Veterinary Record is launching a new award to recognise practical contributions to the development of evidence-based veterinary medicine (EBVM). The Veterinary Record Evidence Award aims to recognise those who have contributed to the development of EBVM or its application in practice. Nominations are welcomed from those in practice, academia or industry. Nominations can cover any area where EBVM techniques are used; they could cover, for example, promoting the concept of EBVM, developing new approaches to data collection and analysis, or applying the principles of EBVM in dayto-day practice. The Veterinary Record Innovation Award will also be awarded this year, having been introduced in 2015. This award is open to individuals and veterinary teams whose innovation has brought about a change or improvement in any aspect of veterinary practice. This change might relate to a particular aspect of clinical practice or have had a broader impact on veterinary activity. We welcome a broad range of nominations, which might include, for example, a clinical innovation in medicine or surgery, work that has influenced policymakers, a campaign to improve animal health and welfare, a practice educating owners on responsible ownership, or something that has changed how the business of veterinary practice is conducted. Last year's award attracted a number of high calibre entries, and last year's entrants are invited to enter again this year. For both awards, nominations can be made on behalf of a candidate but self-nominations will also be considered. Nominations should be between 500 and 800 words, and evidence to substantiate the nomination should be included. In addition, video nominations can also be included. Nominations for the evidence award should describe what was done, how EBVM techniques were used and what the outcome was in practical terms. Nominations will score well if they can demonstrate the use of both individual clinical expertise and the best external evidence. Nominations for the innovation award should explain what the innovation is, what the impact has been and why it should be considered for the award. Entries should be entitled either 'Veterinary Record Evidence Award' or 'Veterinary Record Innovation Award' and e-mailed to firstname.lastname@example.com. The closing date for nominations is July 15, 2016. The awards will be presented at the BVA Members' Day in Bristol on September 22. The awards ceremony will also include the presentation of the Veterinary Record Impact Award (formerly the William Hunting Award; VR, November 23, 2013, vol 173, pp 497-498), which recognises the research paper published in Veterinary Record in the previous year that is considered to have had the most significant practical impact.


Over the past three years, Rider University's Student Success Center Writing Lab has implemented an embedded tutor program for composition courses. Tutors attend class, participate in class discussions, facilitate writing workshops in class, and hold drop-in hours for students (in addition to tutors' Writing Lab hours). The Embedded Tutor (ET) program, facilitated by Jenny Scudder (who is also the Writing Lab Director), has been successful in helping students complete skills-based courses and connect to academic support services. Initial assessment of the ET program supports the inclusion of the tutor in a skills-based course. While an ET's training is similar to a tutor who works solely in the Writing Lab, there are key additions that are vital to the tutors'—and the program's—succes


The Precautionary Principle has become enshrined in international law, and is the basis for European environmental legislation. However, "precautionary" decisions have been controversial, and the principle itself lacks clear definition. A recent commentary by the European Commission offers guidelines for politically transparent application of the principle, while emphasizing the need for careful review of relevant scientific data. Recent precautionary policies for limiting public exposure to radio-frequency energy shows that the principle can be applied in a way that does not conflict with traditional exposure guidelines. Major uncertainties still remain in the standard of proof needed to invoke the principle.


The adsorption of vitamin B3 (VPP) by activated carbons and their release processes in the distilled water, simulated gastric fluid and simulated intestinal fluid were investigated. The adsorptive capacity of the activated carbon for VPP was 94.91 mg/g. Simulated gastric fluid could promote the release of VPP adsorbed by the activated carbon, and the cumulative percentage of VPP released was 76.36%. Based on three commonly-used kinetic models for drug release, mathematical simulations were carried out. It was found that the release processes of VPP in three different media could be fitted well by the Higuchi model Q = kt1/2 + C.


In this report we present an initial determination of the biochemical defect present in a Chinese hamster ovary cell line selected for resistance to concanavalin A. Membranes of this mutant, B211, incorporated at least lo-fold less mannose from GDP-['4C]mannose into oligosaccharide-lipid than membranes of the wild type. In the presence of dolichol phosphate, membranes of the mutant and wild type exhibited similar rates of synthesis of a number of early intermediates, namely, mannosylphosphoryldolichol, N-acetylglucosaminyland N,N'-diacetylchitobiosylpyrophosphoryldolichol, glucosylphosphoryldolichol, and mannosyloligosaccharide-lipid. The membranes of B211 did not incorporate glucose from UDP-[3H]glucose into oligosaccharide-lipid or protein. Comparison by gel filtration chromatography of oligosaecharides derived from the oligosaccharide-lipids of B211 and wild type cells labeled with [2-3H]mannose revealed that B211 cells incorporated little if any label into an oligosaccharide corresponding to the most excluded oligosaccharide labeled by wild type cells. This concanavalin A-resistant cell line appears to lack the ability to glucosylate oligosaccharide-lipid.


Effective transformational leaders must be able to facilitate meaningful change to be successful. While the traditional approach of analytical thinking based on reasoning using existing facts and perspectives may have served them well in the past, this approach often limits leaders from causing meaningful change because it has a built-in bias of the here and now. Elastic thinking will serve leaders more effectively for identifying new creative and innovative ways to address existing problems and ongoing issues. Elastic thinking is represented by: (1) flexible thinking, (2) abandoning ingrained assumptions that limit the identification of new innovative and creative solutions to problems and issues, (3) utilizing a leader's imagination and "free thinking" to establish new frameworks of references, and (4) looking beyond existing conditions by using different perspectives for thinking that opens up the mind to creating new associations and relationships between ideas and concepts for problem solving and addressing issues.


Many protein receptors for animal and human viruses have been discovered in decades of studies. The main determinant of virus entry is the binding of the viral spike protein to host cell receptors, which mediates membrane fusion. In this work, a bilayer network is constructed by integrating the similarity network of the viral spike proteins, the similarity network of host receptors, and the association network between viruses and receptors. The structural perturbation method (SPM) is used to predict possible emerging infection of a virus in potential new host organisms. The reliability of this method is based on the hypothesis that the major barrier to virus infection is the differences in the compatibility of spike proteins and cell receptors, which is determined by the amino acid sequences among species.


Objective and methods: To evaluate interferon-gamma release assays (IGRA) in childhood tuberculosis, a systematic review was conducted by searching MEDLINE. Results: Seventeen relevant articles were included, all using surrogate measures (positive rate in culture-confirmed tuberculosis and negative rate among low-risk subjects) for tuberculosis infection. Only one paper contained data for estimating likelihood ratios for the tuberculin skin test (TST) and IGRA among predominantly BCG-unvaccinated paediatric subjects. The positive and negative likelihood ratios (95% confidence interval) were, respectively, 5.5 (2.3-13.2) and 0.44 (0.28-0.71) for TST with 15 mm cut-off; 74.9 (4.8-1181) and 0.09 (0.03-0.29) for QuantiFERON-TB Gold in-Tube; and 37.1 (5.3-258) and 0.07 (0.02-0.28) for T-SPOT.TB tests. Predictive values varied in different clinical and epidemiological settings. Unlike TST, test performance of IGRA was not affected by BCG vaccination status. Conclusion: TST may still play an important role in targeted contact investigation and clinical management, although IGRA may outperform TST in some settings.


An approximate displacement method for three-dimensional analysis of tall reinforced concrete buildings is described in Ref. 2. Floors, subsequently called nodal floors, are selected between which only minor changes in the formwork are to occur. Only nodal floors are described in the computer input. However, at every floor level constraints are imposed that permit columns and walls to be treated in the same general manner. A building stiffness matrix with a fraction of the natural degrees-of-freedom is assembled using one component matrix for each member-group of vertically adjacent similar members. For preliminary analysis, sufficient nodal floors are selected to model the major irregularities in stiffness; average member properties are used within each member-group. For final analysis, more detail and accuracy are obtained by adding nodal floors in the preliminary mathematical model. In the previous paper, natural modes and periods for approximate models are compared to those of the detailed model for which the building is idealized as a system of individual members. Herein, the results of approximate and detailed static analyses will be compared.


Cepheus is the first computer program to essentially solve a game of imperfect information that is played competitively by humans. The game it plays is heads-up limit Texas hold'em poker, a game with over 1014 information sets, and a challenge problem for artificial intelligence for over 10 years. Cepheus was trained using a new variant of Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR), called CFR+, using 4800 CPUs running for 68 days. In this paper we describe in detail the engineering details required to make this computation a reality. We also prove the theoretical soundness of CFR+ and its component algorithm, regret-matching +. We further give a hint towards understanding the success of CFR+ by proving a tracking regret bound for this new regret matching algorithm. We present results showing the role of the algorithmic components and the engineering choices to the success of CFR+.


Objectives: To assess the relative role of US and CT in patients with abdominal trauma and to compare it with operative findings or clinical outcome and also to suggest guidelines for imaging and management protocols based on the above results.
 Materials and Methods: Thirty-three consecutive and positive patients of abdominal trauma were evaluated with both ultrasonography (US) and computed tomography (CT). Thirty-one of them had blunt abdominal trauma. One patient had penetrating injury and another patient had blast trauma. Injuries to different organs were staged using organ injury scaling (OIS) system. Hemoperitoneum as detected on US and CT was scored. The US and CT findings were compared and correlated with the operative findings or clinical follow-up in conservatively managed cases
 Results: Patients with large hemoperitoneum required surgery more often. Grading of organ injuries did not correlate with need for surgery except for splenic injuries. In 25 patients, either US or CT would have been sufficient for arriving at a management decision. In seven patients, CT altered the management decision that was arrived at on the basis of US. One patient required angiography for diagnosis and vascular intervention.
 Conclusions: CT is better than US for the diagnosis of abdominal trauma. However US can be used as a useful initial modality. It is important that in all patients where US indicated presence of abnormality, in suboptimal US studies and in US-negative studies in symptomatic patients, the studies be supplemented with CT. Truly normal US scans in asymptomatic patients may be highly reliable for excluding significant organ injuries and these patients may be followed up without CT scan or admission.


CONTEXT
No studies have examined the association between body habitus and incidence of pituitary adenoma.

OBJECTIVE
To determine if body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, body somatotype, or height are associated with risk of pituitary adenoma.

DESIGN
Pooled analysis of three prospective cohort studies.

SETTING
Population-based study.

PARTICIPANTS
Participants of the NHS, NHSII, and HPFS, totaling 284,946 American health professionals.

EXPOSURES
BMI, waist circumference, body somatotype, and height.

OUTCOME MEASURES
Self-reported incident pituitary adenoma. Multivariable (MV)-adjusted hazard ratios of pituitary adenoma were estimated using Cox proportional hazards models.

RESULTS
During 7,350,156 person-years of follow up, 387 incident pituitary adenomas were reported. Comparing BMI of ≥30 to <25 kg/m 2, higher adult BMI was associated with higher risk of pituitary adenoma (MV HR=1.74, 95%CI:1.33-2.28), as was higher maximum adult BMI (MV HR=1.76, 95%CI:1.34-2.30), higher waist circumference (MV HR=1.06, 95%CI: 1.04-1.09 per inch), and higher BMI during early adulthood (at age 18-21, MV HR=2.65, 95%CI:1.56-4.49). Taller adult height was associated with pituitary adenoma (MV HR=1.05, 95%CI:1.01-1.09 per inch). Overall findings were similar in women and men, although power was limited in men (n=62 cases). Sensitivity analyses demonstrated that the association between adult BMI and pituitary adenoma extended to at least 14 years prior to diagnosis and that the results were not affected when analyses were restricted to participants with similar healthcare utilization.

CONCLUSION
Higher BMI and waist circumference, from early adulthood to the time of diagnosis, were associated with higher risk of pituitary adenoma.


Hemispheric asymmetry is one of the basic aspects of perception and cognitive processing. The different functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain have been studied with renewed interest in recent years, as scholars explore applications to new areas, new measuring techniques, and new theoretical approaches. This volume provides a comprehensive view of the latest research in brain asymmetry, offering not only recent empirical and clinical findings but also a coherent theoretical approach to the subject. In chapters that report on the field at levels from the molecular to the clinical, leading researchers address such topics as the evolution and genetics of brain asymmetry; animal models; findings from structural and functional neuroimaging techniques and research; sex differences and hormonal effects; sleep asymmetry; cognitive asymmetry in visual and auditory perception; and auditory laterality and speech perception, memory, and asymmetry in the context of developmental, neurological, and psychiatric disorders. Contributors: Katrin Amunts, Ulrike Bayer, Alfredo Brancucci, Vince D. Calhoun, Maria Casagrande, Marco Catani, Michael C. Corballis, Patricia E. Cowell, Timothy J. Crow, Tom Eichele, Stephanie Forkel, Patrick J. Gannon, Isabelle George, Onur Gunturkun, Heikki Hamalainen, Markus Hausmann, Joseph B. Hellige, Kenneth Hugdahl, Masud Husain, Gregoria Kalpouzos, Bruno Laeng, Martina Manns, Chikashi Michimata, Deborah W. Moncrieff, Lars Nyberg, Godfrey Pearlson, Stefan Pollmann, Victoria Singh-Curry, Iris E.C. Sommer, Tao Sun, Nathan Swanson, Fiia Takio, Michel Thiebaut de Schotten, Rene Westerhausen


The theory of trade-off suggest that limited resources should lead to trade-off in resource intensive traits such as immunity related and sexually selected traits in males. Alternatively, sexual exaggerations can also act as an honest indicator of underlying immunocompetence, leading to positive correlations between these traits. Several studies have addressed this question using experimental evolution. However, they have rarely used ecologically relevant pathogens and fitness measurement (e.g., measuring post-infection survivorship) to find correlations between sexual selection and immunity. Here we attempt to address this caveat by evolving populations of Drosophila melanogaster under differential sexual selection. After more than hundred generations, we infected virgin and mated males from each population with three pathogenic bacteria: Pseudomonas entomophila (Pe), Staphylococcus succinus (Ss) and Providentia rettgeri (Pr). Fitness was measured as either post-infection survivorship (Pe and Ss) or bacterial clearance ability (Pr). Contrary to expectations, sexual selection had no evolutionary effect on male fitness against any of the pathogens. Moreover, mating had a beneficial effect against Pe and Pr, but no effect against Ss, suggesting pathogen specific phenotypic correlations between mating and immunity. Following these results, we discuss the significance of using ecologically relevant pathogens and quantifying host fitness while studying sexual selection-immunity correlations.


Two studies were conducted to compare bioavailability of DL-methionine hydroxy analogue-free acid (MHA-FA) relative to DL-methionine (DLM) in layers. The bioavailability was compared for egg production, egg mass, egg weight and feed conversion. In trial 1 five supplemental levels of methionine (0.02, 0.04, 0.06, 0.08 and 0.10%) from DLM or MHA-FA source were added respectively to a basal diet containing 14.97% protein, 0.27% methionine, and 0.24% cystine. Hy-Line W-36 hens (1,760) 37 weeks old were used. Egg production was not improved beyond the first 0.02% added methionine level. Thus, an accurate bioavailability value of MHA-FA relative to DLM could not be obtained, indicating that this test was not statistically sensitive enough to estimate the bioavailability of MHA-FA relative to DLM. In trial 2, 1,920 Hy- Line W-36 hens 53 weeks old were used in a 3×2×2 factorial experiment with three protein levels, two supplemental methionine levels, and two methionine sources. DLM and MHA-FA were compared at different protein and supplemental methionine levels on an equimolar basis. There were no differences (P > 0.05) between the 0.02% and 0.04% supplemental methionine level or between DLM and MHA-FA in eg g production, egg mass, or feed conversion. Because no difference in egg production, egg mass and feed conversion between 0.02% and 0.04% methionine could be detected and that difference should be greater than the difference between DLM and MHA-FA, no potential differences between DLM and MHA-FA could be detected. There was a difference (P 0.05) than that of hens fed MHA-FA, the difference was calculated to indicate that the bioavailability of MHA-FA might be 88.9% on a molar basis or 78.2% on a weight basis.


University, Inc. The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education. By Jennifer Washburn. Basic Books, New York, 2005. 346 pp. $26, C$36.95, £19.99. ISBN 0-465-09051-6. The author argues that corporate intrusion-with its concomitant secrecy, patent monopolies, and exclusive licenses-is undermining academic freedom and scientific inquiry in U.S. universities.


Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a student-centered teaching approach. This study was conducted to identify the impact of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) on student achievement in engineering subject material at Vocational College Kuantan, Pahang. The study design used in this study was a quasi-experimental type involving two study groups namely the experimental group and control group. The experimental group in this study was referred to as the group exposed to the PBL teaching method. Whereas the control group is a group that uses traditional teaching strategies that use the standard (lecture) method commonly practiced, however, the content of teaching for the subject of engineering materials is the same as the experimental group. The respondents in this study were 30 students of 1st-semester Fabrication Welding Metal that selected using purposive sampling. To determine the level of student achievement, the researcher presents an achievement test for the subject of engineering materials. The results of this study were analyzed by independent t-test using Statistical Package for The Social Science (SPSS) version 21.0. This study found that student achievement in the experimental group was higher than the control group achievement. This shows that the PBL teaching method affects students' achievement in the subject of engineering materials at Vocational College Kuantan, Pahang. It is hoped that the findings of this study can serve as a reference to various stakeholders in designing and implementing problem-based learning methods to produce skilled thinkers who are critical in their work, problem-solving skills, and lifelong learning.


A diamondlike-carbon (DLC) layer was used to substitute for the buried SiO2 layer in silicon on insulator (SOI) to mitigate the self-heating effects in our previous study. However, we discovered drawbacks associated with the inferior Si/DLC interface, inadequate thermal stability as well as carbon-silicon interdiffusion at the Si/DLC interface that could hamper future application of this silicon-on-diamond structure to microelectronic devices. In this work, we introduced a silicon dioxide barrier layer between the Si film and DLC buried layer to form a silicon-on-SiO2∕DLC dual-insulator structure to tackle these problems. Cross-sectional high-resolution transmission electron microscopy reveals that the Si/insulator interface is atomically flat and the top Si layer has nearly perfect crystalline quality. The SiO2∕DLC dual-insulator layer retains excellent insulating properties at typical complementary metal oxide silicon processing temperatures. Numerical simulation reveals that the negative differential r...


This study aims at identifying the structural dynamic characteristics using an ambient vibration, and developing a health monitoring system which adopts damage detecting algorithms. One of the main problems for this system design is to measure long-time dynamic response signals and simultaneously estimate the structural dynamic properties. In order to be suitable for a long-time monitoring, we conduct an ambient dynamic testing for a 3-floor moment resistance steel structure and analyze structural dynamic characteristics using time domain estimation techniques. Also, a damage detecting test is performed to evaluate damage state by various detecting algorithms (modal correlation method (MAC & COMAC), eigen-parameter change method). Finally, this paper suggests the optimal algorithms for the identification of the structural damage locations and damage quantities with all such comparisons. The algorithms presented in this paper prove to be applicable in structural health monitoring of structures.


Late Quaternary movement on three reverse faults and the presence of one possible strike-slip fault have been recognized in the southeastern part of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Movement along all four faults occurred during or after a pre-Fraser glaciation, and the last movement on the Saddle Mountain East fault appears to have occurred about 1,240 to 1,235 yr B.P. Displacements along these faults correlate well with other workers9 recent geophysical analyses of tectonic events in the adjacent Puget Lowland. The Dow Mountain and Cushman Valley (?) faults each approximate an orthogonal plane derived by focal-mechanism solutions for two groups of recent shallow-focus earthquakes in the Puget Lowland. The Saddle Mountain faults do not correlate with recent earthquake data, but the Saddle Mountain East fault, when plotted with its orthogonal plane, is compatible with the modern regional stress field determined by other workers. The Saddle Mountain faults are believed to be Holocene features developed within an older northeast-trending zone of fracturing. This older zone possibly developed during a late stage of complex folding and doming of the Olympic Mountains, before the development of the northwest-southeast compressive stress system that has characterized this region during the Holocene.


An experimental set-up for time-gated fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy is described, and some recent applications in cellular and molecular biology are summarized. Selective detection of intrinsic fluorophores, in particular nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and flavins was demonstrated in living cells. Non-radiative energy transfer from reduced NADH to the mitochondrial marker rhodamine 123 was evaluated for probing mitochondrial malfunction in living cells. An increase of "energy transfer efficacy" up to a factor 4 was detected after inhibition of enzyme complexes of the respiratory chain. Two different fluorescence lifetimes of calcium orange were evaluated, whose relative intensities depended on calcium concentration. Therefore, fluorescence measured within two different time gates appeared to be suitable for ratio fluorometry of calcium. Time-gated fluorescence spectra of the membrane marker laurdan showed more pronounced changes than steady state spectra when temperature was increased from 24 degrees C to 38 degrees C. This may improve measurements of intracellular temperature. Time-gated detection of small amounts of porphyrins and their discrimination from a large fluorescent background caused by chlorophyll in transgenic tobacco plants again proved the advantages of time-gated fluorescence spectroscopy.


*The first translation to honour the authentic Chinese spirit of the Book of Change For more than 3000 years the I Ching has been the most important book of divination in the world. Yet it has always been translated by Westerners who brought their own cultural biases to the work. Now, for the first time, an eminent Chinese scholar has translated the original ideograms of the I Ching into English. Imprisoned and sentenced to death during the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Master Alfred Huang studied the I Ching in secret with some of China's greatest minds. Released in 1979, he emigrated to the United States, where he discovered that no I Ching existed in English that truly understood the Chinese mind. This book is the product of his desire to right that situation. To the Chinese, the I Ching is nothing without the Confucian commentaries known as the Ten Wings. Previous editions have given them only a minor place in the book, or have left them out altogether. In this new translation, they are restored to their central importance by Master Huang. This book also emphasizes the intricate connections between the 64 possible hexagrams, and introduces several new methods for doing readings.


The gender differences in the in vitro microsomal metabolic activation of hepatotoxic clivorine, a representative naturally occurring hepatotoxic otonecine type pyrrolizidine alkaloid, in Sprague-Dawley rats and their relation to the gender differences in susceptibility to clivorine intoxication were reported in the present study. Clivorine-induced liver damage in the male rat via metabolic activation to form the reactive pyrrolic ester followed by covalent binding to liver tissue constituents has been reported previously by our research group. The present study demonstrated, for the first time, that cytochromes p450 3A1 and 3A2, which are constitutively expressed in the male rat, might play a significant role in the metabolic activation of clivorine in the rat. Thus, in the male rat, the metabolic activation by liver microsomes to form the reactive pyrrolic ester was found as the only direct metabolic pathway of clivorine followed by subsequent formation of the toxic tissue-bound pyrroles leading to hepatotoxicity. In the case of the female rat, a less significant metabolic activation was observed, whereas the formations of two novel nonpyrrolic metabolites were determined as the predominant biotransformations. None of the four cDNA-expressed rat enzymes (cytochrome p450 2C12, 2E1, 3A1, 3A2) tested could catalyze the formation of these two new metabolites. Furthermore, the female rat (LD(50) = 114 +/- 9 mg/kg, i.p.) was found to be significantly less susceptible to clivorine intoxication than the male rat (LD(50) = 91 +/- 3 mg/kg, i.p.). Therefore, the results suggested that a significantly lower metabolic activation due to the lack of cytochrome p450 3A1 and p450 3A2 activities mainly accounted for the smaller susceptibility of the female rat to clivorine intoxication.


French and Canadian architects are amongst those contributing expertise in emergency humanitarian situations. Postcolonial dimensions of emergency humanitarian architectural practice have forced some architects to wrangle with professional and personal subjectivities. For example, contributing their know-how to projects involving refugees has helped professionals at Québec's Architecture Sans Frontières (ASF-Québec), formerly known as Architectes de l'urgence et de la coopération (AUC), to highlight an apparent disconnect between professional norms and standards supposedly impervious to imperialism and a more personal ethic broadly shaped by a postcolonial consciousness. The essay is used to explicate how architects in France and Québec, respectively, have responded to recent and ongoing humanitarian crises and why their responses signal how the postcolonial has the power to change notions of what it means and can mean to be ethical in architectural practice. Codification of a new postcolonial ethic in Québec, at ASF-Québec, has not appeared in formal documents aligned with the architect's professional and legal responsibility. Instead, situated within an economy of humanitarian architectural practice, this codification is embodied in the everyday of humanitarian architectural practice.


The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of parturition on the physiological method and the satisfaction of pregnant women (case study; Hamedan province's health center) the statistical population of this study is 85 employees of Hamedan health centers, who work in the field of childbirth, of which 69 people were selected from cluster sampling method as a statistical sample. The main tool of data collection in this study is a questionnaire. In the present study, the questionnaire was used and examined. The methodology of the study is descriptive of the kind of correlation and based on the time of data collection is the type of cross-sectional study. It is used to normalize the data by k-s test. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS software. The results show that there is a relation between the childbirth effect on the physiological method and the satisfaction of pregnant women.


Interest in change detection techniques has considerably increased during recent years in the field of autonomous robotics. This is partly because changes in a robot's working environment are useful for several robotic skills (e.g., spatial cognition, modelling or navigation) and applications (e.g., surveillance or guidance robots). Changes are usually detected by comparing current data provided by the robot's sensors with a previously known map or model of the environment. When the data consists of a large point cloud, dealing with it is a computationally expensive task, mainly due to the amount of points and the redundancy. Using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) instead of raw point clouds leads to a more compact feature space that can be used to efficiently process the input data. This allows us to successfully segment the set of 3D points acquired by the sensor and reduce the computational load of the change detection algorithm. However, the segmentation of the environment as a Mixture of Gaussians has some problems that need to be properly addressed. In this paper, a novel change detection algorithm is described in order to improve the robustness and computational cost of previous approaches. The proposal is based on the classic Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm, for which different selection criteria are evaluated. As demonstrated in the experimental results section, the proposed change detection algorithm achieves the detection of changes in the robot's working environment faster and more accurately than similar approaches.


1. High-resolution MRCP is a noninvasive imaging modality for depicting the pancreatobiliary tree. The imaging quality of high-resolution MRCP is satisfactory. MRCP can demonstrate dilation, stenosis, and intraductal filling defects of both the biliary tract and the pancreatic duct, which meets the clinical demand for pancreatobiliary imaging. 2. MRCP was successful in almost all the patients. However, the causes of MRCP failure were patient motion, irregular respiratory rhythm, severe pneumobilia, and massive ascitic fluid. 3. When only MIP reconstructed images were used for interpretation, small intraductal filling defects such as a gallstone can be missed. In combination with coronal source images, the ability to detect intraductal stones can be increased. 4. Ferrite ammonium citrate (FAC) is useful in suppressing the background signal intensity of gastrointestinal contents so that the ducts can be clearly visualized. The other technique for decreasing the background signal intensity is target MIP postprocessing, which works well for better visualization of the ducts. 5. The degree of ductal narrowing tends to be overestimated with MRCP because of MIP reconstruction artifact and lower spatial resolution of MRCP than ERCP. 6. MRCP has a diagnostic pitfall of a pseudostenosis of extrahepatic ducts, which may lead to a false-positive diagnosis of ductal narrowing. This pitfall may be caused not only by MIP postprocessing artifacts but by gas, surgical metal, and vascular compression of right hepatic artery. There is another diagnostic pitfall that it is difficult to differentiate intraductal mucin from pancreatic fluid in dilate pancreatic ducts, although ERCP identifies mucin as intraductal filling defects.


Iron ore is railed several hundred kilometres from inland mines to port, where it is crushed and separated into lump and fines products for shipment to customers. During crushing, each trainload is sampled and assayed to measure the grade, in iron, phosphorus, silica, alumina and a number of other minerals. Trainloads from different mines are of systematically different grade. Accurate product grades for each trainload, from each mine, are required for production planning and quality control. During crushing each trainload is contaminated with ore from the preceding and possibly from the following trainloads, so that the reported grade is biased by this dilution from the neighbouring trainloads. Although the dilution effect has long been recognised, it has not previously been quantified and therefore has not been corrected for. This paper describes the development, verification and use of a non-linear regression model enabling the amount of dilution to be estimated, so that the diluted grades can be corrected to undiluted grades.


Will I be my corpse someday? This is a controversial philosophical question. If I'm a material being, that question is an important part of the metaphysics of material beings. Animalism claims that I'm a human animal. I have started as a fetus. Eric Olson argued that this is incompatible with the psychological-continuity approach to personal identity. From this it follows that we should accept the biological approach; the persistence condition for me is a Life. William Carter suggested that this approach has the same problem with the corpses as the psychologicalcontinuity approach has with fetuses. I'm going to show that Carter is not right, but we should slightly specify a biological approach: the persistence condition for me is my Life


Thermotolerance of pineapple crowns ('Champaka 153') to 50C and above was increased with a 30-min first treatment at 30, 35, or 40C. Pineapple crowns receiving a 30min heat treatment, before a second heat treatment at 50 or 55C, exhibited significantly less leaf damage than controls receiving no first treatments (P ≤ 0.05). The degree of thermotolerance was dependent upon the season in which crowns were harvested; greater thermotolerance occurred in crowns harvested in April than those harvested in October. Maximum thermotolerance occurred after an interval of at least 8 h between the first treatment and the higher temperature heat treatment. Thermotolerance was stable for at least 24 h.


George W., this one's for you. In Washington Times correspondent Sammon's inside account of the Bush administration's reaction to 9-11 and the resultant war on terror, readers are tendered a breathless, highly complimentary portrait of the president and an overly simplistic moral tale about the great merit and unwavering moral vision of his inner circle. What could be an extremely interesting if one-sided account is often undercut by Sammon's penchant for editorializing (Bush was "more directly affected than most Americans by the attacks themselves"; Osama bin Laden "giggled" when speaking about the attacks; and the president often "twinkles" when he speaks) and novelizing (Bush "never thought he would be so relieved to see the White House again. He scanned the magnificent curve of the South Portico...He gazed at the Rose Garden"). Nor does Sammon seem to appreciate the irony of quoting some of the president's less eloquent statements, such as: "The role of a president is to seek great objectives for the country, big goals." Sammon, author of the bestselling At Any Cost, largely writes for the converted, so the intended audience for this volume will no doubt love it. Those more skeptical of the government's policies, however, will find his narrative more hagiography than history, and will want to wait for Bob Woodward's forthcoming Bush at War, which covers the same territory from a different angle.


Opal is a natural nanostructure model. It possesses nanosized close packed silica spheres and a regular sublattice of voids, filled with molecular water and accessible for filling by other substances. Using natural opal as a substrate, no complimentary technique is needed to produce a patterned surface as it is present naturally. Thus, the possession of nano-dimensions for efficient influencing of different biological events can be used in the laboratory and biologically integrated multifunctional devices (biomaterials, sensors) could be created. Additionally, biomineralization mechanisms may be studied using model systems. The main purpose of the work is to use nanostructured or other functionalized materials as models to contribute to the study of biomineralization. Particularly this paper reports on the ability of natural opal from Bulgaria's Eastern Rhodopes mountain to induce the deposition of a surface layer of calcium phosphate from simulated body fluid. Raman, infrared spectroscopy and XRD were used to show that opal consists of two main phases: microcrystalline quartz and cristobalite and that the observed with optical microscopy layer deposited from the simulated body fluid on both phases was calcium phosphate.


This paper aims at giving a description and an assessment of the volunteer management in the Bisket Jatra, the cultural event of Madhyapur Thimi. The recruitment, selection, supporting, training and retention processes of the volunteer have been studied in order to find how the policies of the volunteer management differ in the community-based cultural event to the modern models used in organizational world. The bases of the recruitment, selection, task divisions in the Bisket Jatra are the casts, sub-casts within the Newar community and the quarters of Thimi they belong to. This paper tries to assess how effective such community-based volunteer program can be and how successfully they help deliver the event, with the increased sense of belonging and the cultural pride among the volunteers. For this, qualitative ethnographic research has been made using snowball sampling technique. The data collected through the interviews has been analyzed using descriptive method in order to show how the whole community takes charge of different tasks and coordinates as a team in the Bisket Jatra.


The decreases in the number of strikes in the UK during the 1980s has revived the discussion of the explanatory factors of strike frequency. This paper investigates explanations for the variations of strike frequency in British manufacturing. The framework used is that of the joint cost model; strike frequency is inversely related to strike costs. The results from a panel of 90 manufacturing industries for the period 1983-88 show some support for the hypothesis that strikes decreased because they became more expensive. In the main we find that factors which affect both employers and employees (such as revenue, inventories) are significant in explaining variations in strike frequency. Factors which affect only employees, however, such as the unemployment rate, are not.


We have combined new data from our observing campaigns and data from the literature to construct the radio continuum spectra for a sample of mostly quasar-type high peaking gigahertz-peaked spectrum (GPS) source candidates. We have also studied the spectra and variability of so called "bona fide" GPS sources and other inverted-spectrum sources from the literature. For many of our sample sources we now have data spanning over two decades, enabling us to study their long term behaviour. Based on our earlier results we expected to find several new high peaking GPS sources. Instead we found out that even most of the "bona fide" GPS sources cease to adhere to the generic GPS source properties when using these well-sampled long term data sets. In our sample of 35 inverted-spectrum sources from the literature only five seem to be consistent with the GPS properties, and even out of these sources two are too sparsely sampled to firmly make conclusions about their variability. Thirteen of the "bona fide" GPS sources exhibit pronounced activity, which diverges from the low variability expected from these sources. None of our new candidates turned out to have both a convex spectrum and little to no variability, but there is one variable source with a consistently convex spectrum. All the rest have flat spectra, but the upper envelope of the spectrum is clearly convex for four extremely variable sources. Similar continuum spectra with a flat lower envelope and a convex upper envelope are observed for eight previously identified inverted-spectrum sources. According to this study the genuine quasar-type GPS sources are rare but there is a large number of highly variable sources that can have a convex spectrum peaking at high radio frequencies (up to ca. 100 GHz) during flares. Many of the GPS sources from the literature have too easily been classified as GPS sources based on too sparse data, and studying the long term variability is essential for identifying the sources with consistently convex continuum spectra.


The massive diffusion of smartphones, the growing interest in wearable devices and the Internet of Things, and the exponential rise of location based services (LBSs) have made the problem of localization and navigation inside buildings one of the most important technological challenges of recent years. Indoor positioning systems have a huge market in the retail sector and contextual advertising; in addition, they can be fundamental to increasing the quality of life for citizens if deployed inside public buildings such as hospitals, airports, and museums. Sometimes, in emergency situations, they can make the difference between life and death. Various approaches have been proposed in the literature. Recently, thanks to the high performance of smartphones' cameras, marker-less and marker-based computer vision approaches have been investigated. In a previous paper, we proposed a technique for indoor localization and navigation using both Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and a 2D visual marker system deployed into the floor. In this paper, we presented a qualitative performance evaluation of three 2D visual markers, Vuforia, ArUco marker, and AprilTag, which are suitable for real-time applications. Our analysis focused on specific case study of visual markers placed onto the tiles, to improve the efficiency of our indoor localization and navigation approach by choosing the best visual marker system.


Social interaction is seen as a key dimension of social sustainability and an essential feature of the social capital of cities. Yet social interaction in suburban neighbourhoods has been largely overlooked by researchers and designers; a neglect that has had negative impacts on social sustainability in the suburbs. In this paper the impact is explored of tree coverage on neighbourhood attachment in residential, low-density suburban streets in Victoria, Australia. The research is part of a wider study considering the complex relationship between four contributors to social interaction – Neighbourhood Attachment, Neighbourhood Satisfaction, Neighbouring and Walkability, and Safety – and two categories of factors that influence social interaction: the psycho-social and physical characteristics of neighbourhoods. The residents of three suburbs in Geelong, Australia, were questioned via a survey that aimed to measure how physical design factors impact the residents' interactions. To isolate as much as possible design factors from social factors, the three suburbs chosen had equivalent socio-economic profiles. Two survey methods were used. First, questionnaires were delivered to six streets in each of the three suburbs. Each street had a different type of planning layout. Second, on-street face-to-face survey was carried out in the public spaces adjacent to neighbourhood libraries. The survey used multi-choice 5-point Likert scale questions to determine values for four scales that measure four contributors to social interaction. The wider research hypothesises that characteristics of neighbourhood form, such as tree coverage, can facilitate social interaction by increasing perceptions of neighbourhood attachment. The findings of the research reported on this paper indicated that Neighbourhood Attachment scores significantly increase as tree coverage increases in the suburbs. It is concluded that an understanding of how neighbourhood form determines social interaction in the suburbs can inform strategies for architects, urban planners and other built environment professionals to design sustainable suburban neighbourhoods; particularly through designing streets that provide sense of place and community.


Next Generation Networks (NGNs) are expected to handle heterogeneous technologies, services, verticals and devices of increasing complexity. It is essential to fathom an innovative approach to automatically and efficiently manage NGNs to deliver an adequate end-to-end Quality of Experience (QoE) while reducing operational expenses. An Autonomous Network (AN) using a closed loop can self-monitor, self-evaluate and self-heal, making it a potential solution for managing the NGN dynamically. This study describes the major results of building a closed-loop Proof of Concept (PoC) for various AN use cases organized by the International Telecommunication Union Focus Group on Autonomous Networks (ITU FG-AN). The scope of this PoC includes the representation of closed-loop use cases in a graph format, the development of evolution/exploration mechanisms to create new closed loops based on the graph representations, and the implementation of a reference orchestrator to demonstrate the parsing and validation of the closed loops. The main conclusions and future directions are summarized here, including observations and limitations of the PoC.


Background: Treatment of acute HCV is more effective than treatment of chronic HCV, but physicians are often reluctant to treat people who inject drugs (PWID).

Methods: HIV seronegative PWID with acute hepatitis C infection were randomized to receive 24 weeks of pegylated interferon (Peg-IFN) or to observation. Serum HCV RNA was measured every 4 weeks. After 24 weeks, control subjects with persistent viremia were offered treatment with Peg-IFN and ribavirin. The primary endpoint of the trial was likelihood of achieving a sustained virologic response (SVR).Secondary endpoints included time to viral clearance, treatment adherence and incidence of depression.

Results: 24 patients were randomized to treatment vs. control; 1 was lost to follow-up before the baseline visit. Of the 9 patients who received >1 injection of Peg-IFN, 55% had an SVR; three became re-infected. Among controls, 14% cleared virus, 79% became chronically infected. Treated participants were more likely to clear HCV than controls (HR (95% CI) =15.34 (3.08-76.40), p=0.001).Additionally, for the univariate analysis, participants with more recent PWID (5.00 (1.23 – 20.00)), a baseline viremia< 5 log IU/mL (3.57 (0.94 – 14.28)), and an ALT level ≤ to 450 IU/mL (6.67 (0.83 – 50.00)) were more likely to clear virus. Sixty-seven percent of participants received at least 80% of scheduled injections and the incidence of severe depression was low.

Conclusions: We found that treatment of HCV in active PWID was effective and safe, though re-infections occurred. Adherence rates in this cohort were excellent, supporting the idea that this difficult-to-treat population benefits from medically supervised injections.


M18 aspartyl aminopeptidases (DAPs) are well characterized in microbes and animals with likely functions in peptide processing and vesicle trafficking. In contrast, there is a dearth of knowledge on plant aminopeptidases with a preference for proteins and peptides with N-terminal acidic residues. During evolution of the Plantae, there was an expansion and diversification of the M18 DAPs. After divergence of the ancestral green algae from red and glaucophyte algae, a duplication yielded the DAP1 and DAP2 lineages. Subsequently DAP1 genes were lost in chlorophyte algae. A duplication of DAP2-related genes occurred early in green plant evolution. DAP2 genes were retained in land plants and picoeukaryotic algae and lost in green algae. In contrast, DAP2-like genes persisted in picoeukaryotic and green algae, while this lineage was lost in land plants. Consistent with this evolutionary path, Arabidopsis thaliana has two DAP gene lineages (AtDAP1 and AtDAP2). Similar to animal and yeast DAPs, AtDAP1 is localized to the cytosol or vacuole; while AtDAP2 harbors an N-terminal transit peptide and is chloroplast localized. His6-DAP1 and His6-DAP2 expressed in Escherichia coli were enzymatically active and dodecameric with masses exceeding 600 kDa. His6-DAP1 and His6-DAP2 preferentially hydrolyzed Asp-p-nitroanilide and Glu-p-nitroanilide. AtDAPs are highly conserved metallopeptidases activated by MnCl2 and inhibited by ZnCl2 and divalent ion chelators. The protease inhibitor PMSF inhibited and DTT stimulated both His6-DAP1 and His6-DAP2 activities suggesting a role for thiols in the AtDAP catalytic mechanism. The enzymes had distinct pH and temperature optima, as well as distinct kinetic parameters. Both enzymes had high catalytic efficiencies (kcat/Km) exceeding 1.0 x 107 M-1 sec-1. Using established molecular chaperone assays, AtDAP1 and AtDAP2 prevented thermal denaturation. AtDAP1 also prevented protein aggregation and promoted protein refolding. Collectively, these data indicate that plant DAPs have a complex evolutionary history and have evolved new biochemical features that may enable their role in vivo.


As the communication industry has connected distant corners of the globe using advances in netw ork technology, intruders or attackers have also increa sed attacks on networking infrastructure commensurately. System administrators can attempt to prevent such attacks using intrusion detection tools and systems. There are ma ny commercially available signature-based Intrusion De tection Systems (IDSs). However, most IDSs lack the capability to detect novel or previously unknown attacks. A speci al type of IDSs, called Anomaly Detection Systems, develop models based on normal system or network behavior, with the goal of detecting both known and unknown attacks. Anomaly detection systems face many problems including high rate of f alse alarm, ability to work in online mode, and scalability. Th is paper presents a selective survey of incremental approach es for detecting anomaly in normal system or network traffic. The technological trends, open problems, and challenges over anomaly detection using incremental approach are al so discussed.


To study decay in attachment to an organization, I analyse data on women who obtained an MBA from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business (GSB). I measure attachment in terms of network embedding: an alumna is attached to the GSB to the extent that people close to her graduated from the GSB. Behavioral data corroborate the network data in that alumnae measured to be more attached are more likely to have joined an alumni club and made a financial contribution to the school. The hypothesis is that alumnae attachment will decay over time, more slowly when the school is deeply embedded in an alumna's network, more quickly when disruptive events compete for the alumna's time and energy. As expected, attachment declines across the years after graduation (linearly for the first 20 years to about half its initial level), and decay is inhibited when connections with GSB graduates are embedded in stable relations of family, work, or long-term friendship. Decay is remarkably robust to events after graduation (which account for only 2 per cent of explained variance in attachment). In other words, an alumna's attachment today was largely determined while she was in school. The results should be of practical value to people who design programmes to build personal attachment to organizations, and of theoretical interest to scholars who study such connections. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


1. The barbules of the abdominal feathers of sandgrouse exhibit structural characteristics which are favourable for the uptake of large quantities of water. This feature greatly assists the male of the species in his efforts to bring water to the young. 2. The structural details of feather keratin, peculiar to many fibrous proteins, provide a straightforward explanation of the mechanical transformation of sandgrouse barbules, when wetted, in physico-chemical terms appropriate to macromolecular systems. 3. X-ray analysis of dry and wetted sandgrouse barbules qualitatively support the proposed mechanism of a reversible melting-recrystallization cycle for the barbule keratin.


Compared to in-clinic balance training, in-home training is not as effective. This is, in part, due to the lack of feedback from physical therapists (PTs). In this paper, we analyze the feasibility of using trunk sway data and machine learning (ML) techniques to automatically evaluate balance, providing accurate assessments outside of the clinic. We recruited sixteen participants to perform standing balance exercises. For each exercise, we recorded trunk sway data and had a PT rate balance performance on a scale of 1–5. The rating scale was adapted from the Functional Independence Measure. From the trunk sway data, we extracted a 61-dimensional feature vector representing the performance of each exercise. Given these labeled data, we trained a multi-class support vector machine (SVM) to map trunk sway features to PT ratings. Evaluated in a leave-one-participant-out scheme, the model achieved a classification accuracy of 82%. Compared to participant self-assessment ratings, the SVM outputs were significantly closer to PT ratings. The results of this pilot study suggest that in the absence of PTs, ML techniques can provide accurate assessments during standing balance exercises. Such automated assessments could reduce PT consultation time and increase user compliance outside of the clinic.


According to the author's knowledge task scheduling in fog paradigm is highly complex and in the literature there are still few studies on it. In the cloud architecture, it is widely studied and in many researches, it is approached from the perspective of service providers. Trying to bring innovative contributions in these areas, in this paper, we propose a solution to the context-aware task-scheduling problem for fog paradigm. In our proposal, different context parameters are normalized through Min Max normalization, requisition priorities are defined through the application of the Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) technique and scheduling is performed using Multi-Objective Non-Linear Programming optimization (MONLIP) technique.


A fundamental problem in energy harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is to maximize coverage, whereby the goal is to capture events of interest that occur in one or more target areas. To this end, this paper addresses the problem of maximizing network lifetime whilst ensuring all targets are monitored continuously by at least one sensor node. Specifically, we will address the Distributed Maximum Lifetime Coverage with Energy Harvesting (DMLC-EH) problem. The objective is to determine a distributed algorithm that allows sensor nodes to form a minimal set cover using local information whilst minimizing missed recharging opportunities. We propose an eligibility test that ensures the sensor nodes with higher energy volunteer to monitor targets. After that, we propose a Maximum Energy Protection (MEP) protocol that places an on-duty node with low energy to sleep while maintaining complete targets coverage. Our results show MEP increases network lifetime by 30% and has 10% less redundancy as compared to two similar algorithms developed for finite battery WSNs.


The aim of this paper is to propose innovative approaches to relationship marketing that affect the process of building relationships with customers, based on a detailed analysis of the literary sources and the research. This proposal is supported by the information technology e-CRM and social CRM. The paper contains a detailed description of the procedure for successfully implementing innovative approaches to relationship marketing in business. This should serve mainly to marketing managers as a valuable tool in their use of innovative approaches to relationship marketing, especially in the process of obtaining innovative ideas from customers, in order to identify their needs and requirements. Furthermore, the paper contains the main results of our research aimed at identifying the extent of utilization of innovative approaches to relationship marketing in Slovak businesses. A total of 207 respondents were involved in the research (medium and large businesses and following methods were used: comparative method of qualitative evaluation method, the method of structured and structured interview method, observation, document analysis method (method of content analysis) and questionnaire method.


Although the typical genomic and phenotypic changes that characterize the evolution of organisms under the human domestication syndrome represent textbook examples of rapid evolution, the molecular processes that underpin such changes are still poorly understood. Domesticated yeasts for brewing, where short generation times and large phenotypic and genomic plasticity were attained in a few generations under selection, are prime examples. To experimentally emulate the lager yeast domestication process, we created a genetically complex (panmictic) artificial population of multiple Saccharomyces eubayanus genotypes, one of the parents of lager yeast. Then we imposed a constant selection regime under a high ethanol concentration in 10 replicated populations during 260 generations (six months) and compared them with evolved controls exposed solely to glucose. Evolved populations exhibited a selection differential of 60% in growth rate in ethanol, mostly explained by the proliferation of a single lineage (CL248.1) that competitively displaced all other clones. Interestingly, the outcome does not require the entire time course of adaptation, as four lineages monopolized the culture at generation 120. Sequencing demonstrated that de novo genetic variants were produced in all evolved lines, including SNPs, aneuploidies, INDELs, and translocations. In addition, the evolved populations showed correlated responses resembling the domestication syndrome: genomic rearrangements, faster fermentation rates, lower production of phenolic-off flavors and lower volatile compound complexity. Expression profiling in beer wort revealed altered expression levels of genes related to methionine metabolism, flocculation, stress tolerance and diauxic shift, likely contributing to higher ethanol and fermentation stress tolerance in the evolved populations. Our study shows that experimental evolution can rebuild the brewing domestication process in "fast motion" in wild yeast, and also provides a powerful tool for studying the genetics of the adaptation process in complex populations.


Oral squamous papilloma is a benign proliferation of stratified squamous epithelium, which results in a papillary or verrucous exophytic growth on the surface. Tomes in 1848 first described it as a localized wart on the gingiva which is an HPV-induced epithelial hyperplasia. It is usually reported in the age group of 30-50 years with no gender predilection, detected usually on the
buccal, labial or lingual mucosa. While most HPV lesions in other body parts are infective, oral papillomas are rarely contagious. It clinically displays a narrow stalk below a whitish growth bearing multiple blunted verruciform surface projections. The less keratinised lesions display a pinkish or reddish coloration. Submucosal fibrovascular connective tissues are contiguous with the stroma of the lesion. A small amount of scattered chronic inflammatory cells are common in the connective tissue stroma of the peduncle. The keratin on the surface is usually parakeratin and is thickened. Mild mitotic activity may be present rarely in this entity. Bearing striking clinical resemblance with verruca vulgaris, condyloma acuminatum or verruciform xanthoma, this condition can be histologically distinguished from them. Surgical excision is an adequate treatment for this condition and recurrence is rare. The figure displays the clinical features of a squamous papilloma in a 55 year old gentleman in whom the lesion was surgically removed.


In this paper we describe a novel human machine interface system aimed primarily at those who have experienced loss of extremity motor function. The system enables the control of a wide range of assistive technologies such as wheelchairs, prosthetics, computers and general electrical goods at the 'flick of a tongue'. This system could benefit a huge sector of people including those who have suffered a spinal cord injury, stroke or quadriplegia.The technology focuses on a unique hands‐free interface whereby users can issue commands simply by performing subtle tongue movements; these tongue motions are continually monitored by a small microphone positioned comfortably within the ear canal. Due to the physiological connections between these regions and the distinctive nature of the signals, these commands can be detected and distinguished allowing a control signal to be issued.This inexpensive device offers significant advantages over existing technologies by providing unobtrusive, hygienic control through natural tongue motion. New software has been implemented, achieving over 97% correct classification across four different tongue movements for seven test subjects. Feasibility of the system as an interface for a variety of devices is demonstrated through simulation studies including controlling a prosthetic manipulator and power wheelchair.


World agriculture is based on a small number of animal species and a decreasing number of breeds within each species. Several breeds of West African shorthorn cattle (Bos taurus brachyceros) are now at high risk of extinction due to interbreeding. The West African shorthorn breeds are particularly important resources because of their superior abilities to resist diseases, particularly trypanosomiases, and be productive under high humidity, heat stress, water restriction and with poor quality feed. A study was undertaken in the derived savanna area of southwest Nigeria to determine the prospects for conservation through use and possible improvement of the Muturu, a West African shorthorn breed known to be in decline throughout southern Nigeria. An analysis of farmers' breeding practices and breed preferences confirmed a strong trend away from Muturu, and identified the traits farmers find least desirable about the Muturu relative to other breeds. An analysis of cattle market prices found small, but significant, price differences by breed. The best hopes for increased utilization likely in other areas of West Africa, such as southeast Nigeria, where the Muturu is better suited to the farming systems and there is a large market for this breed to provide incentives.


The Water Problem Institute of the Russian Academy of Science and the Tennessee Valley Authority are participating in a joint project to demonstrate the use of geographic information systems (GIS) in managing water resources under the changing economic system in Russia. The purpose is to improve decisions by better organizing, analyzing, and presenting water resource data and management options. Results to date include development of a conceptual approach and review of existing data. The project area includes the Upper Volga River Basin which encompasses the Moscow metropolitan area. Data are being managed at three levels depending on the scale and detail (i.e., regional, watershed, and local). Initial conclusions indicate a great potential for this technology, but many obstacles due to the current economic situation.


Using the semiempirical MNDO method, several systems simulating the active site of serine proteases have been studied. The stabilization energy was found to depend strongly on the nucleophilicity of the attacking group. The decrease of the activation energy has been estimated as 9 kcal/mole. It was shown that the substrate distortion does not vary with forming of hydrogen bonds.


This title offers market-tested guidelines to understand the math and determine the profit potential of each option trade. Successful option trading requires that you understand and know how to use the mathematics underlying option prices. "The Mathematics of Options Trading" focuses on that math, providing you with the knowledge you need to both determine expected results of an option trade and calculate the optimum position size before committing capital. Based on never-before-published work and research, this straightforward book includes: clear-cut explanations of volatility and time to expiration - the two most important concepts for option traders; formulas and examples for calculating profit profiles of naked and covered options, combinations, spreads, synthetics, and more; and, the Reehl Option Trader CD - with programs that immediately analyze profitable opportunities using numerous different strategies."The Mathematics of Option Trading" explores dozens of formulas and techniques for analyzing option trades, as well as for understanding the odds of those trades, based on mathematical probabilities. It shows you how to work the numbers to take advantage of favorable opportunities as they present themselves, while at the same time making the necessary moves to reduce risk at every step. Trading options is a meticulous and exacting undertaking that is fraught with risk. One way to achieve more consistent profitability is to gain a working knowledge of the mathematics and analyze the profit/loss profiles of each trade before putting your trading capital on the line. "The Mathematics of Options Trading" focuses on the formulas and know-how you need to remove much of the guesswork from trading options.This in-depth trading manual provides you with the mathematical sophistication required for successful options trading, taking the mystery out of the math and making it both understandable and usable. Its comprehensive coverage includes: formulas for developing profitable option strategies, including algebraic derivations, explanations and examples; basic combinations - covered calls and puts, protective puts, spreads, straddles, and strangles; strategy variations in which the number of options involved is important, including ratio spreads, backspreads, and butterfly spreads; calculation of mathematical expectation - the product of the value of an event and the probability of the event's occurrence; and, historical volatility - its calculation, use with the Black-Scholes option pricing model, sources for volatility information, and more.It also includes: the Greeks - Delta, Gamma, Vega, Theta, and Rho, with calculations and examples; and, other valuable concepts, including moving averages, first and second order equations, search algorithms, the put/call ratio, the central limit theorem, and more. Before you can be consistently successful as an option trader, you must first consider the possible outcomes together with their associated probabilities to always be aware of the odds of success. "The Mathematics of Options Trading" explains the mathematics required to achieve that goal, and how to dramatically improve the profit potential of trade selection. The powerful accompanying CD includes: Expectation.exe - produces results for a single trade for any strategy covered in the book, both onscreen and on a printed report; and, DailyCheck.exe - produces a printed report covering all example strategies for options on a given underlying instrument.


The ability of Ethiopian farmers to deal with rainfall risk is scanty due to the extension of land plots and incomplete and inefficient financial markets. Traditional drought insurance is flawed by information asymmetries, high administrative costs, and non-diversifiable risks. Insurance based on indexes is a promising alternative. Working on 120 rural households, we estimate the willingness to pay for a drought weather derivative through a mixed logit model allowing for random preferences. The results suggest that the premium, indemnity, and perceived frequency of drought are important determinants of the take-up. Apparent inconsistencies in behavior can be interpreted as rational choices.


a specific binding site in nervous tissue has revolutionised some aspects of neuropharmacology. However, the use of ligand binding has widened so as to make use of them for drug screening and for the measurement of drug concentrations in biological fluids. However, as with many relatively simple techniques, there are many hidden pitfalls not only in methodology but particularly in data interpretation. The second edition of this volume is very welcome since the first saw many of us through the difficult problems of establishing ligand binding assays in our own laboratories. It is designed as a laboratory guide to the topic but fluctuates between purely theoretical aspects to very practical considerations. The second edition contains new chapters on peptide receptors and sodium sensitive voltage channels, the importance of which has only become apparent in the past few years. Most aspects of ligand binding techniques are covered from straight-forward in vitro binding assay through to auto-radiographic techniques and receptor purification. I was


5-Hydroxytryptamine (serotonin) in micromolar amounts increased the growth of fibroblasts in culture while not affecting five other cell lines. Serotonin appeared to shorten the lag phase of cell growth. The effect was less when serotonin was added to the fibroblast culture after the initial 24-hour period. The two functional groups of the serotonin molecule were required for growth enhancement. Serotonin in millimolar concentrations was toxic to fibroblasts.


Quantum computer requires quantum arithmetic. The sophisticated design of a reversible arithmetic logic unit (reversible ALU) for quantum arithmetic has been investigated in this letter. We provide explicit construction of reversible ALU effecting basic arithmetic operations. By provided the corresponding control unit, the proposed reversible ALU can combine the classical arithmetic and logic operation in a reversible integrated system. This letter provides actual evidence to prove the possibility of the realization of reversible Programmable Logic Device (RPLD) using reversible ALU.


Plant nuclear genomes harbor sequence elements derived from the organelles (mitochondrion and plastid) through intracellular gene transfer (IGT). Nuclear genomes also show a dramatic range of repeat content, suggesting that any sequence can be readily amplified. These two aspects of plant nuclear genomes are well recognized but have rarely been linked. Through investigation of 31 Medicago taxa we detected exceptionally high post-IGT amplification of mitochondrial (mt) sequences containing rps10 in the nuclear genome of M. polymorpha and closely related species. The amplified sequences were characterized as tandem arrays of five distinct repeat motifs (2,157, 1064, 987, 971, and 587 bp) that have diverged from the mt genome (mitogenome) in M. polymorpha nuclear genome. The mt rps10-like arrays were identified in seven loci (six intergenic and one telomeric) of the nuclear chromosome assemblies and were the most abundant tandem repeat family representing 1.6% - 3.0% of total genomic DNA, a value ca. three-fold greater than the entire mitogenome in M. polymorpha. Compared to a typical mt gene, the mt rps10-like sequence coverage level was 691.5 - 7,198-fold higher in M. polymorpha and closely related species. In addition to the post-IGT amplification, our analysis identified the canonical telomeric repeat and the species-specific satellite arrays that are likely attributable to an ancestral chromosomal fusion in M. polymorpha. A possible relationship between chromosomal instability and the mt rps10-like tandem repeat family in the M. polymorpha clade is discussed.


A three-dimension finite element simulation for the model of three-dimensional network structure foam was made by ANSYS software in this paper. Influence of magnitude of load, loading position and volume fraction on the compressive strength of SiC foam three-dimensional network structure was investigated. The results show that with the increase of magnitude of load and the decrease of volume fraction, the compressive strength of foam decreases gradually. Non-deformability decreases with the increase of load; moreover, the reduction degree becomes bigger gradually. Compressive strength of SiC foam and volume fraction are nonlinearly dependable.


Antiretroviral treatment (ART) have been reported to make changes in the functioning of dopaminergic neurons by altering the expression of dopamine active transporter (DAT). ART containing efavirenz drug have been related to show the adverse reactions on the central nervous system (CNS). Reported literature indicates the correlation of DAT19/10 genotype with the risk of progression of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection.

To assess the polymorphism in the human gene DAT1 including variable number tandem repeats (VNTR) from individuals having an infection of HIV.

Genotyping was completed by performing a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in a total of 165 HIV positive patients on ART treatment (34 were HIV-infected patients with hepatotoxicity, 131 HIV-infected patients) and 160 healthy controls without HIV infection.

Incidence of DAT19/9, 8/9 genotypes, and allele with 9 repeats were higher in individuals having hepatotoxicity compared to those who do not have hepatotoxicity (5.9 vs. 0.8%, OR = 7.73; 2.9 vs. 0.8%, OR = 3.86; 20.58% vs. 14.12%, OR = 1.56). DAT19/10 genotype was related to severity of hepatotoxicity (OR = 1.86; P = 0.05). Upon comparison of genotype between individuals who do not have hepatotoxicity but having HIV infection and healthy controls without HIV infection, the dispersion of DAT1 10/11, 6/10 genotypes were greater in individuals with HIV infection (1.5% vs. 0.6%, OR = 2.73; 3.1% vs. 1.3%, OR = 2.73). DAT19/10 genotype was related to the people of advanced stage of HIV infection (OR = 2.05, P = 0.04). A higher incidence of DAT19/10 genotype was found in individuals with early stage of HIV infection than healthy controls (26.3 vs. 15.6%, OR = 1.93). In alcohol and tobacco consuming individuals with HIV infection and hepatotoxicity, DAT19/10 genotype has demonstrated hazard in the progression of HIV infection and increasing severity of hepatotoxic condition (OR = 1.40, P = 0.91, OR = 1.50; P = 0.91 and OR = 1.57, P = 0.39; OR = 2.70; P = 0.53). In patients with hepatotoxicity, nevirapine utilization with DAT19/10 genotype had demonstrated an increase in severity of hepatotoxicity (OR = 4.00, P = 0.41). In individuals with HIV infection and hepatotoxicity, alcohol and nevirapine usage along with DAT1 9/10 genotype have indicated a hazard for progression of HIV infection and increase in severity of hepatotoxicity (OR = 1.47, P = 0.85; OR = 1.73; P = 0.32).

The genetic polymorphism with DAT19/10 genotype was linked with the progression of HIV infection and in the advancement of HIV-related illnesses.


Parent-held child health record (PHCHR), a public health intervention for promoting access to preventive health services, have been in use in many developed and developing countries. This review aimed to evaluate the use of the records toward promoting child health/development. We searched PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar to identify relevant articles, of which 32 studies met the inclusion criteria. Due to considerable heterogeneity, findings were narratively synthesised. Outcomes with sufficient data were meta-analysed using a random-effects model. Odds Ratio (OR) was used to compute the pooled effect sizes at 95% confidence interval (CI). The pooled effect of the PHCHR on the utilisation of child/maternal healthcare was not statistically significant (OR = 1.31, 95% CI 0.92–1.88). However, parents who use the record in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) were approximately twice as likely to adhere to child vaccinations (OR = 1.93, 95% CI 1.01–3.70), utilise antenatal care (OR = 1.60, 95% CI 1.23–2.08), and better breastfeeding practice (OR = 2.82, 95% CI 1.02–7.82). Many parents (average-72%) perceived the PHCHR as useful/important and majority (average-84%) took it to child clinics. Health visitors and nurses/midwives were more likely to use the record than hospital doctors. It is concluded that parents generally valued the PHCHR, but its effect on child health-related outcomes have only been demonstrated in LMIC.


OBJECTIVE
To compare the accuracy of radiography and computed tomography (CT) in predicting implant position in relation to the vertebral canal in the cervical and thoracolumbar vertebral column.

STUDY DESIGN
In vitro imaging and anatomic study.

ANIMALS
Medium-sized canine cadaver vertebral columns (n=12).

METHODS
Steinmann pins were inserted into cervical and thoracolumbar vertebrae based on established landmarks but without predetermination of vertebral canal violation. Radiographs and CT images were obtained and evaluated by 6 individuals. A random subset of pins was evaluated for ability to distinguish left from right pins on radiographs. The ability to correctly identify vertebral canal penetration for all pins was assessed both on radiographs and CT. Spines were then anatomically prepared and visual examination of pin penetration into the canal served as the gold standard.

RESULTS
Left/right accuracy was 93.1%. Overall sensitivity of radiographs and CT to detect vertebral canal penetration by an implant were significantly different and estimated as 50.7% and 93.4%, respectively (P<.0001). Sensitivity was significantly higher for complete versus partial penetration and for radiologists compared with nonradiologists for both imaging modalities. Overall specificity of radiographs and CT to detect vertebral canal penetration was 82.9% and 86.4%, respectively (P=.049).

CONCLUSIONS
CT was superior to radiographic assessment and is the recommended imaging modality to assess penetration into the vertebral canal.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE
CT is significantly more accurate in identifying vertebral canal violation by Steinmann pins and should be performed postoperatively to assess implant position.


Semaphorins are a large family of secreted and transmembrane proteins required for guidance of pioneering axons to their predestined targets during neuronal development. Acting as inhibitors, chemo-repellents or attractants, semaphorins appear to affect axon steering, fasciculation, branching, and synapse formation. However, research into the function of semaphorins in non-neuronal systems has highlighted the important roles these molecules play in the immune system as well as in organogenesis, vascularisation and angiogenesis. Semaphorins have also been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease, and in the progression of certain types of cancer. The role of the leukocyte semaphorin, semaphorin4D (Sema4D) and its interaction with receptors are the focus of these studies. Sema4D is a 150 kDa transmembrane protein expressed on the surface of most haemopoietic cells including B and T lymphocytes. It is reportedly involved in T-cell activation and B-cell aggregation and survival, via the c-lectin, CD72. It is one of only a few semaphorin family members known to play a physiological role in the immune system. In contrast, Sema4D is also able to repel projecting axons through an interaction with PlexinB1, suggesting that it also plays an important role in the developing neuronal network. Studies described here are concerned with the structure of Sema4D and initial studies on its PlexinB1 receptor. Plexins, like semaphorins, contain a sema domain and usually 3 PSI domains. Having determined the structure of Sema4D, studies are underway to solve the structure PlexinB1, and the Sema4D-PlexinB1 complex. Aside from the structural studies, the functions of several aspects of Sema4D are of interest. These include, the specific role of the PSI domain which is also present in both plexins and integrins; mapping of the Sema4D-plexinB1 binding region using site-directed mutagenesis and Biacore binding studies; and a search for other molecules that interact with Sema4D.


This pilot study aimed to explore the effect of solution-focused group counseling intervention on Internet addiction among college students. Eighteen college students participated in this study, out of which nine subjects were assigned into the experimental group and the rest (n = 9) to a control group. The experimental group received group counseling for five weeks, while the control group did not receive any intervention. The revised version of the Chinese Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS-R) was used to capture pre-test and post-test excessive use in the two groups. The experimental group was also subjected to a follow-up test and self-reported Internet addiction scores six months after the end of group counseling. Results showed that after the five-week solution-focused group counseling, the scores of four dimensions of the CIAS-R in the experimental group had CIAS-R decreased, and the reduction trend of the total score of CIAS-R was similar across all subjects in this group. The treatment effect was larger than the placebo reduction in the control group in two dimensions: compulsive and withdrawal (Sym-C & Sym-W) and tolerance (Sym-T) symptoms. Qualitative research confirmed the conclusions from the quantitative data, showing that the experimental group reduced its Internet addiction symptoms. Overall, the findings suggested that solution-focused group counseling had positive intervention effects on Internet addiction.


The purpose of this scoping review was to provide a broad overview of the literature pertaining to parasport coaches, including information regarding the size and scope of research, the populations and perspectives obtained, and the type of methods used to conduct the research. Data were collected and analyzed using a six-stage framework for conducting scoping reviews. The results revealed that the majority of articles were based on interviews, and an overwhelming majority of the participants were men coaching at the high-performance level in North America. Three of the most frequent topics were becoming a parasport coach, being a parasport coach, and having general parasport coaching knowledge. Articles ranged in date from 1991 to 2018, with 70% of empirical articles published from 2014 onward, indicating an emerging interest in this field of research. This review has the potential to advance the science and practice of parasport coaching at all levels.


Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP) is the knowledge gateway of medicinal and aromatic plants related services and technologies. It organizes kisan mela (Farmers Fair) every year and display new varieties/technologies and innovative cultivation practices on commercially viable MAPs for its end users. Analyzed data reveals that 75.85% farmer preferring aromatic crops and only 24.15% farmers in favor of medicinal crops. In the year 2010-2012, aromatic crops are quite popular among the farmers and increment pattern of aromatic crops were 40% & 71.90 in Mint; 48% & 78.37% in Rose, Menthol mint still dominates the choice, while in case of medicinal plants, the adoption pattern increments were 75% & 38.09% in Stevia; 35.71% & 21.05% in Withania; 37.5% & 77.27% in Tulsi respectively. It leads to improved socio-economic condition of farmers in the area using cultivable land but also in rural sector under stress and unsustainable land.


The success of Darwin Core and ABCD Schema as flexible standards for sharing specimen data and species occurrence records has enabled GBIF to aggregate around one billion data records. At the same time, other thematic, national or regional aggregators have developed a wide range of other data indexes and portals, many of which enrich the data by interpreting and normalising elements not currently handled by GBIF or by linking other data from geospatial layers, trait databases, etc. Unfortunately, although each of these aggregators has specific strengths and supports particular audiences, this diversification produces many weaknesses and deficiencies for data publishers and for data users, including: incomplete and inconsistent inclusion of relevant datasets; proliferation of record identifiers; inconsistent and bespoke workflows to interpret and standardise data; absence of any shared basis for linked open data and annotations; divergent data formats and APIs; lack of clarity around provenance and impact; etc. The time is ripe for the global community to review these processes. From a technical standpoint, it would be feasible to develop a shared, integrated pipeline which harvested, validated and normalised all relevant biodiversity data records on behalf of all stakeholders. Such a system could build on TDWG expertise to standardise data checks and all stages in data transformation. It could incorporate a modular structure that allowed thematic, national or regional networks to generate additional data elements appropriate to the needs of their users, but for all of these elements to remain part of a single record with a single identifier, facilitating a much more rigorous approach to linked open data. Most of the other issues we ‡ ‡ ‡ © Hobern D et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. currently face around fitness-for-use, predictability and repeatability, transparency and provenance could be supported much more readily under such a model. The key challenges that would need to be overcome would be around social factors, particularly to deliver a flexible and appropriate governance model and to allow research networks, national agencies, etc. to embed modular components within a shared workflow. Given the urgent need to improve data management to support Essential Biodiversity Variables and to deliver an effective global virtual natural history collection, we should review these challenges and seek to establish a data management and aggregation architecture that will support us for the coming decades.


Historically, frequent, low-severity fires in dry western North American forests were a major driver of ecological patterns and processes, creating resilient ecosystems dominated by widely spaced pine species. However, a century of fire-suppression has caused overcrowding, altering forest composition to shade-tolerant species, while increasing competition and leaving trees stressed and susceptible to pathogens, insects, and high-severity fire. Exacerbating the issue, fire incidence is expected to increase with changing climate, while fire season has been observed to begin earlier and last longer than historic trends. Forest thinning and prescribed fire have been identified as important management tools to mitigate these risks. Yet little is known of how thinning, fire, or their interaction affect contemporary evolutionary processes of constituent pine species that influence fitness and play an important role in the opportunity for selection and population persistence. We assessed the impact of widely used fuel reduction treatments and prescribed fire on fine-scale gene flow on an ecologically important and historically dominant shade-intolerant pine species of the Sierra Nevada, Pinus lambertiana Dougl. Treatment prescription (no-thin-no-fire, thin-no-fire, and fire-and-thin) was found to differentially affect both fine-scale spatial and genetic structure as well as effective gene flow in this species. Specifically, the thin-no-fire prescription increases genetic structure (spatial autocorrelation of relatives) between adults and seedlings, while seed and pollen dispersal increase and decrease, respectively, as a function of increasing disturbance intensity. While these results may be specific to the stands at our study site, they indicate how assumptions relating to genetic effects based on spatial structure can be misleading. It is likely that these disequilibrated systems will continue to evolve on unknown evolutionary trajectories. The long-term impacts of management practices on reduced fitness from inbreeding depression should be continually monitored to ensure resilience to increasingly frequent and severe fire, drought, and pest stresses.


Traditionally, there have been two large obstacles faced in attempting to apply AI techniques to games and other virtual environments. The first obstacle is the gap between the largely declarative representations used by many AI techniques and the largely procedural approaches used in virtual environments. The second obstacle is the gap between the skill sets and knowledge bases of the two domain experts with AI researchers often lacking experience using virtual environment APIs and development environments and virtual environments developers often lacking significant AI knowledge. In this paper we present Bowyer, a tool designed to address these two obstacles to the integration of AI planning algorithms into virtual environments. Bowyer bridges the gap between the declarative representations in a planning domain and the procedural framework of a virtual environment via the use of code generation techniques. Bowyer's functionality also allows planning researchers to integrate their planning research into virtual environments without the need to have extensive knowledge of virtual environment development.


Abstract In this study I examine the presentation of Saladin and the Crusades within the genre of Persian universal histories produced from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. While a number of recent studies have begun to explore the place of the Crusades in the historical memory of the Islamic world, to date little attention has been given to the question of the manner in which the ensuing Mongol conquests affected subsequent Muslim memory of the Crusades. In this article I argue that historiographers of the Mongol and post-Mongol eras largely sought to legitimate the conquests through evocation of heresy and by celebrating the Mongols' role in combating alleged heretical elements within Muslim society, most notably the Ismāʿīlīs. While Saladin is universally remembered today first and foremost for his re-conquest of Jerusalem from the Crusaders, within the context of the agenda of Persian historiography of the post-Mongol era the locus of his significance was shifted to his overthrow of the Ismāʿīlī Fatimid dynasty in Egypt, to the almost complete exclusion of his role in the Crusades. This article challenges long-standing assumptions that the figure of Saladin was largely forgotten within the Muslim world until the colonial era, and instead presents an alternative explanation for the supposed amnesia in the Muslim world regarding the Crusades in the pre-modern era.


OBJECTIVE
Research indicates a marriage effect with respect to drinking and drinking problems. This effect is characterized by less consumption and fewer problems among married men and women as compared with either single or divorced individuals.

METHOD
This article reviews evidence regarding processes that might account for the marriage effect.

RESULTS
The literature suggests that the marriage effect reflects three processes: (1) reduced alcohol consumption triggered by the transition to marriage, (2) the deleterious effect of heavy drinking on marital quality and marital stability and (3) increased consumption in response to the transition to divorce.

CONCLUSIONS
Given the nature of these transitions, it is argued that transitions to marriage and divorce should be viewed as unique opportunities for adult prevention activities, but that more pre-prevention research focused on changes over these transitions is needed to help target prevention efforts.


To investigate effects of size and spatial distributions of defects from primary damage to annealing of an individual cascade, molecular dynamics (MD) and object kinetic Monte Carlo (OKMC) are applied for simulating cascade generation and annealing. MD cascade simulations of tungsten are carried out with two typical embedded atom method potentials for cascade energies in the range from 0.1 to 100 keV at 300 K. The simulation results show that even though the number of survival defects varies slightly, these two potentials produce very different interstitial cluster (IC) size distribution and defect spatial distribution with cascade energies larger than 30 keV. Furthermore, OKMC is used to model individual cascade annealing. It demonstrates that larger-sized ICs and closely distributed SIAs in the cascade region will induce a much higher recombination fraction for individual cascade annealing. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the size and spatial distributions of defects for primary damage in the multi-scale simulation framework.


This study assessed the above-ground carbon stock in the five major forest types, representing two physiographic regions and four districts of Nepal. Altogether, 116 circular sample plots were laid out systematically in different forests types to inventory the forest. Total above-ground biomass was derived with allometric equations. Results indicated variation in age of the stand (18-75 years), above-ground carbon stock per hectare (34.30- 97.86 dry wt. ton ha -1 ) and rate of carbon sequestration (1.30-3.21 t ha -1 yr -1 ), according to different forest types. The rate of carbon sequestration by different forest types depended on the growing nature of the forest stands. Tropical riverine and Alnus nepalensis forest types demonstrated the highest carbon sequestration rates in Nepal. Key Words: Above-ground biomass; carbon; forest types; Nepal DOI: 10.3126/banko.v19i2.2979 Banko Janakari , Vol. 19, No.2 2009 pp.10-14


International students often desire to study overseas and many countries, including New Zealand, welcome them into their schools and universities. Students from Mainland China, one of the most populous countries in the world and, until quite recently closed to the rest of the world, have, in the past few years, made up the large majority of those who come to New Zealand to study. Those wishing to enter university after completing high school in China must acquire a specified level of English and successfully complete a two semester long Foundation Studies course, before being eligible for undergraduate study. Research into independent or self-regulated learning has shown that Western (mainly American) students are much more successful academically and enjoy their studies more if they are willing and able to self-regulate their learning. This research has occurred mostly in Western settings with Western participants. The present research using a mixed methods approach aimed to examine the self-regulated learning, epistemological beliefs, demographic factors and personality traits of Mainland Chinese students studying in the Foundation Studies course and to determine whether any of these factors appeared to have any appreciable effect on their experiences in the course and on their final outcomes. The research found that while no one specific factor seemed to determine experiences and outcomes, it would appear that personality characteristics of face, optimism and other Dependability scores may mediate factors such as ability (measured by grades), length of time in the country, self-regulated learning and motivational strategies (such as organisation, time management, effort regulation and self-efficacy), and previous independent learning to influence these experiences and outcomes. While it appears that the North American theory of self-regulated learning is applicable to these students, it seems that cultural beliefs may affect which selfregulatory factor is most salient in their academic outcomes. Further research would be valuable to clarify these differences.