This paper presents an overview of the SIGIR 2020 eCom Rakuten Data Challenge. For this data challenge we make available a multimodal dataset of 99 thousand product listings from Rakuten France catalog. Each product in the dataset contains a textual title, a (possibly empty) textual description and an associated image. Two tasks are proposed, namely large-scale multi-modal classification and cross-modal retrieval. Among the data sets, around 85 thousand products and their corresponding product type category are released as training data, around 9.5 thousand products and 4.5 thousand products are released as the test sets for the multi-modal classification and cross-modal retrieval tasks respectively. The evaluation is run in two stages to measure system performance, first on 10% of the test data, and then on the rest 90% of the test data. The different systems are evaluated using macro-F1 score for the multi-modal classification task and recall@1 for the cross-modal retrieval task. Sixteen independent teams submitted system outputs in the proposed tasks. The top performance obtained at the end of the second stage is 91.94% macro-F1 and 50.23% recall@1 for the two tasks respectively.


Corporation has grown to become a leading supplier of automation and industrial control components. Headquartered in Flemington, NJ, Altech has an experienced staff of engineering, manufacturing and sales personnel to provide the highest quality products with superior service. This is the Altech Commitment! Altech's line of safety relays are manufactured by , a company well know in Europe for its quality safety relays. The products presented in this catalog will help you meet requirements of Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC, important international safety standards, CE-marking demand, and more, when exporting your machinery or equipment. What is a Safety Relay? A safety relay contains force guided contacts; they are also known as captive, locked or positive guided contacts. Force guidance in a relay means that the contacts in a contact set must be mechanically linked together so that it is impossible for the NO (normally open) and NC (normally closed) contacts to be closed at the same time. The contacts are linked so that no one contact in a relay can change state without changing all the contacts in that relay. There must be a 0.5 mm minimum air gap between the open contacts for the entire service life of the relay, even in the case of a failure. The force guidance of the relay contacts must always be preserved even when a relay part fails to function correctly. Our technical experts welcome the opportunity to answer your technical questions and provide solutions to your automation and control problems. Give us a call or visit www.altechcorp.com. Altech's control components meet diverse national and international standards such as UL, NEC, CSA, IEC, VDE and more. Altech provides superior customer service and delivery through Total Quality Management and Continuous Process Improvement. Altech is ISO 9001 approved. We perform these services with honesty and integrity and are committed to achieve these goals.


Article history: Received: April 2014 Received in the revised form: June 2014 Accepted: September 2014 The paper presents the level of incurred labour inputs and the equipment in the form of production means in 46 family farms listed according to the intensity of production organization. The obtained results were presented with a table and description method. The analysis which was carried out proved that along with the intensity of production organization the number of physical workers increases in farms with simultaneous decrease of AL area. The investigated farms featured quite variable size of participation of capital calculated into the replacement value of mechanization means per a hectare of agricultural land. A positive average correlation between intensity of production organization and objectified work inputs and a weak correlation between intensity of production organization and human work inputs were determined.


This article examines the interrelationship between globalization and democratic development by studying three of the main actors in the Thai political economy: the military, the private sector, and civil society. The article examines how their roles have changed in the context of globalization in the 1990s. It then looks briefly at how these changes have impacted on both the form and content of political activity in Thailand at the start of the new millennium, particularly as exemplified in the results of the general election on 6 January 2001. During the 1990s, civil society in Thailand had become stronger and was able to challenge the old socio-political order, while the military was simultaneously tamed. At the same time, however, "money politics" -- the merging of profit-seeking and power-seeking -- has become stronger. The victory of the Thai Rak Thai party in the January 2001 general election signals a new and more sophisticated conjunction between the private sector and politics. Introduction What has been the relationship between globalization and democratic development in Thailand during the 1990s? At the start of the 1990s, there were several analyses of democratization in Southeast Asia, including the works by Kevin Hewison [1] and Michael Vatikiotis. [2] These observers argued that democratization in Southeast Asia was related to internal factors, such as the fast-changing economy, the cohesion or factionalization of authoritarian rulers, the perceptions of the legitimacy of government, the size and attitude of the middle classes, and trends in civil society. By contrast, recent academic analyses have emphasized the importance of external factors on democratization and political change in the Southeast Asian countries. Amitav Acharya has argued that internal forces which press for democratization in the Southeast Asian countries often gain power from external factors, particularly from the spread of democratic values within the context of globalization. [3] During the decade of the 1990s, Thailand became more exposed to global forces. Of course, Thailand was already a relatively open economy, and had experienced two previous waves of globalization -- the first beginning in the late nineteenth century with the expansion of the rice economy, and the second in the late 1950s with the country's induction under the United States' Cold War strategy and economic tutelage. Even so, most analysts agree that globalization in the 1990s has had a higher intensity. This was most obvious during the 1997--98 economic crisis whose origins lay in the country's financial liberalization and greater exposure to eccentric international capital flows, the result of which was the loss of economic sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the transfer of significant capital assets into foreign hands. At the same time, during the past decade Thailand made significant advances in democratization, most notably through the Constitution of 1997. The new charter was driven by popular support in the teeth of opposition from Establishment forces. The charter set out to re-engineer the political system in order to reduce the power of the bureaucracy, make politicians more responsive to the popular will, and to undercut old monopolies in business and government. In this article, the interrelationship between globalization and democratic development will be examined through a study of three of the main actors in Thailand's political economy: the military, the private sector, and civil society. The roles of these three actors have changed in the 1990s, and the article will examine how that has happened. It will also examine how these changes have impacted on Thai society in the new millennium, with the results of the general election of January 2001 providing one clear direction. The Military During Political Reform Amidst Economic Crisis: Loss and Compromise The military has been one of the major political forces determining the pace of democratization in Thailand. …


In this paper, the specialities and status quo conditions of Chinapsilas clothing industry and clothing logistics are analyzed; the logistics cost of the clothing industry is higher comparing to the same industry in the developed countries. From the viewpoint of the whole manufacturing logistics chain, all the problems existed in clothing logistics system are discussed. The processes and solutions, including the model of e-pos optimization are developed in this paper. This study demonstrates that Chinapsilas clothing logistics system exist a lot of problems which leads to a higher cost and a lower efficiency. If all these problems could be resolved through the methods and solutions mentioned in this paper, Chinapsilas clothing industry will be more concentrated on its core competence and will improve its competitiveness in the near future.


After 40 years of significant work, it was generally accepted that chromium in its trivalent valence state, Cr(III), is an essential micronutrient for humans. This view began to be challenged around the turn of the millennium. Some investigators argue that its effects on glucose and lipid metabolism reflect a pharmacological rather than a nutritional mode of action while yet others express concern about the toxicity and safety of supplemental chromium. Understanding the conjectures requires a reflection on the different definitions of "essential" and a perspective on the development of the field, which in itself is a remarkable snippet of science history and education. At the center of the discussion is our failure to have established a molecular structure and a specific site of action of a biological chromium complex. Instead, many different types of Cr(III) complexes, in particular chromium picolinate, but also those with nicotinate, propionate, histidinate, chloride, and other ligands, all with different chemical properties and biological activities, are being used in laboratory investigations and supplementation. Without knowledge of the metabolic transformations and the specific chemical properties that biological ligands impart on chromium, many of these investigations, in particular those ex vivo, have limited value for understanding chromium's biological function. Whether a chromium deficiency exists in humans and who is affected is poorly defined. There is evidence for the efficacy of chromium supplements in improving conditions in metabolic syndrome and in some diabetes Type 2 patients, but there are no effects on body composition in healthy individuals. Chromium is present in human tissues and in our food and Cr(III) compounds are given in (total) parenteral nutrition, taken as a supplement by athletes and bodybuilders, are ingredients of vitamin pills consumed by the general population, and are employed in animal nutrition. Another contentious issue is whether Cr(III) complexes are safe, as chromium in its hexavalent state, Cr(VI) (chromate), is genotoxic and a group I carcinogen for humans with sufficient evidence for inhalation and lung cancer. For the benefit of human health, there is a continuing need for a balanced view and informed and robust experiments to determine the specific biological molecules that are involved in the metabolism of Cr(III), the activity of biological Cr(III) complexes at specific sites of action, and the amount of supplemental Cr(III) that potentially causes long-term toxicity.


Spatial modelling is increasingly being used as an alternative to conventional design- based line transect sampling to estimate cetacean abundance. This new method combines line transect sampling with spatial analysis to predict animal abundance based on the relationship of ani- mals observed to environmental factors. It presents several advantages including: (1) the ability to use data collected from 'platforms of opportunity', (2) the ability to estimate abundance for any defined subarea within the study area, and (3) the possibility for increased precision if covariates explain sufficient variability in the data. One study has been conducted to compare spatial modelling with conventional line transect methods, but the use of covariates in the detection function and the inclusion of school size have not previously been investigated. In the present study, the density of striped dolphins Stenella coeruleoalba was estimated in western Mediterranean waters using spatial distance sampling models applying generalised additive models (GAMs). This estimate was com- pared with density values previously estimated in the same area using conventional line transect methods. The densities estimated were very similar: 0.494 animals km -2 (coefficient of variation, CV = 0.16) using spatial models and 0.489 animals km -2 (CV = 0.19) using conventional line transect methods. Densities were also similar when they were calculated in stratified areas defined during the original line transect study. The precision of the estimates from spatial modelling was higher than that of the estimates obtained from conventional line transect analysis, particularly in the subareas. The results confirm that spatial modelling is a good approach for estimating cetacean abundance.


Many biological and biomedical laboratories in the Greater Jakarta have limited facilities. Problems arise when bio-specimen transports are moved from one laboratory to another. These transports may take hours due to traffic in the Greater Jakarta area. Lengthy transport may be problematic to the research at-hand, since many biological specimens will fail to survive if temperatures exceed 37°C for even a few minutes. When this happens, the condition of the specimen may be compromised or even damaged. To address this problem, we fabricated and tested a conditioned bio-specimen transporter (Conbiport). The Conbiport used a Rubbermaid cooler box as a basis, which is made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), allowing for temperature preservation. The Conbiport was equipped with an Arduino microcontroller, a heater, a temperature sensor, and its peripheral components so that the temperature inside the Conbiport could be steadily maintained. Four different control system configurations were tested: proportional (P-dom), proportional-derivative (PD-dom), proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and on-off. The results showed that the P-dom configuration exhibited the fastest heat rate. This configuration may provide better portability when it comes to specimen testing, despite the tendency of the temperature to offset from the setpoint. On the other hand, the PID controller provided the most stable temperature preservation, although it took a longer time to achieve the setpoint. Nonetheless, we proved that the Conbiport could maintain the temperature required for specimen transportation in urban areas, such as Greater Jakarta.


Abstract Background and aims: In the most chemical process industries, workers are exposed to various chemicals and working with these chemicals without considering safety and health considerations can lead to different harmful symptoms. For deciding about control measures and reducing risk to acceptable level, it is necessary to assess the health risk of exposure to harmful chemicals by implementation of specific risk assessment techniques in the process industries. The purpose of this study was to assess the health risks arising from chemical exposures in a petrochemical industry. Methods: A simple and applied method was used for health risk assessment of chemicals in a petrochemical industry. Firstly job tasks and work process were determined and then different chemicals in each tasks identified and risk ranking was calculated in each job task by aid of hazard and exposure rate. Results: The result showed that workers are exposed to 10 chemicals including Methyl ethyl ketone, Epichlorohydrin, Sulfuric acid, Phenol, Chlorobenzene, Toluene, Isopropanol, Methylene chloride, Chlorideric Acid and Acetone during their work in plant. Out of these 10 chemicals, the highest risk level was determined for Epichlorohydrin in the jobs related to tank and utility operations and maintenance workers. The next high risk level was for Epichlorohydrin in technical inspecting and Methyl ethyl ketone in Tank and utility operations operator. Conclusion: Hazard information and monitoring data of chemical agents in chemical industries can be used for assessing health risks from exposures to chemicals and ranking jobs by their risk level. These data can be used for resource allocation for control measures and reducing risk level to acceptable level.


We report the surfactant-free emulsion copolymerization of styrene (Sty)/methyl acrylate (MA) and vinylidene chloride (VDC)/MA by using clay platelets (LAPONITE® or a mixture of LAPONITE® and Montmorillonite) as Pickering stabilizers. Several parameters such as the presence of MA, the clay percentage and the monomer composition were shown to play a crucial role in the formation and stability of the resulting clay-armored particles. Optimal batch conditions led to stable latexes with a shelf life of at least one year. The film-forming process of the clay/P(VDC-co-MA) hybrid latexes was then studied. Transmission electron microscopy analysis of ultrathin cross-sections of the nanocomposite films revealed that latexes with high VDC contents (≥90 wt%) were not film-forming, whereas those of the same polymer composition but without clay led to a continuous film, suggesting that the clay platelets hindered polymer chain interdiffusion. Decreasing the VDC content to 87 wt% enhanced chain mobility, resulting in a uniform film with a honeycomb structure arising from the original clay-armored particle morphology.


There are significant challenges accompanied by fabricating a pure crystalline VO2 (M1) thin film with an abrupt metal to insulator phase change properties. Most fabrication methods yield an amorphous VO2 thin film that requires a post-annealing process to be converted into crystalline VO2 (M1). Hence, the thickness of VO2 (M1) films produced is very limited. In this work, we report the growth of pure VO2 (M1) crystalline thin films onto a sapphire substrate in an oxygen atmosphere by the femtosecond pulsed laser deposition technique and using vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) as an ablation target. The thin films were deposited at substrate temperatures of 25 °C, 400 °C, and 600 °C, which reveal the crystallized structures of VO2 (M1) without post-annealing. The thin film deposited at a substrate temperature of 600 °C exhibits a sharp and an abrupt metal-to-insulator transition (MIT) at a temperature of 66.0 ± 2.5 °C with nearly four orders of magnitude of the resistivity change (3.5 decades) and a narrow MIT hysteresis width of 3.9 °C. Furthermore, the influence of the substrate temperature, nanoparticle or grain size, and film thickness on the MIT parameters such as sharpness of the transition temperature, hysteresis width, and amplitude are discussed for potential applications of tunable antennas, terahertz planar antennas, and RF-microwave switches.


This thesis examines the possibility for industrial charcoal production with power generation at Mully Children's Family (MCF) Yatta, located in rural Kenya. In Kenya, most of the population use firewood or charcoal for food preparation. In rural areas, where unsustainable firewood consumption is most common, it would be beneficial to use sustainably produced charcoal instead, due to health aspects and to reduce deforestation. With the forest biomass potential fully established MCF will annually have around 1000 ton dry biomass available. Different technologies for industrial charcoal production have been described and the Pressvess twin retort is found to be a suitable design for MCF Yatta. This is a twin retort with two externally heated charge cylinders heated by a common combustion chamber. The annual potential for this type is 140 ton charcoal generating 520 MWh of accessible heat. However, it is a batch process which is not ideal to combine with power generation and therefore two alternative designs have been proposed. One option is to have interchangeable charge cylinders, heated with the pyrolysis gas from the opposite charge cylinder, enabling the Pressvess twin retort to be semi continuous and generate smoother heat. The potential for this design is annually 340 ton charcoal and 1320 MWh of accessible heat. Another option is to have two Pressvess twin retorts ran in counter phase and in this way simulate a semi continuous process. This will require two units, giving higher heat losses, but it may be easier than enabling the unit to tolerate interchangeable charge cylinders. This option may annually produce 280 ton of charcoal and generate 1040 MWh of accessible heat. Power generation technologies believed to be combinable with charcoal production have been described. Steam engine, steam turbine or an organic rankine cycle (ORC) turbine are closed cycle technologies that is suitable for the small scale production at MCF Yatta. Thermal efficiencies have been calculated for suitable working fluids for the ORC turbine and different parameters for steam. With a thermal storage, as a buffer between the charcoal production and the units utilizing the heat, a low temperature of the working fluid is preferable and with this in mind R245fa will be a good choice. An ORC turbine will be able to deliver a maximum of 27e kW, with heat from two charcoal production units and 33 kWe, with heat from a modified charcoal production unit. This will match the average electricity consumption of MCF Yatta well, which is 30 kWe. At MCF Yatta, one Pressvess twin retort may be install before the forest is fully established. The excess heat may be used to supply hot showers. When the biomass potential is reached the a semi continuous charcoal production should be established, and an ORC-turbine may be integrated.


This paper proposes a novel compressing and expanding (companding) system for OFDM wireless communications that minimizes the compression distortion and so reduces the peak power of OFDM symbols. OFDM systems suffer from large variations in instantaneous peak power. Such transients distort the signals when they are passed through a nonlinear high power amplifier (HPA) prior to transmission. Existing companding systems are far from perfect since the receiver can not accurately estimate the degree of compression applied by the transmitter and thus can not regenerate the original signal by expansion; the key problems are the band pass filter (BPF), HPA, and the noise component enhanced by the channel compensation filter. In the proposed companding system, each symbol is divided into segments, and series of consecutive segments are grouped into clusters. Each cluster is multiplied by a weight equal to the inverse of the largest instantaneous power within the cluster. The receiver estimates the weight used for each time cluster. The weights for all clusters are averaged to mitigate the weight estimation error. As a result, the proposed expander can accurately estimate the weights used and thus well suppress the compression distortion.


Southwestern British Columbia and northwestern Washington State are subject to megathrust earthquakes, deep intraslab events, and earthquakes in the continental crust. Of the three types of earthquakes, the most poorly understood are the crustal events. Despite a high level of seismicity, there is no obvious correlation between the historical crustal earthquakes and the mapped surface faults of the region. On 24 June 1997, a M L = 4.6 earthquake occurred 3–4 km beneath the Strait of Georgia, 30 km to the west of Vancouver, British Columbia. This well-recorded earthquake was preceded by 11 days by a felt foreshock ( M L = 3.4) and was followed by numerous small aftershocks. This earthquake sequence occurred in one of the few regions of persistent shallow seismic activity in southwestern British Columbia, thus providing an ideal opportunity to attempt to characterize an active near-surface fault. We have computed focal mechanisms and utilized a waveform cross-correlation and joint hypocentral determination routine to obtain accurate relative hypocenters of the mainshock, foreshock, and 53 small aftershocks in an attempt to image the active fault and the extent of rupture associated with this earthquake sequence. Both P -nodal and CMT focal mechanisms show thrust faulting for the mainshock and the foreshock. The relocated hypocenters delineate a north-dipping plane at 2–4 km depth, dipping at 53°, in good agreement with the focal mechanism nodal plane dipping to the north at 47°. The rupture area is estimated to be a 1.3-km-diameter circular area, comparable to that estimated using a Brune rupture model with the estimated seismic moment of 3.17 × 10 15 N m and the stress drop of 45 bars. The temporal sequence indicates a downdip migration of the seismicity along the fault plane. The results of this study provide the first unambiguous evidence for the orientation and sense of motion for active faulting in the Georgia Strait area of British Columbia.


In the context of fake news, bias, and propaganda, we study two important but relatively under-explored problems: (i) trustworthiness estimation (on a 3-point scale) and (ii) political ideology detection (left/right bias on a 7-point scale) of entire news outlets, as opposed to evaluating individual articles. In particular, we propose a multi-task ordinal regression framework that models the two problems jointly. This is motivated by the observation that hyper-partisanship is often linked to low trustworthiness, e.g., appealing to emotions rather than sticking to the facts, while center media tend to be generally more impartial and trustworthy. We further use several auxiliary tasks, modeling centrality, hyper-partisanship, as well as left-vs.-right bias on a coarse-grained scale. The evaluation results show sizable performance gains by the joint models over models that target the problems in isolation.


In October 2007, a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)-sponsored workshop, entitled "Applying Principles from Complex Systems to Studying the Efficacy of CAM Therapies," was held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Over a 2-day period, the workshop engaged a small group of experts from the fields of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) research and complexity science to discuss and examine ways in which complexity science can be applied to CAM research. After didactic presentations and small-group discussions, a number of salient themes and ideas emerged. This paper article describes the workshop program and summarizes these emergent ideas, which are divided into five broad categories: (1) introduction to complexity; (2) challenges to CAM research; (3) applications of complexity science to CAM; (4) CAM as a model of complexity applied to medicine; and (5) future directions. This discusses possible benefits and challenges associated with applying complexity science to CAM research. By providing an introductory framework for this collaboration and exchange, it is hoped that this article may stimulate further inquiry into this largely unexplored area of research.


Background and Hypothesis: A recent study estimates 17,670 individuals will die from bladder cancer in the United States in 2019. With current imaging and treatment technology, bladder cancer is associated with high recurrence rates making it the highest lifetime treatment cost per patient. High expense is primarily due to the profound heterogeneity associated with bladder cancer necessitating repeated intervention. Traditional treatment of non-muscle invasive bladder (NMIBC) cancer following intravesical tumor resection often includes chemotherapy or immunostimulatory therapy via Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) infusions. Both lack specificity for cancerous tissue, leading to sub-optimal prognosis and unnecessary discomfort for patients. Furthermore, bladder cancer detection is limited in its precision. Methods such as CT/MRI urography and cystoscopies are unable to accurately detect tumors under 2 centimeters in diameter. Blue light cystoscopy, a gold standard detection method, is unable to accurately differentiate tumors from inflamed tissue. This leads to issues detecting aggressive carcinoma in situ. The goal of this project is to enhance tumor detection by fusing various targeting ligands to elastin-like peptides (ELP).
Experimental Design or Project Methods: Using synthetic biology approaches, a library of ELP fusions were made and purified using a simplified organic extraction method. (Biomaterials Science 2018, 6 (4), 863-876) This resulted in exceptionally pure protein within a matter of hours. Contrast agents were covalently attached, and performance testing was done in murine bladder cancer cells.
Results: Novel ELP fusions were successfully produced and sequences verified. Protein expression and purification yielded active targeted constructs which showed enhanced binding efficiency over non-targeted constructs. These ELP fusion proteins are effective transporters for rapid and preferential cargo entry into bladder cancer tissue.
Conclusion and Potential Impact: Chemotherapeutic, immunostimulatory, and tumor imaging cargo are all bright candidates for targeted ELP fusion technology. Targeted ELP delivery may be a superior tool key to improving tumor visualization and treatment, leading to improved comfort and prognosis in patients with NMIBC.


Reduction in system size, increase in system performance and savings in system cost are valuable benefits that SER/DES devices (Serializers and Deserializers) bring to many system designers. These benefits are the reason why SER/DES are integral pieces of many of today's high-speed systems. One of the design constraints for these systems is the maximum transmission distance between a serializer and a deserializer. While most SER/DES can support transmission over only several meters of cable, many systems require the transmission distance between a serializer and a deserializer to be tens and even hundreds of meters. This application report introduces the DS15BA101 and DS15EA101, a cable extender chipset, which can enable long reach applications for SER/DES devices. It also lists Texas Instruments SER/DES that can benefit from the chipset, discusses distance limitations of the SER/DES and the distance gains that can be realized with the aid of the chipset in applications utilizing both single-ended and differential interconnects.


The effect of micronization on sun protection factor (SPF) were tested on two types of titanium dioxide (TiO2) with primary particle sizes of 20 nm and 170 nm. Oil/water creams with 5%, 10%, and 20% concentrations of each type of TiO2 were prepared, and SPF was measured using both in vitro and in vivo methods. In vitro analysis demonstrated that submicron-sized TiO2 cream had a lower SPF value than nanosized TiO2 formulations of the same concentration. In vivo experiments confirmed this result, and a strong correlation between in vitro and in vivo measurements was observed. Furthermore, the SPF values of nanosized TiO2 sunscreen were concentration-dependent in the range of 5% to 20%. Scanning electron microscopy results indicate that the higher SPF of nanosized TiO2 formulations may be due to the formation of multilayer agglomerates by small particles at nano-scales, leading to a reduced void space between particles and a more efficient barrier to protect skin from sunlight.


Two major problems were identified in reviewing current research in Web-based instruction: 1) assessment of irrelevant learning outcome variables and 2) weak methodological design in conducting quantitative research. This quantitative study was designed to investigate whether different types of Web-browsing interface in Web-based instruction influence students' learning achievement of varied educational objectives. The studied interfaces were 1) browser scroll, 2) frame-based, and 3) pop-up-window interfaces. This study also investigated a potential interaction between the interface and students' prior knowledge, since prior knowledge had long been considered an important learning variable for acquiring new information. A total of 137 undergraduate students participated in the study. A statistical multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to analyze collected data. Results showed significant main effects of independent variables in all criterion tests except for the treatment effect on a comprehension knowledge test.


Experiments were performed to test the hypothesis that acute hypertension caused by aortic baroreceptor deafferentation (ABD) is the result of sympathetic vasoconstriction. Cardiac output (CO), mean arterial pressure (MAP), and total peripheral resistance (TPR) were measured before and after ABD in anesthetized and conscious rats. The role of the sympathetic nervous system in acute ABD-induced hypertension was evaluated by examining the ability of adrenalectomy, adrenal demedullation, guanethidine or combined adrenal demedullation, and guanethidine pretreatment to prevent, and total autonomic blockade to reverse, ABD-induced hypertension. CO did not change significantly after ABD at any time, whereas MAP and TPR increased significantly (P less than 0.05). Only combined adrenal demedullation and guanethidine pretreatment prevented ABD-induced hypertension, and autonomic blockade normalized MAP in ABD rats. Normalization of blood pressure was the result of a decreased TPR. It is concluded that acute ABD-induced hypertension results from vasoconstriction caused by neurally released and/or circulating catecholamines.


In Israel East meets West. Their jewellery traditions blend, resulting in creative innovations. In the 1930s, European immigrants introduced the spirit of the Bauhaus, while oriental craftsmanship was invigorated in the 1950s and 1960s by immigration from Islamic countries. State jewellery companies preserved traditional crafts, while at the same time developing a new and elegant style, designed to express the national identity of the still young state of Israel. There are important links between native jewellery makers and European and American jewellery artists, who were guest lecturers at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in the 1970s and had a lasting influence on Israeli artists. The transition to art jewellery was finally completed in the 1980s, paving the way for artists who are now internationally renowned. A further chapter is dedicated to contemporary works by some outstanding young artists. Although their works are part of the global jewellery scene, they are also dedicated to their homeland, for example through unequivocal references to local political tensions. Artists (a selection): Bianca Eshel Gershuni, Esther Knobel, Deganit Stern Schocken, Vered Kaminski, Attai Chen.


Spatial population structure can substantially change the stochastic dynamics of mutants invading a resident population. One way to introduce population structure is putting the individuals on the nodes of a network. Individuals can be replaced by offspring of their neighboring nodes, connected through undirected links. A quantity of interest is the probability that the mutant takes over the entire population, the fixation probability. Regular networks where every node has the same number of links (e.g. rings or lattices) are called isothermal and lead to the same fixation probability as a well-mixed population. A network that increases the fixation probability of advantageous mutants and decreases it for disadvantageous mutants compared to a well-mixed system, is called an amplifier of selection. The rate of evolution, i.e. the average waiting time for the first successful mutant to appear, is increased by amplifiers of selection. But besides leading to a higher fixation probability, the amplifiers can also increase the time until fixation of the advantageous mutants, slowing down evolution. We analyze small graphs to explore the impact of network structure on the fixation time. In the simplest case of four nodes, there are six different connected networks. Among these, the fully connected network (corresponding to the well-mixed population) and the ring are isothermal. Surprisingly, the other four networks are amplifiers of selection and hence there are no suppressors of selection of size four. All these networks increase the fixation time of the mutants compared to the complete network. Intuitively, one might assume that the removal of a link from a given network would increase fixation time. But a simple counter-example shows that the fixation time can also decrease by removing a link.


In an effort to identify the enzymatic mechanism responsible for the synthesis of reactive oxygen species produced during the hypersensitive response, preparations of rose (Rosa damascena) cell plasma membranes, partially solubilized plasma membrane protein, and cytosol were assayed for the NADHand NADPH-dependent synthesis of superoxide using assays for the reduction of cytochrome c (Cyt c), assays for the reduction of nitroblue tetrazolium, and assays for the chemiluminescence of N,N*-dimethyl-9,9*biacridium dinitrate (lucigenin). Each assay ascribed the highest activity to a different preparation: the Cyt c assay to cytosol, the nitroblue tetrazolium assay to plasma membrane, and the lucigenin assay to the partially solubilized plasma membrane protein (with NADH). This suggests that no two assays measure the same set of enzymes and that none of the assays is suitable for comparisons of superoxide synthesis among different cell fractions. With the plasma membrane preparation, the presence of large amounts of superoxide-dismutase-insensitive Cyt c reductase confounded attempts to use Cyt c to measure superoxide synthesis. With the partially solubilized membrane protein, direct reduction of lucigenin probably contributed to the chemiluminescence. Superoxide synthesis detected with lucigenin should be confirmed by superoxide-dismutase-sensitive Cyt c reduction.


Carex section Scirpinae is a small group of North American sedges that possess a dioecious breeding system, unispicate inflorescences and pubescent perigynia. Historically, ten different taxa had been recognized at the specific or infraspecific levels based primarily on morphological characters. Taxonomic problems in the group were related to the lack of a comprehensive monographic treatment. Floristic treatments were limited and focused only on a few regional taxa. Descriptions were often incomplete, lacking descriptions of staminate material or complicated by the inconsistent use of the terms phyllopodic and aphyllopodic. Patterns of variation in morphological characters across a wide geographic range were not understood. Little, information was available concerning chromosome numbers, anatomy, interbreeding relationships, micromorphological features and ecology. A systematic investigation of taxa assigned to this section was carried out to: (1) circumscribe taxa, (2) examine phenetic relationships, (3) resolve the question taxonomic rank, and (4) determine whether the group was monophyletic. Based on evidence drawn from morphology, chromosome numbers, leaf anatomy and surface structure, achene and perigynium micromorphology, interbreeding relationships, ecology and distributions, six taxa are recognized in two species, one with four subspecies. The section, as treated here, consists of Carex scirpoidea Michx., with four subspecies (ssp. scirpoidea, ssp. convoluta, ssp. pseudoscirpoidea, and ssp. stenochlaena), and Carex curatorum Stacey. The subspecies of C. scirpoidea are geographically based ecotypes that differ morphologically in only a few characters. Carex curatorum is distinguished by characters of perigynium morphology, domed silica bodies of the achene, sparsely pilose leaf surfaces, a restricted distribution in riparian habitats in southern Utah and northern Arizona. The section Scirpinae forms a cohesive group of dioecious, unispicate sedges with pubescent perigynia, chromosome numbers of n = 31, similar leaf anatomy and high degree of interfertility between subspecies based on handpollinations. Two taxa, Carex gigas (Holm) Mack. and C. scabriuscula Mack., previously assigned to the section, have been excluded. Plants are often not dioecious, rarely unispicate and have perigynia with few short hairs, have chromosome numbers of n = 29 and exhibit amphistomatous leaves.


Large induction and synchronous electric motors play an essential role in petrochemical installations. The availability and operating safety of large HP motor drives are influenced by the frequently-encountered difficult starting conditions and the correct selection and setting of protective devices. Motor data, required for monitoring functions, such as locked-rotor time, starting time or starting cycle are determined using different calculation methods and criteria, as motor manufacturers apply various techniques and limit values and no uniform standards exist. If these data, which have been determined using different techniques, are interpreted in the same way, this can result in protection levels, which either limit the availability or reduce the motor lifetime. Calculation methods for protection-relevant data are compared with measurements and discussed. Especially for large HP motors, only state-of-the-art computer based calculations are able to provide results, realistically defining the actual motor stress levels. Drives in classified locations require special attention when selecting protection devices for starting and operation.<<ETX>>


Analyses of miscellaneous materials of green-gemmous Lophozias have shown: (1) L. silvicola is a distinct species from L.ventricosa. (2) L. iremelensis is synonymous with L. ventricosa and treatment of the former as conspecific with L. wenzelii is erroneous. (3) Jungermannia groenlandica is a distinct variety of L. wenzelii. (4) The separating of the sect. Guttulatae is unfounded because of absence of constant defining features from sect. Lophozia. So, sect. Guttulatae should be rejected. (5) L. silvicoloides seems to be a more or less common species of East Siberia and Far East with a few disjunctions in Europe. The species is close on the one hand to L.silvicola and on the other hand to L. ascendens. Two new combinations are proposed: Lophozia ventricosa var. guttulata (Lindb. et H. W. Arnell) Bakalin comb. nov. and Lophozia wenzelii var. groenlandica (Nees) Bakalin comb. n. The key for identification of Holarctic's green-gemmous Lophozias is presented.


In finite-fault modeling of earthquake ground motions, a large fault is divided into N subfaults, where each subfault is considered as a small point source. The ground motions contributed by each subfault can be calculated by the stochastic point-source method and then summed at the observation point, with a proper time delay, to obtain the ground motion from the entire fault. A new variation of this approach is introduced based on a "dynamic corner frequency." In this model, the corner frequency is a function of time, and the rupture history controls the frequency content of the simulated time series of each subfault. The rupture begins with a high corner frequency and progresses to lower corner frequencies as the ruptured area grows. Limiting the number of active subfaults in the calculation of dynamic corner frequency can control the amplitude of lower frequencies. Our dynamic corner frequency approach has several advantages over previous formulations of the stochastic finite-fault method, including conservation of radiated energy at high frequencies regardless of subfault size, application to a broader mag- nitude range, and control of the relative amplitude of higher versus lower frequencies. The model parameters of the new approach are calibrated by finding the best overall fit to a ground-motion database from 27 well-recorded earthquakes in California. The lowest average residuals are obtained for a dynamic corner frequency model with a stress drop of 60 bars and with 25% of the fault actively slipping at any time in the rupture. As an additional tool to allow the stochastic modeling to generate the impulsive long-period velocity pulses that can be caused by forward directivity of the source, the analytical approach proposed by Mavroeidis and Papageorgiou (2003) has been included in our program. This novel mathematical model of near-fault ground mo- tions is based on a few additional input parameters that have an unambiguous physi- cal meaning; the method has been shown by Mavroeidis and Papageorgiou to sim- ulate the entire set of available near-fault displacement and velocity records, as well as the corresponding deformation, velocity, and acceleration response spectra. The inclusion of this analytical model of long-period pulses substantially increases the power of the stochastic finite-fault simulation method to model broadband time his- tories over a wide range of distances, magnitudes, and frequencies.


High temperature MgO-ZrO2 insulation coatings were grown on long-length Stainless-Steel (SS) tapes by reel-to-reel sol-gel method for applications of High Temperature Superconductor/Low Temperature Superconductor (HTS/LTS) coils and magnets. The residual stresses were investigated analytically at various temperature ranges, 580◦C to 25◦C (room temperature) and -196◦C (liquid helium temperature), and 630◦C to 25◦C and -196◦C for different thicknesses to be 13, 12, and 7 μm. The maximum stress values were obtained to be 1.92 GPa in tension for SS substrate with the 13 μm coating and -2.42 GPa in compression for the 7 μm MgO-ZrO2 coating in the temperature range between 630◦C and liquid helium temperature. The surface morphologies and microstructure of sample were also characterized using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). SEM observations revealed that MgO-ZrO2 coatings have a mosaic like crack structure.


This correspondence paper presents the validation of a formation flight control technique with obstacle avoidance capability based on nonlinear model predictive algorithms. Control architectures for multi-agent systems employed in this correspondence paper can be categorized as centralized, sequential decentralized, and fully decentralized methods. Centralized methods generally have better performance than decentralized methods. However, it is well known that the performance of the centralized methods for formation flight degrades when there exists communication failure among the vehicles, and they require more computation time than the decentralized method. This correspondence paper evaluates the control performance and the computation time reduction of the sequential decentralized and fully decentralized methods in comparison with the centralized method and shows that the fully decentralized method can be made effective against short term communication failure. The control inputs for formation flight are computed by nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC). The control input saturation and state constraints are incorporated as inequality constraints using Karush Kuhn Tucker conditions in the NMPC framework, and the collision avoidance can be considered in real time. The proposed schemes are validated by numerical simulations, which include the process and measurement noise for more realistic situations.


Remote backup systems are often used to provide high data availability. Updates are typically propagated to the backup via a log, which decouples the backup from the primary. We show that this decoupling can lead to efficient installation of updates in batches and efficient processing of read-only queries, by eliminating or reducing access conflicts between updates and queries. We present several methods for query processing at the backup and evaluate their performance analytically.<<ETX>>


The aim of this study is to contextualize the fragments of the The Wonders beyond Thule in the set of lost Greek novels that have come to us in papyri paying special attention to the treatment of hiatus. The literary ambitions of Callirrhoe, Ninus, Parthenope, and The wonders beyond are similar and their 'implicit readers' would have belonged to the educated elite known by the term of pepaideumenoi and pepaideumenai. Other conclusion is that hiatus is a license that depends on the style of the author, but it can sometimes be attributed to an error by the scribe or a decision of the modern editor.
The study includes value information about novel fragments since 1998 (edition by López-Martínez) and a hypothesis regarding archaeological materials (papyri and inscriptions) found in a Hellenistic city on the Banks of the Oxus River in Afghanistan, Ai Khanoum, which offer us tantalizing paralells for the fictional mise en scène of Diogenes' novel.


Progress on the vision laid out in the Science of Science Policy Roadmap requires a move to system level thinking and analysis in the study of technology development. System level analysis will require systemic data infrastructure. The need for such an infrastructure is increasingly explicitly recognized at the national level. This paper will review infrastructure efforts including previous US-based infrastructure, national research documentation systems used in systemic evaluations, the Community Innovation Survey in Europe, Lattes in Brazil, the NRC ranking of US graduate programs. The strengths and weaknesses of each approach will be compared, and key issues will be identified.


In this paper, due to its advantages of high accuracy and moderate computational cost, detached eddy simulation (DES) is adopted to observe detail flow characteristics of a kind of vertical axial wind turbine equipped with four helical blades. The numerical results obtained from the method have been validated by experiments as well as been compared with those from unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations (U-RANS). Several critical parameters, such as the torque, power coefficient, and tangential force, are studied in detail. It is found that the results from DES are closer to the measurement data than those from U-RANS. And, the characteristics of the flow field in the turbine can be clearly revealed by DES. Furthermore, the effects of tip vortex, Reynolds number, and pitch angle on turbine performance have also been analyzed and discussed.


In this letter we investigate the effect of interfacial surfactant on the motion of an air bubble rising in a vertical capillary tube filled with a viscous fluid and sealed at one end. A thin layer of liquid, with almost constant thickness b, exists between the bubble interface and the tube wall. The fluid displaced by the front meniscus flows down through this layer because the tube is sealed far up at the top. The steady rising velocity U of the bubble is related to the thickness b. An upper bound for U is obtained in terms of b and other physical data of the problem, which is in good agreement with previous experimental results. It is proved here analytically that the presence of surfactant on the bubble interface causes a thinning and a delay effect: the thickness of the liquid layer behind the bubble and the rise velocity of the bubble are smaller than those for the 'clean' case. Exactly the opposite effect of surfactant in the horizontal case has been derived analytically by Daripa and Pasa (2010 J. Stat. Mech. L02002) and numerically by Ratulowski and Chang (1990 J. Fluid Mech. 210 303). These effects of interfacial surfactant are consistent with previous experimental and numerical results.


Background : Food-dependent exercise-induced anaphylaxis (FDEIA) is characterized by anaphylac-tic symptoms after eating certain foods, followed by exercise. As we examine more patients who have pollinosis, we have more opportunities to see allergic disease such as FDEIA, OAS, and so on. Methods : We performed a retrospective analysis of six cases, diagnosed FDEIA for this three years. Results : Of six cases, the ages are 8 to 47 years old, and the trigger allergens were wheat, shrimp, and grapefruit. The trigger exercises were running, volleyball, as well as taking a bath. In four cases, the patients had history of allergic disease such as atopic dermatitis, allergic rhinitis, and so on. In two cases of wheat-dependent exercise-induced anaphylaxis, the IgE levels for ω 5-gliadin (a major wheat allergen) in a RAST were positive. Conclusion : Of six cases diagnosed FDEIA, the trigger allergens were wheat, shrimp, and grapefruit. In cases of wheat-dependent exercise-induced anaphylaxis, the IgE levels for ω 5-gliadin in a RAST were positive. After the food allergen has been identified, we advised strict restrictions on in-gestion of trigger allergens in the case of shrimp and grapefruit, and on any exercise after eating foods containing wheat flour in the case of wheat.


The present work reports on the effect of chloride concentration on the repassivation behavior of commercial aluminum alloys Al 5754-H111, Al 5083-H111, Al 2024-T3 and Al 7075-T6. Characteristic parameters of pitting and repassivation processes were determined from single cycle anodic polarization curves recorded in different NaCl solutions. Empirical relationships of the characteristic parameters as a function of log [Cl-] were derived from repeated experiments. Data analysis was complemented by corrosion morphology examination. Overall results show that valuable information on the corrosion resistance of different Al alloys can be obtained from the polarization response during the reverse scan. In the presence of localized attack other than pitting, the passivation of active surfaces follows a more complex mechanism.


Background: Caesarean section is one of the most commonly performed surgical procedures in obstetrics and certainly one of the oldest operations in surgery; the incidence of caesarean section is steadily rising. The increasing use of CS as a mode of delivery is due to improved safety of the procedure because of increasing use of antibiotics, blood availability, and improved anesthetic techniques. Despite all these, problems of safety and cost still pose some concern, particularly in resource-poor countries. Objective: To evaluate the incidence, indications, and outcomes of caesarean section in this hospital during the period under review. Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective descriptive analysis of all the caesarean sections carried out at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada from 1st January 2012 to 31st December 2016. The labor ward delivery register and theatre operation register were also reviewed. The nature and indications for the procedure were analyzed. Other parameters reviewed included booking status of the patient, parity, and fetal outcome. Results were presented using simple percentages and ratios. Results: Out of 9,604 deliveries during the study period, 2,053 cases were by caesarean section, giving a caesarean section rate of 21.4%. Most cases 1647 (80.2%) were by emergency caesarean sections and elective caesarean section accounted for 406 (19.8%) cases. The rate of caesarean section was higher among unbooked patients 1304 (63.5%) than booked patients 749 (36.5%). Cephalopelvic disproportion was the most common indication 633 (30.8%) followed by fetal distress 484 (23.6%) and severe pre-eclampsia/eclampsia 224 (10.9%). Anemia was the most common postpartum morbidity and there were 17 maternal deaths and the maternal case fatality rate was 0.8%, and there were 62 (2.9%) perinatal deaths due to birth asphyxia following emergency caesarean section. Conclusion: The rate of caesarean section has been increasing gradually and is associated with maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. There is need for education of the populace to reduce late presentation.


This paper uses a large cohort of Dutch felony offenders to causally model the effect of time served on future criminal offending. To address the selection issues inherent in this sort of examination, we combine developmental trajectory analysis (Nagin, 2005) with a generalization of the propensity score introduced by Joffe and Rosenbaum (1999) and extended by Lu et al. (2001). Results indicate that, on average, offenders serving shorter periods of confinement are subsequently sentenced to fewer days of incarceration than comparable offenders serving longer sentences. However, on the whole, we find only weak evidence of a dose-response relationship between time served and future offending.


Emerging Smart phones and smart systems are to give a whole new dimension to the way we shop, bank, and go about many of our everyday activities. The Internet of Things (IoT) shall be able to incorporate transparently and seamlessly a large number of different and heterogeneous end systems, while providing open access to selected subsets of data for the development of digital services. Building a general architecture for the IoT is hence a very complex task, mainly because of the extremely large variety of devices, link layer technologies, and services that may be involved in such a system. Today, application architects need to use a messaging broker to speed and scale their applications, in the particular cloud. Once we select our messaging middleware application, then application developers need to select the protocol. Finally, we provide our conclusions for the IoT communications based protocols and we have conducted their study in different application area.


Introduction: Burnout has been consistently linked to physiological and affective outcomes as well as organizational consequences.The study sought to determine the existence of burnout and its probable health consequence son ; low-emotional jobs' such as that of accountants.The concern for doing this study arose from the fact that the accountant has a delicate role to maintain a balance between the interest of the enterprise, stakeholders and self; with each group exerting their unique demands and pressure.
General objective: the objective of the study was to determine the prevalence rate and factors associated with burnout syndrome among accountants at the University of Nairobi.
Specific objectives: the specific objectives were to determine the prevalence of burnout among accountants and compare this across the various sections with in the Finance department and levels of accountants. Also to determine the relationship between burnout syndrome and accountants tenure of office, level of professional education and health.
Design: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study.
Study setting: The study was conducted in all the sections of the Finance Department within Main Campus, Colleges, Student Welfare Authority, University Flealth Services, and the University of Nairobi Entrepreneurial Services Ltd (UNES).
Method: All the 173 accounting staff within the department were requested to participate, however only 95 agreed, 31 declined, 6 delayed in returning their questionnaires while 41 could not be traced. The Maslach Burnout Inventory -
General survey and the General Health Questionnaire were used. Data collected was entered and analysed using SPSS computer software version 11.5 by applying descriptive and inferential statistics
Results: the prevalence rate for burnout was 100%; with 27.4% of respondents having low burnout and 72.6% having high burnout, consequently 18.9% of the respondents had varying levels of psychological distress as measured by GHQ-12. The risk factors included workload, role in the organization, relationships at work, work location / section and the level of academic and professional education.
Conclusion: burnout was established among accountants and the contributing job stressors were also identified as well as the consequent effect on the accountants' health. The study established that the syndrome had not been known to the study population before and how it was influencing their output at work and at their personal levels of functioning.
Implications: It is hoped that the outcome of the study will increase the Accountants knowledge about, and understanding of stress. Further, the study will lead to the development of a stress health promotion model that will benefit members of staff at the University of Nairobi.
Recommendations: that staff should be assed according to mutually agreed target between an employee and supervisor; the University should explore possibilities of flexible work arrangements in addition to hiring of part-time employees.
Further longitudinal studies on burnout in a Kenyan organizational context would enable benchmark against local organizations and would provide useful information to managers.


Due to the limitations that unimodal systems suffer from, Multibiometric systems have gained much interest in the research community on the grounds that they alleviate most of these limitations and are capable of producing better accuracies and performances. One of the important steps to reach this is the choice of the fusion techniques utilized. In this paper, a modeling step based on a hybrid algorithm, that includes Particle Swarm Optimization and Genetic Algorithm, is proposed to combine two biometric modalities at the score level. This optimization technique is employed to find the optimum weights associated to the modalities being fused. An analysis of the results is carried out on the basis of comparing the EER accuracies and ROC curves of the fusion techniques. Furthermore, the execution speed of the hybrid approach is discussed and compared to that of the single optimization algorithms, GA and PSO.


e51 ©Society for DisasterMedicine andPublic Health, Inc. 2020. This is anOpenAccess article, distributed under the termsof the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: 10.1017/dmp.2020.306 A Proposed COVID-19 Testing Algorithm–Corrigendum


In some practical enciphering frameworks, operational constraints may require that a secret key be embedded into the cryptographic algorithm. Such implementations are referred to as White-Box Cryptography (WBC). One technique consists of the algorithm's tabulation specialized for its key, followed by obfuscating the resulting tables. The obfuscation consists of the application of invertible diffusion and confusion layers at the interface between tables so that the analysis of input/output does not provide exploitable information about the concealed key material.Several such protections have been proposed in the past and already cryptanalyzed thanks to a complete WBC scheme analysis. In this article, we study a particular pattern for local protection (which can be leveraged for robust WBC); we formalize it as DIBO (for Diffused-Input-Blocked-Output). This notion has been explored (albeit without having been nicknamed DIBO) in previous works. However, we notice that guidelines to adequately select the invertible diffusion ∅and the blocked bijections B were missing. Therefore, all choices for ∅ and B were assumed as suitable. Actually, we show that most configurations can be attacked, and we even give mathematical proof for the attack. The cryptanalysis tool is the number of zeros in a Walsh-Hadamard spectrum. This "spectral distinguisher" improves on top of the previously known one (Sasdrich, Moradi, Güneysu, at FSE 2016). However, we show that such an attack does not work always (even if it works most of the time).Therefore, on the defense side, we give a straightforward rationale for the WBC implementations to be secure against such spectral attacks: the random diffusion part ∅ shall be selected such that the rank of each restriction to bytes is full. In AES's case, this seldom happens if ∅ is selected at random as a linear bijection of F322. Thus, specific care shall be taken. Notice that the entropy of the resulting ∅ (suitable for WBC against spectral attacks) is still sufficient to design acceptable WBC schemes.


Eschar in scrub typhus aids in early diagnosis and institution of appropriate therapy; however, the eschar positivity rates vary greatly in endemic regions. Multiple eschars in scrub typhus are a rare presentation. Our patient presented with fever and multiple eschars and was empirically started on doxycycline. Nested polymerase chain reaction from all the four eschars and from EDTA blood were positive for 56-kDa type-specific antigen which is specific for Orientia tsutsugamushi. The patient recovered completely after 7 days of antibiotic treatment. He was from an area where scrub typhus was not observed previously. An eschar in an acute febrile patient from the "tsutsugamushi triangle" is a valuable sign in scrub typhus diagnosis. A search for multiple eschars in scrub typhus must be made by clinicians.


An analysis was made of heat transfer at low Peclet numbers for fluids flowing turbulently in smooth tubes. Previous analyses for flow of gases and liquid metals at low Peclet numbers gave higher heat-transfer coefficients than were indicated experimentally. When the mixing-length theory was modified in order to account for the heat transferred by conduction to a turbulent particle as it moves transversely, the predicted results were brought into agreement with the experimental results.


Voice Your View (vYv) is a RCUK Digital Economy-funded project that investigates how digital technologies can be applied in public spaces to make them safer. vYv is developing a range of mobile and static devices that allow the public to voice their opinions and concerns on their environment as and when thoughts occur to them. As a simple example, a jogger might feel unsafe in his/her local park due to lack of lighting. Rather than go home and write a letter to the local council – a strategy which would likely end up with the observation being forgotten – the jogger can simply document his/her concern using a vYv mobile phone application. Crucially, vYv is developing and applying advanced natural language processing algorithms to filter, structure and make sense of the potentially vast amount of textual comments received using the system. An early trial of vYv in Lancaster had 600 users [1]; results on automatically analyzing the textual comments from these users showed that vYv identified an acceptable theme in a comment 78% of the time [2]. This paper applies the vYv text analysis engine to qualitative questionnaire responses from a Derry District Policing Partnership (DDPP) survey carried out on public confidence and satisfaction with policing in Derry in 2009. The aim of the study was to investigate the feasibility of creating public perception maps automatically – that is, given a large number of textual commentaries (such as those produced by vYv) expressing people's perceptions of their environment, how feasible is it to automatically extract the meaning of the comments and plot them on maps? These so-called public perception maps will capture the 'buzz' of public feeling at a given snapshot in time, and can potentially be updated in real-time as new comments arrive.


Scanning worms, that spread by probing the IP address space to find vulnerable hosts, are among the most serious threats to Internet security today, as evident by the time-scales of some recent large-scale worm attacks. Only an automatic defense can hope to contain a carefully designed worm that uses an unknown or a recently-divulged vulnerability. In this paper, we propose acooperation-based worm containment approach that enables potentially distrusting firewalls in different access networks to exchange information in order to contain the spread of a fast scanning worm. Based on modeling the propagation of scanning worms, we identify and analytically quantify the effectiveness of two forms of cooperation between firewalls, namely, implicit signaling and explicit signaling. Specifically, we highlight the regimes under which implicit and explicit signaling provide effective containment. In this paper, we also address some of the deploymentchallenges associated with cooperation-based worm containment. Specifically, in a partial deployment scenario where only a small fraction of access networks ( 1%) are protected behind firewalls, we demonstrate a rerouting mechanism that can provide effective containment ( 97%) for these protected networks. One limitation of our work is that our analysis does not apply to worms based on pre-generated target lists, stealthy worms that slowly infect their vulnerable population, and rapidly mutating polymorphic worms.


This article explores the poem's problematic use of holy war rhetoric, arguing for an engagement with contemporary debates on the transformation, revival and decline of the crusading ideal within the framework of the Papal Schism and the Hundred Years War. More specifically I suggest that through its skillful use of religious vocabulary the poem highlights the manipulative potential of the language of holy war, and in doing so asks the reader to reflect critically on the crusading revival under Richard II. Yet rather than merely denouncing the simple appropriation of religious language to justify a continued war of conquest, the poem stresses the potential for a genuine blurring of motives—political, spiritual, economic, imperialistic, self-glorifying—which may ultimately result in the pursuit of those delirious messianic ambitions that the poem's Arthur seems to share with Richard II.


Abstract Aims: This retrospective chart review examined the six-month migraine-related healthcare resource use (HRU) among European patients who had ≥4 migraine days per month and previously failed at least two prophylactic migraine treatments. Methods: Neurologists, headache specialists, and pain specialists in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain who treated ≥10 patients with migraine in 2017 were recruited (April–June 2018) to extract anonymized patient-level data. Eligible physicians randomly selected charts of up to five adult patients with clinically-confirmed migraine, ≥4 migraine days in the month prior to the index date, and had previously failed at least two prophylactic migraine treatments. Treatment failure was defined as discontinuation due to lack of efficacy and/or tolerability. Demographic and disease characteristics as of the index date, and migraine-related HRU incurred during the 6-month study period, were recorded. Results: A total of 104 physicians contributed 168 charts for patients (63% female). On average, patients were 38 years old and failed 2.3 prophylactic treatments as of the index date. During the study period, 83% of patients had ≥1 outpatient visit for migraine in the physician's office, and 27% went to the ER/A&E. Approximately 5% of patients were hospitalized for migraine, with an average of one hospitalization and an average length of stay of 3 days. Approximately 39% of patients had ≥1 blood test, 22% had ≥1 magnetic resonance imaging, 17% had ≥1 electroencephalogram, and 13% had ≥1 computerized tomography scan. Visits to other healthcare providers were common. Limitations: This study is subject to the limitations of chart review studies, such as errors in data entry. Conclusions: Across four European countries, the HRU burden of migraine among patients who previously failed at least two prophylactic treatments was high, indicating a need for more effective prophylactic treatments to appropriately manage migraine and reduce the HRU burden attributable to this common disorder.


There is presently lack of data on composition of potentially toxic metals and their leaching from clay based foodwares into food. Therefore, in present study we evaluated the leaching of cadmium, chromium, copper, manganese, nickel, lead and zinc from raw clays and traditional clay posts from two locations, Ara-Ekiti, Ekiti State and Kono-Boue, Rivers State in Nigeria. Samples were digested with aqua regia and analysed using atomic absorption spectrometry and also with energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence. Tap water set at different temperatures (27 0 C and 100 0 C) and pH values (4.2 and 9.2) were used to leach the pots. The pH of the raw clays ranges from 2.08–6.50. The order of concentrations is Fe>Mn>Pb>Zn>Ni>Cr>Cu>Cd for both clays and this was consistent with XRF data. The results from this study indicate that Cd, Cr, Cu and Pb were not in leachable forms in clay pots. The concentration ranges of Fe and Mn leached were 0.16–8.37 ppm and 0.08– 10.00 ppm, respectively. In all cases the Kono-Boue pots indicated more leached concentrations of metals than Ara-Ekiti pots. It is essential to assess traditional clay pots for leachability of xenobiotics.


We report the results of treatment with single agent 2'-deoxycoformycin (Pentostatin) in two patients with Hepatosplenic gammadelta T-cell lymphoma (HSgammadeltaTCL), a rare lymphoma subtype with a highly unfavorable prognosis. Present and previous data reviewed here demonstrates the striking cytotoxic activity of Pentostatin against gammadelta+ tumor T cells. Further studies are warranted to define the optimal strategy to fully exploit therapeutic potential of this drug in patients with HSgammadeltaTCL.


The 1994 issue of the 'Carbon Dioxide Fact Sheet' follows the same format as in previous years but has been extended to include other countries and regions of interest. The calculations rely upon the SP Statistical Review of World Energy for consumption data for the world and its principal regions and nations. This well-accepted source of data appears in the June following th e year under review and thus provides a means of estimating emissions of CO 2 from the fossil fuels throughout the world on a consistent basis as early as six months after the conclusion of the subject year.


Background: National Institute of Ayurveda, Jaipur, India, had distributed Ayurveda immunity booster kit (AIBK) (prepared at own pharmacy and comprising Chyawanprasha – 300 g, Vyadhi Kshamatva Kwatha – 300 g, and Vyadhi Kshamatva capsule – 30 g) for 15 days among the health-care workers, sanitation workers, and security and police staff engaged in the containment zones for prevention of COVID-19. Aim: The aim of present study was to explore the medication that may be effective in prevention of the COVID -19. Hence, this study was done to assess the compliance of these medicines and their effects in the prevention of COVID-19. Methods: One thousand seven hundred and fourteen frontline workers were provided with the AIBK for 15 days from April 24, 2020, to June 27, 2020. Data of frontline workers who had participated in AIBK and completed the treatment regimen with 2 weeks of follow-up after treatment with complete available data for safety, palatability, efficacy, and compliance were included in the study. Any adverse event needing hospitalization or medication, drug compliance and palatability, and appearance of the symptoms of COVID-19 or testing positive for COVID-19 were the outcome measures. Results: Out of 1714 participants, 1003 participants were found to be eligible for this analysis. The median age of these participants was 39 years (range, 19-70), and males accounted for 90.1% (904 of 1003). A total of 7.5% of participants (75 of 1003) reported having adverse events after taking the study treatment. None of the participants reported any serious adverse effects after the administration of the AIBK. The acceptability of the AIBK was as high as 97.4%. None of the participants reported positive for COVID-19 results or COVID-19 symptoms up to 2 weeks of follow-up after completion of the study treatment. Conclusion: The acceptability of AIBK is good and indicates its role in the prevention of COVID-19-like illness, hence further randomized control trials or cohort studies can be done to assess the mechanism of action and efficacy of AIBK as the preventive strategy in COVID-19.


Blast through phase-locked loop challenges fast with this practical book guiding you every step of the way from specs definition to layout generation. You get a proven PLL design and optimization methodology that lets you systematically assess design alternatives, predict PLL behavior, and develop complete PLLs for CMOS applications that meet performance requirements no matter what IC challenges you come up against. After a review of PLL essentials, this uniquely comprehensive workbench guide takes you step-by-step through operation principles, design procedures, phase noise analysis, layout considerations, and CMOS realizations for each PLL building block. You get full details on LC tank oscillators including modeling and optimization techniques, followed by design options for CMOS frequency dividers covering flip-flop implementation, the divider by 2 component, and other key factors. The book includes design alternatives for phase detectors that feature methods to minimize jitter caused by the dead zone effect. You also find a sample design of a fully integrated PLL for WLAN applications that demonstrates every step and detail right down to the circuit schematics and layout diagrams. Supported by over 150 diagrams and photos, this one-stop toolkit helps you produce superior PLL designs faster, and deliver more effective solutions for low-cost integrated circuits in all RF applications.


We describe an impressive ~55 m high outcrop from the Pilanesberg Platinum Mine open pit, located in the North-Western Bushveld Complex. The outcrop exposes the complete two-dimensional structure of three Merensky Unit potholes that cut several metres down into the underlying footwall anorthosites. The transgressive field relationships are interpreted to have resulted from thermochemical erosion of the footwall rocks by new pulses of magma replenishing the chamber and resulting in incremental growth of the Bushveld Complex.


The idea of democracy is a curious oneand puzzling. There is reason for this;everyone talks about democracy no matter whether their views are on the left, centreor right of the political spectrum. Various politicians, regimes, whether in Africa, Europe or America claim to be democratic;yet what each says and does is usuallydifferent. Democracy as a practice is supposed to bestow rules, laws and decisions that are justifiable on democraticgrounds. Democracy also has evolved through social struggles. This article examines the practice of democracy withinthe context of local government in South Africa, and is an attempt to explore the concept of democracy without escaping other historical aspects of the idea and practice. From a methodological standpoint, this article is based on a literature assessment. Lastly and most importantly, this paper has made a scholarly contribution to the scholarship of Political Science and Public Administration with regard to the nexus between democracy and public participation at local government level in South Africa.


Program verification is one of the central research topics in computer science since its inception – we can consider the field to be initiated as early as in 1949, with Alan Turing's pioneering paper "Checking a Large Routine." Yet, we are still far from the dream of automatically proving every computer program correct. Two aspects make this problem particularly challenging: concurrent program execution on parallel processors, and large, or even infinite, state spaces of data-manipulating programs. Nowadays, with concurrency entering everywhere, from smartphones to aircrafts, proving the correctness of infinite-state concurrent programs becomes increasingly more important: we do want to be sure that the program that controls the airplane we are flying in is correct. In this thesis we propose a new approach to the verification of infinitestate concurrent programs. We call it causality-based, because it captures in an automatic proof system the "cause-effect" reasoning principles, which are often used informally in manual correctness proofs. While traditionally automatic methods are based on the state space exploration, our method is based on a new concurrency model, called concurrent traces, which are the abstractions of the history of a concurrent program to some key events and the relationships between them. Causality-based proof rules relate concurrent traces with each other, by formally tracking what are the necessary consequences (the "effects") from a particular analysis situation (the "cause"). The full correctness proof is then a composition of such primitive proof steps. We study the syntactic and language-based properties of concurrent traces, and characterize the complexity of such operations as emptiness checking and language inclusion. Regarding the program correctness, we develop proof systems for the broad classes of safety and liveness properties, and provide algorithms for the automatic construction of correctness proofs. We demonstrate that for practically relevant classes of programs, such as multi-threaded programs with binary semaphores, the constructed proofs are of polynomial size, and can be also checked in polynomial time. The methods of the thesis have been implemented in Arctor, the first scalable termination prover for concurrent programs, which is able to handle programs with hundreds of non-trivial threads.


Throughout the period following Pearl Harbor, as one crisis in Japanese-American relations followed another, the American public opinion was divided. Some newspapers and personalities feared that there would be war over the San Francisco school board crisis, while others believed that talk of war was ridiculous. Partisan politics often affected the course of affairs on the Japanese question.


The EU GDPR comes into effect on May 25, 2018. Under this regulation, stronger legislation than the existing directive can be enforced. The IoT industry, especially among various industries, is expected to be heavily influenced by GDPR since it uses diverse and vast amounts of personal information. This paper first analyzes how the IoT industry handles personal information and summarizes why it is affected by GDPR. The paper then uses the cost definition of Gordon and Loeb model to estimate how GDPR affects the cost of IoT firms qualitatively and uses the statistical and legal bases to estimate quantitatively. From a qualitative point of view, GDPR impacted the preventative cost and legal cost of the Gordon and Loeb model. Quantitative view showed that the cost of IoT firms after GDPR could increase by three to four times on average and by 18 times if the most. The study finally can be applied to situational awareness of the economic impact on the certain industry.


In the context of an automatic street extraction from remotely sensed images, we are concerned about defining some quantitative criteria for evaluating the performance of algorithms. The aim is to obtain a measure of the quality of the results delivered by any method. This purpose needs the definition of a reference in order to compare it with extracted objects. In this paper, existing references in matter of pattern recognition from geographical scenes will be reviewed. Then a methodology for extracting a relative reference is defined when the only information available is the remotely sensed image. Related quantitative criteria are also given. The complete methodology is finally applied on a high resolution image from an urban scene.


Objective: To report researches carried out by the TEXTQUIM/TEXTECC project between 2002 and 2010 about Brazilian Portuguese scientific discourse in Chemistry and Pediatrics. Methodology: By using Corpus Linguistics, we observed: a) causality expressed by verbs and connectors; b) patterns of collocation with recurrent terminologies. As translations from English into Portuguese are common, we contrasted original texts and compared data with French texts. Results: The findings show higher frequency of causal connectors than causal verbs, low frequency of PORQUE and CAUSAR, recurrent associations around typical terminologies in Brazilian texts and influence of translations from English in the causal patterns observed in the Portuguese texts. Publications were produced, as well as presentations and free on-line tools for public access of our corpora. These resources are available at www.ufrgs.br/textquim.
Received: 22-01-10 / Accepted: 09-04-10
How to reference this article:
Bocorny Finatto, M. J.; Evers, A.; De Oliveira, C. M. & Alencar Silva, M. C. (2010). From terminologies to recurrent constructions: a study of specialized languages. Íkala, 15(2), pp.223-258.


BACKGROUND
Current European regulations require a deferral period of 6 months or 3 years, depending on the risk of exposure, for prospective blood donors at risk of malaria. This period may be reduced to 4 months if an immunological or molecular genomic test is negative at each donation, but Italian regulations have not adopted this provision. As cases of transfusion-transmitted malaria have been recorded in medical literature in blood donors deferred for 3 years and not tested, the Immunohematology and Transfusion Centre of the Ca' Grande Polyclinic Hospital in Milan decided to introduce immunological testing for all donors at risk of malaria.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Four hundred and twelve blood donors at risk of malaria, who had lived in a malarial area during the first 5 years of life or for more than 6 consecutive months, were tested for malarial antibodies using an enzyme immunoassay kit. The kit (Malaria EIA, Newmarket, UK) uses four recombinant antigens specific for P. falciparum and P. vivax and with cross-reactivity for P. ovale and P. malariae. The kit detects total immunoglobulin antibodies against P. falciparum and P. vivax and shows 80% cross-reactivity with P. ovale and 67% with P. malariae. Antibody-positive samples were further checked by an immunochromatographic test for P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale and P. malariae antigens and by haemoscopy (thin film and thick smear).

RESULTS
Italian citizens accounted for 16.8% (69/412) of the whole group of donors examined. We found that 8.7% of the donors who were classified as being at risk of malaria were positive for total immunoglobulin antibodies. Only one Italian citizen resulted positive for the test. The positive candidates were deferred from blood donation. None of the antibody-positive donors was confirmed positive by the immunochromatographic test and by haemoscopy.

CONCLUSION
The introduction of a malarial screening test in the assessment of blood donor eligibility may increase the safety of blood donations, but could further reduce blood availability. If immunological testing were to be accepted nationally as a valid method of assessing the risk of malaria, more than 90% of the donors who are currently deferred for 3 years could be accepted 4 months after their last visit to an endemic area, thus increasing the availability of blood.


AIMS: The definition of limited airflow as forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1)/forced vital capacity (FVC) ratio for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is still controversial. The objective of this study was to compare the prevalence of COPD using fixed ratio and lower limit of normal (LLN) of FEV1/FVC for the presence of airflow limitation and evaluate the performance of FEV1/forced expiratory volume in 6 s (FEV6) in patients diagnosed with COPD according to the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) fixed ratio. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Patients who presented to the pulmonary disease clinic between May 2008 and December 2017 and who were diagnosed with COPD were evaluated retrospectively. The distribution of FEV1/FVC-LLN according to the GOLD fixed ratio was evaluated after the patients were divided based on age groups. A receiver operating characteristics curve was used to determine the best FEV1/FEV6 cutoff value which fit into the FEV1/FVC <LLN, and sensitivity and specificity were calculated. RESULTS: Of the patients, 165 (85.9%) were male and 27 were female, with a mean age of 64.40 ± 10.66 years (range, 40–85). Among the patients, 11.5% of 61 patients aged 40–60 years, 28.4% of 67 patients aged 61–70 years, and 26.6% of 64 patients aged over 70 years were out of the diagnosis of obstruction according to the fixed ratio of FEV1/FVC >LLN. The cutoff value of FEV1/FEV6 for airway obstruction according to FEV1/FVC <LLN was 0.735 with a sensitivity of 99.3%, a specificity of 95.3%, and area under the curve of 0.900 (95% confidence interval: 0.856–0.944, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: In this study, older patients, particularly, were diagnosed less often with an FEV1/FVC <LLN value calculated according to the Global lung function initiative (GLI) norms, compared to the fixed ratio. In addition, ratio of FEV1/FEV6 of < 0.735 may be useful in the diagnosis of airway obstruction in the early period and may also be used in office-type spirometers, since it is not dependent on a time constant.


In this work we show the application of Sailfish to the study of fluid dynamics in porous media. Sailfish is an open-source software based on the lattice-Boltzmann method. This application of computational fluid dynamics is of particular interest to the oil and gas industry and the subject could be a starting point for an undergraduate or graduate student in physics or engineering. We built artificial samples of porous media with different porosities and used Sailfish to simulate the fluid flow through them in order to calculate their permeability and tortuosity. We also present a simple way to obtain the specific superficial area of porous media using Python libraries. To contextualise these concepts, we analyse the applicability of the Kozeny–Carman equation, which is a well-known permeability–porosity relation, to our artificial samples.


Abstract A process for the removal of two chlorophenols (2-chlorophenol and 2,4-dichlorophenol) from water using surface modified mango seed waste by adsorption process followed by cement fixation of the phenols-laden adsorbent is investigated. The two main objectives of this study were to develop efficient adsorbent utilizing mango seed waste by physiochemical activation and to an environmentally-friendly disposal of phenols-laden adsorbent into cement by a fixation process. The results of the present study reveal that the modified mango seed adsorbent showed an efficient adsorption potential for chlorophenols removal from water. The maximum adsorption potential of modified mango seed adsorbent for 2-chlorophenol and 2,4-dichlorophenol was 40.6 and 72.3 mg g−1, respectively at 25°C. Adsorption kinetic data of chlorophenols adsorption on mango seed adsorbent could be described more favorably by a pseudo-second-order kinetic model. After the adsorption studies, the phenol-laden adsorbent was immobilized in cement for its ultimate disposal. Leachates from the fixed phenols-laden adsorbent exhibit phenols concentrations lower than the drinking water standards. Results from this study suggest the potential utility of agricultural wastes as one of the most promising activated carbon precursors for phenols removal from water and wastewater and the safe disposal of phenol-laden adsorbent into cement by fixation process.


The present investigation was undertaken to study the milkability characteristics of Holstein cows. Out of 6,660 initial records 4,607 records were finally included in the analysis after deleting some records with an abnormal range of values for the traits considered. These 4,607 Holstein cows belonged to a total of 122 herds located in a province in Korea. The 'LactoCorder' instrument was used to electronically record the milkability traits at the milking parlor. A total of 19 traits were studied which were broadly classified into milk yield, milking speed, milking time and the electrical conductivity related traits. The SAS 9.1 statistical software was used to carry out analyses. The average maximum milk flow per minute was 3.21 kg/min, while the average milking speed during the main milking process (DMHG) had a mean value of 2.30 kg/min. The total milk yield was 14.14 kg, 62% of which was milked during the first three minutes of the milking. The average total milking time was 8.23 min. Among the three phases of the main milking process, the time of stable milk flow had the longest time (2.97 min) followed by the time at the decline phase (2.62 min). The average time taken to reach the plateau phase was 1.08 min, which can still be reduced further through improved managemental practices. Among milk yield traits, milk yield during the first two (MG2) and three (MG3) minutes of milking had high positive correlation with milking speed traits and negative correlations with almost all the milking time traits except time of incline in milk flow from 0.5 kg/min till the attainment of the plateau phase (tAN). Milking speed traits had negative correlations with total milking time, time at main milking process, time at plateau and with the time at decline. Since there was medium to high negative correlation between the milking speed and the time at plateau, there is a need for selection of cows which have intermediate milking speed so that it could require less milking time and also the optimum (higher and longer) plateau time. Proper pre-stimulation and avoiding over milking will help in further reducing the milking time and thus will add to the net profit of the farmer.


Saline (154 mM NaCl) infused into one renal artery of anesthetized rats produced a prompt and substantial increase in sodium excretion without significant alteration of arterial pressure, renal blood flow, or glomerular filtration rate. A 1-h infusion at rates of 0.0375, 0.05, or 0.1 ml/min increased sodium excretion by the infused kidney from 0.15 +/- 0.04 to 0.70 +/- 0.12, from 0.45 +/- 0.10 to 2.17 +/- 0.40, and from 0.27 +/- 0.06 to 4.29 +/- 0.80 mumol/min, respectively. Natriuresis also occurred in the contralateral kidney. No comparable responses resulted from infusions at 0.0375 ml/min into the jugular vein, inferior vena cava, or carotid artery. Cross-circulation of blood from infused rats increased sodium excretion in uninfused recipients from 0.36 +/- 0.11 to 1.43 +/- 0.43 mumol.min-1.kidney-1. Isovolemic exchange-transfusion of blood from infused donor rats increased sodium excretion in uninfused recipients from 0.30 +/- 0.05 to 0.51 +/- 0.09 mumol.min-1.kidney-1. In both experiments, aortic infusions below the renal artery produced no comparable effect in recipient rats. Infusion of 300 mM glucose was not natriuretic. Infusion of two NaCl loads, 5.8 and 15.4 mumol/min, each at two different rates, increased sodium excretion in proportion to the load of NaCl and not to the rate of infusion. Infusions of a protein-free artificial rat plasma or of 140 mM NaCl, both with the sodium concentration of rat plasma, produced very little increase in sodium excretion. Infusion of 154 mM sodium lactate produced an increase in sodium excretion comparable to that produced by 154 mM NaCl. Reducing the infusion rate of 154 mM NaCl from 0.05 to 0.01 ml/min produced a rapid decline in the rate of sodium excretion. We conclude that renal arterial saline infusion activates a mechanism that increases sodium excretion by the infused kidney and concurrently causes the release of a natriuretic factor. Increased sodium concentration in renal arterial blood was the only stimulus found to produce the effect.


The growth-strain method was applied to cutout optimization in laminated composite plates. Since the growth-strain method optimizes a shape by generating the bulk strain to make the distributed parameter uniform, the distributed parameter was chosen as Tsai-Hill value. In this study, of particular interest is to see whether the growth-strain method developed for shape optimization in isotropic media would work for laminated composite plates. In volume control of the growth-strain method, it makes Tsai-Hill value at each element uniform in laminated composite plates under the predetermined volume. The shapes optimized by Tsai-Hill fracture index were compared with those of the initial shapes for the various load conditions and predetermined volumes of laminated composite plates. As a result, it was verified that volume control of the growth-strain method worked very well for cutout optimization in laminated composite plates.


The Relationship of Spirituality and the Well-Being of Latino College Students (May 2016) Andrea Patricia Almaguer, B.A., Psychology, Texas A&M International University; Chair of Committee: Dr. Sara Castro-Olivo The Latino population in the United States continues to grow (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012b). Besides their significant representation in the general population, national data has shown that Latinos are at great risk for health problems that usually go unmet (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). There is little research that focuses on the effects of spirituality on their well-being. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between spirituality, purpose in life, and mental well-being of Latino college students. Data was obtained and analyzed for 184 Latino college students at a Hispanic serving University in South Texas. Linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the predictive relationship between spirituality, well-being, purpose in life as well as familismo, well-being, and purpose in life. Data showed that spirituality significantly predicted mental well-being and purpose in life for Latino college students. Ways in which mental health practitioners can use this information to develop culturally relevant interventions and consider cultural protective factors such as spirituality and familismo for Latinos will be discussed.