents a newly constructed database on foreign trade of Sweden–Finland 1738–1805, consisting of all exports and imports that were recorded by the custom houses in this period, and is made available at www.historia.se/Swedish foreign trade 1738_1805.xlsx. The traditional view as presented by Eli Heckscher, who was very critical of the mercantilist policies of the time, was that the overseas trade of Sweden-Finland saw a trend of secular stagnation during the course of the eighteenth century. By contrast, we show that in conjunction with a substantial expansion of the population, total trade nearly increased twofold during the period of study. Despite that, there was a small decrease in the value of exports in relation to GDP, mostly explained by a drop in the relative price of bar iron. The degree of specialisation of Swedish exports saw a declining tendency in this period. While exports from Sweden had a higher degree of specialisation than Finnish exports, imported goods to Finland were more concentrated than Swedish imports. Lastly, the composition of imports did not markedly alter, meaning that a consumer revolution did not take place in either Sweden or Finland.


This article analyzes Boys in white: student culture in medical schoolby Howard S. Becker, Blanche Geer, Everett C. Hughes and Anselm Strauss, considered a model of qualitative research in sociology. The analysis investigates the trajectories of the authors, the book, qualitative analysis, and the medical students, emphasizing their importance in the origins of medical sociology and the sociology of medical education. In the trajectory of the authors, bibliographical information is given. The trajectory of qualitative research focuses on how this methodology influences the construction of the field. The investigation of the students' trajectory shows how they progress through their first years at medical school to build their own student culture.


The main contribution of this article is introducing an intelligent classifier to distinguish between benign and malignant areas of micro-calcification in companded mammogram image which is not proved or addressed elsewhere. This method does not require any manual processing technique for classification, thus it can be assimilated for identifying benign and malignant areas in intelligent way. Moreover it gives good classification responses for compressed mammogram image. The goal of the proposed method is twofold: one is to preserve the details in Region of Interest (ROI) at low bit rate without affecting the diagnostic related information and second is to classify and segment the micro-calcification area in reconstructed mammogram image with high accuracy. The prime contribution of this work is that details of ROI and Non-ROI regions extracted using multi-wavelet transform are coded at variable bit rate using proposed Region Based Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees (RBSPIHT) before storing or transmitting the image. Image reconstructed during retrieval or at the receiving end is preprocessed to remove the channel noise and to enhance the diagnostic contrast information. Then the preprocessed image is classified as normal or abnormal (benign or malignant) using Probabilistic neural network. Segmentation of cancerous region is done using Fuzzy C-means Clustering (FCC) algorithm and the cancerous area is computed. The experimental result shows that the proposed model performance is good at achieving high sensitivity of 97.27%, specificity of 94.38% at an average compression rate and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) of 0.5bpp and 58dB respectively.


The effect of turbulent  mixing on  the  course  of two fast parallel competitive  chemical reactions  (netralization  of sodium  biborate  snd  iodide-iodate  oxidation-reduction  reactions) carried  out  in  continuous  stiwed  tank  reaktors  have been  studied  theoretically,  using  Packet Diffusion  Model,  and  experimentally  to  validate  the  theoretical predictions. System studied  consists  of flat bottom  cylindrical  tank  0.2 m in  diameter.  The height of liquid  in  the  tank  is  also  0.2 m. The  tank  was equipped  with Fan Turbine  with diameter equal  to I/3  tank  diameter. Sulphuric  acid solution  (0.5  Il,Q was fed into  the  tank through  2 mm-diameter pipe,  and  the  aquous  solution containing 0.0909  M NaH2Boj,  0.0909  M H:Bo:,  0.0116667  M KI, and  0.0023333  M KIO3wasfed  into  the  tank  through  I0  mm-diameter  pipe.  The rate  of acid solution  was  varied  0,045,  0.068,  and 0.09  liter/minute,  while the  rate  of  the  other solution  was varied  I,  1.5,  and  2 liter/minute  (the  rate  variation  coruespond  to  the  mean residence  time variation of 6, 4, and 3 minutes). The  impeller  rotation  speedwas  varied;  9,12,  and  I5  rps.  The iodine  concenftation  in  the  tank  influent  was  analyzed  using  spectrophotometer. The  simulation  works  conclude  that  the  selectivity  of iodine  decrease  with  increasing impeller  rototion  speed for the  mean  residence  time of 3 and 4 minutes,  while for the  mean residence  time of  6 minutes,  the iodine  selectivity increase  with  increasing  impeller  rotation speed. Increasing  the  mean residence  time from 3 to  4 minutes will decrease  the  iodine selectivity, while  increasing  the  mean residence  time further to  6 minutes  will  increase  the selectivity.  The theoretical  prediction  using  Packet  Difusion  Model agree fairly well  with  the experimental data.  The  experimental studies  also  showed  that  the feed position  in  the  region  of high  turbulent  intensity  (impeller  region)  give  lower iodine  selectivity compaired  to  the selectivity  in  the  region  of lower  turbulent  intensity.  The  Packet  Dffision  Model  cannot simulate  the  effect  offeed  position  on the  iodine  selectivity. Keywords:  Packet  Diffusion Model, Micromixing, and  Continuous  Stirred  Tank  Reactor


In 1963, the leading fisheries targeting Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) in the Norwegian Sea and North Sea suddenly collapsed without any warning. Little is known about this collapse and several hypotheses have been put forward, such as changes in migratory routes, recruitment failure or eradication of a sub-population: all of these hypotheses could result from natural causes and/or from overfishing. To help explain this mysterious event, an original data set of the main bluefin tuna fisheries of the 20th century, including total catch and size composition of the catch, has been compiled and analysed. The results reveal a strong and unambiguous link between the Nordic purse seine and Spanish trap fisheries during the 1950s and 1960s. However, this link vanished during the 1970s. In addition, the North-west Atlantic and Mediterranean trap fisheries appeared also to be partially connected to the Nordic fisheries. During the 1950s and 1960s, the main migration routes of bluefin tuna were probably from the Mediterranean spawning grounds and from the West Atlantic coasts to the Norwegian coast and North Sea, which were probably a key feeding ground at that time. The analyses also lead to the conclusion that interactions between environmental, trophic and fishing processes have probably affected bluefin tuna migration patterns which would have finally caused the Nordic fisheries collapse. This retrospective analysis finally leads to an original – albeit more speculative – hypothesis concerning Atlantic bluefin tuna population structure, therein conjectured as an assemblage of at least three sub-populations.


Summary

Previous research has identified the generation of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emanating from renewable energy project transmission cables to be a potential stressor to aquatic communities. In this study, we investigated whether the presence of a high voltage submarine transmission cable affected the spatial pattern and composition of nearshore and offshore fishes at a Laurentian Great Lakes site. The transmission cable investigated in this study runs 7.8 km along the lakebed of Lake Ontario, carrying electricity from the Wolfe Island wind power project to the city of Kingston, Ontario. In autumn of 2011, both nearshore electrofishing and deeper-water fisheries acoustic surveys were conducted along transects at varying distances to the cable. For both habitat types, no detectable effects of the cable on the fish community were found. Local habitat variables, including substrate or depth, were more important in explaining variation in fish density than proximity to the cable. Common species encountered during the surveys were round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) in the nearshore and alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) in the deeper channel. American eel (Anguilla rostrata), thought to be an electromagnetically sensitive species, was also encountered during the surveys including in close proximity to the cable. More robust impact assessments require sampling fishes before a cable installation, over greater time frames (additional seasons or years), and habitats that support more diverse native assemblages.


Microfinance industry has faced an exponential growth within developing regions over the last two decades. Sri Lanka has jumped on the microfinance bandwagon just like its South Asian counterparts. MFI's elusive focus was to provide affordable financial services to the poor, low-income households. As a result, microfinance has been firmly established as one of the main contributors towards achieving Financial Inclusion. Microfinance interest rates are high in Sri Lanka mostly ranging from 20% to 72%. This is due to the high risks involved and high transaction costs. MFI's customers are mostly rural dwellers residing in geographically dispersed areas with a sparse population is one of the leading causes of high transaction costs. Based on thirty women micro-loan borrowers who were interviewed through qualitative focus group discussion and in-depth interviews conducted within Northern Province of Sri Lanka, It was seen that majority of the microfinance agents/officers followed time consuming, costly and manual practices. Such as manually filling the forms, conducts regular weekly meeting to collect repayments and visits the head office to update information and handover the repayments collected. This paper aims to discuss on how ICT usage can reduce transaction costs and streamline loan management practices by improving efficiency and effectiveness. This paper further seeks to explicate microfinance's role to achieve financial inclusion within the Northern Province, Sri Lanka.


Hydrofoils have been applied to many different types of marine craft, including yachts. However, most of these have been for attempts at speed records or by inventors and, notably, the international Moth class, but so far not to modern racing yachts. They provide a number of advantages, and this project has investigated the feasibility of application to a modern canting-keel maxi yacht. The investigation began with drawing up a set of lines for a modern canting-keel maxi yacht. A resistance was then predicted, both with and without foils, using the Delft Systematic Yacht Series and a three-dimensional analysis of the foil-borne resistance. A towing rig was designed and constructed, and several models built and tested on open water and in a swimming pool to compare the resistance and performance, both with and without foils. Finally, a radio-controlled sailing model was constructed and tested, both with and without foils. The results showed a clear speed advantage for the foil-assisted maxi yacht. Just as with canting keels, fitting foils to an ocean-racing maxi will not be without its problems. However, the evidence is compelling, and it is considered only a matter of time before someone sets a precedent with a full-scale yacht, which others will follow.


Abstract It is argued that the way to bring about development in the Northeast is by economically integrating the region with the vibrant markets of Southeast Asia and East Asia through the Act East Policy. Accordingly, a number of projects have been initiated to improve connectivity between the Northeast and the neighbouring countries. It is believed that connectivity projects will act as growth corridors resulting in economic development of the region. However, to effectively implement the policy and to reap its benefits, it is imperative to overcome challenges such as adverse security situations, bad governance, lack of entrepreneurial skills, absence of markets, and reluctant neighbours.


The Zn inactive class of glyoxalase I (Glo1) metalloenzymes are typically homodimeric with two metal-dependent active sites. While the two active sites share identical amino acid composition, this class of enzyme is optimally active with only one metal per homodimer. We have determined the X-ray crystal structure of GloA2, a Zn inactive Glo1 enzyme from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The presented structures exhibit an unprecedented metal-binding arrangement consistent with half-of-sites activity: one active site contains a single activating Ni(2+) ion, whereas the other contains two inactivating Zn(2+) ions. Enzymological experiments prompted by the binuclear Zn(2+) site identified a novel catalytic property of GloA2. The enzyme can function as a Zn(2+) /Co(2+) -dependent hydrolase, in addition to its previously determined glyoxalase I activity. The presented findings demonstrate that GloA2 can accommodate two distinct metal-binding arrangements simultaneously, each of which catalyzes a different reaction.


Steady operation was one of the main objectives of wind turbine controlling. Online monitoring and fault diagnosis system had been installed on the wind turbine, the characters of system natural frequency were obtained by comparing collecting datum in site with theory analysis result. Wind turbine rotation speed should avoid [8.4r/min,10r/min] base on the characters to guarantee no resonance and avoid severe vibration. Such realizes wind turbine steady operation.


Hepatocytes have been characterized that were isolated with sodium perchlorate from the livers of rats both intact and given a single injection of a carcinogen--4-dimethylaminoazobenzene. A decreased number of big hepatocytes (600-900 mkm2) and the appearance of small hepatocytes (75-120 mkm2) were observed 7 days after the carcinogen injection. An excessive accumulation of glycogen was shown in certain hepatocytes. By the 30th day the picture was nearly normal.


The CLW modulator represents the first successful application of high-power IGBT switching modules to meeting the requirements of multi-megawatt peak power modulators for microwave amplifier applications. Unlike some other solid-state modulators, no semiconductor switches are placed in series in this system. Neither are the switches connected in parallel. Rather, each switch drives a segment of the pulse transformer core, in a configuration we refer to as a "fractional-turn primary" arrangement. As no PFN is required the width of the output pulse can be adjusted by simply adjusting the trigger duration of the IGBT switches and no PFN ripple occurs on the pulse-top. The volume of the complete modulator is about 10% of a classical unit of the same power. The advantages of this new concept will be discussed with details of a unit that has been in continuous use for more than two years.


Ten phosphatized specimens of a small (<180 micrometers) animal displaying clear bilaterian features have been recovered from the Doushantuo Formation, China, dating from 40 to 55 million years before the Cambrian. Seen in sections, this animal (Vernanimalcula guizhouena gen. et sp. nov.) had paired coeloms extending the length of the gut; paired external pits that could be sense organs; bilateral, anterior-posterior organization; a ventrally directed anterior mouth with thick walled pharynx; and a triploblastic structure. The structural complexity is that of an adult rather than a larval form. These fossils provide the first evidence confirming the phylogenetic inference that Bilateria arose well before the Cambrian.


This paper studies the spatial economic activity in Turkey and estimates the correlation between wages and consumer demand across NUTS1 regions of Turkey. First, simple market potential function is used to test whether closeness to larger markets has impact on wages. Second, Krugman (1993) economic geography model is estimated to see the agglomeration forces in Turkey. The results suggest that wages are higher in the regions close to larger markets and low trade costs and high share of expenditure on manufactured goods are the forces of agglomeration in Turkey.


We consider the equilibrium choice of selling mechanisms by competing firms. For a model where a number of sellers choose sequentially between any two selling mechanisms, there is a unique (subgame perfect) equilibrium under fairly natural assumptions about the monotonicity and differences of the two mechanisms. All sellers choose the mechanism that has the higher per-seller surplus at a critical mass number of sellers. If a mechanism is efficient or is favored by the buyer in some "strong" sense, it will be selected as the equilibrium mechanism. Otherwise, the less efficient mechanism can emerge in equilibrium, even when the number of sellers is arbitrarily large. An increase in the number of sellers need not increase the buyer's surplus, and can sometimes lead to a less eiAcient equilibrium mechanism. When more than two selling mechanisms are available, however, the equilibrium may no long be unique; and there are usually multiple equilibria when sellers choose selling mechanisms simultaneously.


Traumatic brain injury (TBI) modulates several cell signaling pathways in the hippocampus critical for memory formation. Previous studies have found that the cAMP-protein kinase A signaling pathway is downregulated after TBI and that treatment with a phosphodiesterase (PDE) 4 inhibitor rolipram rescues the decrease in cAMP. In the present study, we examined the effect of rolipram on TBI-induced cognitive impairments. At 2 weeks after moderate fluid-percussion brain injury or sham surgery, adult male Sprague Dawley rats received vehicle or rolipram (0.03 mg/kg) 30 min before water maze acquisition or cue and contextual fear conditioning. TBI animals treated with rolipram showed a significant improvement in water maze acquisition and retention of both cue and contextual fear conditioning compared with vehicle-treated TBI animals. Cue and contextual fear conditioning significantly increased phosphorylated CREB levels in the hippocampus of sham animals, but not in TBI animals. This deficit in CREB activation during learning was rescued in TBI animals treated with rolipram. Hippocampal long-term potentiation was reduced in TBI animals, and this was also rescued with rolipram treatment. These results indicate that the PDE4 inhibitor rolipram rescues cognitive impairments after TBI, and this may be mediated through increased CREB activation during learning.


In this paper, a novel compact microstrip low-pass filter (LPF) with ultra wide stop band and sharp roll off, is proposed. In the proposed structure, a high impedance transmission line is loaded by compact microstrip resonant cells, which results in ultra wide stopband. The −3 dB cut-off frequency of filter is 1.5 GHz and the maximum insertion loss is <0.1 dB in the passband. The proposed LPF presents extremely wide stopband from 1.68 to 44 GHz, with more than the −20 dB attenuation level, which suppresses the 2nd to 29th harmonics with high rejection levels. The size of the proposed LPF is only 0.1 λg × 0.19 λg, which shows excellent size reduction. There is a good agreement between the simulated and measured results.


The economics of health care and health draws from a number of fields, ranging from government policy makers, economist, health care professionals, as well as watch-groups. Statistical Data


3D MoO3/PANI hybrid nanosheet networks were fabricated via hydrothermal, freeze-drying and electropolymerization methods. The structure, morphology, optical and electrochemical properties of the hybrid material were characterized using scanning electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and electrochemical measurements. It was found that the conductivity of the 3D MoO3 nanosheet networks was enormously enhanced by introducing PANI. The 3D MoO3/PANI hybrid nanosheet networks show a complementary dual-electrochromic effect (ranging from light yellow to purple then dark blue), fast switching speed of bleached and colored states (0.9 and 1.0 s, respectively), superior coloration efficiency and better cycling stability. The results demonstrate that optical and electrochemical properties of 3D MoO3/PANI hybrid nanosheet networks were improved compared to those of 3D MoO3 nanosheet networks. The unique inorganic–organic hybrid nanosheet networks can be used as effective electrode materials in the optical–electrochemical field.


Microbial DNA has multiple immune effects including the capacity to induce polyclonal B cell activation and cytokine production in normal mice. We recently described the accelerated induction of anti-DNA Abs in NZB/NZW mice immunized with Escherichia coli (EC) dsDNA; paradoxically these mice developed less renal disease than unimmunized mice or mice immunized with calf thymus DNA. We postulated that alterations in cytokine production induced by bacterial DNA may play a key role in renal protection. To determine the effect of bacterial DNA on cytokine production in NZB/NZW mice, we measured the serum cytokine levels, cell culture supernatant cytokine levels, and number of cytokine-producing splenocytes in NZB/NZW mice injected with EC DNA, calf thymus DNA, or an immune active oligonucleotide. There was a 10- to 25-fold increase in the number of cells secreting IFN-gamma compared with IL-4 in mice immunized with EC DNA. IL-12-secreting cells were also increased by bacterial DNA immunization. In parallel with the increase in IFN-gamma secreting cells, there was a significant rise in serum IFN-gamma levels in mice receiving EC DNA. These results indicate that EC DNA modulates systemic cytokine levels in NZB/NZW mice, selectively increasing IL-12 and IFN-gamma while decreasing IL-4 production. The cytokine response of NZB/NZW mice to bacterial DNA may be of significance in disease pathogenesis and relevant to the treatment of lupus-like disease.


Bureaucracy is characterised by rules, specific sphere of competence, hierarchy, specialized training, separation from means of production or administration and the recording in writing. The NHS is not a typical bureaucratic organization, but it has some of its characteristics. The alternative models (democratic, matrix-type structure) do not seem to respond to the need for change. It is suggested that the characteristics of an organization's structure be treated as variables. Partial alternatives are discussed. The relationship between the goals, the users and the workers - workers and users' participation in the planning and control of the NHS. Conflict as a motor for change. Controlling power - representatives of the community and of the workers. The person in the organization - involvement of all workers in management at different levels and the development of persons towards their full capacity. The case is made for the person-centered approach to management.


Abstract. An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach is used to downscale ECHAM5 GCM temperature (T) and rainfall (R) fields to RegCM3 regional model scale over Europe. The main inputs to the neural network were the ECHAM5 fields and topography, and RegCM3 topography. An ANN trained for the period 1960–1980 was able to recreate the RegCM3 1981–2000 mean T and R fields with reasonable accuracy. The ANN showed an improvement over a simple lapse-rate correction method for T, although the ANN R field did not capture all the fine-scale detail of the RCM field. An ANN trained over a smaller area of Southern Europe was able to capture this detail with more precision. The ANN was unable to accurately recreate the RCM climate change (CC) signal between 1981–2000 and 2081–2100, and it is suggested that this is because the relationship between the GCM fields, RCM fields and topography is not constant with time and changing climate. An ANN trained with three ten-year "time-slices" was able to better reproduce the RCM CC signal, particularly for the full European domain. This approach shows encouraging results but will need further refinement before becoming a viable supplement to dynamical regional climate modelling of temperature and rainfall.


In this study, we demonstrated photoelectrochemical (PEC) hydrogen generation using p-GaN photoelectrodes associated with immersed finger-type indium tin oxide (IF-ITO) ohmic contacts. The IF-ITO/p-GaN photoelectrode scheme exhibits higher photocurrent and gas generation rate compared with p-GaN photoelectrodes without IF-ITO ohmic contacts. In addition, the critical external bias for detectable hydrogen generation can be effectively reduced by the use of IF-ITO ohmic contacts. This finding can be attributed to the greatly uniform distribution of the IF-ITO/p-GaN photoelectrode applied fields over the whole working area. As a result, the collection efficiency of photo-generated holes by electrode contacts is higher than that of p-GaN photoelectrodes without IF-ITO contacts. Microscopy revealed a tiny change on the p-GaN surfaces before and after hydrogen generation. In contrast, photoelectrodes composed of n-GaN have a short lifetime due to n-GaN corrosion during hydrogen generation. Findings of this study indicate that the ITO finger contacts on p-GaN layer is a potential candidate as photoelectrodes for PEC hydrogen generation.


Flowing supercritical CO(2) was used to activate a cross section of microporous coordination polymers (MCPs) directly from DMF, thus avoiding exchange with a volatile solvent. Most MCPs displayed exceptional surface areas directly after treatment although those with coordinatively unsaturated metals benefit from heating. The method presents an advance in efficiency of activation and quality of material obtained.


Having a well-informed, skilled and motivated volunteer force enables us to deliver the best possible service to children, young people and their families. Like most hospices, our organisation requires staff and volunteers to undertake statutory/mandatory training in order to ensure the safety of its' people and the quality of services delivered to children, young people and their families. We have adopted a tailored and inclusive approach to volunteer learning and development. Volunteers receive relevant content, appropriate to their role, and it is delivered in a format that is cost-effective, accessible and scalable. The development of a core learning matrix and e-learning platform unique to volunteers was developed by the Voluntary Services Team in conjunction with volunteers. This provided a solution to the volunteer statutory/mandatory learning dilemma – balancing legislative requirements with a volunteer engagement and inclusion agenda. Volunteers complete a short learning package that is accessible, tailored and proportional to the level of risk attached to their role. Statutory/mandatory training has been rebranded as volunteer core learning and assessments that had in the past provoked anxiety have been removed. A communications plan shared with staff ensured consistent positive messaging to volunteers and volunteer communications clearly sold the benefits of the new system to volunteers. The matrix and e-learning platform were launched with volunteers in April 2016 and feedback to date has been excellent. Our organisation now has an approach to volunteer core learning that complements the direction of travel in volunteer engagement. Lack of time and too much bureaucracy are well-documented barriers to volunteering. Both these barriers have been addressed by this project. Our organisation has received a lot of interest from other hospices in our volunteer core learning matrix which is why we are keen to share this piece of work more widely at the Hospice UK conference.


Abstract:
The object of this research is to analyse the moral debates, which form the backdrop to the legal issue of patenting human genetic material. The research takes into account Western and Islamic jurisprudence to answer the research question. The moral issues are identified from the jurisprudence developed before the European Patent Office (EPO). The issues are analysed from the standpoint of Western literature and are then shifted to Islamic jurisprudence to enable the framing of policy issues for patenting human genetic material in Islamic countries, particularly Pakistan. These four research questions are: (a) Is patenting human genetic equivalent to patenting human life? (b) Is removing genetic material from embryos against morality? (c) Is patenting human genetic material a commodification of human life? and (d) Does patenting human genetic material inhibit further research?

The research argues that patenting human genetic material is not equivalent to patenting human life as there is no life in genetic material. To this end, the discussion examines the concepts of morality in Western thought, which is followed by a discussion of theories about life to determine whether there is life in genetic material. The discussion takes into account biological, vitalist and materialistic concepts of life to argue that there is no life in genetic material. It also takes into account the jurisprudence developed before the EPO to argue that genetic material does not contain a life. The issue is then looked into from an Islamic perspective. It is argued that Islam does not consider human genetic material to be a life either.

The research examined the issue of whether removing genetic material from human embryos is against morality. The Examining Division took a deontological approach in the WARF and the University of Edinburgh stem cell cases by refusing to allow the use of embryos for inventions involving the use of stem cells. The approach shifted in Appeal when the Enlarged Board of Appeal took a utilitarian approach and refused a patent on totipotent stem cells because they have the potential to develop into a human being while allowing a patent on pluripotent stem cells, which cannot differentiate into a human being. It is argued that there is evidence of the EPO's taking utilitarian approach in many cases such as the Relaxin case, the Oncomouse case, the Upjohn mouse case and so forth; therefore, the EPO should also take the utilitarian approach to this issue, particularly for those embryos which cannot be used otherwise, i.e. embryos which are in excess after their use in in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) or after permitted abortions. Those embryos are either to be destroyed or frozen indefinitely. It is argued that those embryos could be used for therapeutic purposes. From an Islamic perspective, the discussion revealed that the test is ensoulment. An embryo does not contain a life before its ensoulment. Therefore, the Sunni tradition of Islam permits the use of embryos before their ensoulment. However, it prohibits the intentional creation of embryos for therapeutic uses. The Shia tradition of Islam not only permits the use of embryos before their ensoulment, but also permits the intentional creation of embryos for therapeutic uses provided they are used before their ensoulment.

The research also looked into the issue of whether patenting human genetic material is commodification, and if so, whether it is permissible. The discussion looks into theories of commodification to inidicate the concept of commodification in the Western perspective. In this section, the discussion covers the views on pro-commodification and anti-commodification and it is argued that the most common view is that there are some aspects of life that cannot be commodified and human genetic material is one of them. The research argues that it is commodification when human genetic material is sold, but when human genetic material is donated, it is not commodification if inventions using donated genetic material are patented. This is because economic value is not added on the genetic material but it is the price of the intellectual property contributed by the patent holder. From an Islamic perspective, it is argued that patenting human genetic material is moral provided it is given in donation and with free consent.

The discussion examined the last issue of whether patenting inhibits further research. It is argued that giving broad patents, such as giving patents on genetic material, inhibits further research. The patent on genetic material serves as a gatekeeper for upstream and downstream research. It blocks research to improve on the existing research and prevents further research that necessarily involves the use of the patented gene. Therefore, it is argued that the patent offices should avoid giving broad patents and the patent law should not allow the grant of patents on genes, but the patent should be on the use of genes so that the interests of research should not be blocked. From an Islamic perspective, it is argued that the interest of furthering research is morality; therefore, the patent offices of Islamic countries in particular should not grant broad patents.


Artificial general intelligence (AGI) may herald our extinction, according to AI safety research. Yet claims regarding AGI must rely upon mathematical formalisms -- theoretical agents we may analyse or attempt to build. AIXI appears to be the only such formalism supported by proof that its behaviour is optimal, a consequence of its use of compression as a proxy for intelligence. Unfortunately, AIXI is incomputable and claims regarding its behaviour highly subjective. We argue that this is because AIXI formalises cognition as taking place in isolation from the environment in which goals are pursued (Cartesian dualism). We propose an alternative, supported by proof and experiment, which overcomes these problems. Integrating research from cognitive science with AI, we formalise an enactive model of learning and reasoning to address the problem of subjectivity. This allows us to formulate a different proxy for intelligence, called weakness, which addresses the problem of incomputability. We prove optimal behaviour is attained when weakness is maximised. This proof is supplemented by experimental results comparing weakness and description length (the closest analogue to compression possible without reintroducing subjectivity). Weakness outperforms description length, suggesting it is a better proxy. Furthermore we show that, if cognition is enactive, then minimisation of description length is neither necessary nor sufficient to attain optimal performance, undermining the notion that compression is closely related to intelligence. However, there remain open questions regarding the implementation of scale-able AGI. In the short term, these results may be best utilised to improve the performance of existing systems. For example, our results explain why Deepmind's Apperception Engine is able to generalise effectively, and how to replicate that performance by maximising weakness.


OBJECTIVE To evaluate the clinical and angiographic outcome in patients with in-stent restenosis in small coronary arteries and repeat target lesion revascularisation. DESIGN Patients with in-stent restenosis in coronary arteries ⩽ 2.85 mm were eligible for the study and underwent target lesion revascularisation. Clinical and angiographic variables were assessed during a six month follow up period. RESULTS 73 patients with 79 lesions were treated by percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (47%), excimer laser angioplasty (25%), or restenting (28%). The mean (SD) reference diameter before target lesion revascularisation was 2.12 (0.5) mm. Procedural success was achieved in all cases, but 57% of the patients had restenosis after six months. The rate of further restenosis was higher with laser angioplasty (78%) than with restenting (47%) or balloon angioplasty alone (49%, p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Treatment for in-stent restenosis in small coronary arteries is feasible and safe, with a second restenosis rate comparable to large coronary artery series. The strategy of target lesion revascularisation influences further in-stent restenosis, with an increased rate with laser angioplasty compared with restenting and repeat dilatation alone.


While it is preferable that Linked Data is published without access or licence restrictions, there will always remain certain datasets which, perhaps due to financial considerations, cannot be published as Linked Open Data. If these valuable datasets do join the Web of Linked Data, it will be as Linked Closed Data - Linked Data with access and license restrictions. In this paper, we outline a research agenda for Linked Closed Data that considers the effects that access and license restrictions may have on the Web of Linked Data. If implemented poorly, access restrictions have the potential to break URI resolvability, but even when implemented well, we can expect them to affect dataset selection processes and inter-dataset link creation rates. Additionally, there remains the technical challenge of developing and standardising access restriction and automated payment techniques for the Web of Linked Data.


This study investigates the robustness and stability of a likelihood ratio–based (LR-based) forensic text comparison (FTC) system against the size of background population data. Focus is centred on a score-based approach for estimating authorship LRs. Each document is represented with a bag-of-words model, and the Cosine distance is used as the score-generating function. A set of population data that differed in the number of scores was synthesised 20 times using the Monte-Carol simulation technique. The FTC system's performance with different population sizes was evaluated by a gradient metric of the log–LR cost (Cllr). The experimental results revealed two outcomes: 1) that the score-based approach is rather robust against a small population size—in that, with the scores obtained from the 40~60 authors in the database, the stability and the performance of the system become fairly comparable to the system with a maximum number of authors (720); and 2) that poor performance in terms of Cllr, which occurred because of limited background population data, is largely due to poor calibration. The results also indicated that the score-based approach is more robust against data scarcity than the feature-based approach; however, this finding obliges further study.


Hereditary angioedema (HAE) is an autosomal dominant disorder characterized by decreased expression or loss of function of C1 esterase inhibitor (C1-INH). In 2010, international guidelines were published regarding the management of both acute HAE attacks and prophylactic treatment. Additionally, several clinical trials for HAE therapies were published in 2010. The purpose of this study was to assess the adherence of internationally based physicians to the current evidence-based studies and the 2010 International Consensus Algorithm. Internationally based physician members of the World Allergy Organization were surveyed regarding their diagnosis and management of patients with HAE. Only physicians who treat HAE patients were included in the analyses. Of the 201 responding physicians, the most highly used therapies for acute HAE attacks were C1-INH (59%), fresh frozen plasma (FFP; 42%), and icatibant (32%). For their preferred long-term prophylactic therapy, 74% used attenuated androgens and 18% used antifibrinolytics. Physicians in Latin and South America, in particular, were less likely than their international counterparts to prescribe C1-INH and more likely to prescribe attenuated androgens and FFP, and European physicians were the most likely to prescribe icatibant. Over one-third of physicians described themselves as "unfamiliar" with emerging HAE therapies. Many international physicians neither follow current evidence-based studies nor adhere to the 2010 International Consensus Algorithm for treating HAE. Further education of physicians, government authorities, and professional medical groups is necessary to enhance availability to therapies and appropriate use of them.


In this paper, to reveal the influence of multilayer network structure on opinion diffusion in social networks, we study an opinion dynamics model based on DeGroot model on multilayer networks. We find that if the influence matrix integrating the information of connectedness for each layer and correlation between layers is strongly connected and aperiodic, all agents' opinions will reach a consensus. However, if there are stubborn agents in the networks, regular agents' opinions will finally be confined to the convex combinations of the stubborn agents'. Specifically, if all stubborn agents hold the same opinion, even if the agents only exist on a certain layer, their opinions will diffuse to the entire multilayer networks. This paper not only characterizes the influence of multilayer network topology and agent attribute on opinion diffusion in a holistic way, but also demonstrates the importance of coupling agents which play an indispensable role in some social and economic situations.


A nationally-funded detox unit for 15-to-21 year-olds with chemical dependence at the Aislinn Treatment Centre in Ballyragget, Co Kilkenny, which is the only service of its kind for this age group in Ireland, is now actively inviting referrals from GPs countrywide.

The manager of the four-bed detox unit believes that raising awareness of the service could help the Centre better meet the needs of its target population.

Peter Kelly said: "We have an open referral pathway and we would welcome additional referrals from GPs throughout Ireland.

"We are the only service of our kind in Ireland and we are very successfully supported by our local GP."

The Centre, which opened in April following the evaluation of an 18-month long pilot project, is holding an open day between 9.30am and 1pm on Monday, January 13, for La Nua detox, which is a nurse-led and medically-supervised unit.

It offers clients addicted to benzodiazepines, alcohol and opiates a reducing pharmacological detox regimen, inclusive of on-site methadone titration.

Cannabis- and stimulant-dependent clients are also accepted for detox and can receive medication for symptomatic relief of their withdrawals.


As the meaning of spas in the classical period, the public baths were a reference point for social life in the medieval Islamic culture, where the relation between Muslim citizens and water was a very important aspect. In addition to the hygienic aspect, the water had also two strong symbolic values: the first, in "sure" which referred to a paradisiac premium; the second was for its purifying value as an important part of rites of ablution required before praying. The result is that public baths become an important urban element and they can reveal ancient traces about the urban context. The Hamman of Granada, called "Banuelo", is one of the most representatives because of many factors: its good state of preservation and its considerable size allow well to take the suggestion that its plan fits in a perfect rectangle. The aim of the study presented here is to compare, starting and exploiting the digital survey techniques, the conformity of this Hamman with the known case studies of the baths and to focus on the urban-environmental relations in this area. These aspects are very important for the purposes of this research: the presence of an archetypal and so great bath, confirms that the typical model, with the entrance not in line with the main road, is certainly indicative of the presence of an important street, slightly away from the current one (Carrera del Darro). Considering the distribution of this Hamman in the city, the lack of mosques in the area, the proximity of to the city walls and the size of the bath, it is plausible to hypothesize the presence of a single complex with its own city door. This study will present a specific hypothesis about the ancient shape and organization of Granada in this part of the town.


This paper presents a scheme for the detection and isolation of incipient sensor faults in a flight control actuation system. The system considered here is a practical system, which is an electromechanical flight actuator, based on a DC torque motor. The scheme utilizes the analytical redundancy that exists in the system between the linear actuator position, motor shaft velocity and motor current for detection and isolation of the incipient sensor faults. The scheme is based on a single Luenberger observer, which is driven by the motor shaft velocity sensor. Residuals that can indicate various types of faults are generated from the estimate of the sensor output provided by the Luenberger observer. The capability of the residuals, to detect and isolate incipient faults in the sensors, such as bias errors and scale factor errors is demonstrated through simulations. In the event of fault in the position sensor, real time reconfiguration using an estimate of the position from the observer is used for continued operation of the system. The robustness of the fault detection scheme to parameter variations is also examined.


We consider the field of machine learning and where it is both useful, and not useful, for the distribution grid and buildings interface. While analytics, in general, is a growing field of interest, and often seen as the golden goose in the burgeoning distribution grid industry, its application is often limited by communications infrastructure, or lack of a focused technical application. Overall, the linkage of analytics to purposeful application in the grid space has been limited. In this paper we consider the field of machine learning as a subset of analytical techniques, and discuss its ability and limitations to enable the future distribution grid. To that end, we also consider the potential for mixing distributed and centralized analytics and the pros and cons of these approaches. There is an exponentially expanding volume of measured data being generated on the distribution grid, which, with appropriate application of analytics, may be transformed into intelligible, actionable information that can be provided to the right actors — such as grid and building operators, at the appropriate time to enhance grid or building resilience, efficiency, and operations against various metrics or goals — such as total carbon reduction or other economic benefit to customers. While some basic analysis into these data streams can provide a wealth of information, computational and human boundaries on performing the analysis are becoming significant, with more data and multi-objective concerns. Efficient applications of analysis and the machine learning field are being considered in the loop. This paper describes benefits and limits of present machine-learning applications for use on the grid and presents a series of case studies that illustrate the potential benefits of developing advanced local multi-variate analytics machine-learning-based applications.


Rill and gully erosion is a critical environmental problem in India, where vegetal cover plays vital role in the runoff and soil loss reduction and stabilization of disturbed systems. Here, the impact of vegetal cover on runoff and soil erosion in lateritic environment was assessed through experimental observation on five plots (< 5 m 2 area ), containing varied vegetal cover at successive time period. Runoff and rate of soil loss were measured in each plot under seven natural rain storm conditions and compared them. The observed data showed bare plots experienced larger sediment yield than they are with vegetal cover. The simulation results corroborated significant relationship between the soil detachment and explanatory variables, e.g. runoff volume and vegetal cover ( R 2 = 0.95; P<0.001 ). A very significant relationship was found between vegetal cover and sediment concentration ( Adjusted R 2 = 0.91, P<0.001 ). This plot-scale study has the advantage of allowing for detailed process monitoring at micro scale, providing a basic description of the most relevant aspect of vegetal cover on sediment yield. Keywords : Rill-gully erosion; lateritic environment; sediment yield; vegetation cover


Abstract The reactivity of phosphoric acid (H3PO4) toward 2,2'-bipyridine (bpy) and 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) nickel dibromide complexes [NiBr2(bpy)2] and [NiBr2(phen)2] has been investigated. It was found that this interaction leads to new nickel phosphate complexes [Ni(HPO4)(bpy)2] and [Ni(HPO4)(phen)2]. X-ray crystal structure analysis of the obtained complexes indicates that the nickel ions have a distorted octahedral coordination and doubly bridged by two oxygen atoms of the phosphate moiety. Graphical Abstract


A new method for inferring specific stochastic grammars is presented. The process called Hybrid Model Learner (HML) applies entropy rate to guide the agglomeration process of type ab->c. Each rule derived from the input sequence is associated with a certain entropy-rate difference. A grammar automatically inferred from an example sequence can be used to detect and recognize similar structures in unknown sequences. Two important schools of thought, that of structuralism and the other of 'stochasticism' are discussed, including how these two have met and are influencing current statistical learning methods. It is argued that syntactic methods may provide universal tools to model and describe structures from the very elementary level of signals up to the highest one, that of language.


Objective: To identify locations to target for suicide preventive measures to reduce suicide by jumping in Taipei city, Taiwan. Method: A descriptive study of suicide by jumping from a height was conducted in Taipei, 2002–2005. Information on sites from which suicide jumps occurred was obtained from death certificates as well as ambulance, medical and newspaper records. Results: Of the 210 jumping suicide deaths with sufficient information on the site of the jump, private residential buildings comprised the highest proportion (67%) of all jumping sites, followed by business office buildings (13%), hospitals (8%) and shopping malls (5%). However, the number of jumping suicides per 1000 sites was highest for hospitals (307 per 1000 hospitals) and shopping malls (275 per 1000 shopping malls) compared with 2 per 1000 for residential buildings. Women and older people who died by jumping were more likely to have jumped from buildings where they lived, compared with men and other age groups. Conclusion: Although two-thirds of suicides occurred from residential buildings, the sites with the greatest number of jumps per location were hospitals and shopping malls, making them the most cost-effective focus for preventive efforts.


Abstract. We present a comprehensive, interdisciplinary project which demonstrates that large-scale plantations of Jatropha curcas – if established in hot, dry coastal areas around the world – could capture 17–25 t of carbon dioxide per hectare per year from the atmosphere (over a 20 yr period). Based on recent farming results it is confirmed that the Jatropha curcas plant is well adapted to harsh environments and is capable of growing alone or in combination with other tree and shrub species with minimal irrigation in hot deserts where rain occurs only sporadically. Our investigations indicate that there is sufficient unused and marginal land for the widespread cultivation of Jatropha curcas to have a significant impact on atmospheric CO2 levels at least for several decades. In a system in which desalinated seawater is used for irrigation and for delivery of mineral nutrients, the sequestration costs were estimated to range from 42–63 EUR per tonne CO2. This result makes carbon farming a technology that is competitive with carbon capture and storage (CCS). In addition, high-resolution simulations using an advanced land-surface–atmosphere model indicate that a 10 000 km2 plantation could produce a reduction in mean surface temperature and an onset or increase in rain and dew fall at a regional level. In such areas, plant growth and CO2 storage could continue until permanent woodland or forest had been established. In other areas, salinization of the soil may limit plant growth to 2–3 decades whereupon irrigation could be ceased and the captured carbon stored as woody biomass.


In-plane All-photonic Transduction Method For Silicon Photonic Microcantilever Array Sensor Jong Wook Noh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Doctor of Philosophy We have invented an in-plane all-photonic transduction method for photonic microcantilever arrays that is scalable to large arrays for sensing applications in both bioand nanotechnology. Our photonic transduction method utilizes a microcantilever forming a single mode rib waveguide and a differential splitter consisting of an asymmetric multimode waveguide and a Y-branch waveguide splitter. The differential splitter's outputs are used to form a differential signal that has a monotonic response to microcantilever deflection. A differential splitter using an amorphous silicon strip-loaded multimode rib waveguide is designed and fabricated to demonstrate the feasibility of the in-plane photonic transduction method. Our initial implementation shows that the sensitivity of the device is 0.135×10 nm which is comparable to that of other readout methods currently employed for static-deflection based sensors. Through further analysis of the optical characteristics of the differential splitter, a new asymmetric double-step multimode rib waveguide has been devised for the differential splitter. The new differential splitter not only improves sensitivity and reduces size, but also eliminates several fabrication issues. Furthermore, photonic microcantilever arrays are integrated with the differential splitters and a waveguide splitter network in order to demonstrate scalability. We have achieved a measured sensitivity of 0.32×10 nm, which is 2.4 times greater than our initial result while the waveguide length is 6 times shorter. Analytical examination of the relationship between sensitivity and structure of the asymmetric double-step rib waveguide shows a way to further improve performance of the photonic microcantilever sensor. We have demonstrated experimentally that greater sensitivity is achieved when increasing the step height of the double-step rib waveguide. Moreover, the improved sensitivity of the photonic microcantilever system, 0.77×10 nm, is close to the best reported sensitivities of other transduction methods (~10 nm).


Introduction: The purpose of this paper is to determinate the position, depth, dip direction and dip angle the faults in the South region of Vietnam from the total magnetic intensity anomalies, that reduced to the magnetic pole (RTP).
Methods: Based on the Oasis Montaj software, we proposed a new way to compute the positions and the depth to the top of the faults by combining the Tilt angle and the Euler deconvolution methods. In addition, the angle and direction of the dip of theses faults were also determined by considering maximum of the total horizontal derivative of the RTP upward continuation at the different height levels.
Results: The results show that there are 12 faults along the longitudinal direction, latitudinal direction, Northwest — Southeast direction and Northeast — Southwest direction with the mazimum depth is about 3100 m and the dip angle changes in the range of 65-82◦.
Results: These indicate that these methods are valuable tools for specifying the characteristics of geology, contribute to give and confirm the useful information on geological structure in the South region of Vietnam.


A cross-layer analysis framework is developed for the design and performance evaluations of cooperative automatic repeat request (ARQ) with opportunistic multi-point relaying (OMPR) in mobile networks. In particular, three exemplar OMPR functions and their combinations are studied for opportunistic distributed space–time coded (ODSTC) retransmissions in time-division duplex long-term evolution advanced systems. According to the complexities and coordination delays of the OMPR functions, the influences of channel fading on the spatial and temporal diversities offered by ODSTC-based ARQ and their impacts on the system throughput, transmission energy consumption, and relays' queuing delays can be evaluated effectively under this framework. Based on the analytical results, a rate adaptation strategy is also proposed to maximize the system throughput subject to constraints on queuing delays at relay stations (RSs) and packet error rates at mobile stations (MSs). Analysis and simulation results show that in typical vehicular speeds, using maximally two active RSs for ODSTC is a very robust and effective choice to provide near best system throughput with less energy consumptions and lower protocol complexities. The throughput gains over a system without using RS retransmissions range from 16 ~ 80% for cell-edge MSs, with only 25 ~ 45% of the transmission energy consumption.


Extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (ExPEC) represent an important subclass of E. coli that cause a wide spectrum of diseases in human and animal hosts. Fimbriae are key virulence factors of ExPEC strains. These long surface located rod-shaped organelles mediate receptor-specific attachment to host tissue surfaces (tissue tropism). Some ExPEC fimbriae have additional functions such as the promotion of biofilm formation, cell aggregation and adherence to abiotic surfaces. Here we review the structure, function and contribution to virulence of fimbriae associated with ExPEC strains.


A new microscopy technique is introduced, image scanning microscopy (ISM), which combines conventional confocal-laser scanning microscopy with fast wide-field CCD detection. The technique allows for doubling the lateral optical resolution in fluorescence imaging. The physical principle behind ISM is similar to structured illumination microscopy, by combining the resolving power of confocal-laser scanning microscopy with that of a wide-field imaging microscopy. This Letter describes the theoretical foundation and experimental realization of ISM.


The paper presents a study on the performance of non-coated solid cemented tungsten carbide (WC) router cutter when milling oak wood. The tests were done with the oak wood samples. The samples were milled in the CNC milling router. The samples were milled at three different milling modes. The measured micro-geometrical parameter was the width of cutting edge. Actual values of cutting edge width were measured by optical method using optical microscope and digital microscopy camera. Width of cutting edge was measured in the established steps of cutting length. The received images were processed and measured using the computer software. The results are presented in the form of summaries and diagrams.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.mech.23.3.18482


Two groups of eight honey bee colonies were fed with two different concentrations of imidacloprid in saccharose syrup during summer (each colony was given 1 litre of saccharose syrup containing 0.5 microg litre(-1) or 5 microg litre(-1) of imidacloprid on 13 occasions). Their development and survival were followed in parallel with control hives (unfed or fed with saccharose syrup) until the end of the following winter. The parameters followed were: adult bee activity (number of bee entering the hive and pollen carrying activity), adult bee population level, capped brood area, frequency of parasitic and other diseases, mortality, number of frames with brood after wintering and a global score of colonies after wintering. The only parameters linked to feeding with imidacloprid-supplemented saccharose syrup when compared with feeding with non-supplemented syrup were: a statistically non-significant higher activity index of adult bees, a significantly higher frequency of pollen carrying during the feeding period and a larger number of capped brood cells. When imidacloprid was no longer applied, activity and pollen carrying were re-established at a similar level for all groups. Repeated feeding with syrup supplemented with imidacloprid did not provoke any immediate or any delayed mortality before, during or following the next winter, whereas such severe effects are described by several French bee keepers as a consequence of imidacloprid use for seed dressing in neighbouring cultures. In any case, during the whole study, mortality was very low in all groups, with no difference between imidacloprid-fed and control colonies. Further research should now address several hypotheses: the troubles described by bee keepers have causes other than imidacloprid; if such troubles are really due to this insecticide, they may only be observed either when bees consume contaminated pollen, when no other sources of food are available, in the presence of synergic factors (that still need to be identified), with some particular races of bees or when colonies are not strong and healthy.


This paper investigates three master tropes (viz, simile, metaphor, and metonymy) in English magazine ads, taking a semiotic topic-vehicle approach to identify and analyze the three tropes. The purpose of the investigation is twofold: to see (ⅰ) if the topic-vehicle approach can account for the three tropes in English magazine ads and (ⅱ) if the three tropes occur in independent phrases the same as they occur in complete clauses. It is concluded that the semiotic topic-vehicle approach, including the concept of complex tropes derived from it, is generally applicable to the three tropes in English magazine ads and that every type and subtype of a trope assuming the form of a complete clause can also take the form of an independent phrase.


The high social costs associated with bankruptcy have spurred searches for better theoretical understanding and prediction capability. In this paper, we investigate a hybrid approach to bankruptcy prediction, using a genetic programming algorithm to construct a bankruptcy prediction model with variables from a rough sets model derived in prior research. Both studies used data from 291 US public companies for the period 1991 to 1997. The second stage genetic programming model developed in this research consists of a decision model that is 80% accurate on a validation sample as compared to the original rough sets model which was 67% accurate. Additionally, the genetic programming model reveals relationships between variables that are not apparent in either the rough sets model or prior research. These findings indicate that genetic programming coupled with rough sets theory can be an efficient and effective hybrid modeling approach both for developing a robust bankruptcy prediction model and for offering additional theoretical insights. 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.


We propose a method for the stabilisation of quantum computations (including quantum state storage). The method is based on the operation of projection into $\cal SYM$, the symmetric subspace of the full state space of $R$ redundant copies of the computer. We describe an efficient algorithm and quantum network effecting $\cal SYM$--projection and discuss the stabilising effect of the proposed method in the context of unitary errors generated by hardware imprecision, and nonunitary errors arising from external environmental interaction. Finally, limitations of the method are discussed.


Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis is a chronic disease that occurs in persons without significative consumption of alcohol, characterized by macrovesicular steatosis, mixed inflammatory infiltrate, and diverse degrees of fibrosis. It can progress to cirrhosis and its evolution to hepatocellular carcinoma has been described. It principally occurs in patients with obesity, diabetes mellitus, and hyperlipidemia, and is at present considered a manifestation of metabolic syndrome with insulin resistance. In pathogenesis, diverse factors, fundamentally insulin resistance as a mechanism that determines hepatic steatosis, have been described. Later, alteration of signalling cascades, oxidative stress, and other mechanisms occur that lead to inflammation, necrosis, and finally to hepatic fibrosis, the details of which will be described in this review.


There is increasing debate about the role that public policy research can play in identifying solutions to complex policy challenges. Most studies focus on describing and explaining how governance systems operate. However, some scholars argue that because current institutions are often
 not up to the task, researchers need to rethink this 'bystander' approach and engage in experimentation and interventions that can help to change and improve governance systems. This paper contributes to this discourse by developing a design science framework that integrates retrospective
 research (scientific validation) and prospective research (creative design). It illustrates the merits and challenges of doing this through two case studies in the Netherlands and concludes that a design science framework provides a way of integrating traditional validation-oriented research
 with intervention-oriented design approaches. We argue that working at the interface between them will create new opportunities for these complementary modes of public policy research to achieve impact.


Stress-induced DNA duplex destabilization (SIDD) analysis exploits the known structural and energetic properties of DNA to predict which sites become susceptible to strand separation under superhelical stress. Experimental results show that this analysis is quantitatively accurate in predicting destabilized sites that occur in transcriptional regulatory regions, matrix/scaffold attachment sites and replication origins. Here we report the results of a SIDD analysis of the complete E. coli genome, performed using a new algorithm specific for long genomic DNA sequences. Our results demonstrate that less than 7% of the E. coli genome has the propensity to become highly destabilized at physiological superhelical densities. Those SIDD sites with high destabilization potential are statistically significantly associated with divergent and tandem intergenic regions, but not with convergent intergenic or coding regions. More than 80% of the intergenic regions containing experimentally characterized promoters are found to overlap these SIDD sites. Strong SIDD sites are highly enriched in the 5' upstream regions of genes regulating stress responses in E. coli, suggesting a possible functional role in their regulation. We discuss the possibility of using SIDD properties for promoter prediction, and potential roles of predicted SIDD sites in transcriptional regulation.


: Use of a retarder with a light-bodied addition silicone according to the manufacturer's recommendations increased the working time but resulted in poorly fitting crowns fabricated from these impressions. The compression set of the retarded mixes at the recommended time of removal was 3.2% compared with 0.08% for the nonretarded control. Increasing the time for removal by one minute resulted in a satisfactory compression set of 0.19%. It is recommended that if a retarder is used with an addition silicone, the correct time of removal should be determined by the compression set.


Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) is a national non-profit organization that facilitates one-on-one mentoring between at-risk youth and adults in order to build developmental assets and promote the well-being of youth. The organization utilizes mentoring to facilitate strong, caring relationships that help marginalized youth realize their potential. The Great Lakes Bay Chapter of BBBS (Midland, Michigan) seeks to expand positive psychology resources and curriculum to: (a) bring together staff, mentors, mentees, and parents with a common language; (b) build and support strong relationships; and (c) enhance well-being in youth. This project provides a character strengths curriculum to support these goals. The project includes a train-thetrainer model and implementation recommendations to pilot the curriculum at the Great Lakes Bay chapter. If impactful, BBBS can adapt and scale the curriculum for other programs. To meet the diverse needs of the mentees, a research-informed Positive Psychology Playbook is included. The playbook is an expertise kit covering eight topics relevant to the development of at-risk youth. These topics, which include gratitude, grit, growth mindset, optimism, resilience, selfefficacy, character strengths and positive relationships, further equip the Great Lakes Bay Chapter with positive psychology knowledge, tips, and activities to support the development and well-being of marginalized youth.


Using data from a unique survey in Japan, we investigate the relevance of different lending technologies which are utilized in lending to small- and medium-sized enterprises. We characterize loans from a technology point of view, and ask (i) to what extent different lending technologies are used, (ii) how complementary the technologies are, and (iii) what determines the choice of each technology. We find that although the financial statement lending technology is most commonly used, multiple lending technologies are usually used at the same time. This suggests the existence of complementarity among lending technologies. We also find that individual technologies have their distinct characteristics as well, and, among other findings, smaller banks and banks with a rich accumulation of soft information tend to lend using the relationship lending technology.


Carbon gas balance was evaluated in an anthropogenically impacted (Mtoni) and a pris- tine (Ras Dege) mangrove forest in Tanzania. Exchange of carbon dioxide (CO2) was measured for inundated and air-exposed sediments during day and night using in situ and laboratory incubations. In situ methane (CH4) emissions were measured in the dark during air exposure only. Emission of CO2 and CH4 from open waters (e.g. creeks) was estimated from diurnal measurements of CO2, par- tial pressure (pCO2) and CH4 concentrations. CO2 emission from darkened sediments devoid of bio- genic structures was comparable during inundation and air exposure (28 to 115 mmol m -2 d -1 ) with no differences between mangrove forests. Benthic primary production was low with only occasional net uptake of CO2 by the sediments. Emissions of CH4 from air-exposed sediment were generally 3 orders of magnitude lower than for CO2. Presence of pneumatophores and crab burrows increased low tide emissions several fold. Emissions from open waters were dependent on tidal level and wind speed. Lowest emission occurred during high tide (1 to 6 mmol CO2 m -2 d -1 ; 10 to 80 µmol CH4 m -2 d -1 ) and highest during low tide (30 to 80 mmol CO2 m -2 d -1 ; 100 to 350 µmol CH4 m -2 d -1 ) when supersaturated runoff from the forest floor and porewater seepage reached the creek water. Based on global average primary production and measured gas emissions, the carbon gas balance of the 2 mangrove forests was estimated. The densely vegetated Ras Dege forest appears to be an efficient sink of greenhouse carbon gases, while extensive clear-cutting at the Mtoni forest apparently has reduced its capacity to absorb CO2, although it is seemingly still a net sink for atmospheric CO2.


This paper highlights the trends in global freight transportation which has recently shown intense growth but also a "new" geography of flows. In particular the analysis describes the growth in relation to GDP with reference to destinations (Europe, United States) and to the origin of flows. The trends identified show the emergence of new patterns of routes and nodes. Moreover, logistic services are proving to be an advantage for the Mediterrean area which is the place of transshipment and unloading of containers arriving from Asia. At present, there is not a strict hierarchy between hubs in the Mediterrean basin, in contrast with what has happened in the North of Europe. In Southern Europe, the competition among regions to attract these new flows is becoming fierce. Factors playing a fundamental role in this scenario are: accessibility to the main populated and economically dynamic regions of Europe, existing infrastructure (although there is a need to update and modernise facilities), regional development policies, and, above all, the strategies of the global terminal operators.


Influence of the mean stress on fatigue life was investigated for carbon steel. Uni-axial fatigue tests were conducted by stress and strain-controlled conditions at room temperature. The fatigue life was reduced by applying the mean stress for the same stress amplitude. The fatigue life exhibited better correlation with the strain range rather than the stress amplitude. Increase in strain range caused by applying the mean stress correlated well with the decrease in the fatigue life. It was assumed that the mean stress effect on the fatigue life was brought about by the change in crack growth rate caused by applying the mean stress. The mean stress enhanced crack mouth opening and accelerated the crack growth. The non-closure model, in which the crack mouth is assumed not to be closed even at the minimum peak stress, was proposed.


Beyer, Doornik and Hendry (2000, 2001) show analytically that three out of four aggregation methods yield problematic results when exchange rate shifts induce relative-price changes between individual countries and found the least problematic method to be the variable weight method of growth rates. This papers shows, however, that the latter is sensitive to the choice of base year when based on real GDP weights whereas not on nominal GDP weights. A comparison of aggregates calculated with different methods shows that the differences are tiny in absolute value but highly persistent. To investigate the impact on the cointegration properties in empirical modelling, the monetary model in Coenen & Vega (2001) based on fixed weights was re-estimated using flexible real and nominal GDP weights. In general, the results remained reasonably robust to the choice of aggregation method. JEL Classification: C32, C42, E41


Australia's abundant supply of coal has underpinned its power system. Competing countries have used a variety of energy resources, which sees many of them now equipped with resilient power systems to provide future electrical power. This paper considers the implication of possible scenarios for the Australian power system in 2035.


A critical overview of the concepts that govern the principles of the Eternally Collapsing Object (ECO) is entailed in this article. The mathematical analysis will be dealt to conclude the proof required for the ECO paradigm is ad-hoc in nature at best. The first section details in rejecting black holes always considers the possibility of formation of trapped surfaces, so we will begin our work by looking into"non occurrence of trapped surfaces"then we analyze Dr. Mitra's indirect claim regarding how $ R = 0$ (inside black hole) could also be treated as another coordinate singularity. After this a detailed analysis on the claim that the mass of the Schwarzschild black hole being zero is in actuality a valid claim or not. The main aim of this article is address the core issue of whether black holes indeed do exist or is it a consequence of biases that circumvent common sense over the years. This article aims to bridge the gap between ECOs and black holes and if at all black holes do exist, which was vehemently denied by the person whose paper I am reviewing. The analysis presented here will show us, why ECOs are baseless and can not really be the solution to black hole problem.