Abstract EosFP is a fluorescent protein from the coral Lobophyllia hemprichii that changes its fluorescence emission from green to red upon irradiation with near-UV light. Here we present the spectroscopic properties of wild-type EosFP and a variety of monomeric and dimeric mutants and provide a structural interpretation of its oligomerization and photoconversion, which is based on X-ray structure analysis of the green and red species that we reported recently. Because functional expression of the monomeric EosFP variant is limited to temperatures of 30°C, we have developed a tandem dimer. This construct, in which two EosFP subunits are connected by a flexible 12 amino acid linker, expresses well after fusion with the androgen and endothelin A receptors at 37°C. A variety of applications in cellular imaging, developmental biology and automated high-content screening applications are presented, which demonstrate that EosFP is a powerful tool for in vivo monitoring of cellular processes.


This research focuses on managing cardiovascular disease (CVD) using mobile technologies and a decision support system (DSS). Evidence from this study indicates that this development can benefit health professionals in medical diagnoses of CVD, which is the most prevalent cause of death in Australia. Capturing cardiac data early when infarction is suspected has the potential to save lives and reduce health costs. This research is built upon a mobile ECG decision support system (M-ECG DSS), which allows remote monitoring of patients. It provides real-time data for specialists, GPs, hospitals and emergency service without the need for hospital admission or travel. The research combines web browser and native applications with DSS together for the first time to give health professionals a non-delay access and fast interpretation to support diagnosis on a mobile device (with synthetic ECG data being used). The mobile ECG decision support system (M-ECG DSS) is expected to improve overall referral processes and diagnoses of CVD patients remotely located from physicians by eliminating or minimising unpredictable elements such as delays in diagnosis time and speed.

The primary research aim is to identify ECG functional and DSS system characteristics to arrive at possible solutions for mobile ECG implementations. The research also evaluates the acceptance of the M-ECG DSS system that has been developed. The scientific merit of the research lies in the innovative development of a prototype system that displays the relevant information graphically and in real-time. This research adapts the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Information System Success Model (ISSM) to increase actual use of the application; furthermore, it investigates attitudes toward intention to use the technology and explores the associations between medical system services and acceptance by individual healthcare staff.

This research focuses on the quality of distributing a patient's detail to clinicians. Data collection methods employed in this research encompass interviews and surveys. Qualitative data was gathered from a group of users as an effective means of soliciting views of acceptance of M-ECG DSS from cardiologists, doctors and nurses and to identify attitudes, opinions and acceptance of using this system. In this research, quantitative descriptive statistics are also used to triangulate the results. Eighteen participants from regional hospitals took part in the research - 12 in Taiwan and 6 in Australia. Participants consisted of cardiologists, doctors and nurses who have knowledge on remote medical treatment and pre-hospital (medical treatment before arriving at hospital) services.

The research findings clearly identify the need for this type of application for disease management and patient care. A M-ECG DSS should contain not only ECG functional characteristics but also DSS system characteristics in order to be able to monitor a CVD patient remotely. In addition, the platform developed can be articulated to other disease diagnoses and to pre-screen outpatients. Doctors can save time as all necessary vitals have been taken and available in a patient's record before they present for consultation. This is a challenge, given the variety of mobile devices available to health professionals. Studies have shown that unless such a system is reliable and intuitive to use, its uptake will be limited.

A combination of mobile web browser and native apps has created a new experience for health professionals for CVD diagnosis, and speeding up decision-making. Findings establish that a mobile device has the ability to present more comprehensive details than a paper-based ECG presentation. The research also shows that a DSS in a mobile device should not only provide decision-making information but also increase system resources availability. There is strongly agreement amongst health professionals that a digital measurement tool is a necessary inclusion in mobile DSSs. It can help clinicians to interpret patient data easily, with minimal errors. The research finds that health professionals will realise benefits from monitoring suspect and actual heart disease, and monitoring in real-time patients' activity patterns. Future research may be conducted for constructing a more complete mobile health system as well as a DSS for decision-making. This current research will allow health professionals in hospitals and clinics to monitor patients with minimum human intervention.


Outlier detection will typically be thought of as a pre-processing step for locating, throughout a data set, those objects that do not fits well-defined notions of expected behaviour. it is vital in process for locating novel or isolated events, anomalies, vicious actions, exceptional phenomena, etc. We have got an inclination to reinvestigating outlier detection for categorical data sets. This draw back is very hard owing to the matter of shaping a pregnant similarity live for categorical data. Throughout this paper, we have got an inclination to propose an accurate definition of outliers associated academic degree improvement model of outlier detection, via a replacement construct of holoentropy that takes each entropy and total correlation into thought. Supported this model, we have got an inclination to stipulate a perform for the outlier issue of associate object that's fully determined by the item itself and will be updated expeditiously. We have got AN inclination to propose 2 wise 1-parameter outlier detection ways in which, named ITB-SS and ITB-SP, that need no user-defined parameters for deciding whether or not or not or not associate object is associate outlier. Users would like solely supply the number of outliers they need to notice. Experimental results show that ITB-SS and ITBSP square measure easier and economical than thought ways in which and will be accustomed agitate each vast and high-dimensional data sets wherever existing algorithms fail. Other ways like possibility, Hyper graph theory or agglomeration ways in which goes fail in outlier detection in categorical data. We have got an inclination to area unit measure the outlier detection pattern entropy and total correlation.


Immunoassays designed to detect use of older benzodiazepines such as oxazepam or diazepam often cannot detect triazolam use because of the low doses of triazolam administered, rapid biotransformation to metabolites with poor cross-reactivities, and the small amount of alpha OH triazolam glucuronide excreted in the urine. Previous studies have demonstrated that certain immunoassays have high cross-reactivity to alpha OH triazolam but are unable to detect therapeutic triazolam use in urine. The objectives of this study were to characterize the immunoreactivity toward alpha OH triazolam in the reformulated cloned enzyme donor immunoassay (CEDIA) drug abuse urine benzodiazepine assay and to measure the immunoreactivity of urine specimens from subjects who were administered single oral doses of triazolam. Alpha OH triazolam standards were prepared in drug-free urine and the new CEDIA assay gave a positive result at concentrations from 100 to 200 ng/ml, which indicates an eight-fold improvement in CEDIA cross-reactivity to alpha OH triazolam standards in the reformulated CEDIA assay. With a 200 ng/ml cut-off, 4/30 of the urine specimens screened positive for benzodiazepines without enzymatic hydrolysis and 6/30 after enzymatic hydrolysis. When using an in-house 100 ng/ml nitrazepam cut-off calibrator, 10/30 urine specimens were positive in the reformulated CEDIA assay without hydrolysis and 22/30 were positive with enzymatic hydrolysis before screening.


The mortality rate of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has been dramatically reduced after the supine sleeping position was recommended by health authorities. Concomitant with the decline in overall mortality rate, a marked attenuation of the seasonal distribution has been observed. So far, neither a satisfactory explanation of the previously noted seasonal variation, nor a generally accepted explanation for the preventive effect of supine sleeping position has been presented. Conceivably either the effect of some yet unidentified risk factor for sudden unexpected death in infancy was more prevalent during the dark and cold months of the year during the period when infants generally slept prone, or the effect of the risk factor(s) was more potent in the prone sleeping infant. Prolonged apnoea in infancy may lead to hypoxia, bradycardia and circulatory collapse. Reflex apnoea can be elicited by stimulation of chemoreceptors in the upper airway. The cardio-respiratory response to receptor stimulation is reinforced during a respiratory tract infection. Based on our own and others' experimental data, it is suggested that the reduction in sudden infant mortality rate and in particular the attenuation of the seasonal variation is in part an effect of the reduced likelihood of laryngeal chemoreceptors being stimulated by stagnated airway secretions during upper airway tract infection in the supine sleeping infant.


We study the thermal transport properties of the one dimensional Fermi-Pasta-Ulam model (βtype) with long-range interactions. The strength of the long-range interaction decreases with the (shortest) distance between the lattice sites as distance, where δ ≥ 0. Two Langevin heat baths at unequal temperatures are connected to the ends of the one dimensional lattice via short-range harmonic interactions that drive the system away from thermal equilibrium. In the nonequilibrium steady state the heat current, thermal conductivity and temperature profiles are computed by solving the equations of motion numerically. It is found that the conductivity κ has an interesting non-monotonic dependence with δ with a maximum at δ = 2.0 for this model. Moreover, at δ = 2.0, κ diverges almost linearly with system size N and the temperature profile has a negligible slope, as one expects in ballistic transport for an integrable system. We demonstrate that the nonmonotonic behavior of the conductivity and the nearly ballistic thermal transport at δ = 2.0 obtained under nonequilibrium conditions can be explained consistently by studying the variation of largest Lyapunov exponent λmax with δ, and excess energy diffusion in the equilibrium microcanonical system.


Objective. To assess the inter-rater reliability of the BILAG2004-Pregnancy index for assessment of SLE disease activity in pregnancy. Methods. Pregnant SLE patients were recruited from four centres and assessed separately by two raters/physicians in routine clinical practice. Disease activity was determined using the BILAG2004-Pregnancy index. Reliability was assessed using level of agreement, κ-statistics and analysis of disagreement. Major disagreement was defined as a score difference of A and C/D/E or B and D/E between the two raters, and minor disagreement was a score difference of A and B or B and C between raters. Results. A total of 30 patients (63.3% Caucasian, 13.3% Afro-Caribbean, 16.7% South Asian) were recruited. The majority of patients had low-level disease activity according to the local rater's assessment, and there was no grade A activity, with grade B activity present in the following systems: mucocutaneous (nine patients), musculoskeletal (two patients), cardiorespiratory (one patient) and renal (one patient). The distribution of disease activity was similar to the external rater's assessment. Good levels of agreement (>70%) were achieved in all systems. κ-statistics were not appropriate for use in the gastrointestinal, ophthalmic, constitutional and neuropsychiatric systems, as there was minimal variation between patients but good levels of agreement otherwise. There were three major disagreements (0.1 per patient, all differences between B and D/E) and five minor disagreements (0.17 per patient). Conclusion. The BILAG2004-Pregnancy index is reliable for assessment of disease activity in pregnant SLE patients.


We report measurements of the momentum dependence of the superconducting gap in Bi 2Sr2CaCu2O81x with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy using a dense sampling of the Brillouin zone in the vicinity of the Fermi surface. In the Y quadrant of the zone, where there are no complications from ghost bands caused by the superlattice, we find a gap function consistent within error bars to the form cos( kx)2cos(ky) expected for a d-wave order parameter. Similar results are found in the X quadrant with the photon polarization chosen to enhance main band emission over that due to ghost bands. @S0163-1829 ~96!52238-1#


A simple, low-cost, fast method for the extraction and cleanup of DEF (S,S,S-tri-n-butyl phosphorotrithioate) from fish tissues and water samples was developed. The method combines extraction and cleanup in one step. The basis of the method is passing water samples or aqueous tissue homogenates containing DEF through a C-18 disposable cartridge. DEF is eluted from the cartridge by acetone or ethyl acetate. The eluates are analyzed by gas chromatography using a thermionic-specific detector. The method detects levels as low as 100 parts per trillion (ppt) in water samples; recovery efficiency from spiked fish tissues was greater than 95%. In addition, detectable levels of DEF were recovered from liver, brain, and muscle tissue of fish exposed to this compound. The method has a potential for use with other pesticides.


Patients with multiple myeloma (MM) have increased bone marrow (BM) angiogenesis; however, the proangiogenic properties of myeloma cells and the mechanisms of MM-induced angiogenesis are not completely clarified. The angiopoietin system has been identified as critical in the regulation of vessel formation. In this study we have demonstrated that myeloma cells express several proangiogenic factors, and, in particular, we found that angiopoietin-1 (Ang-1), but not its antagonist Ang-2, was expressed by several human myeloma cell lines (HMCLs) at the mRNA and the protein levels. In a transwell coculture system, we observed that myeloma cells up-regulated the Ang-1 receptor Tie2 in human BM endothelial cells. Moreover, in an experimental model of angiogenesis, the conditioned medium of HMCLs significantly stimulated vessel formation compared with control or vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) treatment. The presence of anti-Tie2 blocking antibody completely blunted the proangiogenic effect of XG-6. Finally, our in vitro results were supported by the in vivo finding of Ang-1, but not Ang-2, mRNA and protein expression in purified MM cells obtained from approximately 47% of patients and by high BM angiogenesis in patients with MM positive for Ang-1, suggesting that the angiopoietin system could be involved, at least in part, in MM-induced angiogenesis.


Introduction: Otosclerosis is a primary and exclusive disease of the otic capsule, known to affect spontaneously only humans. The most classical manifestation is conductive hearing loss secondary to stapedial fixation. Perkins introduced argon laser stapedotomy in 1980 because it appeared that laser offered some technical advantage over conventional techniques. Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective study of 20 cases of stapedial otosclerosis (10 cases in each group) operated during a period of 5 years. Our study compares a series of potassium titanyl phosphate (KTP) 532 laser stapedectomy (LS) with a series of conventional stapedectomy (CS) with respect to technical advantages, hearing results, and complications. Paired students t test was used for statistical analysis of the data. Results and Conclusion: (i) KTP LS using 0.6mm fibre is a safe and efficient technique. (ii) LS is technically less difficult, produces an atraumatic, bloodless opening in the footplate of stapes without mechanical manipulation of the stapes. (iii) The air-bone gap closure is better in laser group.


Background: Migration is an essential component of breast cancer metastasis, which study has been concentrated on culture of established breast cancer cell lines that do not accurately represent the sophistication and heterogeneity of patient's breast cancer. An attempt to perform migration assay using Boyden Chamber Assay (BCA) on primary culture originating from patient's breast cancer tissue was developed to accommodate upcoming study of breast cancer migration in lndonesian patients. Methods: Pathologically proven primary breast cancer tissue samples were obtained from Ciptomangunkusumo Hospital during core (n=4) and incisional (n=3) biopsies of stage llA up to stage lllA breast cancer patients. Following biopsy, the breast cancer tissue samples underwent processings to isolate the cancer cells. These cancer cells were -then resuspended within Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) ahd cultured in 12-well plate. The growth of primary culture were observed and compared between the core biopsy and the incisional biopsy specimens. Optimization of BCA method was later performed to investigate the migration of the breast cancer primary culture towards different experirnental conditions, which were control, Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS), and Stromal Derived Factor-l (SDF-1). Two different number of breast cancer cells were tested for the optimization of the BCA, which were 1 x 105 and3x105cells. Results: None of the culture performed on core biopsy specimens grew, while one out of three incisional biopsy specimens grew until confluence. The one primary culture that grew was later assesed using BCA to assess its migration index towards different experimental conditions. Using 1 x 10s breast cancer cells in the BCA , the result of the absorbance level of migrated cells showed that the migration towards SDF-1 (0.529) nearly doubled the migration towards controlmedium (0.239) and FBS (0.209). Meanwhile, the absorbance levelwas simiiar between the control medium (1.050), FBS (1 .103), and SDF-1 (1 .104) when the same test was run with 3 x 105 breast cancer cells. Discussion: Breast cancer tissue collected using incisional biopsies hao better chance to grow in primary culture than those collected using core biopsies, possibly due to the difference in the amount of tissue extracted. Consistent with previous research, patient's breast cancer cells was shown to migrate more towards the chemokine ligand SDF-1, as compared to control medium and FBS. The number of breast cancer cells run in the BCA also affected the result of the migration assay, where 1 x 10s cells showed a superiority as compared to 3 x 105 cells in showing the migration difference between the different experimental conditions. MKA, Volume 37, Nomor.Supl. 2, November 2014 ED Yulian dkk " Migration assay on primary culture isolated from patient's primary breast cancer tissue Conclusions: This study encourages and facilitates future research to study migration the intrinsic characteristic of individualized patient's breast cancer as well as to assess the change in migration characteristic of breast cancer cells after an in vivo treatment in human.


In the early 1980s we found that streptozotocin and alloxan, typical diabetogenic agents, induce pancreatic beta-cell DNA strand breaks through the formation of free radicals. The breaks induce DNA repair involving the activation of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP), which uses NAD+ as a substrate. As a result, the intracellular levels of NAD+ fall dramatically. The fall in NAD+ inhibits cellular functions including insulin synthesis and secretion, and thus the beta-cell ultimately dies. We subsequently proposed that maintenance of the NAD+ level is essential for the synthesis and secretion of insulin, and presented a unifying model for beta-cell damage and its prevention (The Okamoto model), in which PARP activation plays an essential role. Recently, the model was reconfirmed by experiments using PARP knockout mice and has been recognized as providing the basis for necrotic death of various cells and tissues. In 1993, we found that cyclic ADP-ribose (cADPR), a metabolite of NAD+, is a second messenger for intracellular Ca2+ mobilization for insulin secretion by glucose, and proposed a novel mechanism of insulin secretion, the CD38-cADPR signal system. Recently, various physiological phenomena from animal to plant cells become understandable in terms of this signal system. In 1984, we demonstrated that the administration of PARP inhibitors to 90% depancreatized rats induces islet regeneration. From the regenerating islet-derived cDNA library we found a novel beta-cell growth factor gene, Reg (Regenerating Gene), and elucidated the mechanism of Reg gene expression in beta-cells, in which PARP acts as a transcription factor for Reg gene expression. PARP bound to the cis-element of Reg promoter and formed the active transcriptional DNA/protein complex. The complex formation was inhibited depending on the autopoly(ADP-ribosyl)ation of PARP in the complex. Thus, PARP inhibitors enhance and stabilize the complex formation for Reg gene transcription. Reg protein acts as an autocrine/paracrine growth factor to induce beta-cell replication via the Reg receptor and ameliorates experimental diabetes.


An improved immersed boundary method is proposed and applied to simulate fluid-structure interactions by combining a level set method for free water surface capturing. An efficient Navier-Stokes equation solver adopting the fractional step method at a staggered Cartesian grid system is used to solve the incompressible fluid motion. A new efficient algorithm to search forcing points near the immersed body boundary is developed. The searching schemes for forcing points located both inside and outside the solid phase with the linear interpolation schemes for the determination of velocities at forcing points are presented and compared via the case of dam break over obstacles. The accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed forcing point searching schemes are further demonstrated by the study of wave propagation over a submerged bar and more challenging cases of wedge with prescribed velocity or falling freely into the water. By the extensive comparison of present numerical results with other experimental and numerical data, it suggests that the present improved immersed boundary method with the new forcing point searching scheme has a better performance and is very promising due to its accuracy, efficiency and ease of implementation. Furthermore, the present numerical results show that the outside forcing scheme is superior over the inside forcing scheme.


The development of ovarian follicles is a unique instance of a morphogenesis process still occurring during adult life and resulting from the interactions between somatic and germ cells. In mammals, the initiation of follicular development from the pool of resting follicles is characterized by an increase in the oocyte size concomitant with the surrounding somatic cells proliferating to build an avascular tissue called granulosa. We present a stochastic individual-based model describing the first stages of follicular development, where the cell population is structured with respect to age (progression within the cell cycle) and space (radial distance from the oocyte). The model accounts for the molecular dialogue existing between the oocyte and granulosa cells. Three dynamically interacting scales are considered in the model: (i) a microscopic, local scale corresponding to an individual cell embedded in its immediate environment, (ii) a mesoscopic, semi-local scale corresponding to anatomical or functional areas of follicles and (iii) a macroscopic, global scale corresponding to the morphology of the follicle. Numerical simulations are performed to reproduce the 3D morphogenesis of follicles and follow simultaneously the detailed spatial distribution of individual granulosa cells, their organization as concentric layers or functional cell clones and the increase in the follicle size. Detailed quantitative simulation results are provided in the ovine species, in which well characterized genetic mutations lead to a variety of phenotypic follicle morphogenesis. The model can help to explain pathological situations of imbalance between oocyte growth and follicular cell proliferation 1. Introduction. A highly efficient reproductive capacity is a major advantage for species preservation, faced with the natural selection process, and for individuals within species. In mammalian females, ovarian function is the subject of intensive investigations with the aim to improve the reproductive capacity of domestic and wild animal species and to treat ovarian failures leading to infertility in humans. The issues are crucial for both clinical and zootechnical applications. In humans, the prevalence of the polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a main cause of infertility, has been estimated at up to 10% among reproductive-age women [19]. Improvement of reproductive biotechnologies, including in vitro fertilization, intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection, frozen embryo replacements and egg donation, is a key issue for a better management of reproduction. Improving the knowledge upon ovarian function and its control will help to improve the success of assisted reproductive technologies, hence to prevent ovarian failure or hyperstimulation syndrome in women and to manage


Microbubbles are used as contrast agents in clinical ultrasound for Left Ventricular Opacification (LVO) and perfusion imaging. They are also the subject of promising research in therapeutics as a drug delivery mechanism or for sonoporation and co-administration. For maximum efficacy in these applications, it is important to understand the acoustic characteristics of the administered microbubbles. Despite this, there is significant variation in the experimental procedures and equipment used to measure the acoustic properties of microbubble populations. A chamber was designed to facilitate acoustic characterisation experiments and was manufactured using additive manufacturing techniques. The design has been released to allow wider uptake in the research community. The efficacy of the chamber for acoustic characterisation has been explored with an experiment to measure the scattering of SonoVue® microbubbles at the fundamental frequency and second harmonic under interrogation from emissions in the frequency range of 1.6 to 6.4 MHz. The highest overall scattering values were measured at 1.6 MHz and decreased as the frequency increased, a result which is in agreement with previously published measurements. Statistical analysis of the acoustic scattering measurements have been performed and a significant difference, at the 5% significance level, was found between the samples containing contrast agent and the control sample containing only deionised water. These findings validate the proposed design for measuring the acoustic scattering characteristics of ultrasound contrast agents.


Abstract Egg-laying behaviour of bumblebee workers is highly flexible and influenced by the bees' social status and social environment. In this study, the dependence of the starting time of ovarian development in Bombus terrestris workers was determined under four different social conditions. The purpose was to test the effect of group stimulation and the presence of a queen on ovarian development. The relationship between weight and the commencement of ovarian development in workers was also investigated. We created four test groups: (1) 8 callow workers with a queen, (2) 8 callow workers without a queen, (3) 1 callow worker with a queen, and (4) 1 callow worker without a queen. Mated and hibernated (freshly awoken) B. terrestris queens made up Group 1 and 3. There was no significant difference between the starting times of ovarian development in the experimental groups composed of 8 callow workers in queenright (9.81 ± 2.44 days) and queenless (9.53 ± 2.53 days) conditions. However, ovaries of workers confined singly with a queen started to develop significantly earlier (11.77 ± 3.30 days) than workers confined singly without a queen (14.70 ± 3.56 days). The observations indicate that the presence of a queen does not inhibit the ovarian development of workers. The Point-Biserial Correlation Coefficient between the starting of ovarian development in workers and their weight was −0.013. However, there was a positive correlation between the weight and the ovarian developmental status of workers in groups containing 8 workers.


A retrospective review is presented of 276 women, who were sterilized by laparoscopy (LS) or laparotomy (LT) in a small department of general surgery over a seven-year period. The results obtained were comparable to that of a specialized department. We found that the LS/LT ratio to be 56%/44%. LS was converted to LT in 7.3% of the LS cases. Sixty-five percent of the LS were controlled by hysterosalpingography, and there was residual unilateral patency in eight patients. Tree percent of the women became pregnant after the LS intervention, compared to 1.8% in the LT group. Frequency of metrorrhagia and infection in both groups was equal. The results obtained in this department of general surgery did not differ from those obtained in specialized gynaecological departments. On the basis of this investigation, laparoscopic sterilization may be recommended for sterilization of women in departments of general surgery.


This work investigates the compatibility between label smoothing (LS) and knowledge distillation (KD). Contemporary findings addressing this thesis statement take dichotomous standpoints: Muller et al. (2019) and Shen et al. (2021b). Critically, there is no effort to understand and resolve these contradictory findings, leaving the primal question -- to smooth or not to smooth a teacher network? -- unanswered. The main contributions of our work are the discovery, analysis and validation of systematic diffusion as the missing concept which is instrumental in understanding and resolving these contradictory findings. This systematic diffusion essentially curtails the benefits of distilling from an LS-trained teacher, thereby rendering KD at increased temperatures ineffective. Our discovery is comprehensively supported by large-scale experiments, analyses and case studies including image classification, neural machine translation and compact student distillation tasks spanning across multiple datasets and teacher-student architectures. Based on our analysis, we suggest practitioners to use an LS-trained teacher with a low-temperature transfer to achieve high performance students. Code and models are available at https://keshik6.github.io/revisiting-ls-kd-compatibility/


Electricity markets with high installed capacities of Variable Renewable Energy Sources (VRES) experience periods of supply and demand mismatch, resulting in near-zero and even negative prices, or energy spilling due to surplus. The participation of emerging Power-to-X solutions in a sector coupling paradigm, such as Power-to-Gas (PTG), has been envisioned to provide a source of demand flexibility to the power sector and decarbonize the gas sector. We advance a long-run equilibrium model to study the PTG investment decision from the point of view of a perfectly competitive electricity and gas system where each sector's market is cleared separately but coupled by PTG. Under scenarios combining PTG technology costs and electricity RES targets, we study whether or not there is a convergence in the optimal deployment of PTG capacity and what is the welfare distribution across both sectors. We observe that PTG can play an important price-setting role in the electricity market, but PTG revenues from arbitrage opportunities erodes as more PTG capacity is installed. We find that the electricity and gas sector have aligned incentives to cooperate around PTG, and instead find an issue of misaligned incentives related to the PTG actor. Although not the focus of our analysis, in some scenarios we find that the welfare optimal PTG capacity results in a loss for the PTG actor, which reveals some intuition that subsidizing PTG can make sense to reduce the cost of RES subsidies. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to contextualize these findings for system specificities.


Climate change is currently identified as one of the most challenging global issues, which makes low-carbon development an increasingly popular topic that needs serious consideration. Therefore, the way cities are planned, managed, and use energy will play a vital role in mitigating climate change and its impact on the environment. Some simple city facilities such as pedestrian walkways, safe bikeways, and different modes of transportations, as well as sustainable policies and action programs, could reduce automobile dependency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission in many cities. This project will explore such sufficient and practical rules and policies to redesign neighborhoods to create more sustainable, livable, and low-carbon cities, which will be accessible and attractive for all groups of people. This study reviews, compares, and analyzes different sustainable urbanism principles under three pillars of the sustainable development concept, including environmental, economical, and social. It also analyzes similar successful projects in Europe to find the appropriate and practical rules that are compatible with community requirements. The results show that all the sustainable principles should work together to create a sustainable community with reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is everyone's responsibility to care about the future. It is necessary for urban planners, architects, and any related divisions of government to follow the proper rules to make cities a better place to live and also to increase residents' awareness of both climate change issues and practical solutions. Urban planners are responsible for inviting people to be involved in making decisions and sharing their ideas to enrich communication, with the purpose of making a better city to live in.


Fabriconda is an attenuating wave energy device constructed from inelastic fabric. It is a flooded distensible tube constructed from a series of smaller flooded tubes, called cells, joined longitudinally. This paper presents a t heory to predict the shape a F abriconda forms at different tube and cell pressures and shows it successfully predicts the shape of a model Fabriconda. A 1D linear finite difference simulation based on the conservation of fluid momentum and mass in both the central tube and cells provides a p rediction of the free bulge wave speed along the device. Experiments using a piston to artificially generate a bulge wave within the central tube of a model Fabriconda have produced bulge speeds that demonstrate good agreement with these predictions.


Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has been regarded as one of the most promising technologies for future wireless communications. However, the mutual interference in the communication radar coexistence system cannot be ignored. Inspired by the studies of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), we propose a double-RIS-assisted coexistence system where two RISs are deployed for enhancing communication signals and suppressing mutual interference. We aim to jointly optimize the beamforming of RISs and radar to maximize communication performance while maintaining radar detection performance. The investigated problem is challenging, and thus we transform it into an equivalent but more tractable form by introducing auxiliary variables. Then, we propose a penalty dual decomposition (PDD)-based algorithm to solve the resultant problem. Moreover, we consider two special cases: the large radar transmit power scenario and the low radar transmit power scenario. For the former, we prove that the beamforming design is only determined by the communication channel and the corresponding optimal joint beamforming strategy can be obtained in closed-form. For the latter, we minimize the mutual interference via the block coordinate descent (BCD) method. By combining the solutions of these two cases, a low-complexity algorithm is also developed. Finally, simulation results show that both the PDD-based and low-complexity algorithms outperform benchmark algorithms.


This study tests the conditional and unconditional relationship between income inequality and growth in the post-Second World War period using WIDER inequality database. Regression results suggest that income inequality is declining over time. Inequality is also declining in growth of income. There is a significant regional heterogeneity in the levels and development of inequality over time. The Kuznets hypothesis represents a global U-shape relationship between inequality and growth.


Ukraine is the largest producer of organic agricultural products in Eastern Europe. The purpose of the paper is to highlight the peculiarities of organic production in Ukraine, its state and development prospects. The dynamics of the area of agricultural lands occupied by organic crops and the number of farms engaged in conducting organic production are analyzed. The structure of agricultural lands certified according to organic standards is presented. The analysis of legal regulation of production of this type of products and development of the market of organic products is carried out. The place of Ukraine in Europe and the world was determined by the area of agricultural crops certified according to organic standards. Organic agriculture creates conditions for ecologically safe land use by preserving and restoring soil fertility, overcoming the negative effects of economic activity on the natural environment. A significant advantage of organic production is substantial contribution to solving food security problems by meeting the needs of the population in safe and high quality food products.


When observers retrieve simple visual features from working memory, two kinds of error are typically confounded in their recall. First, responses reflect noise or variability within the feature dimension they were asked to report. Second, responses are corrupted by ``swap errors'', in which a different item from the memory set is reported in place of the one that was probed. Independent evaluation of these error sources is vital for understanding the structure of internal representations and, in particular, how binding information is maintained. However, previous methods for disentangling these errors have been critically dependent on assumptions about the noise distribution, which is a priori unknown. Here I address this question with novel non-parametric methods, which estimate swap frequency and feature variability with the minimum of prior assumptions, and without a fitting procedure. The results indicate that swap errors are considerably more prevalent than previously appreciated (accounting for more than a third of responses at set size 8). These methods also identify which items are swapped in for targets: when the target item is cued by location, the items in closest spatial proximity are most likely to be incorrectly reported, thus implicating noise in the probe feature dimension as a source of swap errors. Finally I show how swap errors can be excluded from the raw histogram of observer responses to uncover the true distribution of error in the reported feature dimension. I will discuss the implications of these results for neural models of working memory storage. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


In Rex Nettleford's Mirror Mirror: Identity, Race, and Protest in Jamaica, Rastafari appears as an expression of black knowledge and politics and as a barometer of the immediate postindependence security concerns as they related to black Jamaicans. This essay is interested in what Nettleford could not have interpreted at the time. Using surveillance reports from the "migrated archives" in the UK, the author shows that the intensifying concern with anticommunism that grew throughout the 1950s undergirded a transition in the approach toward Rastafari on the part of the colonial government, from racialist nuisance to the local elite to a primary threat to the security of the Jamaican state. The essay argues that a deeper understanding of the extent to which post-1952 US foreign policy shaped both local and colonial perceptions of people's struggles for sovereignty should foundationally transform triumphalist as well as teleological narratives that often pervade our discussions of constitutional decolonization.


Background: Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) is recommended the first six months after birth as one of cost effective interventions in saving children's lives. Objective: To determine the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding and describe the common foods introduced to infants before 6months. Design: A prospective cohort study. Setting: Poor community of Moshi urban, Kilimanjaro region, Tanzania. Subjects: Women in their third trimester and were followed to 18 months after delivery. A questionnaire was used to collect information on maternal socio-demographics, delivery status and infant feeding practices at each visit. Maternal HIV status was checked at enrolment. Results: Out of 2231 women, with a live birth, 70% (1535) came back at least once after delivery and information on infant feeding were collected. 94% of the women were living below the poverty line. The prevalence of EBF at 1, 3 and up to 6 months was 48.8%, 22.0% and 0.2% respectively. Two percent of the infants were given semi-solids at 1 month, 35% at 3 months and 95% at 5 months. Water and cow's milk were the most common liquids introduced to infants by one month, while porridge, cow's milk and mtori were commonly introduced at 3 months. Conclusions: EBF up to 6 month is very rare in Kilimanjaro. There is an urgent need to strengthen community and health facility based EBF interventions so as to reach the 90% recommended coverage by the WHO. This will help in improving child survival and in attaining the Millennium Development Goal 4.


The effect of Mn/S ratio on hot ductility of Bi bearing steels has been investigated at the temperatures ranging from 950 to 1250. The hot ductility, measured as the reduction ratio of area, was found to depend on the Mn/S ratio and test temperature to provide the largest hot ductility at the ratio of 3.903 at 1200 . The hot workability of Bi bearing free cutting steels seems to depend greatly on the size, volume fraction, and type and distribution of inclusions. In addition, hot deformation behavior of Bi bearing free cutting steel has also been characterized by constructing a processing map developed on the basis of the dynamic material model. A series of hot compression tests has been carried out at the temperatures ranging from 950 to 1250 under the strain rate ranging from 10-3 /s to 102 /s.


Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films with highly (002)-preferred orientation were grown on glass substrates by rf magnetron sputtering. The effect of thickness on structural and optical characteristics of the deposited films were investigated by X-ray diffractometer and spectrophotometer. The results show that the polycrystalline AZO films consist of the hexagonal crystal structures with c-axis as the preferred growth orientation normal to the substrate, and that the thickness significantly affects the crystal structure and optical properties of the thin films. With the increase of thickness, the crystallite size of the films increases, the lattice spacing, dislocation density, micro strain and optical energy gap decrease, and the average transmitance in the wavelength range of the visible spectrum also slightly decreases.


One of the pivotal study when analyzing the impact of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) phenomenon on rainfall anomalies in the Western part of Indonesia region is knowing the characteristics and the prediction of Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) as the main parameter. This paper, focused to develop a predictive model OLR using the Box-Jenkins (ARIMA) method, which compared by the Holt-Winters method. This analysis focused on the average five days (pentad) OLR data in the Western part of Indonesia region, precisely at the position of 120 o E for period of January 2007 to December 2009. Based on the comparison of the MSE ( Mean Squares of Errors ), and the MAPE ( Mean Absolute Percentage Error ) obtained from the Box-Jenkins (ARIMA) and Holt-Winters methods can be concluded that appropriate to predict the value of pentad OLR data on the position 120 o E is the Box-Jenkins (ARIMA) method, because it has smaller value of MSE and MAPE comparing with the Holt-Winters method. Box-Jenkins model is the model ARIMA (1.0.1)(0.1.1) 9 according to the results of significance analysis, autocorrelation in the residuals (white noise), also normality of residuals, where the process is repeated until model is really suitable and best meet the assumptions of model selection. The models can be assessed by the signal tracking value at each forecasting model. This assessment showed two of models in accepted boundary value, i.e ±5. This shows forecasting model can still be used to predict the 4 periods of the OLR pentad anomaly. Keywords: Box-Jenkins (ARIMA), Holt-Winters, OLR, and Prediction Model ABSTRAK Salah satu kajian penting ketika menganalisis dampak dari fenomena Madden-


Rubber rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa (Pall. ex Pursh) G.L. Nesom & Baird [Asteraceae]) has potential for use in water-conserving landscapes, but poor seedling emergence can be a problem for nursery production. We evaluated the effects of 1) harvest timing (stage of inflorescence maturity); and 2) duration of storage interval on seed viability, emergence, and germination for 6 geographically diverse populations. Stage of inflorescence maturity (harvest timing) had a statistically significant (P < 0.001) effect on seed germination and emergence, but across the harvest dates the trend was erratic and lacked identifiable biological meaning. Once the first seeds were ripe, germination and seedling emergence remained relatively constant throughout the harvest season. A 14-mo storage interval produced consistent and statistically significant (P < 0.001) effects on viability, germination, and emergence of seeds from all 6 populations. Seeds of all populations initially exhibited relatively low germination and emergence percentages, which increased to a maximum within 2 to 5 mo, and then slowly declined during the remainder of the 14-mo storage interval. Decline in germination percentage differed by population and ranged from 4 to 65%. In both experiments, seeds from populations of rubber rabbitbrush displayed very different seed germination and emergence percentages, with average germination under the various treatments ranging from 1.2 to more than 37.3%. When comparing testing methods, tetrazolium viability tests tended to overestimate seed germination, whereas seed germination was higher than seedling emergence. Viable seeds can be obtained from collections made during an extended harvest interval. Also, seeds can be stored at room temperature under ambient conditions with expectations of only minor losses of viability through 14 mo of storage, which should make possible 2 annual production cycles.


Ray-pointing techniques are often advocated as a way for people to interact with very large displays from several meters away. We are interested in two factors that can affect ray pointing: the particular technique's control type, and parallax.

Consequently, we tested four ray pointing variants on a wall display that covers a large part of the user's field of view. Tasks included horizontal and vertical targeting, and tracing. Our results show that (a) techniques based on 'rotational control' perform better for targeting tasks, and (b) techniques with low parallax are best for tracing tasks. We also show that a Fitts's law analysis based on angles (as opposed to linear distances) better approximates people's ray pointing performance.


Abstract Inadequate financial aid adversely affects students' persistence through college graduation. This qualitative study at a Historically Black University (HBU) in the Southwestern region employed purposive sampling to examine 10 former students' perception of financial aid accessibility and its impact on their non-persistence status. Barriers impeding financial aid accessibility and persistence to graduation are shared.  Data collection consisted of recorded responses from open-end questions. A thorough analysis of participant interviews and findings confirmed the existence of barriers obstructing financial aid accessibility and contribute to the phenomena of non-persistence.  The emergent themes significantly contribute to research that informs higher education practitioners and policy makers. In particular, this study serves as a stimulus for dialogue about the need to implement systems and strategies that ensure financial aid support to persistence through graduation at historically Black colleges and universities. Keywords: financial aid packages, non-persistence, barriers, need-based and merit-based financial aid, loan debt, allocation formulas, HBCUs, PWIs


Appendicitis is the most common cause of surgical abdomen. Delay in the diagnosis and appropriate management may lead to potentially life-threatening complications. Bilirubin is associated with the assessment of the severity of appendicitis. The objective of the study is to determine the role of hyperbilirubinemia in predicting appendiceal perforation. An online search was conducted in PubMed, Google Scholar, and PubMed Central to find relevant publications relating to hyperbilirubinemia in perforated appendicitis. Only studies conducted on humans were included. Out of the 1287 articles found, only seven were included in our final review. Of the seven articles included in the review, hyperbilirubinemia is confirmed as a useful predictor for perforated appendicitis or a marker of the severity of appendicitis. Preoperative bilirubin levels can be used as a diagnostic tool in perforated.


An adaptive predictive controller is proposed to solve the time-varying characteristics of the industrial process control system. The arithmetic of implicit expression generalized predictive control(IGPC) is put forward to compute the optimal control signal increment. In order to decrease the computing work and increase the computing speed, the system input/output data are used to identify the controller parameters directly and the plant model parameters are unnecessary. Simulation results show that the controller can track the change of setting value excellently even though without any prior information of controlled system, and have excellent adaptive abilities for the changes of system external disturbing signals and model parameters.


When deploying a robot to a new task, one often has to train it to detect novel objects, which is time-consuming and labor- intensive. We present TAILOR - a method and system for ob- ject registration with active and incremental learning. When instructed by a human teacher to register an object, TAILOR is able to automatically select viewpoints to capture informa- tive images by actively exploring viewpoints, and employs a fast incremental learning algorithm to learn new objects without potential forgetting of previously learned objects. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method with a KUKA robot to learn novel objects used in a real-world gearbox as- sembly task through natural interactions.


A two-part questionnaire was dispensed by five different podiatrists to 73 surgical patients over a 3-month period. Seventy-two (99%) of the patients were satisfied with postoperative results. The average time required to return to shoes, work, and exercise was 6.0, 4.5, and 9.0 weeks, respectively. Age, number of procedures, and type of procedure did have an effect on these values. Subjective comments indicate that surgical patients are most concerned with pain, postoperative swelling, and time needed for recovery.


The terms noninferiority and equivalence are often used interchangeably to refer to trials in which the primary objective is to show that a novel intervention is as effective as the standard intervention. The use of these designs is becoming increasingly relevant to mental health research. Despite the fundamental importance of these designs, they are often poorly understood, improperly applied, and subsequently misinterpreted. In this article, the authors explain noninferiority and equivalence designs and key methodological and statistical considerations. Decision points in using these designs are discussed, such as choice of control condition, determination of the noninferiority margin, and calculation of sample size and power. With increasing utilization of these designs, it is critical that researchers understand the methodological issues, advantages, disadvantages, and related challenges.


Objects rarely sit in isolation in human environments. As such, we'd like our robots to reason about how multiple objects relate to one another and how those relations may change as the robot interacts with the world. To this end, we propose a novel graph neural network framework for multi-object manipulation to predict how inter-object relations change given robot actions. Our model operates on partial-view point clouds and can reason about multiple objects dynamically interacting during the manipulation, By learning a dynamics model in a learned latent graph embedding space, our model enables multi-step planning to reach target goal relations. We show our model trained purely in simulation transfers well to the real world. Our planner enables the robot to rearrange a variable number of objects with a range of shapes and sizes using both push and pick-and-place skills.


IN THE PSYCHIATRIC charts of a mental hospital studied, patients' definitions of what they considered was wrong with themselves made up a section entitled "insight." In this article, we have categorized these definitions and have also used an additional measure of "insight"-Whether or not the patient's hospitalization had come about through his own effort. Further, we have asked if these measures of insight were associated with the patient's prognosis, as measured by release, with the hospital's approval, within one year of admission. Psychiatric Implications of Insight It would seem that insight is more integral to the psychiatric treatment of neurotics than psychotics. As an indication of initial insight, the neurotic patient is usually expected to demonstrate his acknowledgement that he is ill and motivated toward recovery by his seeking and continuing therapy. Within psychotherapy sessions, a more profound indication of his insight


Inter-organizational collaboration is no longer entirely a free choice, but is close to a necessity imposed by economic, technical, and knowledge-related concerns. A deep understanding of collaboration will assist in making intelligent decisions on entering, operating, and evaluating collaborative ventures. The nature of the partners — industrial corporations, consultants, academic institutions and others — and the collaborative structure are important, but so too is the nature of the product. We consider its effects in the collaborative domain on knowledge, intellectual property, and catastrophic risk.


Context. Electron energy spectra exhibiting a high-energy tail are commonly observed during solar flares. Aims. We investigate the influence of the high-energy tail and thermal or nonthermal plasma bulk on the ionization equilibrium of Si and Si flare line spectra. Methods. We construct a realistically composed distribution that reflects the fits to RHESSI observations. We describe the high-energy tail by a power-law distribution and the bulk of the electron distribution by either the Maxwellian or n-distribution. The shape of this composed distribution is described by three parameters: the ratio of the plasma bulk density to the density of the high-energy tail, the power-law index of the high-energy tail, and the parameter n, which describes the bulk of the distribution. Results. Both the plasma bulk and the high-energy tail change the ionization equilibrium. The relative ion abundances are sensitive to the shape of the plasma bulk, but are much less sensitive to the high-energy tail. The high-energy tail increases the ratio of temperaturesensitive lines Si XIV λ5.22/Si XIII λ5.68. Because this ratio can be fitted with a thermal distribution with higher temperature, the highenergy tail influences the temperature diagnostics from flare lines. The high-energy tail has only a small effect on the ratio of the satellite-to-allowed Si XIId/Si XIII lines, which are dominantly sensitive on the shape of the plasma bulk. This enables us to perform an accurate diagnostic of the parameter n describing the plasma bulk. Conclusions. The realistically composed distribution is able to explain the observed features of the RESIK X-ray flare line spectra.


The influence of the diet containing 10 g of citrus pectin, made by "Copenhagen-Pectin-Fabric", on some parameters of lipid and carbohydrate metabolism was studied in 33 coronary heart disease male patients, aged from 29 to 40 years, who had survived documented myocardial infarction. The results of the investigation have evidenced that increased pectin content in the diet promotes the reduction of the total cholesterol and triglyceride levels in the blood serum, the rise of tolerance to carbohydrates and produces no appreciable effect on the lithogenic potential of bile in the coronary patients.


Introduction. Partial meal replacements supplementing low calorie diets may be convenient for working people in time-constrained occupational settings. However, there is limited data obtained among non-obese, otherwise healthy subjects and very few real-life clinical studies corroborating findings from clinical experiments. Methods. We evaluated weight loss, glycemic control and body composition change among volunteer workers undergoing a 4-week low calorie diet followed by a 4-week maintenance regimen supplemented with meal replacements products. Results. Forty-two employees took part to the study and completed the 4-week intervention, whereas 36 completed the maintenance phase. Thirty-one patients (73.7%) experienced a weight loss greater than 3% of initial body mass. There was a reduction in serum glucose (Δ 28d = -6.9 mg/dL, p<0.01), insulin resistance (Δ 28d = -0.40, p<0.01), insulin (Δ 28d = -1.54 pmol l −1 , p<0.05), and fatty mass (Δ 28d = -2.2%, p<0.01) after adjustment for potential confounders. There was negligible reduction in lean body mass (Δ 28d =-0.3%, Δ 60d =-0.2%; p for trend =0.54) and basal metabolic rate (Δ 28d =-8.0, Δ 60d =-6.0; p for trend =0.44). Conclusions. We observed significant weight loss during a 2-month intervention period. The dietary strategy was well accepted irrespective of age, dietary regimen and sex. We also observed a improvement in glycemic control, both among overweight and normal weight volunteers.


Although desirable as an important activity for ensuring quality assurances and enhancing reliability, complete and exhaustive software testing is next to impossible due to resources as well as timing constraints. While earlier work has indicated that pairwise testing (i.e. based on 2-way interaction of variables) can be effective to detect most faults in a typical software system, a counter argument suggests such conclusion cannot be generalized to all software system faults. In some system, faults may also be caused by more than two parameters. As the number of parameter interaction coverage (i.e. the strength) increases, the number of t-way test set also increases exponentially. As such, for large system with many parameters, considering higher order t-way test set can lead toward combinatorial explosion problem (i.e. too many data set to consider). We consider this problem for t-way generation of test set using the Grid strategy. Building and complementing from earlier work in In-Parameter-Order-General (or IPOG) and its modification (or MIPOG), we present the Grid MIPOG strategy (G_MIPOG). Experimental results demonstrate that G_MIPOG scales well against the sequential strategies IPOG and MIPOG with the increase of the computers as computational nodes.


OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study was to determine if grounding in the presence of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) encountered in a normal housing environment produces harmful currents in the human body.

DESIGN
This study had a test-retest design, with duration of 5-15 min per participant.

PARTICIPANTS
There were 50 participants, of whom 23 were males aged 12-77 years (Mage ± standard deviation = 50.5 ± 19.5 years) and 27 were females aged 13-79 years (Mage ± standard deviation = 45.9 ± 19.0 years).

INTERVENTION
Each participant was instructed to touch a lamp on a desk with his or her left hand, then to move the hand away from the lamp (first one foot away and then three feet) while his/her body voltage was measured. Each participant was then grounded and instructed to repeat the same hand movements. Current was also measured during the grounded retest.

OUTCOME MEASURES
The measured parameters were alternating current (AC) body voltage and current generated from contact or proximity to a lamp and other appliances situated on top of a desk.

RESULTS
AC body voltage was reduced by an average of 58-fold when participants were grounded compared with when they were not grounded. AC currents generated during grounding were several orders of magnitude lower than the accepted minimum level of perception.

CONCLUSION
Normal levels of EMFs existing in houses are too low to produce harmful currents when a person is grounded.


Camera traps (CTs) are an increasingly popular method of studying animal behavior. However, the impact of cameras on detected individuals—such as from mechanical noise, odor, and emitted light—has received relatively little attention. These impacts are particularly important in behavioral studies in conservation that seek to ascribe changes in behavior to relevant environmental factors. In this article, we discuss three sources of bias that are relevant to conservation behavior studies using CTs: (a) disturbance caused by cameras; (b) variation in animal‐detection parameters across camera models; and (c) biased detection across individuals and age, sex, and behavioral classes. We propose several recommendations aimed at mitigating responses to CTs by wildlife. Our recommendations offer a platform for the development of more rigorous and robust behavioral studies using CT technology and, if adopted, would result in greater applied benefits for conservation and management.


Abstract This work presents an illustrative application of the second-order adjoint sensitivity analysis methodology (2nd-ASAM) to a paradigm nonlinear heat conduction benchmark, which models a conceptual experimental test section containing heated rods immersed in liquid lead—bismuth eutectic (LBE). This benchmark admits an exact solution, thereby making transparent the underlying mathematical derivations. The general theory underlying 2nd-ASAM indicates that for a physical system comprising Nα parameters, the computation of all of the first- and second-order response sensitivities requires (per response) at most Nα large-scale computations using the first-level adjoint sensitivity system (1st-LASS) and second-level adjoint sensitivity system (2nd-LASS), respectively. For this illustrative problem, six large-scale adjoint computations sufficed to compute exactly all 5 first-order and 15 distinct second-order derivatives of the temperature response to the five model parameters. The construction and solution of the 2nd-LASS require very little additional effort beyond the construction of the adjoint sensitivity system needed for computing the first-order sensitivities. Very significantly, only the sources on the right sides of the heat conduction differential operator needed to be modified; the left side of the differential equations (and hence the solver in large-scale practical applications) remains unchanged. The second-order sensitivities play the following roles: (1) They cause the expected value of the response to differ from the computed nominal value of the response; for the nonlinear heat conduction benchmark, however, these differences were insignificant over the range of temperatures (400 to 900 K) considered. (2) They contribute to increasing the response variances and modifying the response covariances, but for the nonlinear heat conduction benchmark, their contribution was smaller than that stemming from the first-order response sensitivities, over the range of temperatures (400 to 900 K) considered. (3) They provide the leading contributions to causing asymmetries in the response distribution. For the benchmark test section considered in this work, the heat source, the boundary heat flux, and the temperature at the bottom boundary of the test section would cause the temperature distribution in the test section to be skewed significantly toward values lower than the mean temperature. On the other hand, the model parameters entering the nonlinear, temperature-dependent expression of the LBE conductivity would cause the temperature distribution in the test section to be skewed significantly toward values higher than the mean temperature. These opposite effects partially cancel each other. Consequently, the cumulative effects of model parameter uncertainties on the skewness of the temperature distribution in the test section are such that the temperature distribution in the LBE is skewed slightly toward higher temperatures in the cooler part of the test section but becomes increasingly skewed toward temperatures lower than the mean temperature in the hotter part of the test section. Notably, the influence of the model parameter that controls the strength of the nonlinearity in the heat conduction coefficient for this LBE test section benchmark would be strong if it were the only uncertain model parameter. However, if all of the other model parameters are also uncertain, all having equal relative standard deviations, the uncertainties in the heat source and boundary heat flux diminish the impact of uncertainties in the nonlinear heat conduction coefficient for the range of temperatures (400 to 900 K) considered for this LBE test section benchmark. Ongoing work aims at generalizing the 2nd-ASAM to enable the exact and efficient computation of higher-order response sensitivities. The availability of such higher-order sensitivities is expected to affect significantly the fields of optimization and predictive modeling, including uncertainty quantification, data assimilation, model calibration, and extrapolation.


— The study and implementation of measures to promote sustainability for the future development of society development requires the definition of limits on the uncontrolled consumption of natural resources that are a result of human activities. The construction sector has an enormous effect on the environment due to its massive resource consumption; therefore the development of a process to increase sustainability in this sector is paramount. In this sense the systems that assess sustainable construction play a key role. The emergence of voluntary evaluation and certification systems of construction enables the assessment of sustainability of buildings – their construction and operation. The evaluation and certification systems are in constant evolution, expanding their scope of application. Some countries are developing systems of sustainable construction evaluation adjusted to the local context. Through the study of different systems of evaluation and certification and their contents it was possible to identify and select the key factors that support the development of a system that is geared towards application at the regional level thus accomplishing the value of certification systems of sustainable construction.


In making key decisions for the future phases of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), policy makers need to fully understand the competitiveness implications of these decisions on industrial sectors. In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis of cost pass-through ability of producers of selected products within the sectors refineries, glass, chemicals and ceramics of the UK economy. Our results provide new insights into the debate on the ability of pass-through of costs generated by the EU ETS. They suggest that some of the sectors analysed have the ability to pass-through a portion of their carbon costs to the consumers: The UK sectors are not capable to completely pass-through their costs into output prices, with the exception of UK ceramic goods.


The advent of solar energy as the best alternative to traditional energy sources has led to an extensive study on the measurement and prediction of solar radiation. Devices such as pyranometer, pyrrheliometer, global UV radiometer are used for the measurement of solar radiation. The solar radiation measuring instruments available at Innovation Center, MIT Manipal were integrated with a Raspberry Pi to allow remote access to the data through the university Local Area Network. The connections of the data loggers and the Raspberry Pi were enclosed in a plastic box to prevent damage from the rainfall and humidity in Manipal. The solar radiation data was used to validate an Artificial Neural Network model which was developed using various meterological data from 2011-2015.


Bolted flange joints are the most complex structural components of pressure vessels and piping equipment. Their assembly is a delicate task that determines their successful operation during the service life. During bolt tightening, it is very difficult to achieve uniformity of the target bolt preload due to elastic interaction and criss-cross talk. The risk of leakage failure under service loading is consequently increased because of the scatter of the bolt preload.
 In previous work, an analytical model based on the theory of circular beams on linear elastic foundation was proposed to predict the bolt tension change due to elastic interaction. Based on this model, this paper presents a novel methodology for the optimization of the tightening sequence. The target preload and the load to be applied to each bolt in each pass can be calculated to achieve uniform final preload and avoid bolt tension reaching yield under a number of specified tightening passes. The validity of the approach is supported by experimental tests conducted on a NPS 4 class 900 welding neck flange joint and by finite element analysis on this bolted joint using the criss-cross tightening and sequential patterns. This study provides guidelines for bolted flange joints assembly and enhances its safety and reliability by minimizing bolt tension scatter due to elastic interaction.


This study investigated the pragmatic strategies employed by 30 Iranian EFL learners in making suggestions in their L2. Their suggestions were compared with 30 American and another 30 Iranian students who made suggestions in their first language (English and Persian, respectively). Triangulated data obtained from DCT and open role-plays were analyzed based on three aspects of making suggestions at macro level (perspective, directness and politeness) and a number of micro strategies. While the general tendency was to make suggestions from the perspective of both the speaker and hearer (S+H) using almost direct language and redressive actions, at micro level significant differences were observed between the three groups of participants. Moreover, gender, relationship between interlocutors and the topic on which suggestions were made, also appeared to contribute to the observed differences. The findings of the study are discussed in the light of cross-cultural differences and its pedagogical implications are elaborated on.


LINKING METAL SPECIATION AND TISSUE ACCUMULATION TO NICKEL TOXICITY IN AQUATIC AND TERRESTRIAL PLANTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR TOXICITY MODELING AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISK ASSESSMENT Yamini Gopalapillai Co-Advisors: University of Guelph, 2012 Dr. Beverley A. Hale Dr. Bernard Vigneault Various toxicity models such as the Biotic Ligand Model (BLM), Tissue Residue Approach (TRA), and Predicted No Effect Concentration (PNEC) calculator were evaluated for their utility in predicting nickel toxicity to aquatic (Lemna minor) or terrestrial (Avena sativa) plants grown in complex media. For the study on L. minor, exposure chemistry was altered by addition of major cations (Ca, Mg, Na, K) or environmental ligands (dissolved organic carbon (DOC), flotation ligands), or altered by pH. Major cations did not inhibit Ni accumulation via competitive inhibition as expected by the BLM framework. In addition, the counter anion of the added Ca greatly affected L. minor growth response to Ni. The effect of DOC was explained solely by complexation with Ni in solution (conforms to BLM), while the effect of flotation ligands was more complex and better described by a TRA model. Nickel toxicity increased linearly with increasing pH; however, Ni accumulation kinetics suggested that the mechanism of interaction between Ni and protons for plant uptake was not competitive as expected by BLM. In general, although the physiological response of L. minor was affected by exposure chemistry and tissue Ni related well with observed toxicity, total Ni and free Ni activity better related to the majority of the plant's response. For terrestrial plants, Ni PNEC values were calculated and compared to previously published data measuring A. sativa toxicity in agricultural soils near Port Colborne, Ontario. In addition, metal speciation estimated by Windermere Humic Aqueous Model (WHAM) 6 was utilized in Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) analyses to determine factors important for a Terrestrial BLM (TBLM). Calculated PNEC values were conservative (two orders of magnitude lower than no observed effect concentrations). This suggests that the additional assessment factor incorporated into the PNEC calculator is not necessary. In addition, soil type affected Ni's relationship to toxicity (i.e. clay soil was not well predicted). Overall, the results of this thesis suggests that the simplified approach of relating total dissolved Ni concentration to observed toxicity is sufficient for the purposes of plant Ni risk assessment.


Abstract. The net flux of carbon from land use and land-cover change (LULCC) accounted for 12.5% of anthropogenic carbon emissions from 1990 to 2010. This net flux is the most uncertain term in the global carbon budget, not only because of uncertainties in rates of deforestation and forestation, but also because of uncertainties in the carbon density of the lands actually undergoing change. Furthermore, there are differences in approaches used to determine the flux that introduce variability into estimates in ways that are difficult to evaluate, and not all analyses consider the same types of management activities. Thirteen recent estimates of net carbon emissions from LULCC are summarized here. In addition to deforestation, all analyses considered changes in the area of agricultural lands (croplands and pastures). Some considered, also, forest management (wood harvest, shifting cultivation). None included emissions from the degradation of tropical peatlands. Means and standard deviations across the thirteen model estimates of annual emissions for the 1980s and 1990s, respectively, are 1.14 ± 0.23 and 1.12 ± 0.25 Pg C yr−1 (1 Pg = 1015 g carbon). Four studies also considered the period 2000–2009, and the mean and standard deviations across these four for the three decades are 1.14 ± 0.39, 1.17 ± 0.32, and 1.10 ± 0.11 Pg C yr−1. For the period 1990–2009 the mean global emissions from LULCC are 1.14 ± 0.18 Pg C yr−1. The standard deviations across model means shown here are smaller than previous estimates of uncertainty as they do not account for the errors that result from data uncertainty and from an incomplete understanding of all the processes affecting the net flux of carbon from LULCC. Although these errors have not been systematically evaluated, based on partial analyses available in the literature and expert opinion, they are estimated to be on the order of ± 0.5 Pg C yr−1.


AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
To explore factors affecting self-management experiences of patients with chronic hepatitis B within their social and cultural environments.

BACKGROUND
Many cases of hepatitis B are not detected until they are in end-stage liver disease. Despite an increasing trend of indicating a lack of health awareness as the reason, studies have rarely referred to the personal, social and cultural environmental constraints from patients' perspectives.

DESIGN
A descriptive qualitative study.

METHODS
Forty-seven adults diagnosed with chronic hepatitis B were interviewed in a private area of a hospital clinic in Taiwan in 2018. Four open-ended questions relating to care self-management included: disease detection; disease control; preventive care; and, perceptions of screening and follow-ups. Data were examined using content analysis. This study also adhered to the consolidated COREQ guidelines.

RESULTS
Five main themes emerged: personal experiences, awareness of occupational health, the availability of conventional treatment, cultural beliefs about healthcare, and family roles. Findings of note were that some participants became aware that they had never known the difference between follow-up for hepatitis B and regular adult/laborer health checks due to a lack of information within their living environment. Many participants added alternative treatments to their self-management strategies and others frequently ignored follow-up appointments because of different cultural health beliefs.

CONCLUSIONS
Patients' disease self-management perceptions are driven by dynamic influences suggesting that development of policies integrating personal, family, social, and cultural environmental factors could enhance individual screening and subsequent health behaviors of patients with chronic hepatitis B.

RELEVANCE TO PRACTICE
Adding person-centered case management of hepatitis B could enhance patients' adherence to follow-up. Attention should be given to increasing provider awareness of the influence of their own attitude and communication on patients' participation in self-management. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


The fate of Native Americans has been dependent in large part upon the recognition and enforcement of their legal, political, property, and cultural rights as indigenous peoples by American courts. Most people think that the goal of the judiciary, and especially the US Supreme Court, is to achieve universal notions of truth and justice. In this in-depth examination, however, Walter Echo-Hawk reveals the troubling fact that American law has rendered legal the destruction of Native Americans and their culture. Echo-Hawk analyzes ten cases that embody or expose the roots of injustice and highlight the use of nefarious legal doctrines. He delves into the dark side of the courts, calling for a paradigm shift in American legal thinking. Each case study includes historical, contemporary, and political context from a Native American perspective, and the case's legacy on Native America. In the Courts of the Conqueror is a comprehensive history of Indian Country from a new and unique viewpoint. It is a vital contribution to American history. Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee) is of counsel to the Crowe & Dunlevy law firm of Oklahoma. As a staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund for thirty-five years, he represented tribes and Native Americans on significant legal issues during the modern era of federal Indian law. In addition to litigation, he worked on major legislation, such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), and federal religious freedom legislation. He is a prolific writer whose books include the award-winning Battlefields and Burial Grounds.


This paper proposes a new strategy combining interference alignment (IA) and rate splitting for a three user interference channel with a cognitive transmitter. Although a half of available dimensions are sacrificed to align interference signals from other users in conventional IA, the proposed scheme recycles the sacrificed dimensions with the help of a cognitive transmitter. The achievable rate region and generalized degrees of freedom are derived. Compared with conventional IA, the proposed scheme improves achievable rate and generalized degrees of freedom.


Every parents has their own way to lecture their children. But because they feel like their children is theirs solely, some parents apply their policies as their wishes despite how much the intensities. Sometimes the harsh acts turns into child abuses in home. Child abuse is still happening and even increasing every year. Other than wrong way of parent's lecturing, child abuse sometimes happens because of parent's impingement even though campaign of children's rights often provided by many institutions in Indonesia. Child abuses can affect children's growth in the future. Some cases even gives children trauma, making them passive or even worse, becomes rebellious. This research will provide a friendly learning media for children to anticipate so they know how to behave  when they see things in reality. The learning media will be made in children story book so they have image about unusual acts in home. Research will use David McClelland's theory, n-Ach, so children have motivation to be a successful person in term of being positive when meet the conditions. Keywords: Child Abuse, Children Story Book


In this paper, multi-legged walking machine is simplified as one leg, which the whole machine is constructed by the modularization configuration of the legs in an axisymmetric way. Consequently, the control of one leg and its trajectory planning is the significant part for multi-legged walking machine. This paper, according to the structure of the walking machine's leg with 3-DOF open chains, calculates the terminal track of the leg using the principle of kinematics and presents a foot's controller based on dSPACE. In order to obtain the optimization of the foot's track, the three-cubic spline algorithm is considered. Depending on the model of the control system in Matlab, the paper provides a semi-physical simulation for a real leg using dSPACE. The feasibility of the planned track is demonstrated and the PID parameters have been adjusted.


The worldwide surplus of glycerol generated as inevitable byproduct of biodiesel fuel and oleochemical production is resulting in the shutdown of traditional glycerol-producing/refining plants and new applications are needed for this now abundant carbon source. In this article we report our finding that Escherichia coli can ferment glycerol in a pH-dependent manner. We hypothesize that glycerol fermentation is linked to the availability of CO(2), which under acidic conditions is produced by the oxidation of formate by the enzyme formate hydrogen lyase (FHL). In agreement with this hypothesis, glycerol fermentation was severely impaired by blocking the activity of FHL. We demonstrated that, unlike CO(2), hydrogen (the other product of FHL-mediated formate oxidation) had a negative impact on cell growth and glycerol fermentation. In addition, supplementation of the medium with CO(2) partially restored the ability of an FHL-deficient strain to ferment glycerol. High pH resulted in low CO(2) generation (low activity of FHL) and availability (most CO(2) is converted to bicarbonate), and consequently very inefficient fermentation of glycerol. Most of the fermented glycerol was recovered in the reduced compounds ethanol and succinate (93% of the product mixture), which reflects the highly reduced state of glycerol and confirms the fermentative nature of this process. Since glycerol is a cheap, abundant, and highly reduced carbon source, our findings should enable the development of an E. coli-based platform for the anaerobic production of reduced chemicals from glycerol at yields higher than those obtained from common sugars, such as glucose.


LAMP3 (DC-LAMP, TSC403, CD208) was originally isolated as a gene specifically expressed in lung tissues. LAMP3 is located on a chromosome 3q segment that is frequently amplified in some human cancers, including uterine cervical cancer. Because two other members of the LAMP family of lysosomal membrane glycoproteins, LAMP1 and LAMP2 , were previously implicated in potentially modulating the interaction of vascular endothelial and cancer cells, we hypothesized that LAMP3 might also play an important part in metastasis. To clarify the metastatic potential of LAMP3 in cervical cancers, we transfected a LAMP3 expression vector into a human uterine cervical cancer cell line, TCS. In an in vitro invasion assay, the migration of LAMP3-overexpressing TCS cells was significantly higher than in control TCS cells. In an in vivo metastasis assay, distant metastasis was detected in 9 of 11 LAMP3-overexpressing TCS cell–injected mice and in only 1 of 11 control mice. Histologic study showed that LAMP3overexpressing cells readily invaded into the lymph-vascular space. In clinical samples, quantitative real-time reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) analyses showed that LAMP3 mRNA was significantly up-regulated in 47 of 47 (100%) cervical cancers and in 2 of 15 (13%) cervical intraepithelial neoplasias, compared with a low level of LAMP3 mRNA expressed in normal uterine cervixes. Interestingly, high LAMP3 expression was significantly correlated with the overall survival of patients with stage I/II cervical cancers. These findings indicate that LAMP3 overexpression is associated with an enhanced metastatic potential and may be a prognostic factor for cervical cancer. (Cancer Res 2005; 65(19): 8640-5)


An acidic glutathione S-transferase (GST) isoenzyme termed GST6 has been isolated from human brain, characterized and compared with other isoenzymes. The N-terminal amino acid sequence of GST6 was found to be identical with that of GST4 previously purified from human muscle. GST6 cross-reacted with antibody raised against GST4, but not with antisera raised against GST1, GST2 or GST3. The subunit Mr and pI of GST6 were found to be different from those of GST4. The present results indicate that GST6 is another member of the Mu evolutionary class which in man also includes GST1, GST4 and GST5. A minor component that co-purified with GST6 was shown to have an N-terminal sequence similar to, but not identical with, that of GST3. This isoenzyme may be an additional member of the Pi evolutionary class.


In New South Wales there are one million acres of land bearing cypress pine and held under lease from the government. This land is suitable for the joint production of timber and livestock or for timber production alone. Alternatively, the timber can be harvested to provide capital for property development. Farm management plans have, however, been constrained by the land tenure policy which aims to promote both closer settlement and timber production. In this paper the opportunity costs of the current tenure system are evaluated against the freehold situation. The conditions which favour either specialized timber production or the joint production of timber and livestock are examined. Finally, the cost of achieving a timber production target is examined in terms of loss of income to the individual grazier and the nation.


The world of literature responds to the "spirit of carnival" in ways that are both social and cultural, mythological and archetypal. Literature provides a mirror in which carnival is reflected and refracted through the multifarious perspectives of verbal art. In his original, wide-ranging book, David K. Danow catches the various reflections in that mirror, from the bright, life-affirming magical side of carnival, as revealed in the literature of Latin American writers, to its dark, grotesque, death-embracing aspect as illustrated in numerous novels depicting the dire experience of the Second World War.The remarkable meshing of these two diametrically opposed yet inextricably intertwined facets of literature (and of life) makes for an intriguing sphere of investigation, for the carnival spirit is animated by a human need to dissolve borders and eliminate boundaries -- including, symbolically, those between life and death -- in an ongoing effort to merge opposing forces into new configurations of truth and meaning.Expanding upon the seminal ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin, carnival, argues Danow, is designed to allow one extreme to flow into another, to provide for one polarity (official culture) to confront its opposite (unofficial culture), much as individuals engage in dialogue. In this case the result is "dialogized carnival" or "carnivalized dialogue." In their artmaking, Danow claims, human beings are animated by a periodic predisposition toward the bright side of carnival, matched by an equally strong, far darker predilection. Carnival forms of thinking are firmly embedded within the human psyche as archetypal patterns.In this engaging exploratory book, we are shown the distinctive imprint of these primordial structures within a multitude of seemingly disparate literary works.


Felt is described as a type of very thick warpless cloth, made by compressing wool in various ways without weaving, came up by humans' covering up and sheltering needs against natural conditions in the first ages. Turkish nomads made ornaments and the objects they use completely from the wools derived from the animals raised by them. Wool allowed them to produce everything required for them. Felt has developed specificly in Middle Asia and oldest samples of felt are also found in there. Turkic tribes, which went towards west from the regions called as "Felt Land" by Chinese, has brought felt art with themselves and provided continuance of this art in an area involving up to thousands of kilometers from Balkans to the east borders Mongolia which also includes Anatolian and Iranian plateaus. Felt making is a handicraft which develops by traditional way, exists in Konya city centre from past to present. Konya Felt making is handed on "from father to son" or by "apprenticeship" from past to present. Felt products found in museum and storages of Konya has been investigated.


High-precision eclipse spectrophotometry of transiting terrestrial exoplanets represents a promising path for the first atmospheric characterizations of habitable worlds and the search for life outside our solar system. The detection of terrestrial planets transiting nearby late-type M-dwarfs could make this approach applicable within the next decade, with soon-to-come general facilities. In this context, we previously identified GJ 1214 as a high-priority target for a transit search, as the transit probability of a habitable planet orbiting this nearby M4.5 dwarf would be significantly enhanced by the transiting nature of GJ 1214 b, the super-Earth already known to orbit the star. Based on this observation, we have set up an ambitious high-precision photometric monitoring of GJ 1214 with the Spitzer Space Telescope to probe the inner part of its habitable zone in search of a transiting planet as small as Mars. We present here the results of this transit search. Unfortunately, we did not detect any other transiting planets. Assuming that GJ 1214 hosts a habitable planet larger than Mars that has an orbital period smaller than 20.9 days, our global analysis of the whole Spitzer dataset leads to an a posteriori no-transit probability of ~98%. Our analysis allows us to significantly improve the characterization of GJ 1214 b, to measure its occultation depth to be 70 ± 35 ppm at 4.5 μm, and to constrain it to be smaller than 205 ppm (3σ upper limit) at 3.6 μm. In agreement with the many transmission measurements published so far for GJ 1214 b, these emission measurements are consistent with both a metal-rich and a cloudy hydrogen-rich atmosphere.


The purpose of this exploratory research was empirically to examine several logical relationships between key variables in order to create a causal model of end-user application effectiveness. To test the hypotheses, a survey-based field study was conducted in forty large organizations with a total of 506 usable responses. The data were analyzed using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) multivariate path analysis statistical technique. The preliminary empirical evidence provides general support for most of the key relationships contained in the model. Both the model based on the original sample and the validation of that model, based on the holdback sample, had good overall fits to the data. Of the important contributions, the end-users' motivation to develop new applications was found to be the most significant, showing the strongest positive path coefficient with application utilization. Perceived organizational support of EUC was found to be indirectly related to improved end-user information satisfaction and application utilization. Given a limited set of organizational resources, we suggest that managers invest time and money in improving organizational support of EUC where the immediate payoff may not be readily evident.


This paper provides data on Cobol error frequency for correction of errors in student-oriented compilers, improvement of teaching, and changes in programming language. Cobol was studied because of economic importance, widespread usage, possible error-inducing design, and lack of research. The types of errors were identified in a pilot study; then, using the 132 error types found, 1,777 errors were classified in 1,400 runs of 73 Cobol students. Error density was high: 20 percent of the types contained 80 percent of the total frequency, which implies high potential effectiveness for software-based correction of Cobol. Surprisingly, only four high-frequency errors were error-prone, which implies minimal error inducing design. 80 percent of Cobol misspellings were classifiable in the four error categories of previous researchers, which implies that Cobol misspellings are correctable by existent algorithms. Reserved word usage was not error-prone, which implies minimal interference with usage of reserved words. Over 80 percent of error diagnosis was found to be inaccurate. Such feedback is not optimal for users, particularly for the learning user of Cobol.


Contact damage of curved multi-layered systems, consisting of a brittle zirconia (3Y-TZP)/Alumina (Al2O3) coating – prepared by slip casting – on a compliant polymeric substrate from indentation by a hard tungsten carbide sphere is investigated. The essence of this study is to compare the structural performance of layered ceramics, and monolithic ceramic in the brittle coating and compliant substrate of dental crown-like systems. The specimens are loaded at the axis of symmetry. The failure evolution to initiate cracking and final failure patterns in curved multi-layered specimens are compared to those of the single layer specimens of the same thickness and the same study are conducted again with the flat specimens. The onset of fracture is observed in situ using a video camera. It is demonstrated that in all specimens, cone cracking occurs prior to radial cracking, with the latter being defined as the primary mode of catastrophic failure. The multi-layered ZTA (Zirconia Toughened Alumina) specimens prepared by slip casting possessed a distinct final failure pattern in comparison with a single layer specimen. The results of this study provide useful guidelines for building brittle multi-layered coating systems with the functionally graded feature, and complex shapes with geometrical uniformity.


Logarithmic arithmetic supports efficient multiplications but suffers from the drawback of cumbersome addition and subtraction operations, which require lookup tables. Recently, a biasing method has been proposed, providing savings in the table size. The original use of the method was in finite impulse response filters. In this work, the biasing approach is extended to recursive digital filters. The use of biased logarithmic addition in infinite impulse response filters is described, and the properties of the biased logarithmic number system are analysed.


MineSet™, Silicon Graphics' interactive system for data mining, integrates three powerful technologies: database access, analytical data mining, and data visualization. It supports the knowledge discovery process from data access and preparation through iterative analysis and visualization to deployment. Mine-Set is based on a client-server architecture that scales to large databases. The database access component provides a rich set of operators that can be used to preprocess and transform the stored data into forms appropriate for visualization and analytical mining. The 3D visualization capabilities allow direct data visualization for exploratory analysis, including tools for displaying high-dimensional data containing geographical and hierarchical information. The analytical mining algorithms help identify potentially interesting models of the data, which can be viewed using visualization tools specialized for the learned models. Third party vendors can interface to the MineSet tools for model deployment and for integration with other packages.