Among all failures in cable circuits, the failure rate of cable joints is much higher than that in cable bodies. In an effort to reduce cable failure rates and improve the reliability of power cable systems, this article studies the possibility of increasing the length of a cable section and thus reducing the number of cable joints via alternative sheath bonding methods. As the maximum length of an electrical cable section is governed by the permissible sheath standing voltage, this article first proposes a precise sheath voltage calculation model without approximations and simplifications. The sheath voltage per unit length has then been calculated for each bonding method using the proposed model. The maximum length of a cable section has then been calculated, based on the permissible sheath standing voltage, for the various sheath bonding methods. Results show that the traditional 500-m minor section length could be increased to 2.21 km by using the single-point bonding method. The maximum distance can be further lengthened by increasing the physical spacing among the three-phase cables. The economic comparison for each bonding method has also been made. Finally, the proposed method has been applied to a HV cable circuit already in operation, and the operational data confirms the feasibility.


Having clear ecological knowledge of protected species is essential for being able to successfully take actions towards conservation, but this knowledge is also crucial for managing and preventing conservation conflicts. For example, the Siberian flying squirrel, Pteromys volans , listed in the EU Habitats Directive and inhabiting mature forests that are also the target for logging, has had a major role in political discussions regarding conservation in Finland. This species has also been well-researched during recent decades, providing knowledge on the ecology and management of the animal. Herein, we review knowledge on habitats, demography, community interactions and spatial ecology of this flagship species. We compare the ecology of flying squirrels with that of other arboreal squirrels, and summarize conservation management and policy related to flying squirrels. Reviewed research on the Siberian flying squirrel shows that the species has many similarities in behaviour to other arboreal squirrels. For instance, arboreal squirrels deviate from the general pattern of male-biased sexual size dimorphism in mammals, which perhaps relates to the mating system of arboreal squirrels. Important differences are found in the response of Siberian flying squirrels to tree mast, i.e. pulsed food resource, compared to that of red squirrels, and in communal nesting behaviour compared to that of North American flying squirrels. The extensive knowledge on dispersal behaviour of the flying squirrel, well-studied habitat associations and the proved need for evidence-based conservation may guide researchers and managers working with other similar species. For conservation, the case of the Siberian flying squirrel demonstrates that habitat protection becomes both ineffective and uneconomical if ecological knowledge is not applied in the conservation planning process. The cost-effective conservation of the species requires both landscape-level conservation planning and flexible conservation options to increase the motivation of land owners for conservation.


Background: Serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) are the common markers of renal function and also one of the known predictors of adverse outcomes of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The aim of this study is to assess the impact of elevated BUN on in-hospital outcome of ACS patients and superiority of BUN over creatinine for the assessment of in-hospital outcome in our setting.
Methods: This prospective observational study with purposive sampling of a total of 184 patients was conducted from October, 2009 to September, 2010. Based on normal cut off values (BUN and serum creatinine was <20 mg/dl and <1.4 mg/dl respectively) all the patients were divided into four groups; group I- both BUN and serum creatinine are normal, group-II- normal BUN and high serum creatinine, group-III- high BUN and normal serum creatinine, group-IV- - both BUN and serum creatinine are high. In-hospital data like hemodynamic conditions, heart failure, arrhythmias, conduction abnormalities, death etc. were noted. Assessment of in-hospital outcome of ACS patients and comparison to elevated serum creatinine and elevated BUN was done.
Results: ACS patients with only raised BUN level had more occurrence of cardiogenic shock (p=0.008), left ventricular failure (p=0.020), ventricular Tachycardia (p=0.022), ventricular fibrillation (P=0.037) and complete AV block (p=0.022) than those with only raised serum creatinine. In hospital mortality and hospital stay was also increased in ACS patients with elevated BUN than elevated serum creatinine (p value is 0.022 and 0.007 respectively).
Conclusion: Incidence of in-hospital death, cardiogenic shock, left ventricular failure, arrhythmia and duration of hospital stay were significantly (p<0.05) higher in patients who had raised BUN than raised serum creatinine. It is observed that elevated BUN is a better predictor of in-hospital outcome of ACS patients than elevated creatinine.
Cardiovasc j 2022; 14(2): 135-142


A bimetallic macrocyclic-N4 complex, FCC, consisting of a Co-corrole core equipped with a peripheral ferrocene has been synthesized. The complex structure was thoroughly characterized using single crystal X-ray diffraction. The Co-corrole, mono-substituted with a peripheral Fe-complex, exhibited unique characteristics after its pyrolysis for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity. Carbon black supported FCC, pyrolyzed at 500 °C, gives an electrocatalyst with a bimetallic (Co and Fe) active center, which facilitates ORR via a 4-electron pathway. The new non-precious bimetallic electrocatalyst exhibits a high electron transfer number of more than 3.95, with a H2O2 yield of below 2.3%, over the potential range of 0.2–0.8 V for ORR in acidic medium, which is superior to pyrolyzed Co-corroles. The enhanced ORR activity for the catalyst derived from this technique provides a new prospect for next-generation non-precious N4 electrocatalysts for fuel cell applications.


New approaches greatly enhance the physician's ability to assess fetal lung maturation prior to delivery, to understand the processes involved in that maturation, and to anticipate appropriate treatment protocol, all factors contributing to improved mortality and morbidity rates.


New data and a biostratigraphic review on Silurian graptolites of the La Chilca Formation are presented. Silurian retiolitids and monoserial graptolites are described for the first time in the lower layers of the Salto Macho Member at the Poblete Norte section, exposed in the Central Precordillera, San Juan Province, western Argentina. This member (late Hirnantian-early Wenlock) begins with a pebble paraconglomerate covered by a sedimentary succession of dark grey shales and greenish-yellowish siltstones. Two graptolite assemblages were collected therein. The first association includes Pseudoplegmatograptus reticulatus, Stimulograptus sedgwickii, Talacastograptus leanzai, Metaclimacograptus asejradi, Coronograptus sp., and biserial and monoserial indeterminate graptolites. The second contains Retiolites geinitzianus, Monograptus priodon, Stimulograptus sp., Pristiograptus sp., and unknown monoserial colonies. The late Aeronian Stimulograptus sedgwickii Zone is recorded due to the presence of the index taxon in the middle levels of the Salto Macho Member. The second graptolite fauna has been related to the early Sheinwoodian Cyrtograptus murchisoni Zone, based on the presence of palynomorph assemblages from the La Chilca Formation, previously studied in another sections. The biotic changes of the graptolite faunas, sedimentary variations, and prevalent paleoenvironmental conditions observed in the lower beds of the Salto Macho Member, could indicate the first evidence of the Sedgwickii Event in Precordillera, which is recognized globally and involves comparable features.


Abstract The mechanism of Marek's disease (MD) vaccination to prevent the lymphoproliferative disease in chickens is not well understood. It is generally recognized that vaccination prevents disease, including the induction of T-cell tumors, but it does not prevent the pathogenic virus from infecting and replicating in the vaccinated host, nor does it prevent bird to bird spread of the oncogenic virus. The stage at which the vaccinated immune system intervenes in the process from infection to the induction of tumors remains obscure. Using a transplantable tumor induced by the Md5 strain of MD virus (MDV), we show that CVI988 vaccination does not prevent the induction of transplantable tumors in the 15I5 × 71 chicken line. A monoclonal tumor with a V beta 1 T-cell receptor spectratype of 207 base pairs was used to follow the transplantable tumor in serial passages in vivo. This transplantable tumor could be passed in vaccinated birds. The length of time between vaccination and challenge (5 to 12 days) had little or no influence on the ability to transfer the tumor. There was variability in the manifestation of the disease produced by the transplanted tumor. Some chickens presented as normal but were still capable of transmitting the transplanted tumor to newly vaccinated recipients via their blood. This indicates that some chickens can control, but not eliminate, the tumor. The variables inducing health or disease in the challenged chickens remain obscure, but environmental or other factors likely depress the immune system allowing the tumor to overwhelm the immune system.


This paper presents the main features and capabilities of a developed system based on augmented virtuality (AV), which is devoted to the assisted navigation of teleoperated robots. The goal is to provide users with a greater perception of the robot navigation environment that improves the accuracy in teleoperation tasks and reduces the workload required to drive. The developed system is a mixed-perspective exocentric display (ME3D) type. In order to assess the work carried out, a comparative study between the developed ME3D interface and a video-centric display (VC2D) has been conducted. To this end, we have implemented both interfaces on a real robot and performed an experiment with 16 subjects in a real scenario. As a result, we have obtained a high degree of acceptance in the use of the ME3D interface by participants.


Implicit deep learning has received increasing attention recently due to the fact that it generalizes the recursive prediction rules of many commonly used neural network architectures. Its prediction rule is provided implicitly based on the solution of an equilibrium equation. Although a line of recent empirical studies has demonstrated its superior performances, the theoretical understanding of implicit neural networks is limited. In general, the equilibrium equation may not be well-posed during the training. As a result, there is no guarantee that a vanilla (stochastic) gradient descent (SGD) training nonlinear implicit neural networks can converge. This paper fills the gap by analyzing the gradient flow of Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activated implicit neural networks. For an $m$-width implicit neural network with ReLU activation and $n$ training samples, we show that a randomly initialized gradient descent converges to a global minimum at a linear rate for the square loss function if the implicit neural network is \textit{over-parameterized}. It is worth noting that, unlike existing works on the convergence of (S)GD on finite-layer over-parameterized neural networks, our convergence results hold for implicit neural networks, where the number of layers is \textit{infinite}.


This article proposes a conceptual framework of how the United States is reinventing colonialism in the Global South through the domination of digital technology. Using South Africa as a case study, it argues that US multinationals exercise imperial control at the architecture level of the digital ecosystem: software, hardware and network connectivity, which then gives rise to related forms of domination. The monopoly power of multinational corporations is used for resource extraction through rent and surveillance – economic domination. By controlling the digital ecosystem, Big Tech corporations control computer-mediated experiences, giving them direct power over political, economic and cultural domains of life – imperial control. The centrepiece of surveillance capitalism, Big Data, violates the sanctity of privacy and concentrates economic power in the hands of US corporations – a system of global surveillance capitalism. As a feature of surveillance capitalism, Global North intelligence agencies partner with their own corporations to conduct mass and targeted surveillance in the Global South – which intensifies imperial state surveillance. US elites have persuaded people that society must proceed according to its ruling class conceptions of the digital world, setting the foundation for tech hegemony. The author argues for a different ecosystem that decentralises technology by placing control directly into the hands of the people to counter the rapidly advancing frontier of digital empire.


A framework for the integration of meditation and psychotherapy is presented through a consideration of the psychobiological nature of meditation (the relaxation response) and discussion of a traditional meditation practice (mindfulness meditation) as an effective cognitive technique for the development of self-awareness. The mechanisms by which the emotional and cognitive changes of meditation can be of therapeutic value are explored and the synergistic advantages of the combination of psychotherapy and meditation are discussed.


To understand the security threats to reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, this paper studies poisoning attacks to manipulate any order-optimal learning algorithm towards a targeted policy in episodic RL and examines the potential damage of two natural types of poisoning attacks, i.e., the manipulation of reward or action. We discover that the effect of attacks crucially depends on whether the rewards are bounded or unbounded. In bounded reward settings, we show that only reward manipulation or only action manipulation cannot guarantee a successful attack. However, by combining reward and action manipulation, the adversary can manipulate any order-optimal learning algorithm to follow any targeted policy with \Theta(\sqrt{T}) total attack cost, which is order-optimal, without any knowledge of the underlying MDP. In contrast, in unbounded reward settings, we show that reward manipulation attacks are sufficient for an adversary to successfully manipulate any order-optimal learning algorithm to follow any targeted policy using \tilde{O}(\sqrt{T}) amount of contamination. Our results reveal useful insights about what can or cannot be achieved by poisoning attacks, and are set to spur more work on the design of robust RL algorithms.


Article type: Original Article Received: Dec. 2016 Accepted: Feb. 2017 e-Published: 5 Mar. 2017 Corresponding author: Meimanat Hosseini e-mail: email@example.com Background & Aim: Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a sensorimotor disorder that is frequently observed in patients with multiple sclerosis. This study aimed to determine the effect of stretching exercises on the severity of restless legs syndrome symptoms in patients with multiple sclerosis. Methods & Materials: This quasi-experimental study with control group (IRCT2016041627427N1) was conducted on 60 patients with multiple sclerosis (30 in the intervention group and 30 in the control group) referred to the multiple sclerosis society of Kermanshah in 2015. "The demographic questionnaire", "the symptoms of restless legs syndrome and their severity", and "exercise recording form" were used to collect the data. The intervention group was taught the correct way to exercise during four half-hour sessions. The severity of RLS symptoms was measured before the intervention and the end of the fourth and eighth weeks. Data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS software version 20. Results: Before the intervention, the mean score for the severity of RLS symptoms was respectively 19.08±8.12 and 17.42±5.24 in the intervention and control groups (P=0.569). One month (P=0.002) and two months after the intervention (P<0.001), the score was changed to 9.70±5.24 and 7.08±4.08 in the intervention group and 17.61±5.31 and 17.92±5.52 in the control group. Conclusion: Stretching exercises can improve the severity of RLS symptoms in patients with multiple sclerosis. Therefore, the stretching exercises program is recommended for this group of patients.


This research aims to increase learning motivation and scrutinized competent for children 5-6 years old. Method of this research is action research. This resulth  are that motivation competent and scrutinized competent for children through puzzle estafet is increasingly. This result be proof with cycle I, cycle II and cycle III showed increase are 85-100 % for every indicator.


Today, ethics has an important place in all areas of life. Education is also a fundamental process of human life. Therefore, in education ethics has a very important and effective role. In order to be a good human, ethics should be placed as a course in educational system. In this paper, it will be discussed the ethics education in schools. In doing this, it will be also discussed why teaching ethics is important in education. Before discussing this issue, it is necessary to define what ethics is and what education is. Indexed Terms: education, ethics value education,


Intramammary infections by a nonspeciated Mycobacterium of Runyon group IV increased in the dairy herd at the Beltsville, Md, Agricultural Research Center during 4 years, and were cultured from 9.7% of 300 quarter samples from clinical mastitis cases in 1982. The infection was mildly acute, without systemic involvement, and refractory to therapy but self-terminating, usually at the end of lactation. Invasion of the mammary gland commonly followed stress, either calving or previous clinical mastitis, and was most frequent in August and September. Transmission of this mycobacterial intramammary infection from cow to cow was far more likely in free-stall barns than in tie stalls, and seemed not to be associated with machine milking.


Link prediction is an important problem in online social and collaboration networks, for recommending friends and future collaborators. Most of the existing approaches for link prediction are focused on building unsupervised or supervised classification models based on the availability of accepts and rejects of the past recommendations. Several of these methods are feature-based and they construct a large number of network-level features to make the prediction more effective. A more flexible approach is to allow the model to learn the required features from the network for a specific task, rather than explicit feature engineering. In addition, most of the social and collaboration relationships do not happen instantly and rather build slowly over time through several low cost interactions, such as email and chat. The existing approaches often ignore the availability of such auxiliary networks to make link prediction more robust and effective. The main focus of this work is to build a robust and effective classifier for link prediction using multiple auxiliary networks. We develop a supervised random walk model, that does not require any explicit feature construction, and can be personalized to each user based on the past accept and reject behavior. Our approach consistently outperforms several popular baselines in terms of precision and recall in multiple real-life data sets. Also, our approach is robust to noise and sparsity in auxiliary networks, while several popular baselines, specifically feature-based ones, are inconsistent in their performance under such conditions.


Increasingly, the links between energy insecurity (including energy prices, availability, and fuel subsidy reform) and instability are being studied. These issues often become flashpoints for social mobilisation and protest. Previous research has started to explore different types of fuel-related conflict and its relationship with scarcity, abundance, and energy prices but the research is fragmented. Much of this existing research focuses on a possible link between oil and armed conflict and rebellion, rather than on fuel prices as a source of intra-state instability below the level of armed conflict. It is argued that this research gap is important as these protests often have the potential to escalate into broader political movements, and the pressures to reduce reliance on carbon-heavy fuels through increased taxation or the reduction of subsidies is increasing. This rapid review provides an overview of the evidence on the links between energy prices, subsidy reforms and the risk of instability. It first highlights these links and discusses the literature, and then provides some brief evidence on recommendations and lessons learned on managing the impact of subsidy reform processes. The review was unable to identify any indicators of risk or quantitative metrics for appraising energy-related instability, apart from the unique fuel riots database created by Natalini et al. (2020). This rapid review takes a wide view of "instability" and what that means.


We tackle the problem of object detection and pose estimation in a shared space downtown environment. For perception multiple laser scanners with $360^{o}$ coverage were fused in a dynamic occupancy grid map (DOGMa). A single-stage deep convolutional neural network is trained to provide object hypotheses comprising of shape, position, orientation and an existence score from a single input DOGMa. Furthermore, an algorithm for offline object extraction was developed to automatically label several hours of training data. The algorithm is based on a two-pass trajectory extraction, forward and backward in time. Typical for engineered algorithms, the automatic label generation suffers from misdetections, which makes hard negative mining impractical. Therefore, we propose a loss function counteracting the high imbalance between mostly static background and extremely rare dynamic grid cells. Experiments indicate, that the trained network has good generalization capabilities since it detects objects occasionally lost by the label algorithm. Evaluation reaches an average precision (AP) of 75.9%.


The paper presents an approach to realize the complex wavelet method which used in extracting PD (partial discharge) signal features of power transformer. Real wavelet transformation (RWT) is used to analyze and process the signals from the weak insulation in the transformer. But RWT just only extract the eigenvalue of PD signal from real part. Complex wavelet transformation (CWT) can extract the eigenvalue from both real part and imaginary part. In this way, the eigenvalue of the PD signal will contain the information from two spaces, and enhance the accuracy of analysis.


This article focuses on the history of meta-historical reflection in Belgium and makes a comparison with the Netherlands. Meta-historical reflection is defined broadly as including the traditions of so-called substantive philosophy of history and critical philosophy of history as well as more general reflections on the social relevance of history. The article starts with a bibliometric analysis which is used as a first indicator for the changing success of meta historical reflection in the Low Countries. A more qualitatively-oriented analysis of the theme follows. It is stressed that a relatively large interest in meta-history existed in Belgium starting from the early 1960s until the second half of the 1970s. This interest was shared by historians as well as philosophers (of science). The third part of the article raises and (partly) answers the question of why this interest in meta-historical reflection declined again during the 1980s. It also asks why meta-historical reflection, in contrast to the situation in the Netherlands, has until today hardly been professionalized and institutionalized in Belgium.


The possibilities of using the statistiral technique of factor analysis in describing variations in plant communities are explored. This method enables the variations to be treated as continuous, instead of resulting in a separation of the stands studied into a limited number of discrete associations or other synecological categories. It further provides a means for testing whether such separation can be objectively justified. It may often facilitate the recognition of the complexes of environmental factors which mainly determine differences in vegetation, and provides a means of estimating the relative value of the various species as indicators of these environmental complexes. In the present paper, the "principal axes" technique of factor analysis is applied to the analysis of data for percentage cover for 14 species in the Victorian Mallee. It is shown that their distribution, in so far as it does not depend on factors peculiar to individual species, can be represented in terms of at most five orthogonal "factors". The two most important "factors" are interpreted in terms of catenary changes in the vegetation. Other less common species not included in the analysis show high correlations with these "factors". In units of 1.28 ha there is no evidence that more than one continuously varying population is represented in the area; but in units of 25 sq.m. the majority of quadrat records fall into one or other of two principal categories, representing the valley and ridge communities. The potential value of factor analysis in plant sociology, and difficulties in its application to this field, are discussed.


Vast and diverse microbial communities (the microbiome) are distinct at different human body sites and strongly influence health and disease. Specifically, the respiratory tract microbiome is thought to influence outcomes after lung transplantation, the only therapeutic option for end-stage lung diseases. Studies dissecting the role of the microbiome on pulmonary health should also include the viral microbiome (virome), which is less-studied due to unique challenges in identifying these small, diverse, self-replicating genetic elements. Organ transplantation is accompanied by immunosuppression, which can result in reactivation of latent viruses, transfer of viruses from organ donor to recipient, and increased susceptibility to viral infections. We therefore used high-throughput metagenomic approaches to study the virome of lung transplant recipients (LTRs). We first characterized the virome in LTRs and its relationship to clinically defined adverse events. We discovered that a family of eukaryotic viruses (Anelloviridae) is abundant in the lung and blood of LTRs and that their levels in the lungs were associated with primary graft dysfunction, a form of acute lung injury. Next, we investigated the temporal and spatial dynamics of the virome during lung transplantation and identified herpesviruses, parvoviruses, polyomaviruses, bacteriophage and complex anellovirus populations. We focused on the abundant anelloviruses by assembling genomes from shotgun metagenomic sequences and tracking their representation in the lung and blood of LTRs post-transplantation using a metric that accounts for inter-and intra-subject viral diversity. This analysis revealed that anellovirus populations move between lung allografts and the peripheral blood of LTRs. However, many uncharacterized sequences still existed in the metagenomic data generated in these studies. To address this, we developed a molecular and bioinformatics pipeline to mine public datasets and discovered a novel family of small, circular DNA viruses (Redondoviridae). Quantification of redondoviruses in human oro-respiratory samples showed an association with periodontal disease and acute illness. Overall, this work helps define the virome during lung transplantation and introduces a new family of human viruses, broadly demonstrating the importance of exploring the human virome. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Cell & Molecular Biology First Advisor Frederic D. Bushman Second Advisor Ronald G. Collman This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3370


Purpose: When a femtosecond laser beam causes photodisruption, a cavitation bubble is produced. Many laser shots may be placed close together, and the induced cavitation bubbles coalesce to create a cut. Reduction of the bubble diameter is fundamental to improving the cut quality. Methods: A home–built Nd:Glass femtosecond laser is used with a CPA system and 1065 µm wavelength. The pulse repetition rate ranges from 1 to 10 KHz, with a maximum pulse energy of about 60 µJ. The laser delivery system works through an objective lens on an optical table. The samples are fixed to a 3–dimensional moving anterior chamber system, which is connected to a micrometric stepper motor. Human corneas are obtained from the French Eye Bank and are divided into 2 groups, according to their pachymetry: Group 1 (n=10): 1000 µm +/– 75 µm, and Group 2 (n=10): 700 µm +/– 45 µm. The control group is composed of silicon dioxide samples. The treated corneas are analyzed through confocal microscopy. Results: At plasma threshold, the average cavitation bubble diameter is: 6 µm +/– 7µm in the Group 1 corneas, 25 µm +/– 1.5 µm in the Group 2 corneas and 2 +/– 1 µm in the silicon dioxide samples. In group 2 corneas and silicon dioxide samples, the majority of laser pulses generated cavitation bubbles. In group 1 corneas, far fewer of the laser pulses induced cavitation bubbles. The time it takes for one cavitation bubble to disappear is: 90 +/– 10 seconds for a 25 µm cavitation bubble, 25 +/– 5 seconds for a 6 µm cavitation bubble, and 10 minutes in the silicon samples. Conclusions: In more edematous corneas, the cavitation bubble diameter is heterogeneous. This heterogeneity is due to laser beam attenuation by the corneal edema. This information suggests that, in the absence of laser parameter adaptation, the cut quality in edematous and pathological corneas will be less than in clear corneas.


Alpha-methylacyl-CoA racemase (AMACR) deficiency is a disorder that causes a variety of neurological problems that begin in adulthood and slowly get worse. People with AMACR deficiency may have a gradual loss in intellectual functioning (cognitive decline), seizures, and migraines. They may also have acute episodes of brain dysfunction (encephalopathy) similar to stroke, involving altered consciousness and areas of damage (lesions) in the brain. Other features of AMACR deficiency may include weakness and loss of sensation in the limbs due to nerve damage ( sensorimotor neuropathy), muscle stiffness (spasticity), and difficulty coordinating movements (ataxia). Vision problems caused by deterioration of the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye (the retina) can also occur in this disorder.


This paper presents a level set method for image restoration. In the light of the loss of image quality caused by occlusion or part stain, it adopts the method of picking-up image level sets and filling in level sets of occlusion to reconstruct the image. In the process of linking level lines, besides the traditional geodesic curves, it makes use of the Meaningful beeline detection technique. The experiment results show this method is of great importance in the preservation of images.


We present a set of linear codes, namely LEC, to recover from data erasure errors using minimum redundancy that is theoretically possible. The data to be encoded are organized in the form of matrices and the elements are selectively grouped together using XOR operations to generate the code elements. In the paper we describe LEC coding and provide a comparison of the complexity of the coding scheme with that of Reed-Solomon (RS) codes and EVENODD codes. Also, we discuss the application of LEC to the transmission of VBR (variable bit rate) video traffic over ATM networks.


Shear bands are narrow zones of intense shear observed during plastic deformations of metals at high strain rates. Because they often precede rupture, their study attracted attention as a mechanism of material failure. Here, we aim to reveal the onset of localization into shear bands using a simple model developed from viscoplasticity. We exploit the properties of scale invariance of the model to construct a family of self-similar focusing solutions that capture the nonlinear mechanism of shear band formation. The key step is to de-singularize a reduced system of singular ordinary differential equations and reduce the problem into the construction of a heteroclinic orbit for an autonomous system of three first-order equations. The associated dynamical system has fast and slow time scales, forming a singularly perturbed problem. The geometric singular perturbation theory is applied to this problem to achieve an invariant surface. The flow on the invariant surface is analyzed via the Poincar\'{e}-Bendixson theorem to construct a heteroclinic orbit.


We have evaluated the role of circulating serum immunoglobulins (IgG) which inhibit the growth of thyroid in the etiology of thyroid atrophy in endemic cretinism. Twenty nongoitrous cretins (13 women and 7 men, age range: 9-33) were classified on the basis of clinical criteria for cretinism in China. They were born and living in an iodine deficient area, Xinjiang, northwest China. Antimicrosomal antibody titers were negative in all serum. Nine patients (seven women and two men; age range: 11-23) were biologically primary hypothyroid. Seven subjects were of a myxedematous form and two subjects were of a mixed form. We have studied thyroid-growth inhibiting immunoglobulin (TGII) activity that was measured as an inhibitory effect of 4 mg/ml IgG on TSH-induced [3H]-thymidine incorporation into the DNA of a rat thyroid follicular cell line, FRTL5 cells. Six (five women and one man) out of the nine patients with primary hypothyroidism (66.7 percent) had TGII. We also measured other growth-blocking IgG that inhibited [3H]-thymidine incorporation into DNA stimulated by insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I), a growth factor working through a cAMP-independent pathway. Five (three women and two men) out of nine patients (55.6 percent) with nongoitrous primary hypothyroidism had IGF-I-blocking IgG. These results indicate that TGII plays an important role in atrophy of the thyroid in spite of increased serum TSH concentrations, and IgG which inhibits thyroid growth stimulated by IGF-I also might play a role in thyroid atrophy in some endemic cretins.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Attitudes towards the land rights of Sami reindeer herders have changed considerably during the last 100 years. So, too, has consideration of how such rights should be treated by Land Consolidation Courts. This paper reviews changes in attitudes to the Sami land rights with respect to how these are considered in Land Con¬solidation Courts in southern Sami areas in Norway. The review also considers changing attitudes regarding the competence of Land Consolidation Courts to deal with such matters. There were several cases in the 20th Century in which Land Consolidation Courts treated Sami land rights in a restricted and unfortunate manner. Legal practice, however, was not always like that, evidenced by the so-called 'Finn line' (Norwegian: 'finnelinja' -'Finn' is an archaic name for Sami). This boundary was established during a land consolidation case in 1873 and was confirmed in 1883. At that time, Sami land rights were evidently accepted as appurtenant right in privately owned mountain pasture and the Sami were treated in the same way as others who enjoyed rights of usufruct on it. The regulation of 1883 included rules governing compensation for grazing damage on farming land. In particular, responsibility for grazing damage was divided between owners and the reindeer herders, providing these looked after their animals properly, 'The Finn line' subsequently achieved wider importance. The case of 1873¬1883 has been referred to several times as a valuable and valid precedent for a way in which to organize grazing conflicts in other Sami areas. It was used in 1964 as evidence of the special rights of Sami reindeer people in the Brekken common land case. The Sami won this case in 1968 and, in its judgement, the Norwegian Supreme Court of Justice emphasised the importance of the line (Rt. 1968, p. 394). Although, owing to changes in land use practices, the 'Finn line' no longer has any practical significance, its juridical significance remains because it settles the principle that the rights of Sami reindeer herders' have to be considered in the same way as the rights of farming land owners. The ruling of 1873-1883 makes it clear that reindeer herders stand to gain important concessions, with respect to access to pasture, in land consolidation cases. The degradation of Sami land rights from the end of the 19th Century was a consequence of political manipulation and had no basis in law. Attitudes have now changed and, consequently, there is a need to revise recent legislation, such as the 1978 Reindeer Husbandry Act with regard to rules for compensation for grazing damage on farming land, and the 1979 Land Consolidation Act concerning rules of land use.


In present IC design, the process variation such as the litho distortion has made the accurate extraction of parasitic capacitances of interconnects become more difficult. One of the problems is the generation of some small deformation including small angle, which makes it difficult to mesh generation when using 3D FEM solver, and the scale of the equation becomes larger. This paper uses the FEM with the perturbation to deal with the issue. We first build the matrix equation with the nominal geometry parameters, and then add the perturbation terms by using the derivative of the matrix and the dimension changes of the distorted conductors. The pertubated system equation is then solved to get the capacitances. The result shows that the method provides accurate capacitances with less CPU time and memory.


TNBC is unresponsive to hormone therapies, leaving patients afflicted with this disease with limited treatment options. We previously engineered an oncolytic reovirus (r2Reovirus) with enhanced infective and cytotoxic properties in TNBC cells. However, how r2Reovirus promotes TNBC cell death is not known. In this study, we show that reassortant r2Reovirus can promote nonconventional caspase-dependent but caspase 3-independent cell death and that the mechanism of cell death depends on the genetic composition of the host cell. We also map the enhanced oncolytic properties of r2Reovirus in TNBC to interactions between a type 3 M2 gene segment and type 1 genes. Our data show that understanding the interplay between the host cell environment and the genetic composition of oncolytic viruses is crucial for the development of efficacious viral oncolytics. ABSTRACT Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) constitutes 10 to 15% of all breast cancer and is associated with worse prognosis than other subtypes of breast cancer. Current therapies are limited to cytotoxic chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, leaving a need for targeted therapeutics to improve outcomes for TNBC patients. Mammalian orthoreovirus (reovirus) is a nonenveloped, segmented, double-stranded RNA virus in the Reoviridae family. Reovirus preferentially kills transformed cells and is in clinical trials to assess its efficacy against several types of cancer. We previously engineered a reassortant reovirus, r2Reovirus, that infects TNBC cells more efficiently and induces cell death with faster kinetics than parental reoviruses. In this study, we sought to understand the mechanisms by which r2Reovirus induces cell death in TNBC cells. We show that r2Reovirus infection of TNBC cells of a mesenchymal stem-like (MSL) lineage downregulates the mitogen-activated protein kinase/extracellular signal-related kinase pathway and induces nonconventional cell death that is caspase-dependent but caspase 3-independent. Infection of different MSL lineage TNBC cells with r2Reovirus results in caspase 3-dependent cell death. We map the enhanced oncolytic properties of r2Reovirus in TNBC to epistatic interactions between the type 3 Dearing M2 gene segment and type 1 Lang genes. These findings suggest that the genetic composition of the host cell impacts the mechanism of reovirus-induced cell death in TNBC. Together, our data show that understanding host and virus determinants of cell death can identify novel properties and interactions between host and viral gene products that can be exploited for the development of improved viral oncolytics. IMPORTANCE TNBC is unresponsive to hormone therapies, leaving patients afflicted with this disease with limited treatment options. We previously engineered an oncolytic reovirus (r2Reovirus) with enhanced infective and cytotoxic properties in TNBC cells. However, how r2Reovirus promotes TNBC cell death is not known. In this study, we show that reassortant r2Reovirus can promote nonconventional caspase-dependent but caspase 3-independent cell death and that the mechanism of cell death depends on the genetic composition of the host cell. We also map the enhanced oncolytic properties of r2Reovirus in TNBC to interactions between a type 3 M2 gene segment and type 1 genes. Our data show that understanding the interplay between the host cell environment and the genetic composition of oncolytic viruses is crucial for the development of efficacious viral oncolytics.


Pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas (PCC/PGLs) are rare, mostly catecholamine-producing neuroendocrine tumors of the adrenal gland (PCCs) or the extra-adrenal paraganglia (PGL). They can be separated into three different molecular clusters depending on their underlying gene mutations in any of the at least 20 known susceptibility genes: The pseudohypoxia-associated cluster 1, the kinase signaling-associated cluster 2, and the Wnt signaling-associated cluster 3. In addition to tumor size, location (adrenal vs. extra-adrenal), multiplicity, age of first diagnosis, and presence of metastatic disease (including tumor burden), other decisive factors for best clinical management of PCC/PGL include the underlying germline mutation. The above factors can impact the choice of different biomarkers and imaging modalities for PCC/PGL diagnosis, as well as screening for other neoplasms, staging, follow-up, and therapy options. This review provides a guide for practicing clinicians summarizing current management of PCC/PGL according to tumor size, location, age of first diagnosis, presence of metastases, and especially underlying mutations in the era of precision medicine.


Manufacturing organizations adopt sustainability manufacturing in their attempt to address the triple-bottomline (TBL): environmental stewardship, economic growth, and social well-being. This study was conducted in order to characterize the programs adopted by a manufacturing firm with respect to the TBL and in the end, recommend a framework that could be utilized by decision-makers in the firm as they start to pursue a more sustainable strategy. This paper utilized the case study of a prime multinational semiconductor firm that promotes sustainability among their corporate initiatives.The semiconductor industry was chosen because of its prominence in sustainability efforts worldwide. Weaknesses of the current practices were found to be the reactive position of the firm to external drivers due to lack of long-term agenda for sustainability, the lack of reinforcement of social strategies on each other, the fragmented positions of current sustainability strategies along the sustainability "sphere", and the lack of understanding regarding the embedded interrelationships and interdependencies of sustainable manufacturing strategies. A framework is proposed,which captures the influence of internal and external drivers in adopting sustainable manufacturing strategies to address the triple-bottom line. The framework also depicts the influence that external drivers bear on internal ones. This framework could guide decision-makers on sustainable manufacturing strategies selection considering a more holistic approach.


The optical properties of polymer liquid crystal cell exhibiting polymer blue phases (PBPs) have been determined using ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry, polarizing optical microscopy (POM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray measurements, FTIR imaging and optical rotation technique. PBPs are thermodynamically stabile mesophases, which appear in chiral systems between isotropic and liquid crystal phases. A series of cyclosiloxane-based blue phase polymers were synthesized using a cholesteric LC monomer and a nematic LC monomer, and some of the polymers exhibit PBPs in temperature range over 300 degrees in cooling cycles. The unique property based on their structure and different twists formed and expect to open up new photonic application and enrich polymer blue phase contents and theory.


Air pollution is a major component of environmental degradation in the 21st century worldwide due to the increased use of fossil fuels in various industries and their contribution to contaminating the natural atmosphere around us. Environmental pollution is posing a challenge to human existence and the continuation of human generation on this planet. Environmental degradation is considered a major affecting factor of climate change which includes both global warming driven by industrial emissions of green gases and large-scale shift in weather patterns. This problem is growing on a large scale throughout the world and poses challenges to survival and sustainability. Nanotechnology being universal technology can be used to solve this problem of environmental degradation by cleaning the degraded air on large scale and can counter the contribution of natural and industrial pollution. In this paper, the proposal of construction and use of nanotechnology based mega machine is analyzed and the prospectus and challenges of such machine production and maintenance for large scale air cleaning are discussed. The advantages, benefits, constraints, and disadvantages of production and use of such mega machines from various stakeholders' points of view are identified. Finally, the idea of self-sustainable nanotechnology filters based mega machines is proposed using solar/wind energy supported systems for automatic and self-sustainable use.


11.1 Introduction Breast diseases are a major concern in women's health today. Early
detection of breast cancer has a substantial role in reducing fatality rates. By detecting malignant tumors and removing them at an early stage before they metastasize and spread to adjacent regions, cancer threats can be stopped. Early detection of breast cancer by means of thermography has a long and controversial history. The availability of highly sensitive infrared cameras that produce high-resolution diagnostic images of the temperature and vascular changes of breasts, and a greater understanding of advanced image processing techniques, have recently created renewed interest in thermography. Thermography can identify the first signs of cancer formation 8 to 10 years before mammography can. In mammography, anatomical changes are detected, while in functional thermography, physiological changes can be caught. It is worthy to note that physiological changes eventually lead to anatomical changes. Cancer is frequently described as a chaotic, poorly regulated growth.2 Cancerous cells, tumors, and vasculature have irregular shapes that cannot be described using Euclidean geometry, which is based on smooth shapes such as lines, planes, cylinders, and spheres. Since fractal geometry has a stronger means for quantifying the spatial complexity of real objects, it is useful when describing the irregularities of tumor growth.3 Moreover, cancerous cells and tumors can be depicted by a nonlinear dynamical system. A chaotic time series (CTS) can provide the tools necessary for generating procedures used to evaluate a nonlinear system. Detection and diagnostics of dangerous malignant tumors in the breast are very important for physicians. They are generally assessed based on the skill and knowledge of a radiologist through analysis of the visual characteristics shown in a mammogram. Some experts believe that a major characteristic is the irregularity that exists on the edge of a typical cell that forms part of a tumor and tumor structures (angiogenesis). Fractal analysis has a crucial role in identifying malignant from
benign tumors in mammograms. Several studies have been presented that relate edge sharpness of malignant masses with benign masses. Benign masses are usually round and smooth with well-defined boundaries, while malignant masses are rough and have complicated boundaries. Evaluation of a tumor's geometrical complexity can be made by measuring the irregularities of its boundaries.


Abstract. One year of continuous records of temperature, salinity data at various depths, and currents obtained from by an upward looking acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) moored at a site in the Cretan Sea were analyzed. Temperature and salinity data revealed the influence of a multi-scale circulation pattern prevailing in this area. This pattern consists of mesoscale cyclonic and anticyclonic vortices moving together as a dipole, and inducing downwelling and upwelling in the water column. The dipole movements, which control the circulation in the area, have been evidenced from horizontal current variability in the upper 250 m. The basin-scale circulation also shows a prominent seasonal variability. The Empirical Orthogonal Function analysis applied to either zonal or meridional components of the currents, confirmed the prevalence of a depth-independent mode over the baroclinic-like one for the whole period of measurements and for both current components. Nevertheless, the depth-dependent structure indicated the out-of-phase behaviour of the upper 250 m layer with respect to the deeper one. The first mode of the temperature EOF analysis, which accounts for most of the variance, represents the seasonal heating of the water column being principally associated with the surface mixed layer at the level of the seasonal thermocline. Key words. Oceanography: physical (currents, eddies and mesoscale processes, general circulation)


The Limits of Self-Control: Self-Control, Illusory Control, and Risky Financial Decision Making Maria Konnikova Can high self-control have drawbacks? Extensive research has shown the lifelong benefits of self-control for important outcomes such as education, health, income, and happiness. Far less work has been done on its potential negative impacts, where an overwhelmingly positive trait can end up having a less than positive effect on behavior. Recent research suggests that one such side effect may be an increased susceptibility to illusory control (IOC): in situations where actual control is limited but the potential for illusory control is high, high self-controllers may end up being more prone to overconfidence than low self-controllers, and this susceptibility may play out in suboptimal risk-taking behavior. Here, a series of five studies tests this causal chain, exploring the links between self-control and illusory control and the resulting impact of the relationship on risky decisions in the financial domain. In studies 1 and 2, high self-controllers consistently underperformed low selfcontrollers on two tasks of risk-taking, the Columbia Card Task and the Lottery Gambling Task. These effects persisted both under stress and in normal conditions. Individuals high in self-control failed to learn as well from negative feedback and were more prone to overconfidence, leading us to posit a causal mechanism rooted in the illusion of control, and specifically, in the positive affect that accompanies it. Studies 3 through 5 proceeded to test this relationship directly, on a decisionmaking task that looked specifically at financial risk-taking, the Behavioral Investment Allocation Strategy (BIAS). Across the three studies, we validated our findings from Studies 1 and 2 in the new risk-taking task, by showing that individuals low in selfcontrol consistently outperformed those in high self-control by making more optimal choices and fewer errors throughout the game. We next tested the precise causal mechanism of the observed decision making patterns by manipulating IOC (Study 3), positive affect (Study 4), and perceived selfcontrol (Study 5). We found that inducing IOC increased the number of errors committed by both high and low self-controllers across the board: individuals in the IOC condition made fewer optimal choices and performed worse overall, confirming our suspicion that IOC can be responsible for sub-optimal choices on financial risk-taking in stochastic environments. However, because the effect was non-selective, the precise causal mechanism and its relations to self-control still remained to be determined. In Studies 4 and 5, we were able to disambiguate the mechanism behind the underperformance caused by IOC. Specifically, we demonstrated that inducing positive affect (Study 4) reduced the number of optimal choices for low self-controllers on the BIAS task, making them look more like high self-controllers in their decisions. Surprisingly, the induction actually improved performance by high self-controllers. The perceived self-control induction (Study 5) also had a differential effect on high and low self-controllers. It decreased the number of optimal choices made by low self-controllers, again making them look more like high-self-controllers—but, just as with the positive affect induction, it increased the number of optimal choices made by high self-controllers. The increase in positive affect that accompanied the self-control induction was a significant mediator of the effect, a mediation that held when we pooled data from all three studies into a single affective mediation analysis. The induction results for low self-controllers confirm our hypothesis that the positive affect that usually accompanies both the illusion of control and high self-control can be an Achilles heel of high self-control in certain environments with limited actual control, creating a feeling of overconfidence that translates into suboptimal decision making. We explain the surprising improvement in performance of high self-controllers under induction conditions, as compared to baseline, by the higher self-reflection ability that accompanies high self-control. Specifically, a situation that is normally "hot" for high self-controllers is cooled through an induction that draws their attention to their high baseline self-control and accompanying positive affect. As a result, they reflect on their choices to a greater extent and act more in line with their usual optimal decision making ability. We thus both identify a specific environment where high self-control can prove to be a limiting factor for optimal decision making, and suggest a possible way to remedy that limitation, by providing a cooling period and drawing the attention of high selfcontrollers to the reasons for their sub-optimal strategy (namely, their positive feelings and high opinion of their own self-control). Together, the findings provide tantalizing implications for the sub-optimal market choices that even the most intelligent and successful individuals will make under the right conditions—and equally tantalizing ways to make those choices more sound.


Double-sampling /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ analog-digital converters (ADCs) are sensitive to path mismatch which causes quantization noise to fold into the signal band. A recent solution for this problem consists of modifying the noise transfer function (NTF) of the modulator such that it has one or several zeros at the Nyquist frequency, next to those in the baseband. In this brief, we present a systematic design strategy for such ADCs. It consists of finding optimal pole positions for the modified NTF. This can be combined with optimizing the zeros as well. Next, we introduce several efficient structures that have enough degrees of freedom to realize the optimized pole positions.


ALTHOUGH CHILDCARE CENTRES HAVE a vital role to play in the social and emotional development of children, the strategies used to promote children's wellbeing in such settings are not well researched. This study aimed to identify the strategies, facilitators and key challenges for promoting children's social and emotional wellbeing as reported by childcare directors and workers during semi-structured interviews. They reported mainly informal strategies with few formalised policies, curricula or strategies. Staff reported frequent difficulties communicating with parents and/or children due to many families speaking little or no English. Lack of staff training and inadequate resources for activities were other key challenges they identified. Perceived facilitators included staff having strong relationships with each other and sharing a common philosophy, as well as having an open door policy for parents. Systematic development of skills to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing could help leverage childcare staff's potential to promote children's wellbeing during a crucial stage of child development.


recognition is an interesting issue in pattern recognition. In this paper, we propose a method for face recognition using 3D depth information. The goal is to get minimum features and produce a good recognition rates. We extract 3D clouds points from 3d vrml face Database, then the nose tip for each sample is detected and considered as new origin of the coordinate system, Gaussian Hermite Moments are applied to characterize each individual and Back propagation neural network is applied for the recognition task. Experimental results shows that Gaussian Hermite moments with global depth information perform significantly better than another method based on local depth information, in this study we consider the case of using ratios of distances and angles between manually selected facial fiducial points.


Through the use of specially-prepared on-axis SiC substrates with patterned mesa tops completely free of atomic-scale surface steps, we have previously reported the growth of highquality GaN heteroepitaxial films with greatly reduced threading dislocation densities on the order of 107/cm2. In these films, we reported a defect substructure in which lateral a-type dislocations are present in the nucleation layer but do not bow into threading dislocations during the subsequent GaN growth. This study focuses further on the role of SiC substrate surface steps in the generation of misfit, a-type, and threading dislocations at the heteroepitaxial interface. By using weak-beam imaging (both to eliminate Moiré effects and to observe narrow dislocation images) from plan-view transmission electron microscopy (TEM), we identify dislocations generated on stepped and unstepped mesas and compare their geometries. We observe that misfit dislocations nucleated on an unstepped SiC mesa are confined to one set of a-type Burgers vectors of the form g=1/3 [2110] _ _ , straight and well-ordered so that they are less likely to interact with each other. On the other hand, misfit dislocation structures on a stepped SiC mesa surface are not nearly as well-ordered, having bowed structure with threading dislocations that appear to nucleate at SiC surface steps.


Technoscientific objects are commonly cast as distant and unfelt by the researchers who study them. How technoscientific objects can act on researchers bodies is rarely explored. This paper reflects on a feminist technoscience study on the Canadian Sexual Assault Evidence Kit (SAEK), a forensic tool used to document survivors' physical injuries and identify perpetrators of sexual assault. By examining the process of researching the SAEK's forty-year history, this paper considers how empirical objects can get under researchers' skin and be felt through and in their bodies. In doing so, this paper examines intersections between affect and technoscience and explores how affected bodies can be useful 'detectors' of technoscientific relations and methodological resources for studying technoscience. It proposes that embodied responses to technoscientific objects can deepen understandings of not only the objects themselves, but of the world(s) of relations in which they operate. Artistic rendering is proposed as a methodological strategy for capturing affect in feminist technoscience studies.


This article explores issues of cross-cultural communication raised by the Ottoman court's intense patronage of European artistic talent during the early part of Suleyman the Magnificent's reign (1520–1566). It situates the network of patronage of a group of regalia made in Venice for the sultan and a related project for royal tapestries within the context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-papal rivalry. Displayed as parade accessories and stage props in ostentatious ceremonies, these non-Islamic royal status symbols were primarily aimed at communicating Ottoman imperial claims to a European audience through a Western discourse of power. They became publicized through the popular media of European prints, news pamphlets, plays, and songs, which won the sultan his title of "Magnificent" in the West. The article concludes with an analysis of mid-sixteenth-century changes in cultural orientation that abruptly brought this lively chapter in East-West artistic relations to an end.


Long-term social aggregations are maintained by multiple mechanisms, including the use of acoustic signals, which may nonetheless entail significant energetic costs. To date, however, no studies have gauged whether there are significant energetic costs to social call production in bats, which heavily rely on acoustic communication for a diversity of social tasks. We measure energetic expenditure during acoustic signaling in Spix's disc-winged bats (Thyroptera tricolor), a species that commonly uses contact calls to locate the ephemeral furled leaves that they use for roosting. To determine the cost of sound production, we measured oxygen consumption using intermittent-flow respirometry methods, with and without social signaling. Our results show that the emission of contact calls significantly increases oxygen consumption; vocal individuals spent, on average, 12.42 kJ more during social signaling trials than they spent during silent trials. Furthermore, production of contact calls during longer periods increased oxygen consumption for males but not for females. We also found that as resting metabolic rates increased in males, there was a decreasing probability that they would emit response calls. These results provide support to the "allocation model", which predicts that only individuals with lower self-maintenance costs can afford to spend energy in additional activities. Our results provide a step forward in our understanding of how physiology modulates behavior, specifically how the costs of call production and resting metabolic rates may explain the differences in vocal behavior among individuals. Summary Statement Spix's disc-winged bats constantly produce contact calls while searching for roosts, which we show significantly increases an individual's metabolic rate.


Green space and stormwater infrastructure are of valued importance within the City of Philadelphia, but little research exists on understanding the unique contribution that green spaces can make in developing environmentally-conscious citizens. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, this project aims to explore theoretical components of environmental psychology and place attachment as related to the socioenvironmental benefits of urban green space. Two methods were used in 2013-2014 at one green space with stormwater management on the University of Pennsylvania campus: behavior mapping and a 200-person place attachment survey. An initial conclusion is that few participants have attachment to the space, but this does not inhibit perceptions of its quality and worth. The extensive use of the space indicates ample opportunity for environmental education on green stormwater infrastructure. Further research should be conducted to see if perceptual attachment leads to attitudinal correlates to environmental stewardship of place-centered conservation techniques, like green stormwater infrastructure. Disciplines Environmental Sciences | Environmental Studies | Other Environmental Sciences | Other Psychology | Physical Sciences and Mathematics This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/mes_capstones/67 i Environmental Psychology and Urban Green Space: Supporting PlaceBased Conservation in Philadelphia, PA


Abstract Lifelong learning has become associated with participation in the digital age, affecting everything from access to information technology, to its use in teaching and learning. It is therefore inevitable that educationists turn to digital literacy practices to examine their contribution to, and influence on, learning. This article explores the digital literacy practices of a group of higher education students with minimal previous access to digital resources, as well as how they compensate for uneven access, with a view to examining what they perceive to be challenges and possibilities offered by technology. Thus the article highlights how they are 'caught-between' two worlds: the technologicised and non-technologicised. The work is framed by New Literacy Studies, which suggests that literacy is a contextualised practice positioned in relation to social institutions and the power relations that sustain them (Gee, 1996). Emerging themes indicate that students perceive digital practices to have symbolic value, and provide access to cultural capital.


Description: In Eastern and Southern Africa, at least 120 million children and youth are not able to attend school due to COVID-19 related school closures. More than 16 million affected schoolchildren in the region rely on school meals and nutrition services. This joint note provides key messages and guidelines for governments and WFP and UNICEF Country Offices to lead assessments, planning, implementation and system strengthening for risk-informed and resilient school health and nutrition programmes in response to COVID-19.


Many machine learning methods have been applied for short messaging service (SMS) spam detection, including traditional methods such as naïve Bayes (NB), vector space model (VSM), and support vector machine (SVM), and novel methods such as long short-term memory (LSTM) and the convolutional neural network (CNN). These methods are based on the well-known bag of words (BoW) model, which assumes documents are unordered collection of words. This assumption overlooks an important piece of information, i.e., word order. Moreover, the term frequency, which counts the number of occurrences of each word in SMS, is unable to distinguish the importance of words, due to the length limitation of SMS. This paper proposes a new method based on the discrete hidden Markov model (HMM) to use the word order information and to solve the low term frequency issue in SMS spam detection. The popularly adopted SMS spam dataset from the UCI machine learning repository is used for performance analysis of the proposed HMM method. The overall performance is compatible with deep learning by employing CNN and LSTM models. A Chinese SMS spam dataset with 2000 messages is used for further performance evaluation. Experiments show that the proposed HMM method is not language-sensitive and can identify spam with high accuracy on both datasets.


A presentation prepared for the Workshop on Defining a Strategic Agricultural Research Agenda on Post-Crisis/Post-Shock Recovery in Highly Stressed Systems, Nairobi, May 22-23, 2008.


The myotubularin family is a large eukaryotic group within the tyrosine/dual-specificity phosphatase super-family (PTP/DSP). Among the 14 human members, three are mutated in genetic diseases: myotubular myopathy and two forms of Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy. We present an analysis of the myotubularin family in sequenced genomes. The myotubularin family encompasses catalytically active and inactive phosphatases, and both classes are well conserved from nematode to man. Catalytically active myotubularins dephosphorylate phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate (PtdIns3P) and PtdIns3,5P2, leading to the production of PtdIns and PtdIns5P. This activity may be modulated by direct interaction with catalytically inactive myotubularins. These phosphoinositides are signaling molecules that are notably involved in vacuolar transport and membrane trafficking. Myotubularins are thus proposed to be implicated in these cellular mechanisms, and recent observations on myotubularins homologues in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans indicate a role in endocytosis.


A reinforcing method is introduced, concerning the inclined and cantilever features in the structure of the Palms together dagoda in the Famen Monastery and the cracking in the floor slab of 54 meters high. According to the actual situation, the welding of the strengthened metal and the structure on the nodes is difficult to achieve. In order to make some improvement, we use bolt connection run throng the wall body instead of steel belt and steel bone welding, which will make the transmission of the structure more clear, shorten the construction period and ensure the engineering quality effectively. This method can also be used for the reinforcement in concrete structures of large span and tall buildings. Therefore, the discussion of processing technology dealing with the combination of the structural cracks in floor which this article focuses on, has some reference value on similar projects.


Climate change and the increase of impermeable surfaces due to urbanization have led to an increase in the frequency of flooding events. The occurrence of water shortage problems is attributed to an increased population and water pollution. Traditional methods of draining rainwater from rooftops, based on the Rainfall-Discharge (R-D) model, are challenged. By storing some of the rainfall that falls on building rooftops, flooding of nearby sewer systems can be mitigated, and the reduction of peak runoff can then calculated using the Rainfall-Storage-Discharge (R-S-D) model. By utilizing stored rainfall in or near a building, flooding can be further mitigated while conserving water, and the reduction of peak runoff and the amount of used rainwater can also be calculated using the Rainfall-Storage-Utilization-Discharge (R-S-U-D) model. The R-S-U-D model uses site-specific rainfall characteristics; thus, we take Seoul, Korea as a study case. The reduced peak flow and increased design return period for a combination of tank volume and utilization rate can be calculated and presented by a curve, which can be used in the design and operation of sewer systems. Results from the R-S-U-D model can help in designing methods to reduce the flooding risk in existing sewer systems without increasing their capacity, thus reducing expenses. Water conservation is an additional benefit.


There is an urgent need for early diagnosis in medicine, whereupon effective treatments could prevent irreversible tissue damage. Acute anterior chamber inflammation is the most common form of uveitis and a major cause of vision loss. The proximity of the iris vasculature to the light-permeable cornea and its involvement in ocular inflammation make it an ideal target for noninvasive molecular imaging. To accomplish this, carboxylated fluorescent microspheres (MSs) were conjugated with recombinant P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 and systemically injected in endotoxin-induced uveitic animals. MS adhesion in the microcirculation of the anterior and posterior chamber was visualized by intravital microscopy and scanning laser ophthalmoscopy. In iritic animals, significantly higher numbers of recombinant P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1-conjugated MSs adhered to the endothelium (P = 0.03) matching the increase in leukocyte adhesion. Conjugated MSs specifically interacted with firmly adhering leukocytes, allowing quantification of the endogenous immune response. Topical eye drop treatment with dexamethasone (P < 0.01) or cyclosporine A (P < 0.01) significantly lowered MS adhesion in iris vessels. Surprisingly, topical dexamethasone significantly reduced MS interaction in the fundus vessels (P < 0.01), while cyclosporine A did not. In vivo MS accumulation preceded clinical signs of anterior uveitis and leukocyte adhesion in iris vasculature. This work introduces noninvasive subclinical detection of endothelial injury in the iris vasculature, providing a unique opportunity for quantifying vascular injury and immune response in vivo.


Between 1780 and 1820 members of northern Virginia's Society of Friends attempted to mediate the spiritual demands of their faithÐincluding equalitarianism and pacifismÐand the hierarchical nature of the slave society in which they resided. This balancing act was particularly difficult for those Quakers most deeply embedded in the slave economy: merchants residing in the port of Alexandria. These FriendsÑmen like merchant William HartshorneÑstrived simultaneously to oppose slavery and prosper within a slave-based economy. However, the tensions inherent in their anomalous position forced stark choices: accommodation, subversion, or emigration. After 1780, large numbers of Quakers chose the latter route, but for individuals like Hartshorne who remained in Virginia, becoming genuine subversives was impossible as long as their economic welfare depended on the region's slave economy. Though Hartshorne did not personally own or hire slaves, involvement in various internal projects that hired slaves and financial institutions that supported slavery implicated him in the institution. As the region's commitment to slavery grew in the wake of the Haitian revolution and Gabriel's Rebellion, Friends found their situation growing increasingly difficult. Most notably, in the early nineteenth century, in response to the state's legal and economic pressure, the antislavery society that Hartshorne helped establish after the revolution collapsed. Not until near the end of his life would Hartshorne again publicly adopt antislavery positions, but only after he experienced economic ruin and his family's dependence on slavery ended. In short, in a society increasingly committed to slavery, outsiders like the Quakers were compelled to compromise their spiritual and moral beliefs if they wished to thrive.


Nowadays humans are constantly exposed to electromagnetic wave (EMW), especially mobile phone. Recently concerns about the potential risks of EMW it's increasing. A possible risk of the EMW is adverse effect on human semen quality. In this study, it was tried to do meta-analysis on the results obtaining the evaluation of sperm quality (motility and viability) after in vitro exposure to EMW of mobile phone. We carried out a Systematic Review in databases of ISI, Pubmed, Scopus, Ovid, Embase and VIP till December 2015. Then was performed meta-analysis of data extracted by comprehensive meta-analysis 2.2 software. Finally, 10 studies [8: sperm motility (17 subgroups), 6: sperm viability (6 subgroups)] were reviewed and meta-analysis was done. The percentage ranges of sperm motility in the unexposed and exposed samples were 17.70±10.9 % to 87.20±7.32% and 18.40±11.90% to 87.5±8.57%, respectively. The mean differences for sperm motility and heterogeneity were REM:-4.57;CI(-7.11 to - 2.03) and I2=69.38%; ρheterogeneity<0.001, respectively. The percentage range of sperm viability in the unexposed and exposed samples were 50.78±5.98% to 90.9±3.7% and 48.43±13.99 to 90.4±4.1% respectively and for sperm viability, the mean differences for sperm motility and heterogeneity were REM-1.19; CI (-2.04 to -0.34) and I2=96.9%; ρheterogeneity<0.001, respectively. Exposure to EMW of mobile phone decreased significantly sperm motility and sperm viability decreased but not-significantly. Results of this study supported the negative effects of EMW of mobile phone on the sperm motility


Abstract As Axel Honneth has recently noted, the critical concerns of social philosophers during the past three decades have been focused primarily on questions of justice, with ethical issues about the human good being largely excluded. In the first section I briefly explore this exclusion in both 'Anglo-American' political philosophy and 'German' critical theory. I then argue, in the main sections, that despite this commitment to their exclusion, distinctively ethical concepts and ideals can be identified both in Rawls's Theory of Justice and in Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action, taking these as exemplary, representative texts for each theoretical school. These ethical elements, and their implications for the critical evaluation of economic institutions, have gone largely unnoticed. In the final section I indicate the kinds of debates that might be generated, were these to be given the attention they arguably deserve. I focus especially on the significance of empirical issues, and hence on the role of social science in social criticism.


Diversity
Why do gender disparities in different science fields continue to persist? Grunspan et al. took a closer look at the social environment women experience in science classrooms. Students and instructors in three sections of the same undergraduate biology course were asked at multiple points during the semester to name the students they considered knowledgeable about course content. After controlling for differences in performance and outspokenness, females nominated their male and female peers equitably, whereas male students received more recognition from other males than did their female classmates. Further analysis showed that gender bias among male students was 19 times stronger than among females. The favoring of males by their peers may play a role in the retention of women in science.

PLOS One 10.1371/journal.pone.0148405 (2016)


An ultrasonic motor (USM) drive using a two-phase current-source parallel-resonant inverter is proposed in this study. A single-phase equivalent model of the USM is first described. Then, the operating principles of the newly designed driving circuit for the USM, in which the inherent parasitic capacitances formed by the polarized piezoelectric ceramic of the USM are parts of the two parallel- resonant tanks, is introduced. Since the dynamic characteristics of the USM are greatly influenced by the variation in the quality factors of the parallel- resonant tanks, two transformers are added to feed the stored energy in the resonant tanks back to the DC source to reduce the quality factors. Some experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed driving circuit.


Artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated huge potential in a variety of real-world applications. However, some significant considerations like fairness, transparency and trustworthiness are still challenging when applying AI to trust-oriented applications such as E-voting. E-voting plays a significant role in democratic societies, which requires voters and initiators have strong mutual trust. In this paper, we aim to facilitate the consolidation of AI ecosystems by developing a blockchain-based traceable self-tallying e-voting system. We take advantage of an event-oriented linkable group signature and a homomorphic time-lock puzzle to balance the anonymity and accountability, and the voting scale and efficiency of an e-voting system. The proposed e-voting protocol supports additional functions like multi-choice and self-tallying. We prove that the proposed protocol satisfies anonymity, time-bounded privacy, linkability and full-traceability. We also evaluate the time cost of off-chain operations and the gas cost of on-chain operations, which show the proposed e-voting protocol is practical and can be adopted in real-world applications.


Management of organizations providing social services selected issues Organizations intending to succeed in today's demanding market environment cannot avoid answering many important questions when forming their entrepreneurial philosophy. The fundamental question is how to manage the organization so as to satisfy ever-changing customer requirements better and more effectively than competitors, i.e. to manage the organization for long-term prosperity. This situation, which is a logical consequence of market economy development, inevitably impacts the services sector, an integral part of which is the social services sector. The importance of social services in society increases as a consequence of social-demographic factors. Demand for these services increases as well. Social services might become an interesting commodity (particularly the area of accommodation connected with social services), which will attract more and more entities (including private sector entities) intending to carry out activities in this sector. The social services market will become more robust and the quality will increase. Social services users can expect higher satisfaction and the providers will pursue their interests. Currently, social services providers are represented by non-profit organizations, which have more or less a market monopoly. Although generating profits and achieving a competitive edge are not goals for non-profit organizations, these entities should still consider the efficient use of available resources (non-profit organizations meeting their objectives toward the society if the difference between gains and expenses is maximized, which does not mean the maximum profit but rather maximizing the society's interests, i.e. the goal is to gain the maximum possible combination of services provided with minimal resources). In many cases it is obvious that organizations providing social services will have to considerably increase efficiency when using available resources if they want to survive. Increasing the quality of management and continuous implementation of modern management innovations in day-to-day practice are some of the possibilities to achieve that goal. The responsibility lies with managers. Managers' behavior may evoke a feeling of confidence and cooperation or, conversely, a feeling of disinterest and intolerance. Managers must remember that any discrepancies between their words and actions bring about cynicism, distrust and lethargy in a firm's culture. These represent some of the most important factors affecting a company's prosperity.


This article describes ongoing gene therapy trials at University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust for liver, head and neck and prostate cancer treatment. The authors suggest that this research programme might become an alternative option for patients who have not responded to conventional treatments.


'Contest hoots' are acoustically complex vocalisations produced by adult and subadult male bonobos (Pan paniscus). These calls are often directed at specific individuals and regularly combined with gestures and other body signals. The aim of our study was to describe the multi-modal use of this call type and to clarify its communicative and social function. To this end, we observed two large groups of bonobos, which generated a sample of 585 communicative interactions initiated by 10 different males. We found that contest hooting, with or without other associated signals, was produced to challenge and provoke a social reaction in the targeted individual, usually agonistic chase. Interestingly, 'contest hoots' were sometimes also used during friendly play. In both contexts, males were highly selective in whom they targeted by preferentially choosing individuals of equal or higher social rank, suggesting that the calls functioned to assert social status. Multi-modal sequences were not more successful in eliciting reactions than contest hoots given alone, but we found a significant difference in the choice of associated gestures between playful and agonistic contexts. During friendly play, contest hoots were significantly more often combined with soft than rough gestures compared to agonistic challenges, while the calls' acoustic structure remained the same. We conclude that contest hoots indicate the signaller's intention to interact socially with important group members, while the gestures provide additional cues concerning the nature of the desired interaction.


The focus of this thesis is to study computationally the relation between discourse properties and textual complexity. Specifically, we explored three research questions.
The first research question tries to find out to what degree discourse-level properties can be used to predict the complexity level of a text. To do so, we considered three types of discourse-level properties: (1) the realization of discourse relations and the representation of discourse relations in terms of (2) the choice of discourse relation and (3) discourse marker. Using datasets from standard corpora in the field of discourse analysis and text simplification, we developed a supervised machine learning model for pairwise text complexity assessment and compared these properties with more linguistic features. Our results show that the use of only discourse features performed statistically as well as using traditional linguistic features. Thus, we can conclude a strong correlation between discourse properties and complexity level.
The second question that we explored is how exactly does the complexity level of a text influence its discourse-level linguistic choices? To address this question, we conducted a corpus analysis of the Simple English Wikipedia, the largest annotated corpus based on complexity level. Our analysis used the 16 discourse relations defined in the DLTAG framework and focused on explicit relations. Our results show that the distribution of discourse relations is not influenced by a text's complexity level; but how these are signalled is.
Finally, given the results of our corpus analysis, our third research question tries to investigate if we can leverage these differences to mine parallel corpora across complexity levels to automatically discover alternative lexicalizations (AltLexes) of discourse markers. This work led to the automatic identification of 91 new AltLexes in two corpora: the Simple English Wikipedia and the Newsela corpora.
Overall, this thesis demonstrates that a text's complexity level and discourse level properties are indeed correlated. Discourse properties play an important role in the assessment of a text's complexity level and should be taken into account in the complexity level assessment problem. In addition, we observed that the way that explicit discourse relations are signaled is influenced by textual complexity. Lastly, our thesis shows that the automatic identification of alternative lexializations of discourse markers can benefit from large-scale parallel corpora across complexity levels.


Rare diseases, although individually rare, affect approximately 6–8% of the total population with more than 6000 diseases identified. The significance of and unmet need in rare diseases for both patients and society are high. Development of new treatments for rare diseases is associated with significant challenges such as low market potential for innovative pharmaceutical companies, often unclear regulatory path, lack of validated clinical endpoints and patient reported outcomes and insufficient data regarding the disease. Special incentivizing strategies such as market exclusivity, waiver or reduction of regulatory submission fees and assistance in clinical trial protocol development and tax incentives have been implemented to enhance drug development in rare and neglected diseases. The ultimate goal of these strategies is to help patients receive adequate treatments irrespective of the epidemiology of their disease. Furthermore, rare diseases, often with a well-defined pathogenesis, represent a unique opportunity for drug discovery in a given homogeneous disease with subsequent indication expansions. Although the number of rare disease treatments that became available for patients has increased, the unmet medical is still high in this special population.


This paper focuses on faster computation techniques to integrate mechanical models in electronic advanced active safety applications. It shows the different techniques of approximation in series of functions and differential equations applied to vehicle dynamics. This allows the achievement of approximate polynomial and rational solutions with a very fast and efficient computation. First, the whole theoretical basic principles related to the techniques used are presented: orthogonality of functions, function expansion in Chebyshev and Jacobi series, approximation through rational functions, the Minimax-Remez algorithm, orthogonal rational functions, and the perturbation of dynamic systems theory, that reduces the degree of the expansion polynomials used. As an application, it is shown the obtaining of approximate solutions to the longitudinal dynamics, vertical dynamics, steering geometry, and a tyre model, all obtained through development in series of orthogonal functions with a computation much faster than those of its equivalents in the classic vehicle theory. These polynomial partially symbolic solutions present very low errors and very favorable analytical properties due to their simplicity, becoming ideal for real-time computation as those required for the simulation of evasive manoeuvres prior to a crash. This set of techniques had never been applied to vehicle dynamics before.


Gerta Sidonová - Vrbová, (Trnava, Slovakia, November 28, 1926 - London, UK, October 2, 2020) has been a key neuroscientist, who for almost half a century has contributed important findings and hypotheses on the relationships between motoneurons and skeletal muscle fibers, in particular on the differentiation and extent of plasticity of the peculiar characteristics of the different types of fibers present in mammalian muscles. This issue, Ejtm 31(1), 2021, opens with the personal obituary authored by Dirk Pette, who remember his lifelong collaboration with Gerta, describing the many molecular and metabolic events that occur by changing the pattern of activation of adult muscle fibers through neuromuscular low frequency electrical stimulation. To honor the many scientific legacies of Gerta Vrbová and her impact on a generation of researchers studying myology and managements of neuromuscular disorders I add here additional examples of Gerta's scientific heritage and of her relations with colleagues.


Four children with midtarsal dislocations are described. Two of the four patients had a delay in diagnosis because of associated midtarsal injuries detracting from the main pathology. The key pathology was a dislocation or subluxation of the calcaneocuboid joint. The lateral radiograph was the most consistent view in making the diagnosis.


Brominated flame-retardants (BFRs), including polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), were analysed in 77 eggs of 13 wild bird species from Gauteng and northern Free State (the industrial heartland of South Africa). BFRs were in all eggs, but not all BFRs were quantifiable. Concentrations ranged between 2.9 and 46 ng g–1 wm (wet mass) and the predominant congeners were BDE-47, -153, -154, -183 and -209. The BFR compositional patterns of the congeners in eggs differed between species, feeding guilds, and habitats. Differences in associations of birds with humans seemed to have as much an influence as the trophic levels occupied by the maternal animals. The congener pattern of BFRs differed between terrestrial and aquatic species. The congener concentrations and patterns also differed from eggs from other countries, suggesting differences in sources. BFR concentrations in eggs from the current study area were below a reported no observed effect level (NOEL; 1 000 ng g–1 wm). Although this suggests that the BFRs do not pose a risk, the NOEL was mostly based on information from birds from moderate and colder climates. This NOEL might not apply to birds from warmer climates with different life histories, as in the current study, because there are currently only draft regulations on importing BFRs or BFR-containing products in South Africa. The BFR-containing products otherwise destined for countries with BFR restrictions in place may now find their way to South Africa. The additional waste these poorly regulated products generate will eventually find their way to landfills ensuring that release to the environment and consequent exposures to biota will continue without effective interventions and waste management. Our findings indicate the need for on-going environmental monitoring to assess trends, identify hot spots, investigate effects, strengthen waste management, and the need to urgently implement the commitments under the Stockholm Convention.


Abstract Previous research has identified sports-related risk factors that can cause acts of violence outside the sporting milieu. The purpose of this case study is to examine the ideals, language and social status of male ice hockey players and determine whether and how they affect their views of sexuality, aggressiveness and actions outside the ice hockey milieu. The method and material are based on a qualitative content analysis of interviews with six senior ice hockey players in Sweden. Research on masculinity and violence theoretically inspires the study. The findings show that expectations and norms can create increased status in a team and at the same time can also make it difficult for players to fully follow their own values and inner guides. In other words, players can be themselves, yet sometimes have to toe the line and follow the group (even if they do not always want to). Another finding is the dilemma of silence and the difficulties that players face in setting limits for team-mates who, for example, joke in a diminishing and inappropriate way. The article ends with a discussion about the challenges that these results entail regarding progressive (violence-preventative) work within ice hockey at the individual and structural levels.


ABSTRACT Research Findings: This review focuses on the use of robotics in early childhood education (ECE), addressing gender and socioeconomic status (SES) differences in young children's robotics learning. This review systematically evaluates, synthesizes, and displays the research designs, robotic toys, data collection instruments, research methods, and research findings of 15 studies related to this critical issue published from 1984 to 2021. The findings of the review indicate that children's robotics-based learning is impacted by gender and their socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Boys had a considerably higher level of enjoyment in interacting with robotics than girls. Furthermore, low-income families and low parental education resulted in poor robotics-based learning experiences and outcomes for children. Practice or Policy: It is significant to devote attention to developing effective and inclusive robotics education programs for girls and children from less advantaged backgrounds. More robotics education interventions should be conducted in broader contexts to benefit a wider range of children, especially those from a lower-SES background.


Buyback of shares was considered as a good beginning for introducing flexibility in the capital structure. In 1999, the Securities and Exchange Board of India issued guidelines on buyback of shares that are to be followed by the listed companies. Buybacks can be regarded as the late 20th century adoptive strategy in the ever-changing, challenging and demanding scenario of modern corporate finance. The companies going for buyback may have their own reason(s). But the interesting factor to look at is how the stock market reacts to such share repurchase programs. Objectives of the study are to study impact of buyback announcements on stock market in India and provide findings/ results based on analysis. In view of the objectives of the study, exploratory research design has been adopted. Information have been collected for the study on announcement of buyback of shares of companies listed in the S&P CNX 500 broad-based index from 2008-2014.Ten observations of closing market prices of shares before and after the event of buyback of shares have been considered. NSE and money control websites are the sources from which number of companies and their respective dates of announcements based on the board meetings have been identified. The statistical tools applied for data analysis is descriptive and inferential statistic like paired comparison 't'test .is used for the analysis of hypotheses. It is concluded that buyback of shares has no impact on stock market.