Abstract. Climate change impact on storm surge regime is of great importance for the safety and maintenance of Venice. In this study a future storm surge scenario is evaluated using new high resolution sea level pressure and wind data recently produced by EC-Earth, an Earth System Model based on the operational seasonal forecast system of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The study considers an ensemble of six 5 yr long simulations of the rcp45 scenario at 0.25° resolution and compares the 2094–2098 to the 2004–2008 period. EC-Earth sea level pressure and surface wind fields are used as input for a shallow water hydrodynamic model (HYPSE) which computes sea level and barotropic currents in the Adriatic Sea. Results show that a high resolution climate model is needed for producing realistic values of storm surge statistics and confirm previous studies in that they show little sensitivity of storm surge levels to climate change. However, some climate change signals are detected, such as increased persistence of high pressure conditions, an increased frequency of windless hour, and a decreased number of moderate windstorms.


Viral vector-mediated delivery of tumor suppressor genes represents a promising strategy of cancer therapy. Several best-studied tumor suppressor genes, such as p53 and retinoblastoma (Rb), have been evaluated for gene therapy of tumors that carry mutations in these genes. However, these genes may not be applicable to microsatellite instability positive [MSI(+)] tumors because they are rarely mutated in these tumors. The Rb-interacting zinc finger gene RIZ1 is commonly mutated in MSI(+) colorectal, gastric, and endometrial cancers and has demonstrated a capacity to induce cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. Here, we found that RIZ1 expression through adenovirus vectors suppressed growth of MSI(+) HCT116 colorectal xenograft tumors that carry RIZ1 mutations. Malignant cells in the established tumors were efficiently transduced by RIZ1 adenoviruses and underwent apoptosis in response to RIZ1 expression. In comparison, a recombinant p53 adenovirus did not induce apoptosis and tumor suppression. These results suggest that RIZ1 may be useful in gene therapy of MSI(+) colorectal cancers.


An analytical study of the transient response of a CMOS class AB opamp operating in a voltage follower configuration is presented. As with class A opamps, we identify nonlinear and linear regions of operation corresponding to slewing and settling periods in the transient response. But in contrast with class A opamps, it is shown that the feedback configuration should be considered for the entire duration of the transient response. It is shown that doublets (pole-zero pairs) have significant impact on the transient response of the class AB opamps in both nonlinear and linear regions of operation. One result is that in order to prevent overshoot in the transient response due to the doublets, the pole of the double should be located at a frequency higher than about four times the unity-gain bandwidth. The proposed analytical model is valid for any location of the doublets. It agrees well with the results of HSPICE computer simulations, and has the advantage over the latter of providing circuit designers with a clear relationship between the design goals and the device parameters. >


Google Scholar (GS) is one of the popular online databases fulfilling the research needs of academicians by providing an open and freely accessible platform for searching scholarly research along with basic research metrics (citations, h-index, i10, etc.) to assess productivity of an author or researcher. Now that GS is being used to measure the research performance of individual's as-well-as institutions, it becomes very important to maintain a verified profile. This paper aims to analyse dual inter-related issues. Quantify LIS schools in India are the primary focus area of the study. Secondly, the scenario of LIS educators of India under GS will be evaluated. It also presents the accurate status of Indian universities (government) imparting LIS education and to investigate how many faculties of those universities are using Google scholar account for showcasing their research productivity. The study unveils those educators (LIS) whose articles are scattering under GS database but due to unavailability of profile GS can't compute scientometric data for them. As per the VIDWAN database an expert database developed by INFLIBNET, many LIS educators do not have their own Google scholar ID. In India out of 470 govt universities about 129 have LIS schools. Total 324 LIS educators are recruited under those universities. Only 206 educators possess own GS profile. Hence, the GS profile adoption ratio between Indian LIS educators is not impressive. This study can give an overview of the above-mentioned dual topics in details latter.


This study proposes a strategic explanation for the USA's continued provision of military aid to host states with problems of terrorism, despite its poor empirical record. Using a game theoretic model, I demonstrate that US military aid creates a moral hazard problem. If host states are provided with the tools to pacify their territory only if terrorist campaigns are ongoing, but will lose this aid once the problem of terrorism ceases, host states have little incentive to accelerate the demise of terrorist groups. However, the model demonstrates that while military aid does not accomplish the US goal of disarming terrorists, military aid is effective at preventing host states from negotiating with terrorist organizations. The provision of military aid provides a disincentive for host states to reach a negotiated settlement with terrorist groups, and therefore prevents terrorist organizations from altering the status quo that is favorable to the USA. This suggests that while military aid may not be effective at actually disarming terrorist groups, it can be effective at keeping terrorist groups out of power. These hypotheses are tested using the Jones & Libicki (2008) data on terrorism from 1997 to 2006. The empirical results support the conclusions of the theoretical model.


A proteomics approach for protein-protein interactions reveals new components of a conserved cell signaling pathway. The Hippo signaling pathway plays key roles in many processes, from cell proliferation and cell death to regulation of stem cells and cancer cells. Kwon et al. attempted to systematically identify all components of the pathway. A protein-protein interaction screen identified more than 200 interactions among approximately 150 proteins. A protein identified in the screen, Leash, restrained the activity of the transcriptional coactivator Yorkie, which regulates gene expression in response to Hippo signaling. Y. Kwon, A. Vinayagam, X. Sun, N. Dephoure, S. P. Gygi, P. Hong, N. Perrimon, The Hippo signaling pathway interactome. Science 342, 737–740 (2013). [Abstract] [Full Text]


A key question in the economics of climate change is the importance of global policy coordination in reducing carbon emissions. In this paper, we study this question using a two-country (North–South) extension of Acemoglu et al. (2012) which introduces directed technical change into a general equilibrium model of climate change. We find that, first, the optimal policy necessarily requires global policy coordination, with the implementation of research subsidies and carbon taxes in both North and South. Second, under certain circumstances, appropriately chosen environmental regulations in the North alone can prevent the worst environmental disasters. In particular, such disasters can be prevented by a combination of carbon taxes and clean research subsidies under the restrictive conditions that (a) the two inputs are substitutable in both countries; (b) there is no international trade between the North and the South; and (c) the South imitates technologies invented in the North. Third, international trade between the North and the South typically makes it more difficult to prevent environmental disasters through unilateral policies in the North, because environmental regulation in the North may induce full specialization by the South in dirty input production, as imitation of clean technologies by the South then ceases to be profitable. Hence, given current circumstances, global policy coordination is highly desirable.


The study of non-technical losses affecting energy trading companies has guided the researchers' perspective on different techniques and tools that allow them to detect, and why not, to forecast such losses. In the search for a solution to the problem, the different researchers rely on variables that, in many cases, the same marketing companies, from their practical experience, have been considered as incidents in the identification of the problem. However, most of the studies carried out do not support their solutions with the fact that each trading company retains particular data in which both, technical and socio-economic characteristics recorded, are not necessarily shared in their databases. In this work, we follow up on some of the characteristics registered by two Colombian energy trading companies, which serve two different regions of the country in terms of topography and idiosyncrasy. In particular, attention is focused on two characteristics measured in both companies, which by their nature, will always be on the data of any energy trading company: Consumption in kWh, and the period, measured in months. For this purpose, Benford curves analysis, MultiDimensional Scaling (MDS), and hierarchical cluster will be implemented. Finally, it will be studied if the incidence of the variables visualized in the studies presented is reflected in the decision tree model.


My paper introduces general information about Vietnam's Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) which shows the main achievements of the Vietnamese economic integration on the regional level as well as on the global level through FTAs during its economic reform period. It explains the impacts of FTAs which would eliminate tariff s for Vietnam, expand its market, improve the legality of trade, increase the quality of produce and then further benefi ttrade and economic growth. Especially, FTAs are highly necessary for reforming Vietnam'se economic institutions. In addition, of the free trade agreement between the EU and Vietnam FTA (EVFTA) is presented, introducing a new phase in the Vietnam-EU cooperation. EVFTA can off er more trade opportunities for both sides. However, Vietnam also faces many challenges in which Vietnam can lose access to the EU market because it has a lower capacity, weak competition and a slow reform of its economic system, due to the dominant of state owned enterprises. EVFTA might trap Vietnam in inside a low-wage, low-skill cycle. Th e EU imposes a conditionality of the improvement of social issues, stressing democracy, human rights and labor. Th ese issues can be obstacles for the negotiation and implementing of EVFTA.


Interview with longtime resident of Cisco, Texas, Harriett Shelton Collins as part of the Eastland County African American Women Oral History Project. The interview includes Collins' personal experiences about education in Cisco's all-black, one-room Smithville Elementary School, her pregnancy and marriage to Bill Collins, working at the Boss Glove Factory, earning her GED, entering beauty school, and earning a degree as a Licensed Vocational Nurse. Additionally, Collins speaks about social life among blacks in Cisco, especially in church activities, her experiences with racial discrimination, the phenomenon of "passing" among blacks in Cisco and elsewhere, her experiences at "Negro Achievement Day" at the Texas State Fair in Dallas, and her children's experiences in public school during desegregation.


Ensembles of neural networks achieve superior performance compared to stand-alone networks not only in terms of accuracy on in-distribution data but also on data with distributional shift alongside improved uncertainty calibration. Diversity among networks in an ensemble is believed to be key for building strong ensembles, but typical approaches only ensemble different weight vectors of a fixed architecture. Instead, we investigate neural architecture search (NAS) for explicitly constructing ensembles to exploit diversity among networks of varying architectures and to achieve robustness against distributional shift. By directly optimizing ensemble performance, our methods implicitly encourage diversity among networks, without the need to explicitly define diversity. We find that the resulting ensembles are more diverse compared to ensembles composed of a fixed architecture and are therefore also more powerful. We show significant improvements in ensemble performance on image classification tasks both for in-distribution data and during distributional shift with better uncertainty calibration.


The cerebrovasculature is essential to brain health and is tasked with ensuring adequate delivery of oxygen and metabolic precursors to ensure normal neurologic function. This is coordinated through a dynamic, multi-directional cellular interplay between vascular, neuronal, and glial cells. Molecular exchanges across the blood–brain barrier or the close matching of regional blood flow with brain activation are not uniformly assigned to arteries, capillaries, and veins. Evidence has supported functional segmentation of the brain vasculature. This is achieved in part through morphologic or transcriptional heterogeneity of brain vascular cells—including endothelium, pericytes, and vascular smooth muscle. Advances with single cell genomic technologies have shown increasing cell complexity of the brain vasculature identifying previously unknown cell types and further subclassifying transcriptional diversity in cardinal vascular cell types. Cell-type specific molecular transitions or zonations have been identified. In this review, we summarize emerging evidence for the expanding vascular cell diversity in the brain and how this may provide a cellular basis for functional segmentation along the arterial-venous axis.


The Colombian economy and financial system have coped reasonably well with the effects of the global financial crisis. Hence, unconventional" policy measures have not been at the center of the policy decisions and discussions. Nominal short term interest rates have remained the main monetary policy tool and "Quantitative easing" measures have not been central in the policy response. The one "unconventional" monetary instrument used by the Central Bank in Colombia has been changes in reserve requirements (RR) on financial system deposits. Interestingly, they were adopted before the global financial crisis, as a reaction to domestic credit conditions. The effects of RR on interest rate and interest rate pass-through in an inflation targeting regime are not as straightforward as those under a monetary targeting regime. Conceptually, those effects depend on the degree of substitution between deposits and central bank credit as sources of funds for banks and on the extent to which RR changes affect the risks facing banks. The empirical results for Colombia suggest that RR are important long run determinants of business loan interest rates and have been effective in strengthening the pass-through from policy to deposit and lending interest rates. "


The term "lateral violence" describes how members of an oppressed group direct their dissatisfaction inward. This paper reports on qualitative interviews with 30 local Aboriginal participants in Adelaide, South Australia. The purpose was to explore understandings, awareness, experiences, and effects of lateral violence. Most participants completed two questionnaires (the Kessler-5 and negative life events scales) in order to gain further insight into their wellbeing and its association with experiences of lateral violence. Overall, four major interpretative themes emerged from interviews: the predominantly covert and insidious nature of lateral violence; the relationship between racism and lateral violence; challenges to identity as acts of lateral violence; and the destructive effects of lateral violence on wellbeing. The wellbeing scales indicated overall that participants' psychological distress was in the moderate range, with 29% scoring in the high/very high psychological distress range. Many of the participants with high distress levels relayed traumatic narratives of lateral violence and were exposed to a number of negative life events. It is hoped that by increasing awareness of lateral violence and its effects, this will assist in preventing lateral violence incidences within Indigenous communities.


Esperanto is neither an official nor a commonly spoken language anywhere in the world and, due to the limited number of people who speak this language from birth and who teach it to the next generation, the persistence of this speech community cannot rely on intergenerational language transmission. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in France, mainly in Paris, this article explores continuities and discontinuities in the Esperanto community and movement bylooking at how present-day young Esperanto speakers use the language online and through networks of sociability. In asking what is transmitted from one generation of Esperanto speakers to the next, and how new communication technologies impact the ways in which people use the language, I analyse how the concentration of speakers from different age groups around distinct technologies creates a segmentation in this community that leaves some issues incommunicable and hard to transmit. I argue that, on the one hand, engaging with Esperanto through Esperanto associations and, on the other hand, through social media and non-institutionalised gatherings, shapesdifferent perceptions of the language, marking a shift from Esperanto as a forward-looking cause for activists to Esperanto as a tool for sociability and an intellectual game for language-lovers.


Fretting is associated with microslip at the interface of contacts experiencing oscillatory loads. One consequence of fretting is the formation and subsequent growth of cracks at the edge of contact, a phenomenon known as fretting fatigue. Fretting fatigue is an important high cycle fatigue failure mechanism in aircraft structural lap joints and turbine blade/disk contacts. A well-characterized, integrated fretting test system has been developed in which both normal and cyclic tangential fretting loads are applied and monitored in conjunction with a bulk load on the specimen. The experimental data includes histories of the three applied forces and a detailed record of the evolution of interfacial friction coefficient, as driven by the surface microslip. The experimental system has been exercised to observe fretting crack nucleation and growth under a wide range of loading conditions in the context of a statistically-designed test matrix. An extensive multiaxial fatigue analysis based on the stress-strain cycle experienced by each point of the bodies subjected to the fretting loads reveals that the critical location for crack formation is the trailing edge of contact, consistent with observations made in the laboratory. The resulting stress-strain cycles are coupled with strain-life theory and literature values of uniaxial fatigue constants to predict fretting fatigue crack nucleation. The data collected for 2024-T351 aluminum alloy correlates very well with this prediction.


Background and purpose The trend towards a shorter stay in rehabilitation clinic has implications for future language therapy. Constraint-induced aphasia therapy (CIAT) is administered 3 h per day for a total of 30 h of treatment. It was evaluated for patients with chronic aphasia. In the present study we investigated the efficacy of a modified CIAT schedule and included patients with sub-acute stroke. We conducted a randomised, single-blind, parallel-group study. The results were compared to those of patients who received identically intensive treatment focusing on conventional aphasia therapy. Methods Fifty patients were treated with our modified version of CIAT and 50 received a standard aphasia therapy at the same intensity and duration. Inclusion criteria were clinical diagnosis of first-ever stroke, aphasia in the sub-acute stage and German speakers. Language function was evaluated using the Aachen Aphasia Test and the Communicative Activity Log directly before therapy onset, after the training period and at 8-week and 1-year follow-ups. Results Patients of both groups improved significantly in all sub-tests of the Aachen Aphasia Test Battery. The improvements remained stable over a 1-year follow-up period. Patients and relatives of both groups rated daily communication as significantly improved after therapy. Conclusions Both CIAT and conventional therapy performed with equal intensity are efficacious methods for patients with sub-acute aphasia. The modified CIAT schedule is practical in an everyday therapeutic setting. Our results indicate that a short-term intensive therapy schedule in the early aphasia stage leads to substantial improvements in language functions. Clinical Trial Registration Information Clinical Trial Registration-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01625676


This paper presents an original data-hiding application where the payload is intimately related to the host data. On the other hand, we want to preserve this relationship so that each part of the payload is hidden in the related part of the host. On the other hand, we want to ensure that a degradation of the host data implies a proportional degradation of the related part of the hidden data.


The miniaturization of an autonomous robot requires the integration of components that not only need to satisfy strict spatial constraints, but also need to demonstrate useful functionalities and performance, while demanding low power. For miniaturized autonomous robots that aim at exploring unknown environments, sensors for navigation and for the understanding of basic geometrical features of the environment are of utmost importance for a robot's survival and mission. This paper presents a miniaturized triangulation laser scanner that was developed and characterized for use on a 10 × 10 × 10 cm3 robot. The optimal configurations of the laser sensor on two sides of the robot are discussed, and measurement formulas as well as theoretical resolution are deduced. For indoor applications, the measurement range of the system runs from approximately 80 mm, with 1 mm resolution, up to 600 mm, with 12 mm resolution. The aim of the work is to demonstrate the possibility of extracting basic information from the robot surroundings by means of small, simple, low-power, and low-cost demanding devices, which, in addition, can be scaled down in order to equip even smaller robots.


Abstract Doubled haploid lines (DHLs) of rice (Oryza sativa L.) were used to examine responses to drought and rewatering in controlled rainfed lowland conditions, in order to determine whether confounding by unrelated traits would be less than has been reported previously for contrasting cultivars that differ in genetic background. IR62266 and four DHLs derived from the cross between IR62266 and CT9993 (DHL-32, -51, -54 and -79) were grown in pot experiments in the greenhouse during the 2000 dry and wet seasons at IRRI, Los Baños, Philippines. There were two water regimes (well-watered and drought). Estimated water extraction obtained by time domain reflectometry (TDR) was similar to cumulative transpiration estimated from pot weighing for each genotype. Genotypic variation was observed in root traits and water extraction, with extraction slower in DHL-32 and faster in DHL-79, especially in deeper soil layers. An upper bound relationship between water extraction from a soil layer and root length density (RLD) in that layer was readily apparent over DHLs and soil depths, suggesting a critical value of RLD for water extraction of 0.30 cm cm−3 in these conditions. Because soils in the field would not be as homogenous as the puddled soils used in these greenhouse experiments, this critical RLD for water extraction from a soil layer is a reference for ideal conditions, and requires careful validation in the field. Use of DHLs permitted comparisons with reduced confounding by genetic background, with consequent improvements in precision.


Abstract. In recent years, an ever-increasing number of remote satellites are orbiting the Earth which streams vast amount of visual data to support a wide range of civil, public and military applications. One of the key information obtained from satellite imagery is to produce and update spatial maps of built environment due to its wide coverage with high resolution data. However, reconstructing spatial maps from satellite imagery is not a trivial vision task as it requires reconstructing a scene or object with high-level representation such as primitives. For the last decade, significant advancement in object detection and representation using visual data has been achieved, but the primitive-based object representation still remains as a challenging vision task. Thus, a high-quality spatial map is mainly produced through complex labour-intensive processes. In this paper, we propose a novel deep neural network, which enables to jointly detect building instance and regularize noisy building boundary shapes from a single satellite imagery. The proposed deep learning method consists of a two-stage object detection network to produce region of interest (RoI) features and a building boundary extraction network using graph models to learn geometric information of the polygon shapes. Extensive experiments show that our model can accomplish multi-tasks of object localization, recognition, semantic labelling and geometric shape extraction simultaneously. In terms of building extraction accuracy, computation efficiency and boundary regularization performance, our model outperforms the state-of-the-art baseline models.


We consider the problem of detecting whether a high dimensional vector ∈ ℝn lies in a r-dimensional subspace S, where r ≪ n, given few compressive measurements of the vector. This problem arises in several applications such as detecting anomalies, targets, interference and brain activations. In these applications, the object of interest is described by a large number of features and the ability to detect them using only linear combination of the features (without the need to measure, store or compute the entire feature vector) is desirable. We present a test statistic for subspace detection using compressive samples and demonstrate that the probability of error of the proposed detector decreases exponentially in the number of compressive samples, provided that the energy off the subspace scales as n. Using information-theoretic lower bounds, we demonstrate that no other detector can achieve the same probability of error for weaker signals. Simulation results also indicate that this scaling is near-optimal.


What does looking to the art produced by psychiatric patients bring to our understanding of modernism and the rise of geometric abstraction in Rio de Janeiro in the mid-twentieth century? This article explores Brazilian critic Mário Pedrosa's early theses on the psychology of form in relation to his reception of psychiatric patients' creative production. In his early writings on Gestalt, Pedrosa insisted on the autonomy of form and on a modern global, or comprehensive, perception and critiqued bourgeois rationality for its exclusion of the mentally ill. To understand the historical and cultural specificity of Pedrosa's aesthetics of reception, I turn to Rio-based psychiatrist Dr. Nise da Silveira—it is in large measure her work and that of her patients, which stand at the center of this competing account of mid-century aesthetics in Brazil.


Drying kinetics of carrot cubes were carried out at 1 m/s air velocity at different air drying temperatures (30, 40, 50, 60 and 70±0.1 °C) (AIR experiments), and also at the same experimental conditions but applying high power ultrasound (US experiments). Two kind of diffusion models were used to simulate the drying kinetics, according to external resistance to mass transfer being considered (ER model) or neglected (NER model) for solving the diffusion equation. Diffusion ER model was solved using a finite difference method. Drying rate increased as air temperature was higher. Ultrasound also increased drying rate at the different temperatures, but the improvement on drying rate decreased at high temperatures, and almost disappeared at 70 °C. Effective moisture diffusivities only showed an Arrhenius type relationship with temperature for AIR experiments. The NER diffusion model was not accurate to simulate the drying kinetics at any experimental conditions tested. However, diffusion ER model provided a high closeness between experimental and calculated drying data (VAR>99.80). Through the parameters identified of the ER diffusion model, effective moisture diffusivity and mass transfer coefficient, the influence of the power ultrasound application on internal and external resistance to mass transfer was shown to be significant (p<0.05).


Interfacial stress distribution of bonded quarter-planes subjected to a concentrated force was re-investigated based on Bogy's solution[1]. The characteristic length of the singular interface end, δ, was defined, and found varying in a very large size scale with the index of stress singularity from millimeter to nanometer or even smaller scale. The influences the characteristic length scale on the initial debonding of the interface end is a new question worth to pay attention. Photoelasticity experiment was employed to verify whether the initial debonding is always located at interface end with stress singularity. The test results show that the initial debonding does not start from singular interface end if the index of stress singularity is small enough.


Diagnostics software for analyzing ATAMM (algorithm-to-architecture-mapping) based concurrent processing is presented. ATAMM is a Petri-net-based model capable of modeling the execution of computationally complex algorithms on distributed data-flow architectures. The ATAMM multicomputer operating system (AMOS), which enforces the ATAMM rules for predictable multiprocessing, is presented. The software presented referred to as the analysis tool, evaluates the behavior and performance of an ATAMM-based system by examining the time-tagged AMOS communication events collected in a file during execution. The tool provides automatic and user-interactive measurements of throughput, concurrency, resource utilization, and system overhead. The analysis-tool capabilities are demonstrated by evaluating the simulated execution of a specific algorithm graph for a given set of operating system parameters. Measurements of throughput and overhead are used to assess the effect of the operating system on ideal performance.<<ETX>>


Article history: Received Feb 28, 2013 Received in revised format 19 September 2013 Accepted 23 October 2013 Available online November 28 2013 This paper presents an empirical investigation to construct, to validate and to determine normalization factors associated with adolescents depression scale. The study is performed among 750 randomly selected guided and high school students, 364 male and 386 female, who live in city of Zanjan, Iran. Validity of Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Validity of SimpsonAngus Scale (SAS) and divergence validity of the Coopersmith selfesteem coefficients are 0.72, 0.37 and -0.71, respectively. Result suggests that adolescents' depression test is a reliable and valid tool for assessing depression, with utility in both research and clinical settings, counseling centers. In addition, the results of correlation test indicate there are some meaningful differences between depression levels of female and male students. In fact, our survey indicates that female students have more depression than male students do (F-value = 33.06, Sig. = 0.000). In addition, there are some meaningful differences between depression levels in various educational levels (F-value = 8.59, Sig. = 0.000). However, the study does not find sufficient evidence to believe there is any meaningful correlation between educational backgrounds and gender.


In this paper we explore the effectiveness of solution of computationally intensive problems in FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) on an example of Sudoku game. Three different Sudoku solvers have been implemented and tested on a low-cost FPGA of Xilinx Spartan-3E family. The first solver is only able to deal with simple puzzles with reasoning, i.e. without search. The second solver applies breadth-first search algorithm and therefore has virtually no limitation on the type of puzzles which are solvable. We prove that despite the serial nature of implemented backtracking search algorithms, parallelism can be used efficiently. Thus, the suggested third solver explores the possibility of parallel processing of search tree branches and boosts the performance of the second solver. The trade-offs of the designed solvers are analyzed, the results are compared to software and to other known implementations, and conclusions are drawn on how to improve the suggested architectures.


MRI has been formally included in the diagnostic work-up of patients with a suspicion of multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2001, to demonstrate disease dissemination in space (DIS) and time (DIT) and to exclude alternative diagnoses.1 Over time, these criteria have been modified to simplify their use and to clarify specific aspects (eg, spinal cord findings).2

One aspect marginally analysed in the diagnostic work-up of patients with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) is the role of intracortical lesions (ICLs), which are a prominent feature of MS and contribute to disability and cognitive impairment.2 A single-centre study3 showed that inclusion of ICL for the evaluation of DIS in CIS increased the accuracy of MRI diagnostic criteria, with an improvement of specificity.3

The aim of this study was to compare revised McDonald-20101 and Filippi-20103 criteria with respect to development of clinically definite MS (CDMS) in a multicentric cohort of patients with CIS.

Institutional review board approval and written informed consent were obtained.

### Subjects

Consecutive patients with CIS suggestive of MS were prospectively recruited from 2008 to 2013 from five European centres within the MAGNIMS network (http://www.magnims.eu/) (see online supplementary file 1, Supplementary Methods).

### Supplementary Material

Supplementary material 1[SP1.pdf]

Inclusion criteria were a typical CIS syndrome, exclusion of alternative diagnoses and previous events, a baseline brain (including double inversion recovery (DIR)) and spinal cord MRI scan acquired ≤3 months from CIS onset, a follow-up brain scan acquired ≤12 months from CIS onset and a clinical follow-up ≥3 years or until CDMS conversion (defined as occurrence of a second relapse ≥1 month after the first attack) if ≤3 years.

### MRI acquisition and analysis

Using 1.5 (two centres) or 3.0 Tesla (three centres) scanners, brain (including DIR) and spinal cord sequences for lesion identification were acquired. Online supplementary material shows parameters and examples of MRI sequences …


In this study, image processing-based real-time lane detection, which is one of the significant problems in autonomous vehicle control, is explored. A mobile robot platform is developed for that purpose. The motion of the mobile robot is provided by 4 direct current motors, which are independently controlled. An image processing code is developed in a Visual DSP 5.0 environment and run on a BF-561 processor embedded in the ADSP BF-561 EZ-KIT LITE evaluation board (Analog Devices). In the image processing algorithm, Hough lines obtained from the Hough transform of the captured images are called candidate lane marks. Various elimination methods are implemented on these candidate lane marks to detect the actual lane marks. Once the actual lane marks are determined, the real-world coordinates of these lane marks are computed using inverse perspective mapping. The heading angle of the mobile robot is then determined based on the position of the lane marks and the center of the mobile robot. The developed mobile robot platform and the lane detection algorithm are tested under various conditions, including dashed lane marks, varying lightening conditions, and the presence of one lane mark only. It is observed that the algorithm performs successfully and detects the lane marks even in the presence of various disturbance effects under these conditions. After the optimization of the developed image processing code, the number of frames processed by the algorithm increases from 3/s to 30/s, which should be satisfactory for real-time applications.


A team of astronomers from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, and the Raman Research Institute (RRI), in Bangalore, has used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to measure the atomic hydrogen gas content of galaxies 9 billion years ago, in the young universe. This is the earliest epoch in the universe for which there is a measurement of the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies. The new result is a crucial confirmation of the group's earlier result, where they had measured the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies 8 billion years ago, and pushes our understanding of galaxies to even earlier in the universe. The new research is published in the 2 June 2021 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.


Vaginal symptoms caused by thrush are extremely common. However, there have been few qualitative studies reporting women's perceptions and self - management of this condition. This paper reports the results of 30 telephone interviews that were conducted with women who had previously presented at community pharmacies with a self - diagnosis of vaginal thrush. Some women reported that thrush made them feel miserable, unable to work, embarrassed, or even stigmatized. About half of the women knew that they could take simple measures to prevent the symptoms of thrush, but others wanted more information. Most women reported that over - the - counter medicines had cured their symptoms, but some stressed that alternative remedies such as natural yoghurt were also beneficial. Since it appears that thrush may have a major impact on women's lives, it should be taken seriously by health care professionals. Women need reassurance that thrush is a common condition, and that it is not generally regarded as sexually transmitted. Some researchers have argued that women suffering from chronic thrush may benefit from the development of psychological treatment initiatives. However, it is also important to ensure that women know how to prevent thrush, and to inform women about the range of effective remedies that now exist for this condition.


Remaining useful life (RUL) prediction plays a crucial role in decision-making in conditionbased maintenance for preventing catastrophic field failure. For degradation-failed products, the data of performance deterioration process are the key for lifetime estimation. Deep learning has been proved to have excellent performance in RUL prediction given that the degradation data are sufficiently large. However, in some applications, the degradation data are insufficient, under which how to improve the prediction accuracy is yet a challenging problem. To tackle such a challenge, we propose a novel deep learning-based RUL prediction framework by amplifying the degradation dataset. Specifically, we leverage the cycle-consistent generative adversarial network to generate the synthetic data, based on which the original degradation dataset is amplified so that the data characteristics hidden in the sample space could be captured. Moreover, the sliding time window strategy and deep bidirectional long short-term memory network are employed to complete the RUL prediction framework. We show the effectiveness of the proposed method by running it on the turbine engine data set from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The comparative experiments show that our method outperforms a case without the use of the synthetically generated data.


This paper presents results of the rainfall impact on agricultural production and net income for rural households in Mexico using a two-year panel data set. We construct a metric on rainfall variation using historical data from weather stations across Mexico. The relationship between our rainfall measure and agricultural production indicates a consistent negative effect on maize production, specially for rain-fed and small farmers. Moreover, there is mixed evidence for non-maize crops production and non-significant rainfall impact for household's net income.


I mplementing an open access (OA) policy off ers libraries an unusually high level of challenge. Chris Armbruster, who surveyed early policy implementers says that "open access policy implementation is a tough job. Policy pioneers have faced considerable challenges in meeting their own aims and achieving recognized success." 1 But the implementation process also off ers a proportionally high potential for positive payback not just to the campuses, but to the academy and the world beyond. Given this level of challenge and potential impact, libraries would do well to confer with those who have travelled further down the path, in order to maximize their chances for success. Yet not much has been written to date about policy implementation, no doubt because this task is so new to libraries. 2


Abstract : Previous experiments using multidimensional scaling reveal that pilots flying at low altitudes perceive two types of detail in real-world scenes: (a) hills and ridges, and (b) discrete scene elements exemplified by large objects or groups of objects. The present experiments sought to determine the extent to which these types of detail can be effectively rendered in computer- generated flight simulator scenes. In Experiment 1, subjects rated the visual similarity between simulated scenes exhibiting a range of different features. Ratings were analyzed with multidimensional scaling which revealed that subjects perceived variation in three types of detail: (a) texture on the terrain, (b)objects, and (c) hills. Evidence for a dimension related to texture on the terrain arose from comparisons involving completely featureless surfaces which were not represented in real-world scenes. Field of view was reduced in Experiment 2 and results revealed a change in perceived detail. Texture, objects and hills were perceived in scenes, but they were perceived as being a single type of detail contributing to global scene complexity. Taken together, present results indicate that detail important in real-world scenes can be effectively rendered in simulated scenes. Indeed, present scenes exhibited an even richer variety of detail than real-world scenes used previously. Nevertheless, what is important in scenes is not directly related to specific scene features but to more abstract forms of information mediated by those features.


About 60 percent of the mountainous Caribbean island of Jamaica is underlain by karstic limestone. 'Sinkholes' in this limestone form the natural outlets to many surface waters. During periods of heavy rainfall, rapid stormwater runoff is sometimes constrained by the limited capacity of these sinkholes, resulting in flooding. The small rural community of Aenon Town typically suffers from this phenomenon, and a multi-disciplinary flood mitigation and prevention project is being implemented for this area with measures which are geared towards reducing future losses. This project is funded by the Government of Jamaica, with assistance from the United Nations Development Programme, and will focus on improving community awareness and preparedness for floods.


ABSTRACT Designing and conducting sound and informative experiments is an important aspect of inquiry learning. Students, however, often design experiments that do not allow them to reach conclusions. Considering the difficulties students experience with the process of designing experiments, additional guidance in the form of an Experiment Design Tool (EDT) was developed, together with reflection questions. In this study, 147 pre-university students worked in an online inquiry learning environment on buoyancy and Archimedes' principle. Students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, each of which contained a different version of the EDT. Since students' prior knowledge has been found to influence the amount and type of guidance they need, the versions of the tool differed with respect to the level of guidance provided. A pre- and post-test were administered to assess students' conceptual knowledge. No overall differences between conditions were found. In a subsequent analysis, students were classified as either low, low-intermediate-, high-intermediate, or high prior knowledge students. For Archimedes' principle we found that low-intermediate prior knowledge students gained significantly more conceptual knowledge than low prior knowledge students in the fully guided condition. It is hypothesised that students need at least some prior knowledge in order to fully benefit from the guidance offered.


This paper uses a wage setting survey of 1,305 Colombian firms to explore the nature and sources of wage rigidities. This is the first study of a non-European emerging economy that uses evidence from a survey of firms to analyse this topic. The survey was carried out during the first half of 2009, when the Colombian economy was showing signs of a slowdown in economic activity and increasing unemployment. The sample is fully representative of the population under study. The results provide evidence of nominal and real downward wage rigidities in the country. The most important factor in not reducing base wages during an economic slowdown is to avoid the loss of more experienced and productive workers, which is related to the efficiency wage theory in its adverse selection version. In addition, ordered logit regressions were used to determine what factors are related to wage rigidities. The findings indicate that, in general, permanent contracts, workforce composition, labour intensity and the presence of collective agreements play an important role in explaining wage rigidities in the country.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight some inadequacies of the position of lecturers' qualifications to design assessments within hospitality curricula while meeting the requirements of international and national quality frameworks. The Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area leaves the responsibility for designing appropriate teaching and assessment strategies in the hands of educators without fully recognizing the complexity of formulating the desired learning outcomes. Additionally, the subject-oriented background of the majority of educators within universities of applied sciences seems to be ignored in respect of its influence on assessment design. Design/methodology/approach – This paper reflects on the author's experience in designing courses, teaching and assessment strategies at the NHTV University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands, as well as observations of processes at other universities of applied sciences. Findings – The author argues for a uniform delineation of hospitality professional qualifications which integrates learning outcomes from international, national and industry profiles. It is proposed that course design should start with assessment design to achieve alignment with learning outcomes and instructional strategies. Universities of applied sciences will have to train course designers in advanced assessment methods and encourage all faculty to acquire appropriate didactical training in assessing students. Practical implications – This paper offers a view on the strategy necessary to ensuring adequate preparation of lecturers in the areas of writing–learning outcomes and preparing assessment. Originality/value – The value of the paper lies in the fact that it is a unique critique of pedagogy in Dutch universities of applied sciences.


Despite the intensified research efforts into the field of Infant Mental Health and Marriage and Family Therapy, a truly systemically designed program has not been developed. This formative evaluation study illuminates the design phase, its developmental process, and the professional staff member's experience of this newly implemented "Options" program. I focused specifically on Crawford County Community Mental Health Center's innovative systemic approach to issues related to infant mental health. In this body of work, I describe the process of creating this innovative approach, identified how the program originators made decisions about their approach and how the approach is being operationalized on a daily basis by interviewing the clinicians, who are providing the services and the administrators who created and oversee the program. I utilized a qualitative approach in the design, transcription categorization, and data analysis. This formative evaluation used the "flashback approach" to tell the story of the evaluation findings, this included an Executive Summary. This study's exploration yielded a clearer understanding of the developmental process of the infant mental health program and its initial implementation. The results of this evaluation revealed that there are a number of core program components (three levels of focus: child and family, program, and community and catchment area) that were organized and clearly disseminated throughout the staff. The interviews revealed that the program has encountered problematic issues including; policy and procedural agreements and mandates, staff turnover, program ownership and funding limitations. It grew increasingly clear that the value of the program's positive impact on families outweighed the perceived hassle of establishing and implementing the program. This evaluation produced a number of program recommendations for program perpetuation and potential improvements. The program recommendations addressed the challenges facing the "Options Program" are explained. The future research implications of this formative evaluation are enumerated. A FORMATIVE EVALUATION OF A SYSTEMIC INFANT MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAM DESIGNED TO TREAT INFANTS AND THEIR FAMILIES THROUGH A RURAL COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH CENTER


Survivors of intimate partner violence often suffer from a number of serious aftereffects, but current prevalent treatments lack effectiveness for this population. Along with typical trauma symptoms such as avoidance and constriction, other common challenges unique to survivors include a loss of sense of self, negative self-appraisal, and a lack of self-efficacy. Therapeutic Assessment is well-suited to this population due to its potential for helping clients to replace distorted beliefs about the self with more adaptive ones, engaging clients as equals, and helping clients to form cohesive life narratives. The proposed study will measure the effectiveness of this approach with three to five subjects using a time-series design. Subjects will provide daily ratings of their personal experiences evaluating five areas of concern, three to be shared across subjects and two tailored to the priorities of each specific participant. The resulting indices will be tested using Simulation Modeling Analysis (SMA), controlling for autocorrelation using the Lag 1 correlation, to see whether statistically significant changes occur in the desired directions.


A new scheme for MIMO-OFDMA (Multiple Input Multiple Output-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) downlink resource allocation is presented in this paper. It has an objective of maximizing the total system capacity while having constraints on the total available power and proportional fairness. Dominant eigen-channels obtained from MIMO state matrix are used to formulate this scheme with low complexity. It gives a tradeoff strategy among system capacity, computational complexity and proportional fairness. Simulation results show that this new adaptive allocation scheme can provide much better capacity gain than static allocation methods while achieve near optimal fairness of rate distribution with a linear complexity. As a result, it may be suitable for fulfilling diverse QoS requirements of MIMO-OFDMA systems.


This article describes the processes involving the United States Patent and Trademark Office's (PTO's) implementation of administrative patent levers related to business methods. Administrative patent levers are conceptualized in this article as rules that represent a coordinated policy at the PTO to target a particular technology class, and are often motivated by institutional signals sent by actors within all three branches of government, as explained by positive political theory. This article presents an account where policymakers in all branches of government reacted strongly to the dangers posed by business methods. This behavior is explained under the "fire-alarm" theory of regulatory change and the principal-agent theory of administrative decision-making, whereby an administrative agency responds to external institutional pressures and actors. This conceptual analysis of administrative patent levers is then informed by a detailed analysis of business method rules that fall under this category of administrative policymaking at the PTO. A descriptive account is then offered that predicts how the CAFC would review the PTO's use of administrative patent levers as a general matter. Ultimately, the CAFC's approach is deemed undesirable since it fails to recognize that the PTO engages in policymaking. A normative solution is offered whereby the reviewing courts would apply a "hard look" review under Section 706(2)(A) of the Administrative Procedure Act. This standard would require that the PTO offer objective evidence that any administrative patent levers are warranted. This standard would also require that the PTO address any valid arguments or evidence against the implementation of such policy-oriented rules. Under the proposed line of analysis, it is proposed that the business method administrative patent levers would fail to meet this standard of review.


Over the last 20 years, biological MS has changed out of all recognition. This is primarily due to the development in the 1980s of 'soft ionization' methods that permit the ionization and vaporization of large, polar, and thermally labile biomolecules. These developments in ionization mode have driven the design and manufacture of smaller and cheaper mass analysers, making the mass spectrometer a routine instrument in the biochemistry laboratory today. In the present review the revolutionary 'soft ionization' methods will be discussed with particular reference to electrospray. The mass analysis of ions will be described, and the concept of tandem MS introduced. Where appropriate, examples of the application of MS in biochemistry will be provided. Although the present review will concentrate on the MS of peptides/proteins and lipids, all classes of biomolecules can be analysed, and much excellent work has been done in the fields of carbohydrate and nucleic acid biochemistry.


In this paper, seismic elastic and plastic responses of base-isolated structure are investigated, in which the bilinear restore-force model is employed for the isolation equipment. The mutual influences of both damping matrices and stiffness matrices are decoupled by using transition matrix. Based on the increment-dimensional precise integration method (PIM), the increment -dimensional blocks PIM is developed to separate structure characteristics and external forces, which can avoid the calculation of exponential matrices by PIM in each integration step. The results of numerical examples show that the efficiency of the new algorithm is very high in comparing with old method. The advantages of the new algorithm appear more obvious when the characteristics of large-scale structure have slightly changed, and only the external forces vary.


We propose Deep Patch Visual Odometry (DPVO), a new deep learning system for monocular Visual Odometry (VO). DPVO uses a novel recurrent network architecture designed for tracking image patches across time. Recent approaches to VO have significantly improved the state-of-the-art accuracy by using deep networks to predict dense flow between video frames. However, using dense flow incurs a large computational cost, making these previous methods impractical for many use cases. Despite this, it has been assumed that dense flow is important as it provides additional redundancy against incorrect matches. DPVO disproves this assumption, showing that it is possible to get the best accuracy and efficiency by exploiting the advantages of sparse patch-based matching over dense flow. DPVO introduces a novel recurrent update operator for patch based correspondence coupled with differentiable bundle adjustment. On Standard benchmarks, DPVO outperforms all prior work, including the learning-based state-of-the-art VO-system (DROID) using a third of the memory while running 3x faster on average. Code is available at https://github.com/princeton-vl/DPVO


Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is a vascular lesion that usually originates from several sites in the mid-dermis extending into the dermis. Infection from human herpes virus type 8 (HHV-8) is the mostly associated cause. Several articles reported cases of KS, first in Africa, then worldwide because of its close association with HIV / AIDS. KS may also be due to iatrogenic immunosuppression of chronic steroid use, high level of expression of many cytokines and angiogenic growth factors. It can involve skin, mucous  membranes, lymph nodes and viscera. We report a case of a 24-year-old immunocompetent, HIV negative male who presented with indolent lymphadenopathy, after adenectomy and histological and immunohistochemical examination revealed a KS. The patient did not have skin lesions. Refusing any other therapy, our patient still lives healthy.This very rare case shows that KS does not always equal immunodeficiency. Key words : Lymphadenopathic, Kaposi sarcoma, immunocompetent


Virtual reality has the potential to provide a new medium of communication that will allow community, business and recreation to extend into the virtual realm. As with any emerging technology, the law must decide how to respond. When technology throws into question what the law considers to be real, we are starting from a relatively clean slate. The purpose of this article is to consider the extent to which the criminal law must engage with virtual reality. This issue is approached through the case study of virtual indecent assault. After considering the offence of indecent assault in s 135 of the Crimes Act 1961 and the effects of virtual actions, this article argues that the potential for harm justifies the intervention of the criminal law into virtual worlds. In light of this conclusion, this article also aims to outline a set of principles that can shape the criminal law's response. A principled approach can establish a stable foundation from which to tackle the diverse and often unknown challenges posed by an ever changing technology. These principles are applied in the evaluation of the different methods of criminalisation that would be available in the context of virtual indecent assault.


Gender differences in human cardiovascular norepinephrine transporter function may be mediated through female sex hormones. We studied 16 healthy eumenorrheic women (25±1 years) during the early follicular phase (day 5±0) and midluteal phase (day 22±0) of the menstrual cycle. In a randomized, crossover, double-blind fashion, subjects ingested 8 mg of the selective norepinephrine transporter inhibitor reboxetine or placebo. We monitored heart rate, blood pressure, and thoracic bioimpedance at rest and during standard autonomic function tests, including head-up tilt. Venous estradiol and progesterone concentrations were higher in the luteal than in the follicular phase but did not differ between placebo and norepinephrine transporter inhibition testing days. On placebo, hemodynamics at rest and in response to different stressors were mostly identical between cycle phases. In the supine position, norepinephrine transporter inhibition increased blood pressure and stroke volume to a greater extent during the follicular than during the luteal phase. Conversely, the increase in heart rate and cardiac output with norepinephrine transporter inhibition was augmented in the luteal compared with the follicular phase. During head-up tilt with norepinephrine transporter inhibition, blood pressure and stroke volume decreased to a greater extent in the follicular than in the luteal phase. The tachycardic response to head-up tilt with norepinephrine transporter inhibition was augmented in the follicular phase. Our study suggests that sex hormones alter the hemodynamic response to norepinephrine transporter inhibition in women. The phenomenon may be explained by an effect of female sex hormones on norepinephrine transporter function, on compensatory cardiovascular responses, or both.


This book reveals that devout women made vital contributions to the spread and practice of the Reformed faith in the Dutch Republic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The six women at the heart of this study—Cornelia Teellinck, Susanna Teellinck, Anna Maria van Schurman, Sara Nevius, Cornelia Leydekker, and Henrica van Hoolwerff—were influential members of networks known for supporting a religious revival known as the Further Reformation. These women earned the support and appreciation of their religious leaders, friends, and relatives by seizing the tools offered by domestic religious study and worship, and forming alliances with prominent ministers including Willem Teellinck, Gijsbertus Voetius, Wilhelmus à Brakel, and Melchior Leydekker as well as with other well-connected, well-educated women. They deployed their talents to bolster the Dutch Reformed Church from 1572, the first year its members could publicly organize, to the death of this book's last surviving subject Cornelia Leydekker in 1725. In return for their adoption of religious teachings that constricted them in many ways, they gained the authority to minister to their family members, their female friends, and a broader audience of men and women during domestic worship as well as through their written works. These "dissenting daughters" vehemently defended their faith—against Spanish and French Catholics, as well as their neighbors, politicians, and ministers within the Dutch Republic whom they judged to be lax and overly tolerant of sinful behavior, finding ways to flourish among the strictest orthodox believers within the Dutch Reformed Church.


The aim of the article is to form the concept of technology for determining the permeability and porosity properties of terrigenous reservoirs using mathematical modeling methods on a digital rock sample model.
Digital rock sample modeling is used to assess geological oil reserves. The article presents the concept of digital rock sample modeling technology, which allows carrying out qualitative investigations to determine the permeability and porosity characteristics of the formation, including modeling the pore space and filtration processes. The essence of the concept is that the simulation model of the microstructure for the digital model is formed on the basis of a large number of parameters obtained during lithological and petrographic investigations of thin sections, a study of the sludge and geophysical investigations of wells.
The acquired model can be used as a basis for subsequent modeling of filtration processes. Conductivity of single channels of the formed model can be calculated using molecular dynamics methods, models of Boltzmann's lattice equations, and other mathematical models and methods.
Based on the results of the study carried out, the application of stochastic packing methods for modeling the structure of the pore space in the digital rock sample model of terrigenous reservoirs is substantiated.
In connection with the development of computer and nanotechnologies and their use in the oil and gas industry, solutions that allow obtaining adequate results of digital rock sample models are of high importance and relevance for the production sector. It is especially important to use digital rock sample models in the study of reservoir rocks of shelf fields in the western part of the Russian Arctic, oil shales, rocks represented by loose weakly cemented reservoirs, and others, which are complex for physical experiments.


Since people spend most of their time indoors, their indoor activities and related issues in health, security and energy consumption have to be understood. Hence, gathering and representing spatial information of indoor spaces in form of 3D models become very important. Considering the available data gathering techniques with respect to the sensors cost and data processing time, single images proved to be one of the reliable sources. Many of the current single image based indoor space modeling methods are defining the scene as a single box primitive. This domain-specific knowledge is usually not applicable in various cases where multiple corridors are joined at one scene. Here, we addressed this issue by hypothesizing-verifying multiple box primitives which represents the indoor corridor layout. Middle-level perceptual organization is the foundation of the proposed method, which relies on finding corridor layout boundaries using both detected line segments and virtual rays created by orthogonal vanishing points. Due to the presence of objects, shadows and occlusions, a comprehensive interpretation of the edge relations is often concealed. This necessitates the utilization of virtual rays to create a physically valid layout hypothesis. Many of the former methods used Orientation Map or Geometric Context to evaluate their proposed layout hypotheses. Orientation map is a map that reveals the local belief of region orientations computed from line segments, and in a segmented image geometric context uses color, texture, edge, and vanishing point cues to estimate the likelihood of each possible label for all super-pixels. Here, the created layout hypotheses are evaluated by an objective function which considers the fusion of orientation map and geometric context with respect to the horizontal viewing angle at each image pixel. Finally, the best indoor corridor layout hypothesis which gets the highest score from the scoring function will be selected and converted to a 3D model. It should be noted that this method is fully automatic and no human intervention is needed to obtain an approximate 3D reconstruction.


In 2013 the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) F13 committee on Pedestrian/Walkway Safety and Footwear, adapted a new standard F2508-13 "Standard Practice for Validation, Calibration, and Certification of Walkway Tribometers Using Reference Surfaces". The purpose of the standard is to provide a procedure for validation and calibration of tribmeters so that that their readings of the Coefficient Of Friction (COF) in wet conditions will be more reliable and consistent. The drive behind for this standard is a well-known problem where there is a large deviation between the readings obtained by different tribometers when measuring the COF between the same surfaces under wet conditions. The standard is based on a study in which four different reference surfaces were ranked according to their slipperiness measured by the number of slips detected while subjects were walking across them. A validated tribometer, according to this standard, is required to correctly rank the slipperiness of reference tiles with statistically significant differentiation between the COF readings. It is should be emphasize that the standard does not dictate any particular COFs' values for these reference surfaces. The purpose of this paper is to point out some of the difficulties in applying this standard: 1) Different validated tribometers produce different values for the COF of the same ranked surface. Or, vice versa, for the same value of the COF different tribometers will rank the surface's slipperiness differently; 2) Reference surfaces are not the same; and 3) The COF of the higher friction surfaces depends on the direction of the test which is not necessarily in the direction that a person slipped during the accident. These issues will present confusion in case of litigation and the test results are subjected to subjective interpretations.


Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are capable of accurate recognition of simple speech vocabularies such as isolated digits [1]. This paper looks at two more difficult vocabularies, the alphabetic E-set and a set of polysyllabic words. The E-set is difficult because it contains weak discriminants and polysyllables are difficult because of timing variation. Polysyllabic word recognition is aided by a time pre-alignment technique based on dynamic programming and E-set recognition is improved by focusing attention. Recognition accuracies are better than 98% for both vocabularies when implemented with a single layer perceptron.


The Góry Sowie Block, West Sudetes, SW Poland consists of a gneiss–migmatite complex with minor amphibolites, calc-silicate rocks, ultrabasic rocks and granulites. Migmatitic gneisses underwent a complex polyphase history of deformation and metamorphism, each deformation phase (D1 to D5) being associated with synkinematic amphibolite-facies metamorphism (M1 to M5). For a better understanding of the P–T–t-deformation path three types of gneisses, which represent distinct stages of deformation and metamorphism (D2–M2, D3–M3 and D5–M5), have been studied by means of the Rb–Sr and U–Pb isotopic systems. U–Pb monazite and xenotime ages of c. 380 Ma for rocks migmatized and deformed during the D3–M3 and D5–M5 stages constrain the timing of the last metamorphic–migmatitic event in the Góry Sowie Block. Rb–Sr thin-slab and mica–whole-rock dating for samples with D2, D3 and D5 characteristics provide ages between 362 and 375 Ma which overlap within error (2ó). No correlation between deformational characteristics and apparent Rb–Sr ages was recognized. The Rb–Sr data are interpreted as time constraints for post-peak metamorphic cooling. The new geochronological data indicate the significance of Devonian high-temperature metamorphism in the Sudetes and support a similar interpretation of earlier studies. The isotopic results are also consistent with the interpretation, based on field, structural and petrological data, that at least four (D2–D5) structural episodes occurred in Devonian times within a very short time interval, the details of which cannot be further resolved with the methods used.


Following the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive requiring all buildings at construction, sale or rent (or every ten years) to have certificates providing information about their energy performance through a rating of CO2 emissions, Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) and the Display Energy Certificates (DECs) were introduced in the UK in 2008. An EPC consists of an asset rating which is intended to inform potential buyers or occupiers about the intrinsic energy performance of a building. In the same vein as consumer products, buildings are rated on a scale A to G with A being the most efficient. This paper outlines the results of the first large-scale empirical analysis of their effects on residential property prices in England and Wales. It draws upon a sample of approximately 400,000 dwellings in England and Wales that had sold in the period from 1995 to 2011. To enable repeat-sales analysis, the sample included a large proportion of dwellings that had sold more than once. The hedonic model specifications reveal that compared to dwellings EPC rated G, dwellings with better EPC ratings have sold at a significant price premium. This willingness to pay for superior EPC ratings are robust and consistent across several model specifications and samples.


The role of the high potential [3Fe-4S]1+,0 cluster of [NiFe] hydrogenase from Desulfovibrio species located halfway between the proximal and distal low potential [4Fe-4S]2+,1+ clusters has been investigated by using site-directed mutagenesis. Proline 238 of Desulfovibrio fructosovorans [NiFe] hydrogenase, which occupies the position of a potential ligand of the lacking fourth Fe-site of the [3Fe-4S] cluster, was replaced by a cysteine residue. The properties of the mutant enzyme were investigated in terms of enzymatic activity, EPR, and redox properties of the iron-sulfur centers and crystallographic structure. We have shown on the basis of both spectroscopic and x-ray crystallographic studies that the [3Fe-4S] cluster of D. fructosovorans hydrogenase was converted into a [4Fe-4S] center in the P238 mutant. The [3Fe-4S] to [4Fe-4S] cluster conversion resulted in a lowering of approximately 300 mV of the midpoint potential of the modified cluster, whereas no significant alteration of the spectroscopic and redox properties of the two native [4Fe-4S] clusters and the NiFe center occurred. The significant decrease of the midpoint potential of the intermediate Fe-S cluster had only a slight effect on the catalytic activity of the P238C mutant as compared with the wild-type enzyme. The implications of the results for the role of the high-potential [3Fe-4S] cluster in the intramolecular electron transfer pathway are discussed.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Preterm children, compared with term children, are at increased risk of emotional and behavioral problems (EB-problems). Prevalences of EB-problems seem to vary with degree of prematurity and age at assessment. We therefore assessed individual stability of EB-problems in preterm compared with term children first before school entry and again 1 year after school entry, and variation in stability within the preterm group. METHODS: We used data of 401 early preterm (25–31 weeks' gestational age), 653 moderately preterm (32–35 weeks' gestational age), and 389 term children from the Longitudinal Preterm Outcome Project cohort study. We classified EB-problems based on the Child Behavior Checklist at ages 4 and 5; this resulted in 4 categories: consistently normal (2 normal scores), emerging (normal score at age 4 and clinical/subclinical score at age 5), resolving, and persistent EB-problems. RESULTS: All preterm children had higher rates than term children of persistent (7.2% vs 3.6%), emerging (4.3% vs 2.3%), and resolving (7.5% vs 3.6%) EB-problems. Early preterm children had the highest rates of persistent (8.2%) and emerging (5.2%) problems, and moderately preterm children had the highest rates of resolving problems (8.7%). In both preterm and term children, predictive values of normal scores at age 4 for normal scores at age 5 were ∼96%, and of clinical/subclinical scores at age 4 for clinical/subclinical scores at age 5 were ∼50%, except for early preterm children (60%). CONCLUSIONS: Compared with term children, all preterm children are at risk for persistent and changing EB-problems at school entry; individual stability, however, is difficult to predict based solely on the factor of preterm-birth.


Along with the development of existing information media in our current becomes increasingly easy to obtain some information. One was the medium of a lot of information is
changing the television medium. And one form of television that provides much information is a form of advertising impressions. Ads are a form of communication that is intended to motivate, promote, and introduce a product or service to someone or to introduce a consumer product and services to a person or potential customers in addition to the ad's influence is also working separately and invite the public to act and think according with the wishes of the advertisers. One of the ads that never appear on TV political ads in the presidential election and the vice president of the period 2009 - 2014 which is the candidate with serial number one: Megawati Sukarnoputri - Prabowo Subiyanto (Mega-Pro), with serial number two:
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono - Boediono (Sby-Boediono) and the last with serial number three: Jusuf Kalla - Wiranto (JK-Wiranto).
Formulation of the problem in this study is whether there are patterns influence public opinion about the residential election on television ads to view masyarakat on 2009
presidential candidates. The purpose of this study was to determine the pattern of influence of public opinion about the presidential election on television advertising to the public's view on 2009 presidential candidates.
Type used is research eksplanatif research using a quantitative approach, while the method of determining the location of the study authors used the method of Cluster Random Sampling citizens RW 04 Perumahan kopian Indah Desa Ketapang Kademangan district Probolinggo District. In the determination of the sample population and the researchers divided the three populations based on age / age of a. Voter Beginner (17-21 years), b. Young voters (22-37
years), c. Voter Elder (38 years and above). To determine the number of samples, the authors use the method of proportional stratified sampling with the acquisition of Random sample in this study as many as 89 people. In pengimpulan techniques researchers use the media data in
the form of a questionnaire that uses a scale linkert each answer given a score of 1-4. Then in the data analysis techniques researchers use the tools SPSS 15.0 program.
In testing the validity and reliability study using the product moment correlation and statistical tests alpha Conbrach (a), the product moment correlation is known that there is a positive relationship is strong enough between the variables X and Y with r values of 0.568, daam product moment coefficient values the relationship between the two variable positive diakatakan strong enough when approaching the value of 1.00 (Sudjana: 2001). While Alpha Conbrach statistical tests (a) is known for 0.648. Instrument is said to have a high level of reliability if the coefficient value obtained is greater than 0.6 (a> 0.6) (Imam Ghozali: 2002). From the results it can be concluded that there are questions on the questionnaire sedah reliable. Then in a simple linear regression test, the results obtained for y = 19.232 +0.448x. Concluded that the increased masyarakat view of ditelevisi election ads will be followed by
an increase in society's view on 2009 presidential candidate and vice versa.
Research conclusions is that there is a significant pattern of influence between the variables x (view public about election advertising on television) with a variable y (the public's view on the candidates in 2009), concluded that Hi Ho accepted and rejected by the influence y = 19.232 +0.448x. To put others have a significant influence between the public's view of the election ads on television with the candidate masyarakat view 2009.


Background Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has developed into a worldwide pandemic. This study aimed to retrospectively describe the use of corticosteroids in treating COVID-19. Methods For this multicenter retrospective study, medical records from 488 symptomatic COVID-19 patients were reviewed. Patients were divided into severe and nonsevere groups. Baseline characteristics, signs and symptoms, laboratory findings, treatments, and disease outcomes were compared. Specific data for corticosteroid treatment were further analyzed. Results Four hundred fifty COVID-19 patients were included in this study, including 82 severe patients and 368 nonsevere cases. Out of the 450 patients, 126 (28.0%) received corticosteroid treatment. In the 126 patients treated with corticosteroids, the median daily dose of corticosteroid therapy was 56.6 [interquartile range (IQR): 40.0–78.4] mg and median corticosteroid therapy duration was 5.0 (IQR: 3.0–7.0) days. Among nonsevere cases, patients treated with corticosteroids were significantly older in comparison with patients who did not receive corticosteroid treatment (p<0.01); the proportion of patients receiving antibiotic therapy in the corticosteroid group was significantly higher than that in the noncorticosteroid group (p<0.001); hospitalization length and duration of viral shedding were significantly longer in patients in the corticosteroid group than in the noncorticosteroid group after adjusting for age, sex, and comorbidities (p<0.05). In severe cases, patients treated with corticosteroids were significantly older and comorbidities at admission were significantly more common in patients receiving corticosteroid treatment (p<0.05); the proportion of patients receiving antibiotic therapy in the corticosteroid group was significantly higher than that in the noncorticosteroid group (p<0.001); no significant difference in hospitalization length or viral shedding duration was found between two groups after adjusting for age, sex, and comorbidities (p>0.05). Conclusion Our study indicates that corticosteroids are regarded as one of treatments in the general clinical practice of COVID-19. However, corticosteroid use may be accompanied by increased use of antibiotics, longer hospitalization, and prolonged viral shedding.


Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation and the experiment of adhesion force measurement were introduced to study the nanostructure formation process in the atomic force microscopy. The atomic level process of the nanostructure formation and the thermo-mechanical effect caused by the factors of the contact area, the adhesion force, and the temperature were clearly shown and discussed. The size of the forming nanostructures was found to be positively related to the contact area and temperature, but the adhesion force would decrease as the temperature increase. In the case of higher temperature with smaller adhesion force, however, the larger-size nanostructure could still be made.


This chapter examines the general practice and procedure governing competition litigation in Northern Ireland, with particular emphasis on competition law issues. It begins with an overview of the legal system in Northern Ireland, the litigation of private law competition claims in the High Court and in the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), and the rights of parties to commence collective proceedings in group litigation. It then considers the principles governing limitation and time periods for proceedings, the issue of jurisdiction in proceedings, and how an application for the grant of interim relief is made. It also analyses discovery and access to documents, the use of factual evidence and expert evidence, conduct of hearings, how final orders are issued, and how damages are assessed and awarded. Finally, it explores funding and costs in competition litigation, the governing rules on appeals and references, criminal proceedings, arbitration proceedings, and alternative dispute resolution.


This research journal explains about the research conducted by (Megawati (2016a) and Megawati (2016b). On the first web page in JEES shows the last chapter that is in August 2017, in the journal web there are 2 kinds that are published in a different year that is in the year 2017 published 2 volumes is in April and October then in 2016 published 2 volumes also and in the same month that is April and October. On the cover there orange color as its base color then combined with black and on the cover only filled the title and volume number. The readers there are 2 readers from abroad and also 8 readers from within the country. Then for the team maker consists of 3 parts of the team in the making of this journal and there is one of his team members came from abroad (Lebanon). While JEES uses descriptive methods to test its analysis because it implies the ability to write and produce journals. In JEES it describes a naturally occurring phenomenon without the interference of an experiment. Whereas on the first page of PEDAGOGIA shows the last chapter in August of 2017, in the journal web there are 7 kinds published in different year that is in the year 2017 there are 2 volumes in August and February, 2016 there are 2 volume in month August and February, 2015 There are 2 volumes in August and February, 2014 There are 2 volumes in August and February, 2013 There is 1 volume with pedagogical information, 2012 there is 1 volume with pedagogical description, and 2011 there is 1 volume with pedagogy description. On the cover there is the basic color of orange combined with gold and white, and on the cover already seen some of the explanation about the journal. Then for all readers consisting of 4 readers from within the country that is 3 readers from east java and 1 from central java.for the PEDAGOGIA journal creation team consists of 5 groups and all of its members are from within the university For this method using qualitative methods because it shows the resulting observation. Utilizing existing theories as explanatory materials and besides me to explain the analysis with an inductive approach based on data from quantitative methods.
Various research journals have their advantages and disadvantages, but it also depends on what method we use. In each different method it will also make different analysis. Then use the method that suits the need in making a conclusion of a study.


This research has purpose to know the effect of chamir isolate and carrier toward growth and yield of chili and development of anthracnose disease.
This research was conducted in Biotechnology Laboratory and in Experiment Field, Agriculture Faculty, Muhammadiyah University of Malang on February until August 2007. The research methode was used in laboratory using Randomized Complete Design by 6 treatments repeated 5 times. Whereas research methode was used in the field using Randomized Block Design contrast orthogonal consist of 2 factors by 3 times repeating. The first factor was a kind of carrier (P), consist of 2 treatment stage and the second factor was type of chamir isolate (K), consist of 5 stages. In this device was added control where this control just gives pathogen.
Observation variable involve: height of crop, total of leaf, wide of leaf, total of fruit, weight of fruit, intensity of disease attack, diameter of spotted, and total of colony chamir.
The research indicated that anthracnose disease of chili caused by Colletotrichum sp. All of treatment have no effect to growth and development of chilli, whereas disease intensity able to press. All of chamir able to press pathogen with persentage in onder : tomato chamir isolate versus Colletotrichum sp. (2,4%), papaya chamir isolate vesus Colletotrichum sp. (10,4%), avocado chamir isolate versus Colletotrichum sp. (8,0%), and guava chamir Isolate versus Colletotrichum sp. (15,4%).


Theory suggests that subjective well-being is affected by income comparisons and adaptation to income. Empirical tests of the effects often rely on self-constructed measures from survey data. This paper shows that results can be highly sensitive to simple parameter changes. Using large-scale panel data from Germany and the UK, I report cases where plausible variations in the underlying income type substantially affect tests of the relationship between life satisfaction, income rank, reference income, and income adaptation. Models simultaneously controlling for income and income rank as well as models with a number of income lags are prone to imperfect multicollinearity with consequences for the precision and robustness of estimates. When testing relative-income effects, researchers should be aware that reference income constructed as average of a rather arbitrarily defined reference group and reference income predicted from Mincer-type earnings equations are two approaches that can produce inconsistent results, and that are probably not as reliable and valid as previously assumed. The analysis underlines the importance of robustness checks and regression diagnostics, two routines that are often not carried out diligently in empirical research.


Cross-domain data reconstruction methods derive a shared transformation across source and target domains. These methods usually make a specific assumption on noise, which exhibits limited ability when the target data are contaminated by different kinds of complex noise in practice. To enhance the robustness of domain adaptation under severe noise conditions, this paper proposes a novel reconstruction based algorithm in an information-theoretic setting. Specifically, benefiting from the theoretical property of correntropy, the proposed algorithm is distinguished with: detecting the contaminated target samples without making any specific assumption on noise; greatly suppressing the negative influence of noise on cross-domain transformation. Moreover, a relative entropy based regularization of the transformation is incorporated to avoid trivial solutions with the reaped theoretic advantages, i.e., non-negativity and scale-invariance. For optimization, a half-quadratic technique is developed to minimize the non-convex information-theoretic objectives with explicitly guaranteed convergence. Experiments on two real-world domain adaptation tasks demonstrate the superiority of our method.


A method of superhigh-frequency dielectric measurement was proposed for control of hormone-stimulated adenylate cyclase system of human erythrocytes. The method was used for the analysis of some adrenoblockers. Differences in their effects in healthy persons and patients with cardiovascular pathology were found.


There are two broad classes (or categories) of excised human tissue: diagnostic tissue (DT) and research tissue (RT). Classification of excised human tissue does not define its ultimate use and ultimate use of excised human tissue does not define its classification. While both DT and RT can be used for research, DT has specific requirements with respect to how it must be handled if and when being accessed for research. We highlight distinguishing features of DT: (1) it is a clinical record, (2) it must be identifiable to a specific individual, (3) it is stewarded by pathology departments/clinical laboratories and (4) it has a mandatory retention period. We discuss how the further sub-classification of DT into archived DT (aDT) and excess DT (eDT) impacts the nature of its role in research. We examine the concept of DT as a clinical record and emphasize the impact of mandatory retention as it applies to how DT may be accessed for research purposes. We explain the role of post-retention eDT as a source of RT as well as procedures for access to in-retention aDT for research. Clarity of such issues will facilitate responsible access to DT for research.


In urban areas and especially in inner cities, pedestrians crossing the road considerably influence the road traffic flow. For political reasons, priority could be given to pedestrians. A larger number of crossings reduces the pedestrian load per crossing and facilitates both the pedestrian flow and the car flow; the ultimate case is a "cross anywhere" scenario. Earlier work shows that the road capacity decreases with the square of the pedestrian crossing time, hence a short crossing time is desired. Crosswalks can ensure pedestrians cross orthogonally, and thus quickly, and can thereby improve traffic flow. Moreover, a limited number of crosswalks is less stressful than a "cross anywhere" scenario for a car driver since (s)he only needs to expect crossing pedestrians at dedicated crosswalks. This paper studies the effect of the distances between crosswalk and road traffic capacity. The paper's goal is finding a single formula or universal set of charts that can describe the effect of pedestrian crosswalks on traffic flow under virtually all scenarios (with long blocks). This type of result would obviate the need for simulations of specific situations when only a rough assessment of the effect of crosswalks is desired. Traffic flow for several distances between pedestrian crossings is simulated, and moreover, a non-constant inter-crosswalk spacing is considered. The simulation results can be used for other situations, using transformations and an interpolation recipe. Overall, the closer the crosswalks, the better the flow. However, spacings closer than approximately 25-50 meters do not add much. Speed of traffic under a broad array of pedestrian crossing scenarios is given.


There is a growing demand for "tailor-made" new materials for special applications, in particular when the reservoir of the presently used raw materials is limited. Conjugated polymers, especially alternating copolymers meet these requirement and can be "tailor-made" for particular application or processing issues. In this thesis, several conjugated, alternating copolymers with fused ring systems for optoelectronical applications are presented. The mostly used building blocks are benzothiadiazole, benzobis(thiadiazole), cyclopentadithiophene, and indoloindole.
Alternating copolymers based on cyclopentadithiophene and benzothiadiazole- or benzobis(thiadiazole)-moieties (with and without additional thiophene "spacers") are described in Chapter 2 and 3 , respectively. Due to the smaller HOMO/LUMO energy gap of benzobis(thiadiazole) compared to benzothiadiazole, the absorption maxima of the corresponding copolymers are bathochromically shifted to wavelengths above 1 000 nm. The benzothiadiazole-based copolymers were tested with different acceptor materials (fullerenes, nanoparticles) in bulk-heterojunction-type organic solar cells. The best power conversion efficiency of ca. 4.5 % was reached with poly[2,6-(4,4-bis(2-ethylhexyl)-4 H -cyclopenta[2,1- b ;3,4- b' ]-dithiophene)- alt -4,7-[2,1,3]-benzothiadiazole] and C 70-PCBM as acceptor in the active layer.
In Chapter 4 , several indoloindole-based homo- and copolymers are presented. However, the properties of the polymers (regarding molecular weight, solubility, absorption, emission, HOMO/LUMO energy gap) vary considerably. Dual fluorescence, which is observed for the benzothiadiazole containing copolymers, and the oxidation behaviour of the indoloindole homopolymer are studied in detail.


A computer-based system for diagnosing bladder cancer is described. Typically, an object falls into one of two classes: Well or Not-well. The Well class contains the cells that will actually be useful for diagnosing bladder cancer; the Not-well class includes everything else. Several descriptive features are extracted from each object in the image and then fed to a multilayer perceptron, which classifies them as Well or Not-well. The perceptron's superior classification abilities reduces the number of computer misclassification errors to a level tolerable for clinical use. Also, the perceptron's parallelism and other aspects of this implementation lend it to extremely fast computation, thus providing accurate classification at an acceptable speed.<<ETX>>


For the two-level atoms system interacting with single-mode active field in a quantum cavity, the dynamics of the Bose–Einstein Condensation (BEC) is analyzed using an ordinary method suggested by authors to solve the system of Schrödinger representation in the Heisenberg representation. The wave function of the atoms is given. The stability factor determining the BEC and the selection rules of the quantum transition are solved.


e main aim of this article is to nd out the extent to which relative labour productivity and relative unemployment rate changes determine relative wage changes. We use average annual macro-data for the period 2002-2013 for Poland and other 5 new EU members: Estonia, Hungary, Slovak, Czech Republic and Slovenia. Using Poland as benchmark, rst we examine the correlation between wage, productivity and unemployment rate changes in countries in question. en, using panel data model we assess the elasticities of the relative wage changes with regard to relative productivity and unemployment changes. We found out that the trajectory of wage, productivity and unemployment rate development in new EU member countries is diversi ed. We con rmed a strong relationship between wage and productivity ratio changes in Poland related to Czech Republic, Estonia and Hungary. Moreover, an increase of productivity in Poland in comparison to Czech Republic is greater than an increase of wages in Poland in comparison to Czech Republic. e same relation occurs in Slovak and Slovak Republic. At the same time the productivity in Poland in relation to Hungary and Estonia has been growing slower than the wages in Poland in comparison to Hungary and Estonia. e correlations between wage and unemployment rate ratios are of smaller signi cance.


This article reviews the implications for land use policy of Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Fifty years after its publication in 1961, Death and Life remains a clarion call for resistance to monolithic development and to the reigning paradigm of urban planning in the mid-20th century. The article asserts, however, that government officials and planners have learned the wrong lesson from Jacobs. Their emphasis on the top-down imposition of what purports to be varied development is evident in the growth of condemnation for retransfer for private economic redevelopment. Such policies are directly contrary to Jacobs' insistence on bottom-up organic development.The article further describes the muddled state of the U.S. Constitution's Public Use Clause, evident in Kelo v. City of New London and in state cases such as Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corporation. It asserts that judicial unwillingness to provide meaningful scrutiny to condemnation for private redevelopment is based, in part, on acceptance of the revisionist, and incorrect, reading of Jacobs' work.