Received on: 10.09.2018 Revised on: 06.12.2018 Accepted on: 09.12.2018 A simple, validated and affordable visible spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of piperacillin present in bulk and tablet formulation. The proposed method involves the development of a coloured ionassociation complex between piperacillin cation and tropaeolin-ooo anion, which can be further extracted in chloroform. In the formation of cation from piperacillin, site of protonation is oxygen of amide group. Two secondary amides of piperacillin are protonated to form a doubly charged cation. Maximum absorption was observed at 529 nm for the coloured complex. Regression analysis (r = 0.9999) shows that the plotted calibration curve exhibits good linearity in the studied range of concentration (4.0–24.0 μg mL-1). As per the existing guidelines of ICH, various parameters (interday precision, intraday precision, accuracy, ruggedness, LOD, LOQ) of the method were tested for validation. Low values of relative standard deviation (< 2 %) were observed indicating that the proposed method is reproducible, accurate and precise. The proposed method was extended to assay piperacillin powder for injection formulation.


We say a natural number~$n$ is abundant if $\sigma(n)>2n$, where $\sigma(n)$ denotes the sum of the divisors of~$n$. The aliquot parts of~$n$ are those divisors less than~$n$, and we say that an abundant number~$n$ is pseudoperfect if there is some subset of the aliquot parts of~$n$ which sum to~$n$. We say~$n$ is weird if~$n$ is abundant but not pseudoperfect. We call a weird number~$n$ primitive if none of its aliquot parts are weird. We find all primitive weird numbers of the form $2^kpq$ ($p<q$ being odd primes) for $1\le k\le14$. We also find primitive weird numbers of the same form, larger than any previously published.


ABSTRACT The Chile Trench study area extends over 2,000 km along the Andean continental margin, from 23°S to 42°S latitude. The QFL composition of Chile Trench sands encompasses the average compositions of modern sands from strike-slip, continental arc, oceanic backarc, and oceanic forearc types of active margins (Valloni and Maynard 1981), and spans the complete spectrum from dissected to undissected magmatic arc settings (Dickinson et al. 1983). Trench sands along North Chile, Central Chile, and the glaciated archipelago of South Chile are derived from a more plutonic source region, or dissected magmatic arc; these sands exhibit abnormally low lithic and calcic plagioclase content, but high quartz and alkali feldspar. In Central Chile, the plutonic provenance is correlated with an ab ence of Quaternary volcanism. Along the Chilean archipelago, Pleistocene glaciation has carved into the magmatic roots of the Andes, effecting arc dissection in spite of active volcanism. In arid North Chile, the volcanic debris of the High Cordillera is trapped onshore in longitudinal forearc basins, allowing an exaggerated contribution from crystalline rocks of the Coast Range. The light and heavy, mineral and lithic composition of trench sands is described by four ideal petrologic assemblages, isolated by Q-mode factor analysis. The Basic Magmatic Arc petrofacies (volcanic lithics, calcic plagioclase, olivine, clinopyroxene, and orthopyroxene), the most chemically unstable and least differentiated assemblage, is derived exclusively from basalts and basaltic andesites in the Quaternary volcanic arc of South Chile. The Acidic Magmatic Arc petrofacies (volcanic lithics, alkali feldspar, biotite, hornblende, and magnetite) is derived from andesitic to rhyolitic volcanics, and granodioritic plutons emplaced during various Mesozoic and Cenozoic magmatic episodes in the history of the Andean margin. The Metamorphic Magmatic Arc petrofacies (mica, alkali feldspar, hlorite, actinolite, epidote, and blue-green hornblende) is derived from ferromagnesian rocks altered to the greenschist facies in the basal marine section of the Andean eugeosyncline and in the Paleozoic basement. The Cratonic Block petrofacies (quartz and the accessory minerals andalusite, garnet, and tourmaline) is derived from mature platform sediments, late-stage granitic intrusions, and high-grade regional metamorphics associated with the South American craton; it is most prominent along northern Chile where the continental crust is thickest and presumably truncated by subduction erosion. Actual petrofacies in the Chile Trench are typically mixtures of the four ideal petrofacies. Their compositions can be related to 1) the lithology and erodibility of the source terranes, 2) the distribution and composition of modern arc volcanism, 3) the prevailing climate in the provenance region, and 4) the structure and morphology of the continental margin and trench. In many cases contemporary volcanism inundates and dominates the petrologic assemblage, diluting contributions from all other source-rock types and forming a low-diversity petrofacies. At high latitudes, where glaciation was extensive, a variety of source-rock terranes were actively denuded and petrofacies of high diversity were deposited in the adjacent trench. The linear frequency of sediment-supply points along the base of the continental slope controls the spatial heterogeneity of petrofacies on the depositional surface in the trench basin. The most homogenous petrofacies, derived from major submarine canyon systems and extensive subaerial drainage basins, may extend hundreds of kilometers along-margin due to axial transport processes within the trench.


Continuous spinal anesthesia (CSA) with hyperbaric bupivacaine (0.75% bupivacaine in 8.25% dextrose and water) was administered to 27 adult males for transurethral endoscopic surgery. Patients were randomized to receive either 3.75, 7.5 or 10 mg hyperbaric bupivacaine in a double-blind fashion. A 20-gauge nylon catheter was inserted at the L3-4 interspace, via an 18-gauge Tuohy-Schliff needle, extending only 2 cm into the subarachnoid space. All patients were placed in the lithotomy position prior to administration of the hyperbaric bupivacaine. Sensory block was assessed by pinprick and perception of a 50-Hz tetanic stimulus at 5, 10 and 20 minutes, then every 20 minutes thereafter. Peak sensory and motor block were obtained by 20 minutes for all dose ranges. Peak sensory levels were T7.1, T5.6 and T3.9 for 3.75, 7.5 and 10 mg hyperbaric bupivacaine, respectively. Linear regression analysis demonstrated a significant correlation ( r = −0.68) between peak sensory level and dose of bupivacaine. Peak sensory level as estimated by pinprick and 50-Hz tetanic stimulus showed excellent correlation ( r = 0.99). The role of the subarachnoid catheter in the dispersion and distribution of bupivacaine within the subarachnoid space was studied in a model spinal canal system and compared with the distribution of bupivacaine administered via a standard 25-gauge spinal needle. No significant differences were found in the distribution of bupivacaine with either method of injection. The distribution of hyperbaric bupivacaine within the subarachnoid space appears to be related to baricity but is unrelated to administration via needle or catheter.


"I'm not a complicated person; I live my life by simple truths," says Aligasen Naidu, President SAICE for 2010. Honesty, integrity and ethical behaviour are for Ali 'simple truths' in an era where such character traits often are sacrificed on the road to power and profit. "I detest dishonesty in people... it's almost as if you've erected a stone wall in front of me when I realise that you have not been candid with me," he says with earnest conviction. Although reserved by nature Ali expresses himself without hesitation when it comes to matters of principle and other issues close to his heart. This was clear when he spoke to Lorraine Fourie about the highlights marking his professional and personal life.


additional nursing staff is coming from. The best use must be made of our limited resources. Much can be achieved by the efficient organization of tuberculosis arrangements at both regional and hospital level. And it would help immediately and enormously if every large general hospital, both teaching and non-teaching, could be induced to open a male and a female tuberculosis ward. No big hospital can avoid having odd cases of phthisis passing through its wards. Better by far to nurse these in wards properly organized for the purpose and thus reduce the chances of infection of staff and possibly other patients. The training of nurses and of medical students would benefit, and the great increase in the total number of beds available for the disease would go far towards solving this grave problem.-I am, etc.,


In order to manufacture optical components or mechanical parts with high surface roughness requirements, diamond machining is used. To achieve the desired surface quality, the understanding of the surface generation process and its influencing parameters is important. Here, the crucial parameter is the residual unbalance of the main spindle. As the residual un-balance affects the process and vice versa, the investigation of the process-machine interaction is necessary. In this paper we present a model describing this interaction between dynamical unbalances that occur during the machining process and the engine-shaft structure at the example of an ultra-precision turning lathe. This model allows the determination of the achievable surface quality of a workpiece for a given balancing state. On the other hand we will present a mathematical method to solve the corresponding inverse problem of computing the necessary residual balancing state and balancing weights for a given desired or given measured surface quality.


A 21-year-old man has had extensive cutaneous and visceral manifestations of the blue rubber bleb nevus syndrome since birth. Surgical therapy with the carbon dioxide laser was successful in removing 225 skin hemangiomas without recurrences or complications such as hemorrhage and infection. The cosmetic and follow-up results have been excellent.


Hapaxanthy, and its alternative state, pleonanthy, are terms that have long been used to differentiate the flowering behaviour in palms. Despite the fact that hapaxanthy and pleonanthy have recently been reviewed [1-3], there has persisted some confusion regarding the inflorescence structure and life form of the rattans of Africa. Recent field observations have provided further information with regard to the flowering behaviour of the African rattans and have confirmed the hapaxanthic nature of Laccosperma and the pleonanthic nature of Eremospatha and the sole representative of Calamus in Africa, C. deerratus . The genus Oncocalamus , long recorded as being hapaxanthic, is now known to be pleonanthic. Basic knowledge of the life form of economically valuable plants such as rattan is essential if rational decisions are to be made about their long-term management and sustainable utilisation.


The small penis rule is an informal strategy for limiting defamation liability for authors of fiction. The rule recommends that when an author utilizes a fictional character to defame a real-life person, he should also give the character a small penis—the logic being that in order to sue, a plaintiff would have to admit that he is the fictional character, therefore admitting that he has a small penis, and thus dissuading such litigation. In this first-ever Article to address the issue, evidence is provided for why this is an unwise strategy because it would likely cause an increase in defamation liability. Additionally, this Article covers alternatives available to authors of fiction, a real-life example from Michael Crichton, and the peculiarly gendered nature of the small penis rule.


This study was conducted with the objective of evaluating the growth of six strains of Lentinula edodes (LE1, LE2, LE3, LE4, LE5 and LE6) in five culture media and characterizes strains for enzyme production. The culture medium that provided the best mycelial growth of the strains was used for semi-quantitative tests of ligninase and cellulase activity. Samples for enzyme assays and determination of total proteins were collected at 7, 14, 21 and 28 days of incubation to building an enzymatic curve. The strain LE5 is the most aggressive, with higher mycelial growth rate and mycelial mass production in the basic medium added of 0.01% yeast extract. The addition of biotin and thiamine to the culture medium is not sufficient to substitute yeast extract. The performance of the strains with respect to the production of cellulase and ligninase was different. The LE6 strain excelled in the production of laccase, manganese peroxidase and β-glucosidase with 28 days of incubation and endo-β-1,4-glucanase with 14 days of incubation, while strain LE5 excelled in the production of exo-β-1,4-glucanase with 7 days of incubation.


The Qur'an explicitly forbids a person to impose his religion let alone in the midst of a pluralistic society such as Indonesia. Awareness and belief in the truth of Islam is not shown through practices of violence, coercion but rather awareness with demonstrated tangible evidence of the truth. Therefore, the nature of a source of guidance around the globe created by God if it is not hindered by the acts or behavior that is not good, it will be moving towards recognition and strengthen user confidence through revelation. More importantly, the nature of human beings assign responsibility in observing the commandments of universal guidance, which requires an act of free will to guide the nature of the strong state. Although agreed on should not be any compulsion in religion but commentators disagree about who should not be forced and that should be forced. For At-Tabari, who should not be forced out of the verse is the People of the Book (Jews, Christians) as long as they pay the jizya (poll tax).Keywords: Tolerance, Religion, Islamic Perspective.


A long-term pasture persistence trial, consisting of repeated annual sowings, commenced in Canterbury in 2015 and is planned to continue until 2024. Preliminary results of the first 3 years sowings are reported. Each annual sowing used the same randomised block design of eight perennial ryegrass cultivars, one tall fescue and one cocksfoot cultivar, replicated four times. Grasses were drilled into a cultivated seedbed in autumn, with white clover broadcast-sown, then rolled with a Cambridge roller. Except for one 3-week spell in spring and in autumn to accumulate herbage to measure DM yield, botanical composition, morphology and sward density, plots were continuously stocked with sheep to maintain a 3-8 cm sward height from late-August to late-May. Results from the first 12 months following each of the three annual sowings (2015, 2016 and 2017) indicate establishment year had a greater influence on DM yield, botanical composition, grass leaf and stem proportions, and basal cover than did grass species or cultivar. Accumulating data from successive annual sowings and continued monitoring of each will help identify the long-term effect and difference between establishment years, as well as grass persistence traits for inclusion in the Forage Value Index ranking of perennial ryegrass cultivars.


In this paper, a multiphysics numerical model based on the spatial‐dependent rate equations and 3‐D non‐homogeneous heat conduction model is used to investigate the performance of Er3+/Yb3+‐codoped double‐clad fiber amplifiers with respect to the constraints associated with space applications. The effects of fiber length, coating thickness, and core radius changes are analyzed. Furthermore, the impact of thermal heating due to the high power optical signals propagating along the fiber on the amplifier gain is examined. The temperature dependence of the refractive index, emission and absorption cross sections, as well as the radiation induced attenuation is derived and modeled. It is observed that the coating thickness affects the temperature distribution along the whole fiber length. Thicker coating mitigates the temperature variation along the fiber as well as it improves the temperature difference between the core center and the outer fiber surface. Moreover, larger core results in higher optical gain and shorter fibers. By numerical results, it is inferred that the thermal effects could strongly degrade the whole amplifier performance.


Night and shift work might be risk factors for metabolic and cardiovascular disorders due to interference with diet, circadian metabolic rhythms, and lifestyle. The relationship between permanent night work and metabolic and cardiovascular risk factors was explored in a retrospective longitudinal study of workers employed in a large municipal enterprise in charge of street cleaning and domestic waste collection. All subjects who had worked night shifts between 1976 and 2007 as hand sweepers, motor sweepers, and delivery tricar drivers were compared with subjects who always worked the same jobs but on day shifts. From the periodical medical surveillance files, we identified 488 male workers who had been examined on average five times (minimum 2, maximum 14) during the study period, for a total of 2,328 medical examinations; 157 always had worked day shifts, 12 always the night shift, and 319 both (initially day and subsequently night shifts). Their age ranged from 22 to 62 yrs, and work experience varied from 1 to 28 yrs. Lifestyle habits (smoking, alcohol consumption), body mass index, serum glucose, total cholesterol, tryglicerides, hepatic enzymes, blood pressure, resting electrocardiogram, diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension, and related drugs were taken into consideration for the analysis. We used generalized estimating equations (GEE) models (exchangeable correlation matrix) to analyze the relationship between night work and health effects while accounting for within‐subject correlations and adjusting for study period, job, age, and lifestyle variables. As a whole, night workers smoked more and had significantly higher BMI, serum total cholesterol, and triglycerides than day workers. Both the inter‐individual comparison between day and night workers and the intra‐individual comparison among the workers, who were day workers at the beginning of their employment and later became night workers, showed a significant increase in BMI, total cholesterol, and tryglicerides associated with night work. No consistent effect was seen on fasting glucose, hepatic enzymes, and blood pressure, whereas a higher incidence of coronary heart disease was recorded in night workers.


We study the importance of anticipated shocks (news) for understanding the comovement between macroeconomic quantities and asset prices. We find that four-quarter anticipated investment shocks are an important source of fluctuations for macroeconomic variables: they account for about half of the variance in hours and investment. However, it is the four-quarter anticipated productivity shock that is driving a large fraction of consumption and most of the price-dividend ratio fluctuations. These productivity news are key for the model to reproduce the empirical tendency for stock-market valuations and excess returns to lead the business cycle. Importantly, a model that does not use asset price information in the estimation would downplay the role of productivity news; in this case, the model implies that return moves (almost) completely contemporaneously with the economic activity, counterfactually with the data.


Sustainable urban development leads to the creation of livable cities. The Green Open Space (GOS) of City requires the quality of life requirements to support the ecological, socio-cultural, and urban economic functions. In Indonesia, the provision of GOS is the city government's responsibility, which has to carried out transparently and implemented with the involvement of stakeholders. The limited funding for the provision and improvement of the quality of GOS by the city government has developed a CSR scheme from the private sector. This CSR governance model enriches the use of CSR in addition to social assistance or charity activities, which can realize for the wider city community. The city government's role in using CSR models is significant to ensure transparency of costs, accountable design policies, and their implementation and maintenance.


Upon recently, most offshore foundations were based on a number of driven piles that were installed with an impact hammer. With the increase in offshore windfarms two major developments have occurred: the shift from jackets to monopiles, leading to increase of the diameter of the foundation piles, and a shift from impact hammers to vibro hammers.
 As the use of vibratory hammers is becoming more and more common practice, the need for accurate vibro-driving simulation software has increased, which requires that the soil modelling is enhanced to address soil fatigue during pile driving and to predict reliably the soil behavior and resistance during pile driving. In addition pile driving monitoring, which is routine for piles driven with an impact hammer, needs to become common practice.
 This paper addresses advances in soil modelling that allows more accurate pile driving simulation as well as the application of Vibro Driving Analysis (VDA) or Monitoring (VDM) to validate the simulation results. This is illustrated by a case study of the test pile for the Delft Offshore Turbine project, a 28 m long monopile with a diameter of 4 m that was driven 15 m into dense sand layers using a vibro hammer. After some 6 months the pile was extracted, and pile driving simulations and VDA were done both for the installation and extraction phase.


To create a large amount of training labels for machine learning models effectively and efficiently, researchers have turned to Weak Supervision (WS), which uses programmatic labeling sources rather than manual annotation. Existing works of WS for binary classification typically assume the presence of labeling sources that are able to assign both positive and negative labels to data in roughly balanced proportions. However, for many tasks of interest where there is a minority positive class, negative examples could be too diverse for developers to generate indicative labeling sources. Thus, in this work, we study the application of WS on binary classification tasks with positive labeling sources only. We propose WEAPO, a simple yet competitive WS method for producing training labels without negative labeling sources. On 10 benchmark datasets, we show WEAPO achieves the highest averaged performance in terms of both the quality of synthesized labels and the performance of the final classifier supervised with these labels. We incorporated the implementation of WEAPO into WRENCH, an existing benchmarking platform.


A highly specific and sensitive linear humidity sensor has been fabricated using a dispersion of 2D hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) flakes in polyethylene oxide (PEO). Bulk hBN powder was exfoliated via liquid-assisted mechanical exfoliation to achieve few-layered 2D nano-flakes with thicknesses in the range of 3–4 nm. PEO was used as the polymer matrix to disperse the hBN flakes evenly throughout the suspension. An interdigitated transducer (IDT) electrode pair fabricated via reverse off-set printing using silver nanoparticles ink (AgNPs) on a piezoelectric LiNbO3 substrate serves as the transducing portion of the sensor. Electrohydrodynamic atomization was used to spray a uniform thin film of the active composite material onto the sensor electrodes. All the fabrication methods used are compatible with printed electronics approaches and are suitable for mass production. The sensors show excellent stability for up to 40 days of testing. The sensitivity of the near-linear sensors was ∼24 kΩ/%RH, which is better than most of the previously reported studies. The sensors showed response and recovery times of 2.6 s and 2.8 s, respectively. The selectivity of the sensors was tested by exposing the sensors to O2, N2, and CH4 gases in addition to humidity and the results showed no effect of the other gases on the sensors output. The fabricated sensors based on the 2D hBN/polymer composite can be employed in high-end target specific applications requiring accurate and high performance humidity sensors.


This paper examines multi-battle contests whose extensive form can be represented in terms of a finite state machine. We start by showing that any contest that satisfies our assumptions decomposes into two phases, a principal phase (in which states cannot be revisited) and a concluding tie-breaking phase (in which all non-terminal states can be revisited). Degenerate cases are the finite-horizon contests on the one hand (e.g., the match race), and the tug-of-war on the other. Next, assuming a probabilistic technology in each battle, we show that any contest satisfying our assumptions, with either finite or infinite horizon, admits a unique symmetric and interior Markov perfect equilibrium. This entails, in particular, a complete characterization of the equilibrium in the tug-of-war. Finally, we explore, both analytically and numerically, the intricate problem of a contest designer that maximizes expected total effort. In the absence of a complexity constraint, the revenue-maximizing contest is always a match race, where the optimal length of the race increases as the technology of the component contest becomes more noisy. If, however, the complexity constraint is binding, then the optimal contest is typically (but not always) a tug-of-war.


In traditional studies of language policy in China, scholars mainly try to evaluate language policy's effectiveness in attaining goals such as national unity, economic development, and illiteracy reduction. Few people question the underlying framework of such language planning. This paper tries to call into question those basic assumptions. By adopting a critical theory perspective, this paper tries to locate the origin of the current language policy in China in its historical context and argues that the foundation for current Chinese language policy can be tracked back to colonialism: the framework of the current language policy is based on a Eurocentric model as part of a broader project of governmentality and the current simplified Chinese script is partially a colonial invention.


In both gesture and sign, objects and events can be represented by reproducing some of their features iconically. Iconic gestures do not typically appear until well into children's second year of life, suggesting that the cognitive and/or communicative resources required are not trivial. Here we investigate how manual iconicity develops in two different communicative systems. Using longitudinal video corpora, we compare the emergence of manual iconicity in 52 hearing children learning a spoken language (co-speech gesture) to a deaf child creating a manual communication system (homesign). We focus on the shape of the hand, asking how handshape use changes between age 1 and 5, and how handshape choice relates to semantic content. We find broadly similar patterns of handshape development in co-speech gesture and homesign. This suggests that the cognitive building blocks underlying children's ability to iconically map forms to meanings are shared across vastly different communicative systems.


Autoimmune skin diseases are characterized by dysregulation of the immune system resulting in a loss of tolerance to skin self-antigen(s). The prolonged interaction between the bacterium and host immune mechanisms makes Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) a plausible infectious agent for triggering autoimmunity. Epidemiological and experimental data now point to a strong relation of H. pylori infection on the development of many extragastric diseases, including several allergic and autoimmune diseases. H. pylori antigens activate cross-reactive T cells and induce autoantibodies production. Microbial heat shock proteins (HSP) play an important role of in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases because of the high level of sequence homology with human HSP. Eradication of H. pylori infection has been shown to be effective in some patients with chronic autoimmune urticaria, psoriasis, alopecia areata and Schoenlein-Henoch purpura. There is conflicting and controversial data regarding the association of H. pylori infection with Behçet's disease, scleroderma and autoimmune bullous diseases. No data are available evaluating the association of H. pylori infection with other skin autoimmune diseases, such as vitiligo, cutaneous lupus erythematosus and dermatomyositis. The epidemiological and experimental evidence for a possible role of H. pylori infection in skin autoimmune diseases are the subject of this review.


This article aimed to describe gender differences in the mental health literacy of university students in western societies and to provide a brief overview of how gender socialization might contribute to these differences. A review of studies providing information on gender differences in university students' mental health literacy was carried out. The literature showed that the importance of mental health literacy lay in its positive association with better mental health status through the enabling of help-seeking behaviours. University students have some knowledge of mental health and a majority were able to recognize common disorders. However, the ability to recognize disorders did not guarantee adequate knowledge. Similar to adults, young people were more likely to correctly identify depressive symptoms than they were to correctly label schizophrenic symptoms. Males consistently demonstrated less awareness of disorders compared to females, but gender differences did not exist in all circumstances. In terms of help-seeking, young adults preferred informal help from friends and family over professional services, a trend that was especially pronounced in young men. This review suggested that gender does affect mental health literacy in post-secondary students. Although mechanisms to explain how gender mediates literacy can be proposed, gender is not a categorical predictor of differences in university students' mental health literacy. More comprehensive research in young people's knowledge of and attitudes toward mental health is needed.


What is a case decided by the European Court of Human Rights about? The Courts own case database, HUDOC , lists all the articles mentioned in a specific case in their metadata. They also supply a number of keywords, but these keywords for the most part are reduced to repeating phrases from the relevant articles. In order to enhance information retrieval about case content, without relying on manual labor and subjective judgement, we propose in this paper a quantitative method that gives a better indication of case content in terms of which articles a given case is more closely associated with. To do so, we rely on the network structure induced by existing case-to-case and case-to-article citations and propose two computational approaches (referred to as MainIn and MainOut) which result in assigning one representative article to each case. We validate the approach by selecting a sample of important cases and comparing manual investigation of real content of those cases with the MainIn and MainOut articles. Results show that MainIn in particular is able to infer correctly the real content in most of the cases.


This paper presents a novel evolutionary algorithm to image fusion. An original image is divided into blocks with fixed size. According to the idea of the evolutionary algorithm, the image is analyzed using fractal dimension to attain its feature blocks containing edges and textures that are used in the later embedding process and used to form a feature label. The evolutionary algorithm that is the fusion of the feature label and a binary copyright symbol not only represents the copyright symbol, but also reflects the feature of the image. The evolutionary algorithm that is adaptive to the individual image is embedded into the relations between middle-frequency coefficients and corresponding DC coefficients. Experimental results show that this evolutionary algorithm can get good perceptual invisibility, adaptability and security.


Nurse educators have long accepted the monumental responsibility of preparing clinically competent and globally relevant nurses. Complicated by a vastly increasing current and prospective nursing shortage coupled with high nursing attrition rates especially among new graduate nurses, nurse educators are under greater pressure to teach new generations of nurses clinical competence, clinical judgment, as well as compassionate and respectful patient care (Benner, Sutphe, Leonard, & Day, 2010). Blended learning formats, including completely flipped classroom designs as described in this paper, have been used successfully in introductory pathophysiology courses (Blissitt, 2016). However, not all courses – particularly complex concept courses such as advanced pathophysiology – lend themselves easily to such presentation styles in addition to conveying the necessary elements of content required for course completion and, hopefully, retention. The purpose of a flipped classroom design is able to create meaningful learning experiences which engage students with the learning process and acknowledge the students' ability to manage their own learning. The nature of redesigning a course from a strict lecture format to a blended and flipped format requires unique engineering, utilizing Fink's (2013) backward course design as a foundation. In this paper, the complexities of redesigning a graduate level Advanced Pathophysiology course to incorporate clinical competence, clinical judgment and reasoning, as well as compassionate and respectful care of the client along with essential course content is described.


Wind energy has been widely investigated as a promising environmental friendly and economic energy resource these years worldwide. However, high volatility and non-dispatchability make it difficult to control comparing to the traditional energy. Imbalance penalty is one of the major methods to regulate wind farm owners and enhance the benefits of renewables bid into the electricity market, so as to minimize the supply-demand mismatch and local network congestions. In this paper, we consider the optimal wind bidding strategy problem with the existence of imbalance penalty and allowed imbalance band on behalf of a wind farm owner. We provide the analytical solutions of the optimization problem for Normal and Rayleigh distributed wind power. Based on the problem and solutions, we also investigate in the related issues that can help both wind taking and supplying parties to cooperate and help build a reliable energy trading market.


This study sought to elicit global perspectives on Covid19 safety protocols when communicated in English to teachers and students of other languages. Adherence through comprehension of safety protocols by non-native English speaking students and teachers of higher education institutions (HEIs) is central to this investigation. Covid19 pandemic resulted in an unprecedented impact on the education sector. Since the well-being of students and teachers against any form of risk is a priority, safety protocols should be communicated effectively using comprehensible language. However, there is a valid observation on the lack of inquiries on how HEIs communicate, facilitate and implement those safety protocols to ensure adherence. Hence, the quantitative research approach was employed to address the problem presented. Primary data were collected through a structured questionnaire from 450 global student and teacher respondents. The respondents were chosen through a referral sampling technique, also known as a snowball, they joined the online survey, which took place for a month. The descriptive correlational research design was used, and the data were treated using descriptive and inferential statistical tools. Results revealed that out of eighteen components of safety protocols for educational institutions, wearing face masks is clearly understood and was noted as the most prevalently observed. The high level of knowledge and awareness on safety protocols among respondents is linked to massive information dissemination. The step-wise regression model identified only two significant predictors for a conforming perspective: wearing a face mask and physical distancing. The rest of the pre-identified protocols do not significantly affect or influence the perspectives. These results suggest that the respondents adhere to all protocols and agree that wearing face masks is their foremost concern. A negative perspective is indicated toward those who resist following the Covid19 protocols, suggesting that the respondents are aware of the importance of safety protocols in reducing positive cases if religiously observed. This study concludes that protocols for any crisis should be maintained and institutionalised because they serve their purpose better with proper implementation. Furthermore, English as a medium for communicating those health and safety is not a barrier and did not interfere with the respondents' understanding and adherence. Therefore, the language of the protocols is within the grasp of the respondents, which is attributed to the success of its implementation.


A modification to the Asymmetrically-Clipped Optical Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (ACOOFDM) technique is proposed through unipolar encoding. A performance analysis of the Bit Error Rate (BER) is developed and Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to verify the analysis. Results are compared to that of the corresponding ACO-OFDM system under the same bit energy and transmission rate; an improvement of 1 dB is obtained at a BER of 10— 4 . In addition, the performance of the proposed system in the presence of atmospheric turbulence is investigated using single-input multiple-output (SIMO) configuration and its performance under that environment is compared to that of ACO-OFDM. Energy improvements of 4 dB and 2.2 dB are obtained at a BER of 10— 4 for SIMO systems of 1 and 2 photodetectors at the receiver for the case of strong turbulence, respectively.


This paper reviews the exchange rate policy experience of the Nordic EFTA countries (Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) since the early 1970s. The paper briefly describes the main features of the national economies of the Nordic EFTA countries in an international perspective and their exchange rate arrangements in particular, and then attempts to asses the principal advantages and disadvantages of these and alternative arrangements from the Nordic point of view. The paper also tries to evaluate macroeconomic performance in these countries since the early 1970s in view of the exchange rate and other policies that have been followed, with special emphasis on their devaluation record during 1976-82 and the credibility of current policies. In particular, the Nordic EFTA countries have experienced considerably less unemployment (as intended) at the cost of more inflation and, to a lesser extent, a weaker external position than other industrial countries on average in recent years. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of EC current developments as 1992 approaches for the viability of existing exchange rate policies in the Nordic EFTA countries.


Tooth loss due to traumatic dental injury or congenital absence can cause
functional and social- psychological consequences in youth. Pubescent children
with missing teeth are often targets for school bullying. The treatment
modality chosen can impact their well-being during their formative years.
Despite the high success rate in adult patients, implant placement in young
patients is not common due to its ankylosed nature and concerns with possible
infra-occlusion in the future. However, skeletal growth and remodeling is a
continuous process throughout life and postponement of dental implant placement
does not necessary prevent future complication or need for replacement. Dental
implant placement should be considered as a viable treatment option for pubescent
patients if all other conventional alternatives fail to alleviate patients'
concerns both functionally and psychologically. This case report evaluates the
considerations required to place dental implants in pubescent patients, as well
as its advantages and disadvantages.


Music, a multidimensional art from, is naturally entrenched with remarkable therapeutic attribute. Music as a source of communion functions as a mediator between human flesh and soul among people. Music, in its melody, rhythm, pitches levels, and harmony motivates peoples' feelings/emotion to achieve the expected desired result. This paper therefore aims at discussing the ability of music as an agent of healing. Information that would bring about a reliable write-up was gathered through interviews with medical practitioners and patients in some hospitals at Ife, Ibadan and Abeokuta. In addition, books, journals and magazines were consulted. Among the major books consulted is the Holy Bible in order to get authentic information from literary sources. It was thereafter found out that music in all its ramifications as an Art form could effectively serve as palliative/agent of complete healing of the sick. It would be very much advocated that relevant music, as may be demanded by the patients of music as thought relevant by the medical practitioners could be played alongside other medications to facilitate speedy healing process.


Campylobacter fetus is a rare cause of meningitis in the pediatric age group and, in particular, among neonates. The clinical presentation of campylobacter meningitis in high-risk neonates is not well-described. A review of campylobacter meningitis by Lee et al1 in 1985 reported nine cases occurring in neonates, of which only one case was caused by C. fetus. In the ensuing six years only three more confirmed cases of neonatal meningitis caused by C. fetus have been reported.2,3 We here report another confirmed case of C. fetus meningitis in a neonate.


Few studies exist investigating surgical hammertoe correction salvage procedures regarding poor outcomes secondary to silastic implant failure. We present a case of a patient who presented to our clinic with a grossly deformed digit after undergoing several silastic implant procedures. The patient wanted to salvage the toe and elected for surgical intervention. Surgical planning consisted of a V-Y skin plasty with interposition of calcaneal autograft. This allowed restoration of anatomic dimensions and function of the patient's digit. We present this operative technique as a viable method of salvaging failed hammertoe correction procedures.


One of the possible ways to explore contextualization is through external discourses referencing the pragmatics of the discourse in question. These are known as metapragmatic discourse. The purpose of this article is to theoretically integrate the concept of metapragmatics into genre analysis and apply metapragmatic tools to the analysis of specific genres. Five YouTube videos together with their accompanying comments exhibiting metapragmatic properties were analyzed. Methodologically, the analysis relies on the textually oriented content analysis. The results indicate that placing discourses nominally relying on one and the same generic form into a certain genre may be predicated on contextual variables that may have nothing to do with said form per se. These variables, however, may be verbalized by the original author and by their audience in the form of metapragmatic markers. This may mean that for the final addressee, the "effect" of the original discourse will depend on the attribution of this discourse, based on the metapragmatic markers, to one of the "competing" genre variations emerging, as it were, in an ongoing exchange between the author and his audience. A case in point are sponsored and "honest" review genres. A second observation resides in the realm of hybrid genres. An example here is integrating sponsored content into one of the "legitimate" lifestyle-genres ("hot tips", vlog, etc.). A fraction of the discourse community seems to view this as delegitimizing the discourse and the genre in question, while others see it as an "unfortunate insert", which does not, however, change the genre's overall value. This leaves the question open whether such genres should be considered new and full-fledged genres, with sponsored content being one of their integral features.


The purpose of this paper is to empirically study challenges faced by product and service providers when innovating openly with customers in business-to-business (B-to-B) markets. The study aims to fill the research gap of how the challenges vary in different types of customer involvement in innovation. The work applied the qualitative methodology of multiple case studies, and the material was collected in semi-structured interviews with management personnel at 48 companies in Finland and in the Netherlands that are practicing open innovation with their customers in one form or another. For the analysis of challenges identified from the empirical data, a typology of open innovation with customers was built, resulting in four distinct types to categorise product and service providers through their dominant business and innovation logics and related customer involvement. The typology gave the context in which strategic and operational challenges of open innovation with customers were explored. Each of the four types seems to have specific and characteristic challenges of open innovation. The findings of the study will help managers of product and service providers in guiding their open innovation practices with customers in B-to-B markets.


: Aromatase P-450 is a key enzyme in the production of estrogens, that is, the conversion of androstenedione and testosterone to estrone and estradiol. Aromatase is a good target for selective inhibition. New aromatase inhibitors provide a good opportunity for successful treatment during infertility management. They have a potential to replace clomiphene citrate (CC) as the first-line treatment for ovulation induction. Applying aromatase inhibitors during assisted reproduction followed: reducing the FSH dose needed to achieve optimum controlled ovarian hyperstimulation (COH); improving ovarian response to FSH in poor responders; terminating positive feedback loop and improving ovarian response to COH in infertile case with endometriosis; improving implantation rates in assisted reproduction technology (ART); reducing estrogen levels to reduce the risk of OHSS during COH.


45S5 Bioglass® coatings have been produced on superelastic nickel-titanium wires using electrophoretic deposition (EPD). Aqueous suspensions of Bioglass® particles (< 5 &m mean particle size) were used. EPD led to the formation of thick and uniform coatings covering the wires very homogeneously, without the development of any microcracks during the drying stage. Best results were achieved with suspensions containing 20 wt% Bioglass®, an applied voltage of 5 V, and a deposition time of 5 min. Samples sintered for 1 hour at temperatures > 800 °C exhibited diffusion of nickel and titanium into the Bioglass® coating. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to analyse the microstructure of the Bioglass® coatings in terms of level of uniformity, densification, and to discover the possible presence of microcracks, as well as to gain information about the thickness of the coating produced on the different substrates. The results demonstrate that the EPD technique is a very convenient method to produce uniform Bioglass® coatings on wires for biomedical applications.


Information on partial lactations often is included in genetic evaluations by predicting the cow's eventual 305-d yield. Such projected yields have less phenotypic and genetic variation than completed yields but were modeled as having greater or equal variation in evaluations. Analysis of first lactations from 48,424 daughters of 844 Holstein sires indicated that yields predicted early (46 to 75 d) in lactation had less than one-half as much additive genetic variance as completed yields. Multiple-trait REML estimates of genetic correlations of predicted and completed yields were all above .92, indicating that early lactation information is valuable if modeled appropriately. Expanded records with genetic variances equal to those of completed yields and new lactation length weights were derived. Expanded records have larger error variances than either projected or completed yields and, thus, are given less weight when included in animal model evaluations. Genetic gains are expected to increase only .2 to .3%, but more stable genetic evaluations should result from use of expanded records, particularly for animals evaluated primarily from first lactation records in progress.


In recent decades, very few new psychiatric drugs have entered the market. Thus, improvement in the use of antidepressant and antipsychotic therapy has to focus mainly on enhanced and more personalized treatment with the currently available drugs. One important aspect of such individualization is emphasizing interindividual differences in genes relevant to treatment, an area that can be termed neuropsychopharmacogenomics. Here, we review previous efforts to identify such critical genetic variants and summarize the results obtained to date. We conclude that most clinically relevant genetic variation is connected to phase I drug metabolism, in particular to genetic polymorphism of CYP2C19 and CYP2D6. To further improve individualized pharmacotherapy, there is a need to take both common and rare relevant mutations into consideration; we discuss the present and future possibilities of using whole genome sequencing to identify patient-specific genetic variation relevant to treatment in psychiatry. Translation of pharmacogenomic knowledge into clinical practice can be considered for specific drugs, but this requires education of clinicians, instructive guidelines, as well as full attention to polypharmacy and other clinically relevant factors. Recent large patient studies (n > 1,000) have replicated previous findings and produced robust evidence warranting the clinical utility of relevant genetic biomarkers. To further judge the clinical and financial benefits of preemptive genotyping in psychiatry, large prospective randomized trials are needed to quantify the value of genetic-based patient stratification in neuropsychopharmacotherapy and to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of such interventions.


Background Migrants from high endemic countries accounted for 18% of newly diagnosed HIV infections in Europe in 2017. Knowledge on the link between HIV risk and post-migration travels and their impact on HIV acquisition is scarce, but critical to inform prevention. This study aims to explore risky sexual behaviour and HIV-acquisition among sub-Saharan African migrants, and to assess post-migration mobility as a determinant of sexual risk behaviour. Methods Data from two cross-sectional bio-behavioural surveys to assess HIV-prevalence conducted in Lisbon and Antwerp were analysed to explore migration-related characteristics, travel patterns, and sexual risk taking in the host country and abroad. Bi- and multivariate associations were estimated through adjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals; multivariable logistic regression determined factors associated with condomless sexual intercourse. Results Among N = 1508 participants above 18 years (58% males), 68% travelled post-migration (49.2% reported intercourse abroad). The overall proportion of condomless sex at last sexual intercourse was high (68.1%). The odds of condomless sex in the host country was five times higher when the last sexual intercourse abroad was also condomless [OR:5.32; 95%CI:2.98–9.25]. About half of the travellers reported concurrency, i.e. a regular partner in the host country while having other sexual partners abroad. Almost three percent of the participants reported being HIV+, but 5% had a reactive HIV test-result, with similar proportions among travellers and non-travellers. Also, among the n = 75 participants with reactive HIV test-results, condomless sex occurred (n = 40) and was associated with mobility. Conclusions Sub-Saharan African migrants are mobile and engage in sexual risk behaviours in the countries of residence and while travelling, increasing risk of post-migration HIV-acquisition. A transnational perspective on HIV prevention and sexual health promotion is needed for effectively reducing migrants' HIV risk related to their mobility.


The mechanical paintings of Matthew Boulton and Francis Eginton have been the subject of few scholarly treatises since their invention in the 1770s. Such interest as there has been has focussed on the unknown process, and the lack of scientific material analysis has resulted in several confusing theories of production. This thesis's use of the Archives of Soho, containing Boulton's business papers, has cast light on the production and consumption of mechanical paintings, while collaboration with the British Museum, and their new scientific evidence, have both supported and challenged the archival evidence. This thesis seeks to prove various propositions about authenticity, the role of class and taste in the selection of artists and subjects for mechanical painting reproduction, and the role played by the reproductive process's ingenuity in marketing the finished product. Mechanical paintings were symptomatic of wider eighteenth-century concerns – imitation leading to invention, the transfusion of existing technologies, and the role of cultural goods in marking distinction and social class. This thesis's study of these discourses has shed a light on the development of mechanical paintings, but equally, Boulton and Eginton's reproduction of oil pictures has provided new insights into the role of ingenuity and taste-formation in eighteenth-century Britain.


OBJECTIVES
to determine (cost)-effectiveness of a stepped-care intervention programme among subjects ≥ 75 years who screened positive for depressive symptoms in general practice.

DESIGN
the pragmatic cluster-randomised controlled trial with 12-month follow-up.

SETTING
sixty-seven Dutch general practices.

SUBJECTS
two hundred and thirty-nine subjects ≥ 75 years screened positive for untreated depressive symptoms (15-item Geriatric Depression Scale ≥ 5).

METHODS
usual care (34 practices, 118 subjects) was compared with the stepped-care intervention (33 practices, 121 subjects) consisting of three steps: individual counselling; Coping with Depression course; and-if indicated-referral back to general practitioner to discuss further treatment. Measurements included severity of depressive symptoms [Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS)], quality of life, mortality and costs.

RESULTS
at baseline subjects mostly were mildly/moderately depressed. At 6 months MADRS scores had improved more in the usual care than the intervention group (-2.9 versus -1.1 points, P=0.032), but not at 12 months (-3.1 versus -4.6, P=0.084). No significant differences were found within two separate age groups (75-79 years and ≥ 80 years). In intervention practices, 83% accepted referral to the stepped-care programme, and 19% accepted course participation. The control group appeared to have received more psychological care.

CONCLUSIONS
among older subjects who screened positive for depressive symptoms, an offered stepped-care intervention programme was not (cost)-effective compared with usual care, possibly due to a low uptake of the course offer.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
www.controlled-trials.com/ISRCTN 71142851v.


Nowadays, E-learning system has been widely applied to practical teaching. It was favored by people for its characterized course arrangement and flexible learning schedule. However, the system does have some problems in the process of application such as the functions of single software are not diversified enough to satisfy the requirements in teaching completely. In order to cater more applications in the teaching process, it is necessary to integrate functions from different systems. But the difference in developing techniques and the inflexibility in design makes it difficult to implement. The major reason of these problems is the lack of fine software architecture. In this article, we build domain model and component model of E-learning system and components integration method on the basis of WebService. And we proposed an abstract framework of E-learning which could express the semantic relationship among components and realize high level reusable on the basis of informationized teaching mode. On this foundation, we form an E-learning oriented layering software architecture contain component library layer, application framework layer and application layer. Moreover, the system contains layer division multiplexing and was not built upon developing language and tools. Under the help of the software architecture, we could build characterized E-learning system flexibly like building blocks through framework selection, component assembling and replacement. In addition, we exemplify how to build concrete E-learning system on the basis of this software architecture.


Summary

1
Habitat requirements of solitary bees include nesting sites, food resources and nesting material. We used translocation experiments to establish foraging distances and measured foraging trip duration to analyse how solitary bees cope with the distance between nesting sites and suitable food plants in different habitat types.

2
Maximum foraging distance between nesting site and food patch was 150–600 m for the 16 bee species examined. Foraging distance was correlated positively with body length. Mean foraging trip duration, measured for seven bee species, ranged from 6 to 28 min and was also correlated with body length. In a study of the polylectic species Osmia rufa , we found a significant decrease in foraging trip duration with increasing number of plant species. Logistic regressions showed that the oligolectic Megachile lapponica nested in trap nests with a probability of 50% if the distance between trap nest and food patch was less than 250 m. The oligolectic Chelostoma rapunculi utilized trap nests when the distance to the nearest food patch was less than 300 m.

3
These experiments showed that solitary bees have a rather small foraging range so local habitat structure appears to be of more importance than large-scale landscape structure. All requirements for sustaining viable populations must be within this range. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain and restore a dense network of habitat patches in landscapes to ensure long-term sustainability of wild bee diversity and their ecological function as pollinators.


This note describes the microdiagnostic approach being used on the Standard Computer MLP-900 processor. This machine is microprogrammable and designed for general-purpose emulation, simulation, and interpretation. As a consequence it has a number of features that make it unusually well suited for the application of microdiagnostics. These include a READ-WRITE control memory, one clock microinstructions, a general-purpose microinstruction repertoire, almost complete microprogram access to the hardware, and the ability to specify test operands as immediate values. These features plus the highly encoded form of microprogramming used greatly facilitate the design and programming of component-oriented test programs. This results in a microdiagnostic which is very compact, has a very short execution time, and requires a relatively short development time. Other advantages include a relatively low hardcore, very thorough testing, and high fault resolution.


Bitcoin-NG is among the first scalable blockchain protocols by decoupling blockchain operation into two planes: leader election and transaction serialization. Its decoupling idea has inspired a new generation of blockchain protocols. However, the existing incentive analysis of Bitcoin-NG has several limitations. First, the impact of network capacity is ignored. Second, an integrated incentive analysis that jointly considers both key blocks and microblocks is still missing. In this paper, we aim to address these two limitations. First, we propose a new incentive analysis that takes the network capacity into account, showing that Bitcoin-NG can still maintain incentive compatibility against the microblock mining attack even under limited network capacity. Second, we leverage a Markov decision process to jointly analyze the incentive of both key blocks and microblocks, showing that the selfish mining revenue of Bitcoin-NG is a little higher than that in Bitcoin only when the selfish miner controls more than 35% of the mining power. We hope that our in-depth incentive analysis for Bitcoin-NG can shed some light on the mechanism design and incentive analysis of nextgeneration blockchain protocols.


Jurisprudential regime theory is a legal explanation of decision-making on the U.S. Supreme Court that asserts that a key precedent in an area of law fundamentally restructures the relationship between case characteristics and the outcomes of future cases. In this article, we offer a multivariate multiple change-point probit model that can be used to endogenously test for the existence of jurisprudential regimes. Unlike the previously employed methods, our model does so by estimating the locations of many possible changepoints along with structural parameters. We estimate the model using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, and use Bayesian model comparison to determine the number of change-points. Our findings are consistent with jurisprudential regimes in the Establishment Clause and administrative law contexts. We find little support for hypothesized regimes in the areas of free speech and search-and-seizure. The Bayesian multivariate change-point model we propose has broad potential applications to studying structural breaks in either regular or irregular time-series data about political institutions or processes.


This work has been carried out to investigate some reactions of 4,5,6,7-tetrahydrobenzo[b]thiophene derivatives 1a,b to give synthesis a series of novel heterocyclic products like N-ethoxymethino derivatives ( 2a, 2b ), N-phenylaminomethino derivatives ( 3a, 3b ), hydrazine derivatives ( 5a-d ), pyrazole derivatives ( 7a-d, 10a-d, 11a, 11b ) and N-methinonitrilo derivatives ( 9a-d ). The antitumor evaluation of the newly synthesized compounds against the three human tumor cells lines namely breast adenocarcinoma (MCF-7), non-small cell lung cancer (NCI-H460) and CNS cancer (SF-268) showed that some of these compounds exhibit much higher inhibitory effects towards the three tumor cell lines than the positive control doxorubicin. Moreover, they were tested against normal cells namely diploid normal human fibroblast (WI-38), Normal prostate epithelial cells (PrEC) and normal human mucosal epithelial cells (NCM 460). The anti-leishmanial evaluations of the obtained compounds were also performed. Compounds 7d and 10b were the most active towards tumor cell lines while compounds 3a , 3b , 9b and 9d were the most active compounds as anti-leishmanial. Docking of these most active compounds is demonstrated.


G. H. Child and D. R. Norbury write: From our investigation of the slip when active we would like to make the following comments. Although we did not find shear zones in borehole samples, overnight movement of drill casing in two holes and positive response from a slip indicator in another enabled us to identify the surface of sliding under the embankment side slope which the authors confirmed. We disagree with the authors on the location of the back of the slip, considering the crack in the road to be a secondary feature. In our investigation we considered the primary slip surface to be as shown on Fig. 1 Figures 2 and 3 show the top and toe of the slip on 25 October 1976. The casing of the borehole commenced on the verge and referred to in the paper can be seen in Fig. 2 At this stage major movement had occurred and was all downslope of the road. Figures 3 shows the surface ruckling that had already occurred in the field below. Because of the large crack in the embankment side slope we question the authors' conclusion regarding the significance of pore water pressures in the fluvioglacial deposits uphill from this crack. Pore water pressures to their line A or above seem most improbable since this would imply flooding of the old A55 road. We agree that the embankment fill was relatively permeable; gradings indicated that it was probably more permeable than the fluvioglacial sand. Therefore, a feature


There are very limited published studies in Nigeria on the use of 24 hour Holter electrocardiogram (Holter ECG) in the arrhythmic evaluation of hypertensive and diabetic patients. Objective: To evaluate indications, arrhythmic pattern of Holter ECG, and heart rate variability (HRV) among patients with hypertensive heart disease (HHD) with or without heart failure and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) seen in our cardiac care unit. Methods: Seventy-nine patients (32 males and 47 females) were studied consecutively over a year using Schiller type (MT-101) Holter ECG machine. Results: Out of the 79 patients, 17 (21.5%) had HHD without heart failure, 33 (41.8%) had HHD with hypertensive heart failure (HHF), while 29 (36.7%) were T2DM patients. The mean (standard deviation) ages of HHD without heart failure, HHF and T2DM patients were 59.65 ( ± 14.38), 65.15 ( ± 14.30), and 54.66 ( ± 8.88) respectively. The commonest indication for Holter ECG was palpitation (38%), followed by syncope (20.3%). Premature ventricular contraction was the commonest arrhythmic pattern among the 79 patients, especially among HHF patients. The HRV, using standard deviation of all normal-normal intervals was significantly reduced in T2DM patients (81.03 ± 26.33, confidence interval [CI] = 71.02–91.05) compared to the HHD without heart failure (119.65 ± 29.86, CI = 104.30–135.00) and HHF (107.03 ± 62.50, CI = 84.00–129.19). There was a negative correlation between the duration of T2DM and HRV ( r =- 0.613). Conclusion: Palpitation was the commonest Holter ECG indication and premature ventricular contractions were the commonest arrhythmic pattern among our patients. HRV was reduced in T2DM patients compared with hypertensive patients.


Cultural management is the science regarding the organization of cultural activities. For a better understanding, we must first define culture, indicate the object of cultural management, mention its objectives, establish who is the cultural manager and indicate the components of cultural management. According to some anthropologists, culture is a social behaviour, while others consider it a mere abstraction of general behaviour, and others see it as something that only exists in our mind. One of the first definitions of culture is: culture is that whole complex that includes knowledge, faith, art, moral, and other abilities and skills achieved by men as members of society.


The Adana Incident of 1909 is one of the local events of the Armeno-Muslim relations during the final decades of the history of the Ottoman Empire. A good amount of works has been hitherto done by the historians of the Middle East about the communal conflict in Adana in April 1909. Historians have so far heavily focused on the political, economic and social dimensions and/or reasons of the conflict. In spite of the proliferation of writings, however, very few have touched upon the power of rumours in the escalation of violence between the two communities. Indeed, my work on the archival sources of the incident have produced enormous documentation which indicate that the rumours circulated around the city had played unquestionable role in building distrust between the peoples and led to the rise of numerous conspiracy theories. According to one rumour the Armenians were organizing themselves against the Muslims in order to separate from the Empire. Another rumour was that a group of Armenian rebels were about to attack Muslim villages around the city, which stirred up the fears of Muslims. There were also rumours circulating among the Muslim community that Armenians had dug up an underground tunnel in order to reach the weapons depot, which was to aid them in their quest for independence. One major rumour was that Armenians placed human faeces at the door of the Great Mosque. Indeed it was through such rumours that suspicions were piqued and people sought to acquire weapons as a means of protecting themselves. Thus when the killings began on April 14, 1909 in Adana, people attacked each other under the influence of the psychology built by such rumours. Therefore I am of the opinion that it is important to deal with rumour and its affinity to communal violence in history. In this paper an attempt will be made to analyse the role of rumours in the events that unfolded in Adana in April 1909.


The equine genome sequence enables the use of high-throughput genomic technologies in equine research, but accurate identification of expressed gene products and interpreting their biological relevance require additional structural and functional genome annotation. Here, we employ the equine genome sequence to identify predicted and known proteins using proteomics and model these proteins into biological pathways, identifying 582 proteins in normal cell-free equine bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF). We improved structural and functional annotation by directly confirming the in vivo expression of 558 (96%) proteins, which were computationally predicted previously, and adding Gene Ontology (GO) annotations for 174 proteins, 108 of which lacked functional annotation. Bronchoalveolar lavage is commonly used to investigate equine respiratory disease, leading us to model the associated proteome and its biological functions. Modelling of protein functions using Ingenuity Pathway Analysis identified carbohydrate metabolism, cell-to-cell signalling, cellular function, inflammatory response, organ morphology, lipid metabolism and cellular movement as key biological processes in normal equine BALF. Comparative modelling of protein functions in normal cell-free bronchoalveolar lavage proteomes from horse, human, and mouse, performed by grouping GO terms sharing common ancestor terms, confirms conservation of functions across species. Ninety-one of 92 human GO categories and 105 of 109 mouse GO categories were conserved in the horse. Our approach confirms the utility of the equine genome sequence to characterize protein networks without antibodies or mRNA quantification, highlights the need for continued structural and functional annotation of the equine genome and provides a framework for equine researchers to aid in the annotation effort.


This paper describes optimum values of an electrical circuit for energy harvesting using a beam and piezoelectric elements. Energy harvesting techniques recover energy from the environment. We target the energy harvesting methods that extract energy from mechanical vibration systems in this research. Vibration energy is usually extracted through electrical circuits using electromechanical transducers such as DC motors and piezoelectric elements. In order to extract energy effectively, these electrical circuits and additional vibration systems must be optimally tuned. The optimum values of an electrical circuit and additional vibration system can be derived based on impedance matching when a vibration source includes only a single excitation frequency; however, in certain cases, vibration sources include several excitation frequencies. The optimum values derived based on impedance matching are not optimum when the vibration source includes several excitation frequencies. Therefore, we additionally investigated the case of random excitation as a representative of such cases in this research. The optimum values for the case of random excitation are also effective for the cases of free vibration including impulse excitation. The governing equations were formulated using equivalent mechanical models in this research. The combination of a beam and a piezoelectric element was used as the piezoelectric energy harvester because the thorough formulation of the governing equations for this configuration was not found in the research literature. The optimum values of the electrical circuit and additional vibration system were derived using the governing equations. The effectiveness of the optimum values was verified through numerical calculations.


Background: Airway oedema and mucus plugging are the predominant pathological features in infants with acute viral bronchiolitis. Nebulized hypertonic saline (HS) solution may reduce these pathological changes and decrease airway obstruction. Aim: To assess the effects of nebulized hypertonic (3%) saline solution in infants with acute viral Bronchiolitis of moderate severity. Methods: This study was conducted in Al Zahraa teaching hospital for maternity and pediatric in the period between December 2013 till November 2014 at which 165 patients with acute viral bronchiolitis were included. The inclusion criteria were; Infants aged ≤18 months presented with a prodromal history consistent with viral upper respiratory tract infection followed by wheezing and/or crackles on auscultation. Patients were excluded from the study if they have the following criteria: born at ≤ 34 weeks' gestation, previous history of wheezing, steroid use within 48 hours of presentation, history of apnea within 24 hours before presentation, oxygen saturation ≤85% on room air at the time of recruitment, history of a diagnosis of chronic lung disease, congenital heart disease, or immunodeficiency, consolidation or atelectasis on a chest X-Ray and infants with bronchiolitis severity score <4 or > 8. Result: We found that nebulized 3% HS decreases bronchiolitis severity score after 12h of treatment and its effect subsided after more than 48 h. In regard to hospital stay, the study shows a decrease in mean of hospital stay length from 42.2 to 36.3 h. Conclusion: Nebulization with 3% hypertonic saline is safe, can be widely generalized, and may be superior to current treatment for early outpatient treatment of bronchiolitis. Recommendation: Planning for a multicenter trial to explore the clinical benefit of this therapy with a large sample size is essential.


In July 2006 the Centre for Insolvency Law and Policy (CILP), Kingston Law School, Kingston University, received £20,000 research funding to undertake the current research project, Personal Insolvency Law in England and Wales: Debtor Advice, Debtor Education and the Credit Environment. The funding was provided by the Insolvency Service, an executive agency of the Department of Trade and Industry and Grant Thornton LLP, a leading accountancy firm.

The project was originally scheduled to report in February 2007. It now reports in July 2008, to take into account the logistical difficulties faced in corresponding and in arranging meetings with creditors and debt advice and solution providers. For workaday purposes the project was christened PIP, after Personal Insolvency Project. This acronym will be used throughout this report.

The project, as originally proposed consisted of three elements highlighted by the 'Bankruptcy Courts Survey 2005' (BCS) as warranting further investigation. These consisted of: (1) an examination of the role of IVA firms in the insolvency advice market; (2) the holding of a number of free personal finance management workshops, the holding of three Credit Responsibility Days, the creating of a Credit Responsibility Pack, an examination of pre and post bankruptcy petition education; and (3) an examination of bank lending practices to consumer debtors.

Unfortunately, due to the poor uptake of the personal finance management workshops, it was decided that the Credit Responsibility Days would be postponed. The Centre is currently continuing the pilot workshops with a view to eventually into holding the proposed Credit Responsibility Days. As the main source of marketing for the Credit Responsibility Days, the Credit Responsibility Pack will not be trialled in local branches of high-street banks until suitable dates for the event have been finalised. A follow up report will be presented once completed in early 2008.

Abstract

This Personal Insolvency Project (PIP) research report is divided into three parts and two volumes. The three substantive parts are set out in Volume I and relate to the research areas of: (1) debtor advice, (2) debtor education, and, (3) the credit environment. Volume II contains all of the appendices pertinent to the three sections and the bibliography.

The three areas that are examined in this report first came to the fore as points for consideration following the publication of the BCS. It was concluded following that report that a further investigation into areas impacting on personal insolvency should be investigated. This report is a further investigatory exercise. In essence, the major participants in the personal insolvency arena and the causes of the recent upsurge in personal insolvency usage were to be investigated, thus hopefully resolving the extremely important question of: what or who is responsible for the recent upsurge in insolvency procedure usage? This question, inter alia, has been addressed within this report.

The three report sections include, inter alia, an examination of the advice function and general practices of debt solution companies (Part I), and an examination of the attitudes, procedures and approach of major credit providers to the law of insolvency (Part III). A resounding theme from the BCS was the lack of financial literacy amongst the respondents. As there has hitherto been a lacuna in English insolvency scholarship regarding debtor education it was decided that this should be addressed (Part II). There are obvious synergies between the three parts of the report. These are discussed in the main body and conclusions.

The general abstracted conclusions of the PIP research can be seen in the following graphical representation of main findings.


This study investigated the antecedents of employee service quality in the hotel industry by focusing on variables that were believed to be its direct and indirect antecedents. The conceptual model developed in this study suggested that organisational service orientation (OSO), organisational justice (OJ), and the individual service orientation (ISO) of customer-contact employees influence employee service quality (ESQ) through employee attitudes towards their work (job satisfaction (JS) and affective organisational commitment (AOC)) and employee behaviours at work (in-role behaviour (IRB) and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB)). In order to identify the relationships between these constructs, two questionnaires were designed; one to measure employee perceptions of OSO, OJ, ISO, JS and AOC, and the other to measure managers' perceptions of employee IRB, OCB and ESQ. A total of 800 matched questionnaires were distributed randomly to a sample of front-line employees and their direct managers working in four- and five-star hotels in Saudi Arabia. Of these 356 usable matched questionnaires were returned and used in the analysis. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to test the validity of the scales used. The single dimensional scales were all confirmed, although most of the multi-dimensional scales loaded differently and were renamed accordingly. The relationships between the constructs were examined using three analytical methods: correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis and structural equation modelling. The correlation results showed that there were positive significant relationships between all variables at the 0. 01 level (2-tailed). Then multiple regression was used to test the developed hypotheses. All the propositions suggested in this study showed positive relationships. Using the multiple regression analysis to study the proposed relationships model showed an inconsistency in the results when different mediation paths were studied. Therefore, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to confirm the goodness-of-fit of the model generated from the multiple regression analysis. The final model generated from the SEM using AMOS software was considered as a valid and reliable model. The contributions of this research at the theoretical and methodological levels and the implications for theory, management and future research were discussed. Theoretical contributions were addressed in this study. ISO, IRB and OCB were found as direct antecedents of employee service quality. On the other hand, OSO, OJ and JS were found to be as indirect antecedents of employee service quality. JS, IRB and OCB played mediation roles between predictors and the outcome. Unexpectedly, AOC was not correlated to employee service quality in this study. As one of the motivations of this study was to provide a comparison of expatriates and local employees looking at employee service quality while the replacement process -Saudi-isation - was in progress. The results showed that there were no significant differences between Saudi employees and expatriates in terms of the delivery of service quality perceived by their managers. The findings of this study suggest that the Saudi-isation process of employees in the Saudi hotels has little or no impact on the quality of the service delivered to customers.


This book examines broad questions of industrial change in order to explain developments in the oil industry. In contrast to most other work on this industry, firms are considered to be the dependent variables rather than the future production and demand for oil and gas. An analysis of the industry is made by examining how corporations change their operating environments and are themselves changed by their environments. Particular attention is paid to 'mega-mergers' and to industrial downsizing and outsourcing. The significance of such restructuring for the societies the companies serve is also considered and comprehensive use is made of recent theories of the firm. It shows how such theories can be used to analyze a key world-wide industry. The distinctive approach of this book will help extend readers' understanding of the oil industry beyond the more conventional studies. Contents 'And then there were four …' a thumbnail history of oil industry restructuring, 1971-2005, Jerome Davis. The Boundaries of the Firm: Mega-Mergers, Transaction Costs, and Value Chains: Size and profitability in the international oil and gas industry, Petter Osmundsen, Klaus Mohn, Magne Emhjellen and Flemming Helgeland; Vertical integration and industrial restructuring: the economic organization of specific assets in the oil refining industry, Jerome Davis; Economic organization of specific assets in the offshore industry, Ola Kvaloy; Supply chain management in the oil industry: the Angolan and Norwegian cases compared, Arne Wiig; Competitive strategy and industry structure: a value configuration interpretation, Charles Stabell. Present and Future Challenges: Transnational energy companies' investment allocation decisions, Petter Osmundsen, Magne Emhjellen and Morten Halleraker; Liberalization, integration and specialization: the restructuring of the European oil industry, Oystein Noreng; Future oil resources and oil company strategies: the clash between geologists and economists and what it means for the industry, Jerome Davis; 'Why don't oil companies commit more to "renewables"?'- a corporate constraints perspective, Jerome Davis. Conclusion: Conclusion – the limits of the firm: configuration and change, Jerome Davis; Index.


Abstract. Winter CO2 fluxes represent an important component of the annual carbon budget in northern ecosystems. Understanding winter respiration processes and their responses to climate change is also central to our ability to assess terrestrial carbon cycle and climate feedbacks in the future. However, the factors influencing the spatial and temporal patterns of winter ecosystem respiration (Reco) of northern ecosystems are poorly understood. For this reason, we analyzed eddy covariance flux data from 57 ecosystem sites ranging from ~35° N to ~70° N. Deciduous forests were characterized by the highest winter Reco rates (0.90 ± 0.39 g C m−2 d−1), when winter is defined as the period during which daily air temperature remains below 0 °C. By contrast, arctic wetlands had the lowest winter Reco rates (0.02 ± 0.02 g C m−2 d−1). Mixed forests, evergreen needle-leaved forests, grasslands, croplands and boreal wetlands were characterized by intermediate winter Reco rates (g C m−2 d−1) of 0.70(±0.33), 0.60(±0.38), 0.62(±0.43), 0.49(±0.22) and 0.27(±0.08), respectively. Our cross site analysis showed that winter air (Tair) and soil (Tsoil) temperature played a dominating role in determining the spatial patterns of winter Reco in both forest and managed ecosystems (grasslands and croplands). Besides temperature, the seasonal amplitude of the leaf area index (LAI), inferred from satellite observation, or growing season gross primary productivity, which we use here as a proxy for the amount of recent carbon available for Reco in the subsequent winter, played a marginal role in winter CO2 emissions from forest ecosystems. We found that winter Reco sensitivity to temperature variation across space (QS) was higher than the one over time (interannual, QT). This can be expected because QS not only accounts for climate gradients across sites but also for (positively correlated) the spatial variability of substrate quantity. Thus, if the models estimate future warming impacts on Reco based on QS rather than QT, this could overestimate the impact of temperature changes.


The approach adopted for the assessment of Kodiat Rosfa dam water quality, through the respective indexes WQI and IWQI, allowed to highlight the quality of its waters for the intended uses. Indeed, the physicochemical analyzes of the months of February, March, July and December, corresponding to the monthly precipitation and regularized volumes of 2013, 2014, 2015 selected, revealed that 08 samples out of 12 have a WQI within 50 to 100, and 04 samples with WQI lower than 50. This classified the dam waters as good to excellent for consumption. Nevertheless, the results of IWQI index used to assess the quality of dam water Kodiat Rosfa for irrigation show that 7 samples out of 12 present an IWQI within 55 to 70 and 5 samples with IWQI lower than 55. These waters are characterized by moderate (MR) to high (HR) restriction.


Purpose: In a previous study, we found higher detection rate of 2nd and 3rd order vascular thrombosis when CT Perfusion (CTP) was performed as compared to non-contrast CT (NCCT) and CT angiography (CTA) alone. Additionally, a significant number of patients with acute infarct were reported as negative without CTP. In this study, we sought to determine whether missed imaging diagnosis without CTP might affect clinical decision making.

Methods: A total of 758 cases were included in our previous study, with CTP deficits reported in all 71 cases with final infarct volume of 2.8 ml or above. Conversely, 23 of 96 (24%) cases without CTP were reported as negative. In the group without CTP, 7 of 10 patients who had 2nd or 3rd order vascular thromboses with a final infarct > 30cc were reported negative, whereas only 1 of 10 cases were missed in patients who had CTP but a negative NCCT. The treatment decisions at the time of stroke were reviewed for these patients.

Results: In 10 cases with final infarct volume > 30ml reported negative without CTP, zero received TPA or thrombectomy. Conversely, in the same category, 5 of 10 cases with positive CTP received TPA (p = 0.041). There was also a higher rate of TPA or thrombectomy treatment in patients with a positive imaging diagnosis, both with CTP (13 of 71, 18.3%) and without CTP (28 of 73, 38.4%), as compared to the group reported negative without CTP (3 of 23, 13%, p = 0.059). Fewer cases in the CTP group received treatment as compared to cases reported positive without CTP. A possible reason is that the cases with CTP were from an earlier phase of our acute stroke program, when treatment tended to be more conservative.

Conclusions: Our study finds discrepancies in decision making for TPA and thrombectomy in stroke cases with positive versus negative imaging diagnosis. The cases reported negative were less likely to receive treatment, including those with relatively large final infarct size (>30ml). We speculate that a negative imaging diagnosis may create doubt for clinical diagnosis in some cases. Adding CTP in the acute stroke imaging protocol will increase imaging diagnostic accuracy and exclude stroke mimics, therefore providing valuable information for treatment.


The degree to which genetic variation in a given trait varies among different populations of the same species and across different environments has seldom been quantified in wild vertebrate species. We investigated the expression of genetic variability and maternal effects in three larval life-history traits of the amphibian Rana temporaria. In a factorial laboratory experiment, five widely separated populations (max. 1600 km) were subjected to two different environmental treatments. Animal model analyses revealed that all traits were heritable (h(2) approximately 0.20) in all populations and under most treatment combinations. Although the cross-food treatment genetic correlations were close to unity, heritabilities under a restricted food regime tended to be lower than those under an ad libitum food regime. Likewise, maternal effects (m(2) approximately 0.05) were detected in most traits, and they tended to be most pronounced under restricted food conditions. We detected several cross-temperature genetic and maternal effects correlations that were lower than unity, suggesting that genotype-environment interactions and maternal effect-environment interactions are a significant source of phenotypic variation. The results reinforce the perspective that although the expression of genetic and maternal effects may be relatively homogeneous across different populations of the same species, local variation in environmental conditions can lead to significant variation in phenotypic expression of quantitative traits through genotype-environment and maternal effect-environment interactions.


A novel smart nanoparticle-based system has been developed for tracking intracellular drug delivery through surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). This new drug delivery system (DDS) shows targeted cytotoxicity towards cancer cells via pH-cleavable covalent carboxylic hydrazone links and the SERS tracing capability based on gold@silica nanocarriers. Doxorubicin, as a model anticancer drug, was employed to compare SERS with conventional fluorescence tracing approaches. It is evident that SERS demonstrates higher sensitivity and resolution, revealing intracellular details, as the strengths of the original Raman signals can be amplified by SERS. Importantly, non-destructive SERS will provide the designed DDS with great autonomy and potential to study the dynamic procedures of non-fluorescent drug delivery into living cells.


In this study, we report the response of phytoplankton community composition to cold and warm interannual events affecting the waters off the Baja California Peninsula from 2007 to 2016 based on data obtained from a single marine station (31.75° N/116.96° W). Included variables were satellite chlorophyll a, sea surface temperature (MODIS/Aqua), upwelling intensity, and field data (phytoplankton pigments, inorganic nutrients, light penetration). Phytoplankton pigments were determined by high performance liquid chromatography, and CHEMTAX software was used to determine the relative contributions of the main taxonomic groups to chlorophyll a. Our results confirm the decrease in phytoplankton biomass due to the influence of the recent Pacific Warm Anomaly (2014) and El Niño 2015–2016. However, this decrease was especially marked at the surface. When data from the entire water column was considered, this decrease was not significant, because at the subsurface Chla did not decrease as much. Nevertheless, significant changes in community composition occurred in the entire water column with Cyanobacteria (including Prochlorococcus) and Prymnesiophytes being dominant at the surface, while Chlorophytes and Prasinophytes made a strong contribution at the subsurface. Analysis of the spatial distribution of SST and satellite chlorophyll a made it possible to infer the spatial extension of these anomalies at a regional scale.


The Sherman-type Zn-Pb-Ag dolomite deposits in central
 Colorado are hosted in dolostones of the Early Mississippian Leadville
 Formation. Paleomagnetic analysis, using progressive alternating field and
 thermal demagnetization and isothermal remanent magnetization acquisition
 methods, was performed on specimens from samples at 37 sites in the
 Sherman-type Continental Chief, Peerless, Ruby, Sacramento, and Sherman
 deposits, in their host rocks, in the 72 Ma Pando Porphyry sill(s) and in
 the ~40 Ma Leadville-type Black Cloud massive sulfide deposit. Paleomagnetic
 fold, contact, and breccia tests were performed to test for the antiquity of
 the magnetizations. The results are interpreted to indicate that the
 Leadville carbonates were regionally dolomitized at ~308 ± 6 (1 σ ) Ma in the
 Early Pennsylvanian and that the Sherman-type deposits were emplaced at ~272
 ± 18 (1 σ ) Ma during the Early Permian after northeast-trending block
 faulting, karstification, and ~4 ± 1 km of sedimentary burial, possibly as
 the result of subsurface gravity-driven fluid flow related to the Ouachita-Marathon
 orogen. Following late Ouachita-Marathon or earliest Laramide (Late
 Cretaceous) folding, the remanence in the Sherman-type deposits and the
 Leadville dolostone rocks within the contact alteration zone of the 72 Ma
 Pando Porphyry sill(s) was reset to acquire a Late Cretaceous normal
 characteristic remanent magnetization. Thereafter the Black Cloud
 Leadville-type massive sulfide deposit was magnetized in the Eocene to
 acquire a reversed polarity characteristic remanent magnetization that was
 not found in the Sherman-type deposits.


Early detection of myocardial ischaemia is a central problem in cardiological and cardiosurgical intensive care. A new approach is the use of ion-selective electrodes implanted directly on the myocardium, enabling detection of increased potassium activity as an indication of general hypoxia. After a comprehensive study of the electrode parameters, an animal experiment was carried out, in which it was found that respiration-induced hypoxia resulted in an increase in epicardial potassium activity (p < 0.01). Blood gas analysis performed simultaneously revealed reduced arterial pO2, but no acidosis. Haemodynamic data evidenced hypoxic depression of circulatory parameters. Histological examinations of the myocardium beneath the electrodes revealed typical lymphocytic infiltration. Electron microscopy demonstrated crystolysis in the mitochondria as an early sign of hypoxia, thus confirming the sensitivity of these electrodes. This underscores the potential of ion-selective electrodes for the detection of myocardial ischaemia, and they should now be investigated in the clinical setting.


In the paper central elements of the German housing market are analyzed in an exemplary manner for the agglomeration of Munich, and other German state capitals. The idea is to extract data in some sort of data mining from two different sources. The paper e.g. focuses on the topics of housing prices, regional patterns, changing customer demands, demographic trends, net migration. This study analyzes residential property, because the IMV program only tracks houses, flats etc.; commercial properties arenit analyzed by this program. While IMMONET contains residential as well as commercial properties the system is more or less dominated by residential properties, and the data base to analyze offices or re-tail outlets would be quite thin.


This article deals with the multiobjective reentrant hybrid flowshop scheduling problem. In the latter several tasks has to be processed in a system and the special feature here is that they must be processed several times on each machines. The system is composed of multiple stages which contain parallel identical machines. Since the tasks must reenter the system at the end of the normal process they create conflict with the following tasks. This problem is NP-Hard and we have developped a metaheuristics to solve it. The latter is an evolutionary algorithm based on the well known SPEA2 mechanism. This algorithm has a Fuzzy-Logic Controller to adapt mutation and crossover probability of generation t with respect to the structure of the population in previous generations (t −1) and (t −2). The two objectives are the makespan and the total tardiness minimization. In this works we compare the classic SPEA2 and the latter improved by FLC (so called FLC-archive). These two algorithms are tested on multiple instances adapted from the literature. Finally the comparisons of the results obtained by the algorithms are done with two different multi-objectives measures.