In this paper, the system and the design philosophy of wheel-spoke cable-membrane structure of Baoan Stadium is introduced firstly. And then the study of wind tunnel test on 1:250 scale model is mainly presented, together with the numerical calculation of the wind dynamic response. Finally, the wind-resistant design of the roof structure based on the results of wind tunnel test and the foreign design codes is generally introduced.


Water resources are important factors in food production. Those are very vital and strategic to meet food needs and food security. As water is scarce both in terms of volume and distribution throughout the year, reliable water management is needed. To support this water management, the accurate data is needed. However, the complete tabular data is not enough. It is because the existing tabular data does not provide the various activities and events based on time and place spatially and detail enough for planning purposes at the sub-district level. The researchers use high-resolution satellite imagery data that have been pre-processed with the geometric and radiometric corrections. They are used as one of the layers in the working map, so it is easier to provide the depiction of irrigation network objects, to find out the location of rice fields that have not been irrigated and the location of damaged irrigation networks. The depiction of the working map can also be used to map irrigation networks and their network conditions. Through this work, it has been shown that the researchers can map irrigation networks in detail for operational planning at a sub-district level with the help of technology, in particular for developing countries that is difficult or even impossible to do in the past.


Atmospheric delay is one of the major sources of error in repeat pass interferometry. We propose a new approach for correcting the topography‐correlated components of this artifact. To this aim we use multiresolution wavelet analysis to identify the components of the unwrapped interferogram that correlate with topography. By using a forward wavelet transform we break down the digital elevation model and the unwrapped interferogram into their building blocks based on their frequency properties. We apply a cross‐correlation analysis to identify correlated coefficients that represent the effect of the atmospheric delay. Thus, the correction to the unwrapped interferogram is obtained by down‐weighting the correlated coefficients during inverse wavelet transform. We test this approach on real and synthetic data sets that are generated over the San Francisco Bay Area. We find that even in the presence of tectonic signals, this method is able to reduce the correlated component of the atmospheric delay by up to 75% and improves the signal in areas of high relief. The remaining part is most likely due to 3D heterogeneities of the atmosphere and can be reduced by integrating temporal information or using complementary observations or models of atmospheric delay.


This paper examines the influence of migration networks on the adoption of a range of health and marital relationship behaviors by married women in rural Guatemalan communities. Multivariate regression models are used to examine the impact of having kin in urban areas and the U.S. on a rural woman's: modern contraceptive knowledge and use, use of formal prenatal and delivery care, child immunization, and influence in household decisions. We argue that greater knowledge and use of health services and women's greater role in household decisions are characteristic of couples living in urban areas and are part of a range of behavioral and attitudinal changes that migrant women diffuse back to rural areas. After examining each of the outcomes individually, we use regression models to estimate the impact of migration networks on a single summary index of urban agency that we construct from the individual measures of health and decision making behavior.


Turkish Airlines" (TK) brand and brand equity, risk and technology management of the company as perceived by the ticketing employees (TE) were questioned in this study, taking into consideration the air traffic accidents and how they affect the brand image of TK. Phenomenology method of qualitative measures was used in the process of scale development and Paired Sample "t" Test was used for the perceptions of sample groups. The results revealed that the company possesses a well-known brand and the managerial efforts for branding efforts are currently sufficient even though TK has a kind of bad reputation when it comes to plane crashes.


In this paper we describe a solution to our entry for the emotion recognition challenge EmotiW 2017. We propose an ensemble of several models, which capture spatial and audio features from videos. Spatial features are captured by convolutional neural networks, pretrained on large face recognition datasets. We show that usage of strong industry-level face recognition networks increases the accuracy of emotion recognition. Using our ensemble we improve on the previous year's best result on the test set by about 1%, achieving a 60.03% classification accuracy without any use of visual temporal information, showing a top-2 result in this challenge.


In this study the input–output decoupling of linear distributed-parameter systems with distributed control and distributed measurement is considered. The decoupling problem is formulated as an eigenstructure assignment problem for distributed-parameter systems, which is solved using the parametric approach. The resulting static state feedback controller exponentially stabilises the closed-loop system and decouples the reference transfer behaviour with respect to the first p dominant closed-loop modal states. The residual dynamics are taken into account by compensating further dominant eigenvalues with transmission zeros, so that they do not influence the reference transfer behaviour. A heat conductor is used to demonstrate the design procedure which is also compared with an early lumping approach.


Contradictions in the reported biocompatibility of graphene-related materials have been attributed to differences in their preparation. Herein, we address the conflicting behavior of different pristine graphene dispersions through their careful preparation and characterization in aqueous media. Although exfoliated in different media, all graphene dispersions were physically similar and comprised few-layer graphene flakes of 100 to 400 nm mean length with relatively defect-free basal planes. The dispersions were colloidally stable, including in physiological saline and when organic solvents were exchanged with water by dialysis, due to their negative zeta potentials (−28 mV to −60 mV) from interaction with water and the different dispersants. Thus, we have been able to establish the influence of pre-association with different dispersants, including those likely to be encountered during the transport and excretion of graphene in vivo. Shear-forced association with neutral phospholipids was transient, as the lipids desorbed to form liposomes, and left a hemolytic dispersion, whereas other dispersions were not hemolytic. High boiling point solvents widely used to exfoliate graphene are toxic and viewed difficult to remove, but were readily removed by simple dialysis. Human serum albumin readily and stably adsorbed in predominantly monomeric form to pristine graphene in physiological saline, which may be expected in vivo. This work shows the large influence that different adsorbates can have on the behaviour of otherwise physically-similar graphene.


It is generally agreed that one of the drawbacks of a conventional vehicle is the inability to always reach the best operating point of the engine and the inability to regenerate the kinetic energy. Meaning, even with the help of the gearbox or automatic transmission, there is no way to reach more efficient operating points without increasing the power and then there is nowhere to store the excess of the energy converted. Electric vehicles (EVs) offer an opportunity for intelligent motion by working at the best operating point during driving mode, as well as a smart energy management during charging mode. However, it is well-known that the EV has been criticised due to its range anxiety, its limited compatibility with various charging points, its high cost, as well as its limited capability to ride-through a thermal runaway, etc. Today, the range anxiety seems to be resolved by the fact that a significate development is foreseen in the field of the battery cells market for portable equipment such as cell phones, pads, laptops, etc; the same battery technology can be deployed for EVs. Actually, battery packs in EVs tend to have high energy and power densities which will exert a strong thermal stress upon them. This means that individual battery cells are more prone to decline away and eventually fail early because of an excessive loss of capacity and an increase of the internal resistance caused by accelerated aging. Moreover, for electromechanical reasons, each cell is totally unbalanced in operating mode. Therefore, a suitable battery management system should be installed and the capability of the EV to ride-through thermal runaways must be guaranteed. Furthermore, in order to overcome the difference between AC and DC charging station standards, the EV on-board charger has to be flexible for various levels of charging modes (from AC household basic supply to AC or DC ultrafast charging). In order to meet the EV requirements, an advanced power converter which driven efficiency, power density is required. Therefore, the configurable modular multilevel converter (CMMC) has been introduced. It is part of a family of modular multilevel converters, also known as MMC, M2C or DSCC. Hence, its heritage allows bringing the whole advantages to EV applications. In addition it carries the surname of configurable because the converter plays a double role: in fact, it merge the traction converter and the bidirectional charger as well as the battery balancer converter, which not only increases the modularity and the scalability of the power modules but it reduces the cost, condenses the volume. In detail, the concept is linked to the idea of replacing the branch inductance of the standard MMC by the tapped stator windings of the traction motor itself. This allows operating the stator windings as current filter during charging mode. In addition, the famous EV battery pack is split into the MMC submodule. This will increase the fault ride-through capabilities of the Flex-EV battery against thermal runaways, by increasing the capability of the system to work under fault condition. In addition, states of charge (SoC) balancing are implemented at the level of modulation in order to balance that submodule battery state of charge. This is based on a selecting and sorting algorithm, which connect and disconnect the batteries submodules actively according to the sign of the generated AC current wave form and the SoC of the submodules batteries.


Many researchers contend that the intra-individual configuration of multiple traits, as compared to isolated trait dimensions, more effectively capture personality functioning at the level of the individual. Moreover, it is argued that by identifying subsets of individuals with similar trait-profiles, we can shed light on the generative mechanisms that underlie the expression and functioning of personality. Notably, self-regulatory systems of ego-resiliency and ego-control, as developed by Block and Block, comprise a valuable theoretical foundation for the development and interpretation of personality types. However, much of the literature on this topic is theoretically ambiguous, and is afflicted with inconsistent empirical outcomes across studies. The focus of the present thesis is to advance the empirical assessment and theoretical interpretability of personality profiles. More particularly, comparisons between three and four profile solutions are at the core of the current investigations. These competing models reflect differing interpretations of ego-domains; the three profile model embodies a proposed curvilinear relationship between the two constructs, whereas the four profile model emphasises the roles of ego-resiliency and ego-control as distinct mechanisms with unique outcomes.  In Study 1, Latent Profile and Latent Transition Analyses were conducted using the Six-Factor Model of personality. Three and four profile solutions were developed and compared using measures of model fit, profile interpretability, longitudinal stability, and predictive ability. In Study 2, the replicability of both solutions when using the Five-Factor Model was examined, along with the comparative value of the Six- as opposed to Five-Factor Model in profile identification. Finally, in Study 3, the interpretability of the four profile solution as reflecting differentiated domains of ego-functioning was assessed using established measures of ego-resiliency and ego-control. Across all three studies, profiles were considered using a novel approach utilising both continuous and categorical methodologies. Rather than treating profiles as entirely discrete groupings of personality functioning, the present investigation considers convergence with prototypical profiles in terms of degree.  The current findings provide support for the four profile solution as a more coherent and theoretically validated model as compared to the three profile solution. Specifically, although both solutions demonstrated good fit and longitudinal stability, the four profile solution was associated with more theoretically interpretable outcomes. These findings were consistent when using both the Six- as well as Five-Factor Model of personality; however, omission of the sixth trait resulted in a reduction in profile precision and explanatory power. Finally, in Study 3, selected exemplars of the four profile solution converged onto theoretically consistent domains of high/low ego-resiliency and ego-control.   Block and Block's model of ego-resiliency and ego-control provides a clear unifying framework for the intra-individual structuring of a four profile configuration of traits. Ego-constructs are flexible self-regulatory mechanisms that develop through reciprocal person-environmental transactions. The current results are therefore suggestive of a hierarchical relationship between ego-domains and personality traits, whereby traits form the basic parameters of a dynamic self-regulatory system. Moreover, the combination of continuous and categorical methodologies presently used strengthens the conclusions and arguments in this thesis.


In this paper, we present a novel communication scheme called zero-sided RDMA, enabling data exchange as a native network service using a programmable switch. In contrast to one- or two-sided RDMA, in zero-sided RDMA, neither the sender nor the receiver is actively involved in data exchange. Zero-sided RDMA thus enables efficient RDMA-based data shuffling between heterogeneous hardware devices in a disaggregated setup. In our initial evaluation, we show that zero-sided RDMA can outperform existing one-sided RDMA-based schemes due to offloading the coordination to the network and new optimizations that are only possible by coordinating the data exchange on the switch.


Recent growth of the Internet has greatly increased the amount of information that is accessible and the number of resources that are available to users. To exploit this growth, it must be possible for users to find the information and resources they need. Existing techniques for organizing systems have evolved from those used on centralized systems, but these techniques are inadequate for organizing information on a global scale. This article describes Prospero, a distributed file system based on the Virtual System Model. Prospero provides tools to help users organize Internet resources. These tools allow users to construct customized views of available resources, while taking advantage of the structure imposed by others. Prospero provides a framework that can tie together various indexing services producing the fabric on which resource discovery techniques can be applied.


Meckel's diverticulum is the most prevalent congenital abnormality of the gastrointestinal tract. Bleeding from Meckel's diverticulum is the most common clinical presentation, especially in childhood. In adults, manifestations include a broad spectrum of symptoms ranging from an incidental finding in surgery, iron deficiency anemia of unknown etiology, and acute abdomen due to mechanical complications of the diverticulum. Neoplastic transformation has been reported, but gastrointestinal stromal tumors are exceptional in this location. We report a case of gastrointestinal stromal tumor in Meckel's diverticulum, complicated by perforation.


Agricultural technology change is required in developing countries to increase the robustness to climate-related variability, feed a growing population, and create opportunities for market-oriented production. This study investigates technological change in the form of adoption of improved wheat, drought-tolerant teff, and cash crops in the semi-arid Tigray region in northern Ethiopia. We analyze three rounds of panel data collected from smallholder farms in 2005/2006, 2009/2010 and 2014/2015 with a total sample of 1269 households. Double-hurdle models are used to assess how the likelihood (first hurdle) and intensity of technology adoption (second hurdle) are affected by demographic, weather, and market factors. The results indicate that few smallholders have adopted the new crops, those that have adopted the crops only plant small shares of their land with the new crops, and that there has been only a small increase in adoption over the ten-year period. Furthermore, we find that high population density is positively associated with the adoption of improved wheat, and previous period's rainfall is positively associated with the adoption of drought-tolerant teff. The adoption of cash crops is positively associated with landholding size and access to irrigation. The policy implications of these results are that the government should increase the improved wheat diffusion efforts in less population dense areas, make sure that drought-tolerant teff seed is available and affordable after droughts, and promote irrigation infrastructure for production of cash crops.


We investigated the inhibitory effect of the edible mushroom Flammulina velutipes on intracellular lipid accumulation. Among the five fractions of the F. velutipes extract, the acetone fraction had an inhibitory effect on intracellular lipid accumulation. Seven known compounds were isolated from the acetone fraction: methyl linoleate, methyl γ-linolenate, ergosterol, ergosta-5,7-dien-3b-ol, ergost-7-en-3b-ol, ergosterol peroxide, and 5,6-epoxy-24( R )-methylcholesta-7,22-dien-3b-ol. Ergosterol peroxide exhibited a potent inhibitory effect on the intracellular lipid accumulation. Our results indicate that ergosterol peroxide may be important as an anti-obesity agent since it inhibits the metabolic syndrome.


Excessive release of heavy metals into environment due to industrialization and urbanization has posed a great problem to the world. Heavy metal ions do not degrade, so it can give bad effect to human body and environment itself. Adsorption is one of the most effective techniques to remove heavy metals. Activated carbon is the common adsorbent to remove heavy metals from wastewater but it is expensive material. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of rice husks as adsorbent for the removal of lead ions. The lead ions removal from aqueous solution was studied using batch method. The main parameters that influenced lead sorption on rice husk were contact time, adsorbent dosage and pH value. The rice husks were modified using tartaric acid before proceeds with batch studies. Using the initial concentration of lead solutions at 400mg/L, the analysis was continued using different contact time in range of 5 minutes to 70 minutes. Besides that, the influences of adsorbent dosage also been studied in range of 0.5g to 3.0g. Then, for the pH parameter, the experiment was run using the value between 2 and 6. After that, contains of lead ions were analyzed using Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS). For the contact time, the adsorption increased when the contact time increased and the maximum adsorption is 71% at 70 min. The research also gave similar results with the adsorbent dosage, where the adsorption of lead increased with increasing of adsorbent because of greater surface area with maximum value of 80% at 3.0 g. The adsorption of lead using rice husk was increased when the pH increased from 2 to 6 and the percentage adsorption is 86% at pH 6. As the conclusion, the rapid uptake and high sorption capacity achieved when the experiments were conducted at contact time, adsorbent dosage and effective pH. It shown that rice husk is an attractive alternative adsorbent material for the lead ions removal.


Learning can be viewed as mapping from an input space to an output space. Examples of these mappings are used to construct a continuous function that approximates the given data and generalizes for intermediate instances. Radial basis function (RBF) networks are used to formulate this approximating function. A novel method is introduced that automatically constructs a RBF network for a given mapping and error bound. This network is shown to be the smallest network within the error bound for the given mapping. The integral wavelet transform is used to determine the parameters of the network. Simple one-dimensional examples are used to demonstrate how the network constructed using the transform is superior to one constructed using standard ad hoc optimization techniques. The paper concludes with the automatic generation of a network for a multidimensional problem, namely, object recognition and pose estimation. The results of this application are favorable.


To the Editor: Anti-Gn" was reported by Fox and Taswell' as a new antibody reacting with a high frequency erythrocyte antigen, Gn;'. Family studies revealed that some family members lacked this antigen; no other Gn(a-) samples were found in tests on more than 2,500 donors. I t was discovered that erythrocytes of the proposita were Lan( -) when tested with four different anti-Lan sera. In addition, the anti-Gn;' serum from the original proposita, which was contaminated with anti-D, failed to react with three examples of Rh-negative, Lan( ) cells, whereas Rh negative Lan( +) cells were strongly agglutinated. To bypass the anti-D, the antibody was absorbed onto Rh-negative, Lan(+) cells and the ether eluate prepared from these erythrocytes contained antiLan. A fresh blood sample from the proposita was received and tested. The previous results were duplicated, and other investigators have verified our results. We therefore conclude that the anti-Gn" reported by Fox and Taswell is antiLan and that Gn(a-) cells are Lan(-).-Rosiu Nesbitt. Reference Section. Aniericun Red Cross Blood Services. Woshington, D C .


The perpetual struggle for separatism among Moros in Mindanao is produced on a background of historical and cultural injustices and by the presence of Moro liberation fronts, along with the government responses to this issue. This article endeavors to trace and interweave the roots of historical and cultural factors of Muslim separatism in Mindanao, along with its implication to the present Marawi crisis as fueled by the ISIS-linked groups who attacked the Philippines' Islamic city on May 23, 2017. It looks into the history of the arrival of Islam and the subsequent islamization of Mindanao. It then discusses the Muslim resistance movement against two foreign regimes, Spanish and American, which is followed by its resistance against the Philippine government. Factors that trigger Muslims' desire for separatism include at least three notorious massacres: Jabidah, Manili, and the Tacub Massacre. Such historical factors of injustices have fuelled the century-old struggle for separatism and self-determination. With the government's and non-government forces' failure to pacify the island, such struggle resulted into continuing war in the region killing over 120,000 Mindanaoans. Recently, this con lict in the region was reignited when an ISIS-linked group attacked the Philippines' Islamic city of Marawi, affecting over 84,000 internally displaced persons from over 18,000 families who are now seeking refuge in 70 different evacuation centers, in a state of discomfort, missing home and psychologically distress.


This paper introduces single-image geometric and appearance reconstruction from water reflection photography, i.e., images capturing direct and water-reflected real-world scenes. Water reflection offers an additional viewpoint to the direct sight, collectively forming a stereo pair. The water-reflected scene, however, includes internally scattered and reflected environmental illumination in addition to the scene radiance, which precludes direct stereo matching. We derive a principled iterative method that disentangles this scene radiometry and geometry for reconstructing 3D scene structure as well as its high-dynamic range appearance. In the presence of waves, we simultaneously recover the wave geometry as surface normal perturbations of the water surface. Most important, we show that the water reflection enables calibration of the camera. In other words, for the first time, we show that capturing a direct and water-reflected scene in a single exposure forms a self-calibrating HDR catadioptric stereo camera. We demonstrate our method on a number of images taken in the wild. The results demonstrate a new means for leveraging this accidental catadioptric camera.


Supervised dimensionality reduction has shown great advantages in finding predictive subspaces. Previous methods rarely consider the popular maximum margin principle and are prone to overfitting to usually small training data, especially for those under the maximum likelihood framework. In this paper, we present a posterior-regularized Bayesian approach to combine Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with the max-margin learning. Based on the data augmentation idea for max-margin learning and the probabilistic interpretation of PCA, our method can automatically infer the weight and penalty parameter of max-margin learning machine, while finding the most appropriate PCA subspace simultaneously under the Bayesian framework. We develop a fast mean-field variational inference algorithm to approximate the posterior. Experimental results on various classification tasks show that our method outperforms a number of competitors.


Plants are teeming with microbial organisms including those that colonize internal tissues as well as those that adhere to external surfaces. In the rhizosphere, the plant-associated microbiome is intricately involved in plant health and serves as a reservoir of additional genes that plants can access when needed. Microbiome regulation of plant trait expression affects plant performance, which in turn influences various ecosystem functions, such as primary productivity and soil health. Understanding these plant- and microbe-driven interactions requires a study of the nature and effects of the plant microbiome. Conceptualizing the microbiome requires a synthesis of microbial ecology, physiology, and bioinformatics, integrated with insight into host biology and ecology. Microbiome structure and function analyses are recognized as essential components to understand the genetic and functional capacity of the host (previously assigned solely to the host) and include vital aspects of metabolism and physiology. Here, as a special section, we present a set of papers that address the complex interactions between plants and root microbiomes in the rhizosphere. This unseen majority spans scales; with its microorganisms numerically dominant in terrestrial ecosystems, the root microbiome is also involved in plant genetics through integral roles in plant trait expression that can effect community composition and ecosystem functions, such as soil health.


ABSTRACT In this paper, I explore kinship and other networks of support for young mothers and their babies after an unintended, ex-nuptial pregnancy in a resource-poor urban setting. I draw on in-depth interviews conducted with 30 young mothers aged 18 to 20 years old and follow up interviews conducted with 9 of them. The interviews focused on three main areas: pregnancy and birth, education and income generation, and support networks. I present three cases that reflect variability in support and kinship network patterns. I use genograms and kinship network maps to identify sources of support and kinship networks within and outside households. Paying attention to the location and distribution of networks, I engage with the role of kinship capital and other forms of support in mitigating some of the negative consequences of early, unplanned motherhood. I show how young mothers draw on support from kinship networks which in turn adapt and reconfigure to provide support, allowing young mothers to exercise agency in relation to aspirations around educational attainment and income generation.


The number of specular points reflected in a random Gaussian surface is determined theoretically under the following alternative conditions: (1) when the surface is perfectly long crested (two-dimensional); (2) when the surface is three-dimensional but isotropic; (3) for quite general surfaces, provided that the observer and the source of radiation are both at a great distance from the surface.The results can be applied to the similar problem when the surface forms the boundary of two refracting media.


In order to obtain "clean" liquefied lignin, selective liquefaction of lignin from bio-ethanol production residue (BEPR) was conducted using an aromatic solvent, furfuryl alcohol. The effects of liquefaction time, temperature, and liquid ratio on the liquefaction yield were investigated. The results indicated that with the increasing of liquefaction temperature (120 to 170 °C) or liquid ratio (3 to 5:1), the liquefaction yield of lignin (LYL) increased, respectively. Liquefaction times of 15 to 120 min had no significant effect on the liquefaction yield. When liquefaction was conducted at 170 °C for 15 min with a ratio of 5/1 liquefying solvent to raw material, the LYL reached its highest level of 80.23%. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Gel permeation chromatography (GPC) analyses confirmed that the liquefaction process had great selectivity for lignin. Ash and carbohydrates in the raw material could be removed as liquefied residue.


The achievement of common goals through voluntary efforts of members of a group can be challenged by the high temptation of individual defection. Here, two-person one-goal assurance games are generalized to N-person, M-goal achievement games in which group members can have different motivations with respect to the achievement of the different goals. The theoretical performance of groups faced with the challenge of multiple simultaneous goals is analyzed mathematically and computationally. For two-goal scenarios one finds that "polarized" as well as "biased" groups perform well in the presence of defectors. A special case, called individual purpose games (where there is a one-to-one mapping between agents and goals for which they have a high achievement motivation) is analyzed in more detail in form of the "importance of being different theorem". It is shown that in some individual purpose games, groups can successfully accomplish several goals simultaneously, such that each group member is highly motivated toward the achievement of one unique goal. The game-theoretic results suggest that multiple goals as well as differences in motivations can, in some cases, correspond to highly effective groups. Applying this approach to the case of winemakers making disease control decisions in their respective vineyards shows that game outcomes need not depend on the heterogeneity in the resource value, as previously thought, but they could be more generally driven by motivation asymmetry. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


We report on the etiology of zygomatic fractures in an Irish population. More than half of these injuries are related to interpersonal assault. Treatment of these injuries places a considerable burden on the health service.


Eigenspace-based face recognition corresponds to one of the most successful methodologies for the computational recognition of faces in digital images. Starting with the Eigenface-Algorithm, different eigenspace-based approaches for the recognition of faces have been proposed. They differ mostly in the kind of projection method used (standard, differential, or kernel eigenspace), in the projection algorithm employed, in the use of simple or differential images before/after projection, and in the similarity matching criterion or classification method employed. The aim of this paper is to present an independent comparative study among some of the main eigenspace-based approaches. We believe that carrying out independent studies is relevant, since comparisons are normally performed using the implementations of the research groups that have proposed each method, which does not consider completely equal working conditions for the algorithms. Very often, a contest between the abilities of the research groups rather than a comparison between methods is performed. This study considers theoretical aspects as well as simulations performed using the Yale Face Database, a database with few classes and several images per class, and FERET, a database with many classes and few images per class.


This study points to the Civil War as the most significant event in American legal history. The basic principles of the postbellum legal order, believes the author, are so radically different from the Constitution of 1787 that they should be recognized as a second American Constitution, establishing a Second Republic. The first Constitution was based on the principles of peoplehood as a voluntary association, individual freedom, and a republican elitism. The guiding premises of the second Constitution - as articulated in Lincoln's visionary address at Gettysburg and enacted in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments - were in contrast, organic nationhood, equality of all persons, and popular democracy. Thus, although we may yearn for continuity with 1787, in fact our values, commitments, and aspirations for America have radically changed. By finally recognizing our radical discontinuity with the first Republic, says Fletcher, we can put an end to debilitating arguments about the Founders' intent and consciously and energetically pursue the full implications of our true beliefs about what America should and can become.


Verticillium dahliae is a soil-borne vascular pathogen that causes severe wilt symptoms in a wide range of plants. Co-culture of the fungus with Arabidopsis roots for 24 h induces many changes in the gene expression profiles of both partners, even before defense-related phytohormone levels are induced in the plant. Both partners reprogram sugar and amino acid metabolism, activate genes for signal perception and transduction, and induce defense- and stress-responsive genes. Furthermore, analysis of Arabidopsis expression profiles suggests a redirection from growth to defense. After 3 weeks, severe disease symptoms can be detected for wild-type plants while mutants impaired in jasmonate synthesis and perception perform much better. Thus, plant jasmonates have an important influence on the interaction, which is already visible at the mRNA level before hormone changes occur. The plant and fungal genes that rapidly respond to the presence of the partner might be crucial for early recognition steps and the future development of the interaction. Thus they are potential targets for the control of V. dahliae-induced wilt diseases.


To analyze quantum many-body Hamiltonians, recently, machine learning techniques have been shown to be quite useful and powerful. However, the applicability of such machine learning solvers is still limited. Here, we propose schemes that make it possible to apply machine learning techniques to analyze fermion-boson coupled Hamiltonians and to calculate excited states. As for the extension to fermion-boson coupled systems, we study the Holstein model as a representative of the fermion-boson coupled Hamiltonians. We show that the machine-learning solver achieves highly accurate ground-state energy, improving the accuracy substantially compared to that obtained by the variational Monte Carlo method. As for the calculations of excited states, we propose a different approach than that proposed in K. Choo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 121 (2018) 167204. We discuss the difference in detail and compare the accuracy of two methods using the one-dimensional $S=1/2$ Heisenberg chain. We also show the benchmark for the frustrated two-dimensional $S=1/2$ $J_1$-$J_2$ Heisenberg model and show an excellent agreement with the results obtained by the exact diagonalization. The extensions shown here open a way to analyze general quantum many-body problems using machine learning techniques.


The Green Skills Module (GS) is a teaching module of the Design and Technology (DT) subjects developed to introduce green skills and foster a positive attitude towards the environment. This article is intended to obtain the consensus of a panel of experts on the content analysis of the GS module. Modified Delphi Technique was used to analyse the contents of the GS Modules. Nine experts in the curriculum, Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET), Environmental Education as well as DT excellent teachers were selected through the method of purposive sampling. The data were collected using a semi-structural interview method for the first round and questionnaires for the second round. Based on the findings, two elements, namely knowledge and practice of green skills included in the GS module, are analysed using IBM SPSS version 21 to get the value of 'Inter Quartile Range' (IQR) and the Wilcoxon Test. The findings show that all the items for practice have been agreed upon by the experts while two items of knowledge have been rejected. This study indicates that the application of Modified Delphi Technique can be a new alternative method in analysing programme content in the development of a module.


The fragmented distribution of Nautilus pompilius and its biology suggest there will be significant genetic divergence and spatial subdivision between east and west Australian populations. Samples were collected from the northern Great Barrier Reef, the Coral Sea, and the Scott Reef off Western Australia. Phylogenetic trees and a minimum spanning tree were developed from these data to elucidate evolutionary relationships. These data demonstrate significant evolutionary separation of each of the three populations into strongly supported discrete clades matching geographic stratification. Within each of the discrete populations, genetic variation is evident. Strong inter-population variation is evident, with discrete geographic clades being recognized for each extant group. The distinct spatial subdivision between east and west Australian populations of Nautilus are related to geographic and physical isolation over evolutionary time, and this has important fisheries management implications. The distinct geographic patterns of genetic structuring demonstrated by these data indicate the existence of discrete eastern and western Australian management units, and as such, these Nautilus populations should be managed discretely, as each has a high conservation value containing unique genetic variation.


Author(s): Novak, Richard | Advisor(s): Mathies, Richard A | Abstract: Multicellular organisms, from roundworms to humans, are composed of interacting individual cells that give rise to an ensemble behavior. Most current technologies enable observation of only the population-level average and often ignore the vast degree of cell heterogeneity present even in clonal populations. Single cell resolution assays of DNA, RNA, proteins, and other biomolecules can yield insights into the complex interactions present in tissues, organs, and whole organisms. Microfluidic systems facilitate single cell analyses by leveraging the micron-scale geometry for improving sensitivity, decreasing reaction time, decreasing reagents consumption, and improving parallelization and automation for high throughput. Microfluidically-generated droplets, in particular, offer extremely high scalability of reactions and straightforward single cell manipulation. This thesis presents the development of microfluidic droplet generator designs and their application for single cell analysis. Developments in microfabricated chip design presented here have resulted in versatile droplet generation tools for a wide range of applications, while novel microfabrication techniques dramatically reduced fabrication time in commercially-viable materials. A radial micropump design increased throughput per device up to 3x106 droplets per hour, allowing us to detect via digital PCR a single pathogenic E. coli O175 in a background of 105 nonpathogenic bacteria. Developing a rapid nickel mold fabrication method has facilitated prototyping and testing of microfluidic designs in thermoplastic materials in as little as 1-3 hours. These microfabrication innovations have accelerated the pace of device development to meet the needs of single cell analysis and other applications. Microfluidic technologies are opening up research paths that so far have been difficult to pursue using conventional methods. High-throughput droplet generation is used to screen purified DNA from healthy subjects exposed to carcinogens for the lymphoma-related t(14;18) chromosomal translocation with a limit of quantitation of less than 1 mutation in 107 genomes and a dynamic range of 105. We also identify unique breakpoint sites and demonstrate the ability to quantify the relative and absolute mutation frequencies within individuals for subjects with multiple mutation events. For analysis of single cell genomes, we present a novel approach for robust DNA purification and analysis using microfluidic agarose droplet encapsulation of single cells. Agarose provides a rigid yet porous shell around cells that enables purification of whole genomes for thousands of cells in parallel without the loss of single cell fidelity. We apply this method to detecting cells containing the t(14;18) translocation and sequencing two DNA targets per cell. This is extended to 9-plex forensic profiling of single cells, thus enabling analysis of complex crime scene samples with multiple contributors or samples with excessive DNA contamination. Finally, droplets are applied to investigating multiple biological parameters per cell, including growth rate, gene expression, and alternative splicing. We perform cell culture in nanoliter droplets for fast generation and monitoring of colonies originating from single cells. Colonies are subsequently assayed for telomerase hTR RNA and hTERT mRNA expression levels and hTERT splice variants. We observe a large degree of expression level bimodality for several splice variants and significant reductions in bimodality coupled with increases in alpha splicing following exposure to sub-lethal concentrations of the anti-cancer compound curcumin. Prospects for microfluidic droplets are discussed in the context of multiparameter single cell analysis as well as applications of single cell analysis to microfluidic organs-on-a-chip. Understanding basic molecular biology mechanisms from the perspective of single cells will yield insights into behavior of multicellular populations with far-reaching scientific and clinical impacts.


Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) infection results in approximately 1.3 million human deaths each year. M.tb resides primarily inside macrophages, and maintains persistent infection. In response to infection and inflammation, platelet activating factor C-16 (PAF C-16), a phospholipid compound, is released by various cells including neutophils and monocytes. We have recently shown that PAF C-16 can directly inhibit the growth of two representative non-pathogenic mycobacteria, Mycobacterium bovis BCG and Mycobacterium smegmatis (M. smegmatis), by damaging the bacterial cell membrane. Here, we have examined the effect of PAF C-16 on M. smegmatis residing within macrophages, and identified mechanisms involved in their growth inhibitory function. Our results demonstrated that exogenous PAF C-16 inhibited the growth of M. smegmatis inside phagocytic cells of monocytic cell line, THP-1; this effect was partially blocked by PAF receptor antagonists, suggesting the involvement of PAF receptor-mediated signaling pathways. Arachidonic acid, a downstream metabolite of PAF C-16 signaling pathway, directly inhibited the growth of M. smegmatis in vitro. Moreover, the inhibition of phospholipase C and phospholipase A2 activities, involved in PAF C-16 signaling pathway, increased survival of intracellular M. smegmatis. Interestingly, we also observed that inhibition of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) enzyme and antibody-mediated neutralization of TNF-α partially mitigated the intracellular growth inhibitory effect of PAF C-16. Use of a number of PAF C-16 structural analogs, including Lyso-PAF, 2-O-methyl PAF, PAF C-18 and Hexanolamino PAF, revealed that the presence of acetyl group (CH3CO) at sn-2 position of the glycerol backbone of PAF is important for the intracellular growth inhibition activity against M. smegmatis. Taken together, these results suggest that exogenous PAF C-16 treatment inhibits intracellular M. smegmatis growth, at least partially, in a nitric oxide and TNF-α dependent manner.


Rapid demand on system-on-chip(SoCs) and communication increases with the help of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) circuits, even though prime factor is to reduce the Power consumption and the thermal wall have become the major factors limiting the speed of while interconnect is becoming a primary power consumer. High bandwidth is desired to enhance parallelism for better performance, and the power efficiency on this bandwidth is critical to the overall SoC power consumption. Current bus architectures such as AMBA, Core connect, and Avalon are convenient for designers but not efficient on power. This paper proposes a physical synthesis scheme for on-chip buses and bus matrices to minimize the power consumption, without changing the interface or arbitration protocols. By using a bus gating technique, data transactions can take shortest paths on chip, reducing the power consumption of bus wires to minimal. Routing resource and bandwidth capacity are also optimized by the construction of a shortest-path Steiner graph, wire sharing among multiple data transactions, and wire reduction heuristics on the Steiner graph. Experiments indicate that the gated bus from our synthesis flow can save more than 90% dynamic power on average data transactions in current AMBA bus systems, which is about 5–10% of total SoC power consumption, based on comparable amount of chip area and routing resources.


An informer sequentially collects and disseminates information through costly research to persuade an evaluator to approve an activity. Payoffs and control rights are split between informer and evaluator depending on the organizational rules governing the approval process. The welfare benchmark corresponds to Wald's classic solution for a statistician with payoff equal to the sum of informer and evaluator. Organizations with different commitment power of informer and evaluator are compared from a positive and normative perspective. Granting authority to the informer is socially optimal when information acquisition is sufficiently costly. The analysis is applied to the regulatory process for drug approval. (JEL D82, D83, I18, L51, L65, O31)


Introduction Since the early 1920s, administrators representing virtually all universities and colleges worldwide have been using some form of evaluation instrument to measure teacher effectiveness (Guthrie, 1954; Kulik, 2001; Seldin, 1993). These teacher evaluation forms (TEFs) have an impact on decisions regarding teachers' pay, tenure, promotion, and awards (Onwuegbuzie, Witcher, et al., 2007). Indeed, as noted by Washburn and Thornton (1996), TEFs often are used as the sole measure of teacher effectiveness. Additionally, these forms aid students in choosing teachers and courses (Gray & Bergmann, 2003; Marsh & Roche, 1993; Seldin, 1993). Thus, it is vital that data yielded by these TEFS are maximally valid. Onwuegbuzie, Witcher, et al. (2007) assessed the validity of scores pertaining to a TEF by examining 912 students' perceptions of characteristics of effective college teachers. Their study was informative because they were able to develop themes and meta-themes that produced what they termed as the CARE-RESPECTED Model of Teaching Evaluation. This model comprised nine characteristics (i.e., Responsive, Enthusiast, Student-Centered, Professional, Expert, Connector, Transmitter, Ethical, and Director) that factored into four meta-themes (Communicator, Advocate, Responsible, Empowering) that students considered to reflect effective college teaching. These nine themes and four meta-themes are described in Table 1 and Table 2, respectively. Through their model, Onwuegbuzie, Witcher, et al. (2007) hoped to develop an instrument that would provide formative and summative information about the efficacy of instruction. Interestingly, their model has been so popular that from 2007 until 2012, Onwuegbuzie, Witcher, et al.'s (2007) article was the most downloaded article among all articles ever published in the American Educational Research Journal. Since this article was published, educational researchers have increased their interest in TEFs. Indeed, prior to Onwuegbuzie, Witcher, et al.'s (2007) study, there were only six notably published studies in this area. These studies are presented in Table 3. The authors of these works identified several characteristics of effective teaching. Table 4 presents articles in the area of TEFs that were identified through the EBSCOHOST from 2007 to 2011. To locate these articles, two key phrases were used. The first search involved use of the search phrase "student perceptions of effective teachers," which yielded 153 articles, of which six articles were applicable to the current study, and the second search involved use of the search phrase "evaluation of college teachers," which yielded 116 articles, of which four articles were applicable to the current study. These articles informed the sections that follow. Historical Reflection of TEFs Calkins and Micari (2010) revealed that the first formal student rating systems occurred in the mid 1920s at Purdue University. These rating systems assessed the following effective teaching traits: (a) fairness in grading, (b) stimulating intellectual curiosity, and (c) personal peculiarities. During this time, university faculty members, who were held in high scholarly regard, had complete autonomy of their classrooms and could disregard student ratings at their discretion. By the 1950s, however, scholarly regard was beginning to be replaced with skepticism during the Postwar era (Calkins & Micari, 2010). The McCarthy proceedings, which aroused suspicion of Communist education occurring at the university level, influenced government officials to use student ratings to control lectures and to target and to release faculty members who were suspected of Communist instruction. Although students believed that they were gaining power and a voice on their campuses, student rating systems became the leading leverage that government officials would use to monitor curriculum and to hold professors accountable for student success (Calkings & Micari, 2010). …


The aim of this research paper is to investigate the efficiency of dissimilar friction welded super duplex stainless steel SAF 2507 and mild steel joints. The joints were obtained using rotary friction welding process. Friction pressure and forging pressure are varied in three different cases but rotational speed and friction time are kept constant .The joints were subjected to tensile strength and metallographic study. The tensile strength of welded joints compared to that of SDSS SAF 2507 and mild steel in as received condition. The joint efficiency were calculated .The tensile strength and joints efficiency decreased with increasing friction pressure and forging pressure .The results attributed to change in mechanical, physical properties ,and micro structural changes of welded joints like change in ferrite to austenite percent, precipitation of carbides and nitrides ,sigma phase,....etc.


This study was carried out at Bahri Dagdas International Agricultural Research Institute's experimental areas. C 955 and DK 585 were used as material. Richards, Gaussian and Logistic growth models were used for describing plants growth. Coefficient of determination (R), mean squared error (MSE), model efficiency (ME), mean rational error (MRE), mean squared variation (MSV) and Bias were used as comparison criteria. As results, Richards model described dry matter accumulation of silage and seeds corns better than Gaussian and Logistic growth models. Logistic growth equation described dry matter accumulation of silage and seeds corns worse than others growth.


ABSTRACT Klebsiella pneumoniae is at the forefront of antimicrobial resistance for Gram-negative pathogenic bacteria, as strains resistant to third-generation cephalosporins and carbapenems are widely reported. The worldwide diffusion of these strains is of great concern due to the high morbidity and mortality often associated with K. pneumoniae infections in nosocomial environments. We sequenced the genomes of 89 K. pneumoniae strains isolated in six Italian hospitals. Strains were selected based on antibiotypes, regardless of multilocus sequence type, to obtain a picture of the epidemiology of K. pneumoniae in Italy. Thirty-one strains were carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae carbapenemase producers, 29 were resistant to third-generation cephalosporins, and 29 were susceptible to the aforementioned antibiotics. The genomes were compared to all of the sequences available in the databases, obtaining a data set of 319 genomes spanning the known diversity of K. pneumoniae worldwide. Bioinformatic analyses of this global data set allowed us to construct a whole-species phylogeny, to detect patterns of antibiotic resistance distribution, and to date the differentiation between specific clades of interest. Finally, we detected an ∼1.3-Mb recombination that characterizes all of the isolates of clonal complex 258, the most widespread carbapenem-resistant group of K. pneumoniae. The evolution of this complex was modeled, dating the newly detected and the previously reported recombination events. The present study contributes to the understanding of K. pneumoniae evolution, providing novel insights into its global genomic characteristics and drawing a dated epidemiological scenario for this pathogen in Italy.


The concept of mobility, related to technology in particular, has evolved dramatically over the last two decades including: (i) hardware ranging from walkmans to Ipods, laptops to netbooks, PDAs to 3G mobile phone; (ii) software supporting multiple audio and video formats driven by ubiquitous mobile wireless access, WiMax, automations such as radio frequency ID tracking and location aware services. Against the background of increasing budget deficit, along with the imperative for efficiency gains, leveraging ICT and mobility promises for work related tasks, in a public administration context, in emerging markets, point to multiple possible paths. M-government transition involve both technological changes and adoption to deliver government services differently (e.g. 24/7, error free, anywhere to the same standards) but also the design of digital strategies including possibly competing m-government models, the re-shaping of cultural practices, the creation of m-policies and legislations, the structuring of m-services architecture, and progress regarding m-governance. While many emerging countries are already offering e-government services and are gearing-up for further m-government activities, little is actually known about the resistance that is encountered, as a reflection of civil servants' current standing, before any further macro-strategies are deployed. Drawing on the resistance and mobility literature, this chapter investigates how civil servants' behaviors, in an emerging country technological environment, through their everyday practice, react and resist the influence of m-government transition. The findings points to four main type of resistance namely: i) functional resistance; ii) ideological resistance; iii) market driven resistance and iv) geographical resistance. Policy implication are discussed in the specific context of emerging markets. © 2011, IGI Global.


Background Cerebral venous thrombosis accounts for <5% of all strokes. Cortical vein thrombosis (CVT) is even rarer and usually coexists with sinus thrombosis but can present in isolation. As a group their presentation is with headache, focal cortical signs and seizures. Radiologically, patients present with unusual patterns of ischaemia or haemorrhage (particularly subcortical) and oedema in non-arterial territories. We reviewed the potential predisposing factors to thrombosis and discuss the relevance of variation of cortical venous anatomy to CVT and clinical outcome. Methods Retrospective case analysis of seven patients with isolated CVT. The diagnosis of which was made from a combination of the clinical picture (headache, focal cortical deficit and seizures) and the presence of direct evidence of clot or non-arterial infarction or haemorrhage on standard MRI sequences in addition to perfusion MRV and CE MRV. Results Of seven cases four were female, five patients presented with cerebral haemorrhage. Two patients had bilateral hemispheric involvement with three that involved the left hemisphere. Five patients presented with headache, all had focal neurological deficit and three had seizures. Five patients required heparin and six patients had good clinical outcome. Conclusions The presence of headache, seizures and focal cortical signs with unusual non-arterial patterns of ischaemia/haemorrhage should alert clinicians to CVT. Variation in cortical venous drainage may potentiate CVT. In the absence of prompt diagnosis and aggressive treatment with hydration and anticoagulation patients are vulnerable to poor outcome.


Out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) have been proposed as a tool to witness quantum information scrambling in many-body system dynamics. These correlators can be understood as averages over nonclassical multi-time quasi-probability distributions (QPDs). These QPDs have more information, and their nonclassical features witness quantum information scrambling in a more nuanced way. However, their high dimensionality and nonclassicality make QPDs challenging to measure experimentally. We focus on the topical case of a many-qubit system and show how to obtain such a QPD in the laboratory using circuits with three and four sequential measurements. Averaging distinct values over the same measured distribution reveals either the OTOC or parameters of its QPD. Stronger measurements minimize experimental resources despite increased dynamical disturbance.


Edgar Allan Poe suffered from a malady common to nineteenth-century American authors living on both continents: economic circumstances that necessitated a reliance on the market forces of a polity and society with which he clashed. Poe often criticized his contemporary social, political, and literary spheres, and expressed a particular distaste for what he deemed the "folly" of a national literature ("Exordium to Critical Notices" 1027). Perhaps as a remedy to this "folly," he wrote, "the world at large [forms] the only proper stage for the literary histrio" (1027; "Editorial Miscellanies" 1076). (1) In this declaration, Poe emphasizes an artistic cosmopolitanism that is not suggestive of a hypothetical global community, but rather, a severance that denies a particular political attachment. Ironically, at the time Poe claimed the world over nation as the stage for literature, the United States was extending its reach throughout this same "world at large," exemplifying a different cosmopolitan impulse that manifested itself in an expanding global presence and hemispheric hegemony. This paper considers the variance of these two cosmopolitanisms--the negation of a national particularity proposed by Poe against the economic and political expansion at work on a global scale by the United States--as they emerge in several alterations made to Poe's work by the Uruguayan author Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937). In his "Decalogo del perfecto cuentista" ("The 10 Commandments of the Perfect Short-Story Writer"), the status of Poe as a literary predecessor deliberately chosen by Quiroga is clear. The first of these commandments reads: "cree en un maestro--Poe, Maupassant, Kipling, Chejov--como en Dios mismo" (I) [Believe in a master--Poe, Maupassant, Kipling, Chekov--as in God himself]. Yet this principle is tempered by the third mandate on the list: "resiste cuanto puedas a la imitacion, pero imita si el influjo es demasiado fuerte" (III) [resist imitation as much as possible, but do imitate if the influence is too strong]. The tension between these two tenets--between choosing a model and resisting imitation--is evident in Quiroga's treatment of Poe, and illustrates moreover the tension between text and context--between the international proliferation of Poe's literary influence and the simultaneous growth and consolidation of U.S. influence in Latin America--that is necessarily attendant to Quiroga's adaptations of Poe. In the following discussion, I trace the appearance of this tension in Quiroga's work through a comparative examination of his multiple renderings of Poe's 1846 short story, "The Cask of Amontillado." Over the course of about twenty years in the early twentieth century, Quiroga published "El tonel del amontillado" (1901; "The Cask of Amontillado"), "El crimen del otro" (1904; "The Crime of the Other"), "La lengua" (1921; "The Tongue"), and "Una bofetada" (1920; "A Slap in the Face"), each of which alludes to "The Cask of Amontillado." These distinct rewritings of Poe's classic tale demonstrate the development of an increasingly problematic engagement with Poe as Quiroga attempts to navigate between an aesthetic appreciation of Poe's works (and hence, his selection of Poe as model) and the shadow of Poe's socio-political context (i.e., his identity as a U.S. author). These rewritings, consequently, provide a critical index for the fin-de-siecle presence of the United States in Latin America. A complex engagement with rewriting Poe emerges in the ambiguities of Quiroga's first rendering of "The Cask of Amontillado." "El tonel del amontillado," published in the collection Los arrecifes de coral (The Coral Reefs) in 1901, is a short narration whose title is a literal translation of the original. In this piece, Poe's Fortunato is disinterred, his clothing "aun polvoreado de cales" (82) [still dusty with limestone], and he enthusiastically recounts his past adventures to an unnamed narrator. In this short story, Quiroga dramatizes the process of rewriting by duplicating it: the story not only resurrects Poe's tale, but employs a literal process of resurrection, bringing Fortunato out of Montresor's vaults, still covered with limestone dust. …


Syringomyelia secondary to arachnoiditis is a rarely reported entity, which has not been described in the radiographic literature. A series of eight patients who had either postinfectious, posthemorrhagic, iatrogenic, or idiopathic arachnoiditis was examined recently with metrizamide computed tomography (CT). These patients presented with progressive neurologic deficits that could not be attributed to the level of arachnoid changes on myelography. On immediate and/or delayed CT scans, metrizamide accumulation within the central part of the cord was identified, both at and above the level of the arachnoiditis. In some patients, the cord diameter was normal. Syrinx cavities were demonstrated and shunted at surgery with subsequent partial relief or arrest of the symptoms. The mechanism of development of postinflammatory syringomyelia is discussed.


Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have been successfully employed by a vast range of practitioners with different backgrounds. One of the reasons for ML popularity is the capability to consistently delivers accurate results, which can be further boosted by adjusting hyperparameters (HP). However, part of practitioners has limited knowledge about the algorithms and does not take advantage of suitable HP settings. In general, HP values are defined by trial and error, tuning, or by using default values. Trial and error is very subjective, time costly and dependent on the user experience. Tuning techniques search for HP values able to maximize the predictive performance of induced models for a given dataset, but with the drawback of a high computational cost and target specificity. To avoid tuning costs, practitioners use default values suggested by the algorithm developer or by tools implementing the algorithm. Although default values usually result in models with acceptable predictive performance, different implementations of the same algorithm can suggest distinct default values. To maintain a balance between tuning and using default values, we propose a strategy to generate new optimized default values. Our approach is grounded on a small set of optimized values able to obtain predictive performance values better than default settings provided by popular tools. The HP candidates are estimated through a pool of promising values tuned from a small and informative set of datasets. After performing a large experiment and a careful analysis of the results, we concluded that our approach delivers better default values. Besides, it leads to competitive solutions when compared with the use of tuned values, being easier to use and having a lower cost.Based on our results, we also extracted simple rules to guide practitioners in deciding whether using our new methodology or a tuning approach.


Here, we have synthesized the silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) by using the soil fungus Aspergillus niger 2587. The results recorded from UV-vis spectrophotometer and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) support the biosynthesis and characterization of AgNPs. The synthesized silver nanoparticles have also been tested against the larvae and pupae of Anopheles stephensi, Culex quinquefasciatus and Aedes aegypti. The efficacy test was performed at different concentrations for a period of different hours by the probit analysis. The larvae of Cx. quinquefasciatus have shown the 100% mortality to the synthesized AgNPs after 1 h of exposure, while the larvae of An. stephensi and Ae. aegypti were found less susceptible to the synthesized AgNPs. The pupa of Ae. aegypti has shown the efficacy LC50 4, LC90 12 and LC99 19 ppm after 2 h of exposure of the synthesized AgNPs, while, the pupae of Cx. quinquefasciatus and An. stephensi were found less susceptible to the synthesized AgNPs. By this approach, it is suggestive that this rapid synthesis of nanoparticles would be proper for developing a biological process for mosquito control.


Background: Anthropometric scales express the physical potential of football players and can be used to compare them with other sports. Anthropometric proportions play a key role in cricket. Aims and Objectives: To comparison of various anthropometric parameters in cricket and football players. Material and Methods: The present research was carried out in the Sports Physiology Laboratory of the Department of Physiology. The period of the study from December 2012 to November 2014 and the form of study is not followed up. Test analysis is conducted to conduct a comparative study of anthropometric parameters in cricket and football players. Results: We did a test sample with 60 subjects (30 cricket players and 30 football players). The average value of the height of football players is more than that of cricketers. The average weight value of cricket players is higher than that of football players. BMI, percent body fat, percent lean body weight, mid-upper arm circumference, mid-upper arm area, corrected mid-upper arm muscle area, arm fat index, is substantially higher in Cricket players than in Football players. Conclusion: In our research, we notice that, in our cricket and football players, the majority of anthropometric parameters such as height, weight, percent lean body mass, mid-upper arm diameter, mid-upper arm area, and corrected mid-upper arm muscle area are lagging when compared to international cricketers and football players.


The nitrobenzylidenefurandiones 7 react with acetoacetic ester (8) and ammonium acetate or 3-aminocrotonic esters (9a, b) and 2-amino-pent-2-en-4-on (9c), respectively heating in acetic acid to yield the tetrahydrofuro[3,4-b]pyridines 10. The dehydrogenation of 10 using nitric acid or activated manganese dioxide leads to the dihydrofuro[3,4-b]pyridines 12. When the reaction is carried out with the tetronic acid derivatives 7 and the enaminocarbonyl compounds 9 at 30 °C in tert-butanol the hexahydro-7a-hydroxyfuro[3,4-b]pyridines 11 are obtained. Treating the N,O-acetales 11 with acetic anhydride in pyridine affords the annulated lactones 10.


The dynamics and competitively of contemporary labour market is asking for up-to date and pragmatic university courses. A good course is no longer relaying just on the tutor decision, it has to take into consideration a lot of factors, among which the students' opinions as well as their background are among the most important. In order to design a competitive course a real dialogue between the two factors: tutors and students should be initiated from the very beginning. Dialogue and discussions are attitudes that always stimulate and improve didactic strategies, but establishing a constructive dialogue is not a very easy task, especially when working with students enrolled in distance learning courses. Generally speaking, students, mainly in the first year are quite redundant in expressing their opinions and facing their needs. Most of need analysis designed in the first course turned into formal attitudes.
Taking into consideration the above aspects and being aware of the importance of using the new pedagogical and philological support in distance learning environment we thought that some facilities of the virtual campus can be used in order to reinforce students' role in designing a course and clarifying the its main objectives. This paper presents the way in which we used existing facilities of the Credis Virtual Campus and the way in which we want to develop it order to establish a real dialogue with our students, as a leading step in designing a competitive course. Due to the fact that they belong to the faculty of Nursery and Primary School Pedagogy our aim is to teach them not only our particular academic curricula, but also how to use those facilities for their future students.


Many women with serious mental health issues also deal with abuse and have difficulty accessing services. Despite the fact that groups have been found to be one of the most useful tools in healing from the effects of abuse, many professionals see women with serious mental health issues as unable to benefit from counselling and, in particular, from groups for abused women. This study indicates that, when mental health issues are addressed and the group structures and expectations are modified to allow women control over their participation, serious mental health issues are not a barrier to participation in groups.


The current work investigates how adding a battery of optimal capacity to a grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system can improve its economic feasibility. Also, the effect of different parameters on the feasibility of the PV system was evaluated. The optimal battery capacity (OBC) was determined for different saving targets of the annual electricity consumption of the chosen building. For this aim, real electricity consumption data of a residential building in Landskrona, Sweden, was used as energy consumption profile. A Solar World SW325XL, which is a monocrystalline solar panel, was selected as PV panel. The calculations were performed under the metrological and economic conditions of southern Sweden. Different working parameters (WPs) were considered (prices of the battery, feed-in tariffs, and saving targets). The performed calculations show that the optimal battery capacity (OBC), in which the payback time (PBT) of the system is maximized, strongly depends on the WP. The proper selection of the battery can considerably increase the economic feasibility of the PV system in southern Sweden. However, in some cases, using battery can have a negative impact on the PBT of the system. The results show that the electricity price, the module price, the inverter price, and the inverter lifetime have the highest effect on the PBT.


Hundreds of sterile α-motif (SAM) domains have predicted structural similarities and are reported to bind proteins, lipids, or RNAs. However, the majority of these domains have not been analyzed functionally. Previously, we demonstrated that a SAM domain-containing protein, SAMD14, promotes SCF/proto-oncogene c-Kit (c-Kit) signaling, erythroid progenitor function, and erythrocyte regeneration. Deletion of a Samd14 enhancer (Samd14–Enh), occupied by GATA2 and SCL/TAL1 transcription factors, reduces SAMD14 expression in bone marrow and spleen and is lethal in a hemolytic anemia mouse model. To rigorously establish whether Samd14–Enh deletion reduces anemia-dependent c-Kit signaling by lowering SAMD14 levels, we developed a genetic rescue assay in murine Samd14–Enh−/− primary erythroid precursor cells. SAMD14 expression at endogenous levels rescued c-Kit signaling. The conserved SAM domain was required for SAMD14 to increase colony-forming activity, c-Kit signaling, and progenitor survival. To elucidate the molecular determinants of SAM domain function in SAMD14, we substituted its SAM domain with distinct SAM domains predicted to be structurally similar. The chimeras were less effective than SAMD14 itself in rescuing signaling, survival, and colony-forming activities. Thus, the SAMD14 SAM domain has attributes that are distinct from other SAM domains and underlie SAMD14 function as a regulator of cellular signaling and erythrocyte regeneration.


This article presents the definition and implementation of a quantum computer architecture to enable creating a new computational device—a quantum computer as an accelerator. A key question addressed is what such a quantum computer is and how it relates to the classical processor that controls the entire execution process. In this article, we present explicitly the idea of a quantum accelerator that contains the full stack of the layers of an accelerator. Such a stack starts at the highest level describing the target application of the accelerator. The next layer abstracts the quantum logic outlining the algorithm that is to be executed on the quantum accelerator. In our case, the logic is expressed in the universal quantum-classical hybrid computation language developed in the group, called OpenQL, which visualized the quantum processor as a computational accelerator. The OpenQL compiler translates the program to a common assembly language, called cQASM, which can be executed on a quantum simulator. The cQASM represents the instruction set that can be executed by the microarchitecture implemented in the quantum accelerator. In a subsequent step, the compiler can convert the cQASM to generate the eQASM, which is executable on a particular experimental device incorporating the platform-specific parameters. This way, we are able to distinguish clearly the experimental research toward better qubits, and the industrial and societal applications that need to be developed and executed on a quantum device. The first case offers experimental physicists with a full-stack experimental platform using realistic qubits with decoherence and error-rates, whereas the second case offers perfect qubits to the quantum application developer, where there is neither decoherence nor error-rates. We conclude the article by explicitly presenting three examples of full-stack quantum accelerators, for an experimental superconducting processor, for quantum accelerated genome sequencing and for near-term generic optimization problems based on quantum heuristic approaches. The two later full-stack models are currently being actively researched in our group.


This paper describes central theoretical concepts related to web services, service-oriented architecture, semantic web and Ontologies, focusing on the service composition mechanisms. It is discussed what the mechanisms really are, what they do, and how they can be implemented. References to ongoing research project are given. A Composition Framework using the core composition mechanisms are proposed and a Proof of Concept using this framework is implemented. The framework is created as general as possible using interfaces and known communication protocols. Our framework and architectural choices will be described, evaluated and tested. The testing focuses on time, memory usage and CPU usage.


The influence of the family in the care of family practice patients has not been studied extensively. This study uses hypertension as an index condition to characterize the extent of involvement of family around family practice center (FPC) patients and to examine whether the presence of family members influences patient outcomes. Records of 366 hypertensive patients were reviewed for information about blood pressures, demographic characteristics, associated medical conditions, and treatment. Three hundred forty-three of these patients responded to questions about family members, including their use of the FPC and whether they also had hypertension. Twenty percent of patients lived alone. Of the rest, two thirds had some, and one half had all family members enrolled in the FPC. Seventy-three listed family with hypertension, and 42 said these relatives were treated at the FPC. At the time of the first visit to the FPC for hypertension, the mean diastolic blood pressure was 93 mmHg. At their most recent visit, the mean was 83 mmHg, and 69 percent were below 90 mmHg. There was no association between blood pressure control and family enrollment in the FPC.


Most patients suffering from coronary heart disease have string--like pulse due mainly to disorder of cardiac function, lowered arterial compliance and increased total peripheral resistance. The common type of pulse in hematopathy patients is rapid, thready, string--like and slippery, due mainly to increased compensatory pumping action of heart, shortening of ejection time of left ventricle, relatively better vessel compliance and blood rheology as well as low total peripheral resistance.


Sir, Fortuitously, the letter by Joosten et al.' describing the receiver operating characteristic curve for serum ferritin coincided with the publication of the study showing the impact of ventilation/perfusion scanning on diagnostic precision in pulmonary embolism.2 In the PIOPED study the use of high probability lung scan as the decisive diagnostic parameter yielded a specificity of 97% corresponding to a sensitivity of 41%,3 the latter statistic perhaps providing comfort for the perception prevailing amongst 47% of Scottish consultants, that pulmonary scintigraphy was of no value in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.4 The sensitivity of98% which accompanied the use of the low probability scan was accompanied by a fall in specificity to 10%,3 exemplifying the truism that all diagnostic cut-off levels are a trade-off between sensitivity and specificity. For common, and highly treatable, conditions such as iron deficiency and pulmonary embolism, most clinicians are prepared to maximize sensitivity at the expense of specificity, especially if supportive circumstantial evidence can be obtained from tests such as the haematological response to iron supplements in the case of suspected sideropaenia,5 and lower limb venography in suspected thrombo-embolic disease.6 Sensitivity becomes subservient to specificity, however, when maximum diagnostic accuracy is a precondition for testing a hypothesis, hence the use of a serum ferritin< 10 ng/ml as the diagnostic parameter for iron deficiency in the study comparing mean corpuscular volume and mean corpuscular haemoglobin.7


Linear Context-free Rewriting Systems (LCFRS) is an expressive grammar formalism with applications in syntax-based machine translation. The parsing complexity of an LCFRS is exponential in both the rank of a production, defined as the number of nonterminals on its right-hand side, and a measure for the discontinuity of a phrase, called fan-out. In this paper, we present an algorithm that transforms an LCFRS into a strongly equivalent form in which all productions have rank at most 2, and has minimal fan-out. Our results generalize previous work on Synchronous Context-Free Grammar, and are particularly relevant for machine translation from or to languages that require syntactic analyses with discontinuous constituents.


Democracy cannot prosper without democrats. The challenges facing the democratic transformation in Sudan are immense. This report signified the power-sharing intricacies that had been in place for over two years between the civilians and military. The 25 October coup put an end to that partnership. Nonetheless, people in Sudan are increasingly determined to regain their democratic transition. Building Democracy requires more than extending goodwill. It has always been said democracy cannot prosper without democrats. In context, International IDEA Sudan's Programme saw the need to explore the perceptions of the main stakeholder in the democratic transition of Sudan, its people. The primary objective of this report is to study the perceptions among the Sudanese population of the motivations for and barriers to democratic participation. The study aims to generate a baseline of understanding to guide the design of further relevant civic education interventions. Methodologically, this was achieved using primary and secondary data sources: Primary data was collected through direct fieldwork using a structured questionnaire, interviews, focus group discussions and key informant interviews, as well as participatory observation. Secondary sources were collated in a desk review of existing academic and public opinion research, such as data from Afro-barometer and the International IDEA Global State of Democracy Indices.


How do contemporary imaging devices and the forms in which images are displayed affect our perception of Mars? How are scientists and engineers visually exploring, experiencing and navigating this uninhabitable terrain? Can we better understand this virtual landscape through immersive imaging techniques, or are these simply illusions? At what point does the glitch invade these immersive spaces, throwing us back into the realm of the image? And finally, can the glitch be seen as a method towards another kind of visibility, enabling us to 'see' and encounter Mars in productive ways?
Through the analysis of contemporary representations of the Martian terrain, Mars, Invisible Vision and the Virtual Landscape: Immersive Encounters with Contemporary Rover Images offers a new contribution to studies of the digital and virtual image. Specifically addressing immersive image forms used in Mars exploration the research is structured around four main case studies: life-size illusions such as panoramas; 3D imaging; false colour imaging; and the concept of a 'Mars Yard'. The thesis offers a new understanding of human interaction with a landscape only visible through a screen, and how contemporary scientific imaging devices aim to collapse the frame and increase a sense of immersion in the image. Arguing that these representations produce inherently virtual experiences, their transportive power is questioned, highlighting the image as reconstructed – through the presence of a glitch, illusion is broken, revealing the image-as-image.
This thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach in which scientific images are analysed through the prism of photography's relationship to reality, theories of vision and perception, representations of landscape, and digital and virtual image theory. At the heart of this thesis is the act of looking; critical and speculative writing is used to convey immersive encounters with images at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (USA); University College London's Regional Planetary Imaging Facility; Airbus Defence and Space (UK); the photographic archive at the VA and the Panorama Mesdag (Netherlands). The research re-examines scientific forms of images against examples from the history of visual culture (be it art or popular culture) to draw parallels between different ways of seeing, representing and discovering the unknown.
The eyes of the Mars rovers provide viewpoints through which we regard an alien terrain: windows upon unknown worlds. Rover images bridge a gap between what is known and unknown, between what is visible and invisible. The rover is our surrogate, an extension of our vision that portrays an intuitively comprehensible landscape. Yet this landscape remains totally out of reach, millions of miles away. This distance is an impenetrable boundary – both physically and metaphorically – that new technologies are trying to break. Mars, Invisible Vision and the Virtual Landscape offers a two-way impact, constituting a new approach to the relationship between real and imagined images in order to demonstrate that the real Mars, however it is represented and perceived, remains distant and detached.


This thesis presents a two-dimensional water model investigation and development of a multiscale method for the modelling of large systems, such as virus in water or peptide immersed in the solvent. We have implemented a two-dimensional 'Mercedes Benz' (MB) or BN2D water model using Molecular Dynamics. We have studied its dynamical and structural properties dependence on the model's parameters. For the first time we derived formulas to calculate thermodynamic properties of the MB model in the microcanonical (NVE) ensemble. We also derived equations of motion in the isothermal–isobaric (NPT) ensemble. We have analysed the rotational degree of freedom of the model in both ensembles. We have developed and implemented a self-consistent multiscale method, which is able to communicate micro- and macro- scales. This multiscale method assumes, that matter consists of the two phases. One phase is related to micro- and the other to macroscale. We simulate the macro scale using Landau Lifshitz-Fluctuating Hydrodynamics, while we describe the microscale using Molecular Dynamics. We have demonstrated that the communication between the disparate scales is possible without introduction of fictitious interface or approximations which reduce the accuracy of the information exchange between the scales. We have investigated control parameters, which were introduced to control the contribution of each phases to the matter behaviour. We have shown, that microscales inherit dynamical properties of the macroscales and vice versa, depending on the concentration of each phase. We have shown, that Radial Distribution Function is not altered and velocity autocorrelation functions are gradually transformed, from Molecular Dynamics to Fluctuating Hydrodynamics description, when phase balance is changed. In this work we test our multiscale method for the liquid argon, BN2D and SPC/E water models. For the SPC/E water model we investigate microscale fluctuations which are computed using advanced mapping technique of the small scales to the large scales, which was developed by Voulgarakisand et. al.


Extending the understanding of race and ethnicity in the South beyond the prism of black-white relations, this interdisciplinary collection explores the growth, impact, and significance of rapidly growing Asian American populations in the American South. Avoiding the usual focus on the East and West Coasts, several essays attend to the nuanced ways in which Asian Americans negotiate the dominant black and white racial binary, while others provoke readers to reconsider the supposed cultural isolation of the region, reintroducing the South within a historical web of global networks across the Caribbean, Pacific, and Atlantic. Contributors are Vivek Bald, Leslie Bow, Amy Brandzel, Daniel Bronstein, Jigna Desai, Jennifer Ho, Khyati Y. Joshi, ChangHwan Kim, Marguerite Nguyen, Purvi Shah, Arthur Sakamoto, Jasmine Tang, Isao Takei, and Roy Vu.


This article assesses the intimate shift that documentary film has experienced in the last decades in Spain. The aim is to identify the aesthetic and narrative strategies that characterize the first-person documentary, as well as its implementation difficulties in Spain due to the socio-historical value associated with the genre. As a case study, the film Mapa (Siminiani, 2012) is analyzed as a practice where the cinematographic and the life of the author are inextricably linked. This is intended to shed light on the generic ambiguity of the film, between the road movie, the filmed diary and auto-fiction.


In this experiment, we are testing if different forms of sugar have an effect on yeast's production of ethanol. Ethanol is produced through the fermentation that takes place due to the processing of sugar by yeast (Futrell et al 2016). We tested ethanol production rates in separate bio chambers with 2% rice sugar, dextrose, and corn sugar solutions. We used an ethanol probe to measure the production rate of ethanol in the bio chambers. Yeast is a unicellular eukaryotic organism that helps produce products such as bread by producing CO2 through aerobic respiration (French 2016). Because monosaccharides, or simple sugars, are more easily and quickly broken down by yeast, we hypothesize that the rice sugar and corn sugar will produce ethanol at lower rates than dextrose because the yeast will be able to metabolize dextrose faster because it is a monosaccharide.


Rubric assessment of information literacy is an important tool for librarians seeking to show evidence of student learning. The authors, who collaborated on the Rubric Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (RAILS) research project, draw from their shared experience to present practical recommendations for implementing rubric assessment in a variety of institutional contexts. These recommendations focus on four areas: (1) building successful collaborative relationships, (2) developing assignments, (3) creating and using rubrics, and (4) using assessment results to improve instruction and assessment practices. Recommendations are discussed in detail and include institutional examples of emerging practices that can be adapted for local use.


Virtual camshaft part is a very important information carrier for camshaft virtual high-speed grinding. The veracity and maturity of process correlation information, which holding on the virtual camshaft part, will directly determine the virtual high-speed grinding results' authenticity and practicability. By analyzing geometrical structure and all kinds of process correlation attribute information, a method of process information parameterization of camshaft part for virtual high-speed grinding was presented in this paper, and a practicable function module of camshaft virtual part parameterization define was developed according with this mind.


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To describe the knowledge and beliefs about breast cancer and breast cancer screening and practices of clinical breast examination (CBE) and mammography of Korean American women.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional survey.

SETTING
Two Korean churches in a mid-sized Southeastern U.S. city.

SAMPLE
A convenience sample of 107 Korean women ages 40 and older.

METHODS
Data were collected using Champion's Health Belief Model instrument (susceptibility, seriousness, benefits, and barriers) and the Breast Cancer Knowledge test through mailed questionnaires.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Knowledge and beliefs about breast cancer screening and practices of CBE and mammography.

FINDINGS
The percentages of Korean American women who ever had a CBE and mammography were 67 and 58, respectively. Among the Health Belief Model variables, women who never had a CBE had significantly lower knowledge scores and higher perceived barriers to CBE than those who had. Women who never had a mammogram reported significantly higher perceived barriers to mammography. Logistic regression analyses demonstrated that husband's nationality, regular checkups, and encouragement from family members and physicians were significant predictors of CBE and mammography use.

CONCLUSIONS
The frequency of breast cancer screening practices among Korean American women is below national objectives.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE
As healthcare professionals in a culturally diverse nation, nurses need to increase their awareness of cultural variations and provide culturally and linguistically appropriate breast health education. Additional studies with women from a variety of settings are needed to validate present study findings.


To study the effect of the thermal stresses on the optics, experiment is performed to measure the damage threshold of the two fused silica samples with one annealed to eliminate thermal stresses while the other not. The measurement includes the effects of the thermal stresses on the initial damage threshold of the fused silica, the damage growth threshold, and the damage growth laws. The results show that the damage threshold decreases as the thermal stresses increase, and the damage induced by the laser is accelerated by the thermal stresses. For the same laser intensity, the damage growth factor is higher for the area with higher thermal stresses, but the damage growth still obeys the exponential increase rule and no obvious effect of the thermal stresses is found on the damage growth threshold. The study here will determine to some extent whether the technology of the CO 2 laser pretreatment can be applied to the large-aperture optics or not.


This essay analyzes and tries to untangle the meaning and intention of dystopian literature, by analyzing two novels (Neal Shusterman"s "Unwind" and Aldous Huxley"s "Brave New World"). From this analysis, whether or not the futures portrayed in dystopian literature relate to our own future is riddled out, furthermore the importance of the authors" intention is debated and a conclusion is reached. As the dystopian future unravels, ethnicity, gender, class and sexual orientation, to mention a few factors, find their own place in the new world; this essay tries to establish their roles in the new society. When discussing the characters in the novels, Bourdieu"s theories on fields, habitus and social capital are used to figure out what they are competing for and in what ways they struggle for the reward. Furthermore, the development of dystopian imagining is discussed and its function as a reflection of contemporary society and the state of science. Delineating the roles of social classes in dystopias is an important task in figuring out whether social power still reduces minorities depending on class or gender. Our antiquated morals and ethics aren"t suitable anymore and need to be reformed; this is discussed based on dystopian literature and the image of the future. Furthermore, this essay gets into detail with the reduction of man and by what means we are enslaved and made to believe in the faux utopias. In the end, the conclusion reached is that dystopian literature delivers a hefty and important point that needs to be heeded and used as a rare look into the future.


We tackle the problem of reducing power consumption in IP-over-WDM networks, targeting the power-aware logical topology design (LTD). Unlike the previous work in the literature, our solution reduces the power consumption with consideration of the cost (in terms of reconfigured traffic) incurred when the network is reconfigured. We first formulate the LTD with reconfiguration costs as an optimization problem. Then, we present three heuristics to effectively solve it. We compare our algorithms over an extensive set of networks and scenarios. Results indicate that our algorithms are effective in reducing power consumption while limiting the amount of traffic that is reconfigured. Moreover, we show that the input parameters are intuitive and easy to set, which makes our algorithms more practical.


Organic agriculture is a production system which excludes the use of synthetically compounded fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators and livestock feed additives. It is a holistic form of agriculture, incorporating modern science based methods of production as well as ancient knowledge. Organic farming is also known as Eco-farming. The present study compares the selected nutrients like carbohydrate, protein and minerals in the selected organic and conventional nuts (groundnuts, cashew nuts and almonds), dry grapes, sugar and jaggery. Holistic analytical techniques were used to visualize the qualitative difference among organic and conventional foods. Circular paper chromatography method was used for holistic analysis. Their acceptability in terms of overall qualities like, colour, appearance, texture, flavour and taste was also assessed through a panel of 15 judges using a standard score card. The results showed that there was a significant difference in the nutritional quality and acceptability of organic foods selected for the study as compared to conventional counterparts. Holistic analysis showed significant difference in the chromas of organic foods compared to conventional foods in terms of concentric rings, spokes and colour. In conclusion, it can be strongly stated that organic foods showed a significant difference in their nutritional quality and acceptability as compared to conventional foods.