This paper investigates the effect of taxes on the equilibrium ownership structure of productive assets. Ownership structure includes the traditional choice between debt and equity financing, but also the larger choice between corporate and partnership forms. A key feature of these alternative forms is that corporations are subject to taxation at both the corporate and investor levels, whereas partnerships are not. At the same time, depreciation and interest tax shields are taken at the corporate tax rate for corporate assets and at investors' tax rates for partnership assets. We find that assets endowed with excess non-interest tax deductions are best held in partnership form by high tax bracket investors. Assets whose allowed deductions are low enough to generate a net tax liability in corporate formare best held as partnerships by low tax bracket investors. All other assets are held in the corporate sector and are financed in a manner consistent with Miller's(1977) capital structure equilibrium.We argue that our analysis illuminates the tax aspects of such transactionsas mergers and sales or spin-offs of corporate assets to partnerships and royalty trusts. We also show that our results afford a simple characterization of the lease or buy decision.


Stardust grains, more commonly referred to as presolar grains, are solid condensates of stars that are studied in terrestrial laboratories with a variety of analytical techniques. Here we report on submicrometer silicate, oxide and carbonaceous stardust grains identified in the paired enstatite chondrites SAH 97096 and SAH 97159. A majority of the grains with O isotopic anomalies exhibit O excesses and probably originated in the dusty envelopes of low-mass AGB or RG stars. One grain is highly Orich and has a normal Si isotopic composition; based on its O and Si isotopic composition, an origin in a nova is most likely. However, another scenario that may explain this grain's O isotopic composition is a binary star system consisting of an evolved or mainstream star accreting material from its nova companion. Elemental characterization of the O-anomalous grains shows the presence of eleven magnesian silicate grains with or without Fe and three Fe-oxide grains; none of the grains contain Ca or Al. Carbon-anomalous grains have C/C ratios from 19–78; most are probably SiC. The abundances of the Oand C-anomalous grains are 98±34 and 51±13 ppm, respectively, which is much higher than previously observed in other enstatite chondrites, and close to that of some carbonaceous chondrites.


ABSTRACT Background: Denosumab is a monoclonal antibody against RANK-Ligand with a higher activity in preventing skeletal related events (SREs) than zoledronic acid but without impact on disease progression or death. SREs are pathologic bone fractures, surgery or radiation to the bone or spinal cord compression. The relative effects on SREs in patients with bone metastases from castration resistant prostate cancer and breast cancer are similar (hazard ratio 0.82). Denosumab is usually well tolerated but a dose-dependent increase in risk of osteonecrosis of the jaw in up to 8% of patients and cases of fatal hypocalcaemia have been observed. The approved dose of denosumab is 120mg sc every 4 weeks (q4w); the basis for this dose and schedule, however, is not quite clear. E.g. in a study of 255 women with bone metastases from breast cancer who were randomized to receive denosumab 30mg q4w, 120 mg q4w, 180 mg q4w, 60mg q12w, 180mg q12w or an iv bisphosphonate, a similar degree of creatinine-corrected urinary N-telopeptide (uNTx/Cr) suppression was observed at weeks 13 and 25 in all cohorts. Given that the optimal dose and schedule of denosumab is unknown and this drug is associated with considerable costs and adds toxicity a study of de-escalation is warranted. Trial design: The aim of this trial is to test the hypothesis that the benefit of denosumab is maintained if administered 120mg q12w as compared to 120mg q4w. The primary endpoint of this randomized phase III non-inferiority trial is time to first on-trial symptomatic skeletal event (SSE) defined as clinically significant pathological fracture, surgery to bone, radiation therapy to bone, or spinal cord compression. With a non-inferiority margin of 1.2 for the hazard ratio, a power 80% and a type I error 5%, the total sample size is 1380. Secondary endpoints include safety, time to first and subsequent on-trial SSE, health economic outcomes, quality of life, and change in bone turnover markers. Patients with adequate organ function and bone metastases from breast cancer of from castration resistant prostate cancer are eligible. This trial is open for international collaboration. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02051218. Reused with permission from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). This abstract was accepted and previously presented at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting. All rights reserved. Disclosure: S. Gillessen: Advisory board Novartis; B. Thurlimann: Stock owndership Novartis: R. von Moos: Research funding, honoraria, and consultant Amgen. Honoraria and advisory board Novartis. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


The learning organization has been put forward as an effective way of conflict management through the adoption of the disciplines of personal mastery, mental models, team learning, systems thinking and shared vision (O'Keefe and Stewart, 2004; Fisher-Yoshida, 2005), but this depends to a large extent on the transferability of the concept cross-culturally (Fisher-Yoshida, 2005). This paper investigates the transferability of the learning organization concept in British, German and South African contexts with a sample of university-based human resource (HR) management employees. Specifically, the paper investigates the comparative importance of Senge's (1990) learning organization disciplines in generating effective work outcomes among HR employees in three different national cultural contexts. It is suggested that the importance of the learning disciplines in different countries may be influenced by prevailing cultural differences. The study interrogates the notion that the model provides a globally relevant tool for general applications in effective work outcomes. A survey was conducted utilizing HR practitioners employed by three separate universities in three countries (the United Kingdom, South Africa and Germany). Specific measuring instruments were constructed to operationalize Senge's (1990) model. Results suggest influences of national culture on emphases put on specific aspects of the five disciplines in effective work outcomes.


Sarcomatoid carcinoma of the lung is an uncommon subtype of nonsmall-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Even in the early stages, pulmonary sarcomatoid carcinoma (PSC) has a dismal prognosis when compared to other kinds of NSCLC with a mean survival of 9–12 months and a five-year survival rate of around 20%. We present the case of a 68year-old woman with a two-month history of shortness of breath and cough. Initial computed tomography (CT) scan showed features of interstitial lung disease with chronic obstructive airway changes. After 34 months, the patient's condition worsened with newer complaints of sore throat and hemoptysis. A repeat CT scan showed a 49x38x59mm size lesion in the superior segment of the left lower lobe. A core needle biopsy was performed, which revealed tumor cells consisting of irregular tubules and sarcomatoid components. The patient was started on chemotherapy. Unfortunately, she succumbed to her disease. Our case highlights the aggressiveness of PSC.


Purpose: The incidence of esophageal adenocarcinoma is rising, and survival rates remain poor. The hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) receptor Met has been detected in esophageal cancer. The perturbation of cadherin/catenin complexes has also been shown. We sought to investigate a link among Met expression, cadherin/catenin biology, and cell growth. We assessed the prognostic significance of Met expression in esophageal adenocarcinoma. Experimental Design: Met and HGF expression in esophageal tissues were assessed using immunohistochemistry and ELISA. Met-positive cell lines (OE33 and SEG1) and a Met-negative cell line (TE7) were incubated with HGF. Real-time reverse transcription-PCR and Western blotting were used to assess levels of E-cadherin expression. Nuclear TCF/β-catenin signaling was assessed following reporter construct transfection. Agar colony formation was used to assess anchorage-independent growth. A panel of 72 resected esophageal adenocarcinomas were assessed for Met expression by immunohistochemistry and correlated to survival data. Results: An increased expression of Met was seen along the metaplasia- adenocarcinoma sequence. Met-positive cells showed reductions in E-cadherin mRNA (37% and 69%) and protein expression following stimulation with HGF (P < 0.01). OE33 and SEG-1 showed up to a 2-fold increase in the levels of β-catenin nuclear signaling (P < 0.01). TE7 only responded when transfected to express Met; E-cadherin expression decreased by 64% (P < 0.01). HGF stimulation led to increased agar colony formation (P < 0.01). Patients with Met-positive tumors showed lower 6-month survival rates after surgical resection than those with Met-negative tumors (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Met activation induces changes consistent with early invasion, such as down-regulation of E-cadherin, increased nuclear TCF/β-catenin signaling, and anchorage-independent growth. This is supported by ex vivo data associating Met with reduced short-term survival. Inhibitors of Met may be effective treatment for esophageal adenocarcinoma.


The article questions the fundamental paradigms of labor law in view of the challenges presented by digital platform work. It uses heuristic methods, namely legal doctrine and labor law theory, to show how legal concepts of employment have been informed by organization theory. It proposes taking lessons from organizational analyses of market organizing that have already addressed new organizational forms with some precision. This approach would facilitate the development of a consistent and effective regulatory design for digital labor platforms. The design would include two levels: First, regulation should modify the criteria and indicators for classifying workers, either in the employment category or in a new category, to capture indirect mechanisms of worker control such as feedback and rating systems. Second, the rights and obligations associated with labor law, as well as the participation and governance structures, must be reformulated to address indirect control and the social dynamics of virtual workplaces.


We summarize recent work on cool active stars in our programme. We carried out photometry at the Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University (COMU) observatory, and high-resolution spectroscopy at Mt John University Observatory, as well as collecting data from other facilties. A combination of analysis methods, including our information limit optimization technique (ILOT) with physically realistic fitting functions, as well as other public-domain software packages, have been used to find reliable parameters. Stars in our recent programme include V1430 Aql, V1034 Her, V340 Gem, SAO 62042, FI Cnc, V2075 Cyg, FG UMa and BM CVn. Light variations, sometimes over numerous consecutive cycles, were analysed. For AB Dor and CF Tuc, we compared broadband (B and V) maculation effects with emission features in the Ca II K and Hα lines. Broadband light curves typically show one or two outstanding maculae. These appear correlated with the main chromospheric activity sites ('faculae'), that occur at similar latitudes and with comparable size to the photometric umbrae, but sometimes with significant displacements in longitude. The possibility of large-scale bipolar surface structure is considered, keeping in mind solar analogies. Such optical work forms part of broader multiwavelength studies, involving X-ray and microwave observations, also mentioned.


Following Judith Butler's idea of "materialization," the authors consider the effects of three different approaches to historical information about the educational relationship between indigenous and settler peoples. As a part of an argument about how one might legitimately study the establishment of such a relationship and take seriously the viewpoint of the indigenous people, the authors asks what it becomes possible to think when we eschew popular "multiple discourses" in favour of a strategic engagement with a post-interpretivist empiricism. The authors — respectively descendants of white settlers and indigenous Māori — focus on a material reality not present in the archives recording the initial interactions between the indigenous people and the first permanent British settlers in New Zealand.


The prospective analysis is related directly to the future vision, which cannot be guessed, but if it can be visualized and/or be constructed trought to influence that can be had inside the decision making. The prospective analysis milk and cheese quality that appears, comprises of a project financed by the Foundation Hidalgo Produce and operated by the National Institute Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research. The agri-food chain milk analysis, two products were selected to be put under the analysis, vision and evaluation of a panelists experts group who trought Delphi type questionnaire, were shaping their qualifications. To work decision with milk and cheese products was in regard they are most important by volume in that they are consumed and by the economic value that generate in the agri-food chain milk. It was asked the experts who evaluated the present and future situation to milk and cheese quality to 20 relevant variables to milk case and 15 variables to cheese case, under a 2020 tendencial scene. The panelists qualifications, using like statistical measurement the medium one and in a scale from the 1 to the 10, was for the great majority of the variables 9 or 10, that means very elevated 9 and extremely elevated 10; which takes to think that in the future, the quality milk and cheese subject will be of extreme importance in the research processes that make the institutions dedicated to this activity. From the action strategies proposals were derived such as : fulfillment norms by means of a program of stimuli and punishments by quality; establishment promotion of good handling practices; diffusion to consumption quality product; actors training of all the chain links and technologies transference.


Microgrids are frequently employed in remote regions, in part because access to a larger electric grid is impossible, difficult, or compromises reliability and independence. Although small microgrids often employ spot generation, in which a diesel generator is attached directly to a load, microgrids that combine these individual loads and augment generators with photovoltaic cells and batteries as a distributed energy system are emerging as a safer, less costly alternative. We present a model that seeks the minimum-cost microgrid design and ideal dispatched power to support a small remote site for one year with hourly fidelity under a detailed battery model; this mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP) is intractable with commercial solvers but loosely coupled with respect to time. A mixed-integer linear program (MIP) approximates the model, and a partitioning scheme linearizes the bilinear terms. We introduce a novel policy for loosely coupled MIPs in which the system reverts to equivalent conditions at regular time intervals; this separates the problem into subproblems that we solve in parallel. We obtain solutions within 5% of optimality in at most six minutes across 14 MIP instances from the literature and solutions within 5% of optimality to the MINLP instances within 20 minutes.


Empirical analysis of homicides in which children have killed parents has been limited. The most comprehensive statistical analysis involving parents as victims was undertaken by Heide and used Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) data for the 10-year period 1977 to 1986. This article provides an updated examination of characteristics of victims, offenders, and offenses in parricide incidents using SHR data for the 24-year period 1976 to 1999. The analysis proceeds in two stages. First, offense (homicide circumstances), victim (age, race), and offender (age, race, sex) correlates are reported. Second, juvenile involvement in incidents in which parents were killed is examined and a determination is made whether changes in youth involvement in parricide offenses are discernible over the 24-year period. The article concludes with a comparison of findings that emerged from 24 years of data with those from the earlier 10-year period and the discussion of the significance of these findings.


ABSTRACT Carbonate nodules which occur within the trough cross-stratified highly glauconitic Cambrian Lion Mountain Sandstone of central Texas are primarily an expression of depositional fabric. Trilobite and brachiopod skeletal material accumulated as "shell lag" deposits within troughs in front of migrating, subaqueous megaripples in a tidal inlet and form the framework of the nodules. High depositional porosity, due to the morphology of the skeletal material, was filled, at least partly, by passively precipitated acicular to bladed spar while the sediment was still at or near the sediment-water interface. Clastic constituents rest on the upper surfaces of large skeletal grains in geopetal fashion; consequently, the calcite cement is best developed as downward-elongated spar crystals on the ndersides of the skeletal debris. Large areas within the nodules are now filled with radiaxial, fascicular-optic, and planar cross-twin lamellae calcite cement as a result of neomorphism of the original acicular spar. All three types of spar occur as length-fast and length-slow calcite.


Traditionally, data-based soft sensors are constructed upon the labeled historical dataset which contains equal numbers of input and output data samples. While it is easy to obtain input variables such as temperature, pressure, and flow rate in the chemical process, the output variables, which correspond to quality/key property variables, are much more difficult to obtain. Therefore, we may only have a small number of output data samples, and have much more input data samples. In this article, a mixture form of the semisupervised probabilistic principal component regression model is proposed for soft sensor application, which can efficiently incorporate the unlabeled data information from different operation modes. Compared to the total supervised method, both modeling efficiency and soft sensing performance are improved with the inclusion of additional unlabeled data samples. Two case studies are provided to evaluate the feasibility and efficiency of the new method. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J 60: 533–545, 2014


Inspired by Gerschenkron's thesis, this paper contends that conditions of institutional 'backwardness' in late-medieval England stimulated legal innovations to provide the foundations for negotiability in international financial instruments. Though late-medieval England was not 'backward' in the senses expounded by so many earlier historians, her financial institutions, in comparison with those found on the continent, were far less developed. More retrograde were English fiscal and monetary policies, which played a major role in the fall of England's wool trade, once her most lucrative source of revenue, and thus indirectly in the expansion of her cloth export trade, which came to be canalized on the Antwerp market, where the major financial innovations did take place. Medieval English bullionist legislation was particularly regressive, by contemporary standards, in attempting to prevent the use of credit in foreign trade, in order to force exporters to repatriate receipts in bullio n even if such policies had a seemingly noble purpose: to protect the integrity of the coinage, while eschewing continental practices of debasement. In their application, however, they not only hindered the use of credit but also prevented the development of deposit banking, with domestic transfer instruments, on the continental model. English Common Law, furthermore, was generally hostile to any developments that would make bonds, especially registered recognizances , fully transferable and negotiable. But, from the late thirteenth century, the crown proved to be progressive in permitting mercantile courts to utilize the practices of an international lex mercatoria . From the 1360s, English merchants in the wool and cloth trades sought to reduce their transaction costs, to avoid costly recognizances and litigation in Common Law courts, by resorting to informal holograph bills payable to bearer. But these lacked legal protection in transfer payments, until 1436, when the London Mayor's law-merchant court specifically awarded the bearer of a dishonoured bill-of-exchange rights equal to those of the designated payee: the first recorded in Europe, serving as the vital precedent for a similar Antwerp court ruling in 1506 and for national Habsburg legislation in the 1530s to establish full negotiability of commercial bills, including discounting, with revocation of the usury laws.


Born into a wealthy London family in late-eighteenth-century England, Jane Griffin enjoyed nothing like the opportunities available to men of her class. And yet she became a world traveller, ranging far off the beaten path of Grand-Tour Europe to explore Russia, Greece, the Holy Land and northern Africa. She rode a donkey into Nazareth, sailed a rat-infested boat up the Nile River, and, at age of seventy, circumnavigated the globe in rough sailing ships. Jane married Captain John Franklin at thirty-six. She helped him seize the opportunity of a lifetime - leadership of a Royal Navy expedition destined, supposedly, to solve the final riddle of the Northwest Passage. After Franklin disappeared into the Arctic, she badgered the Admiralty into dispatching dozens of ships to locate him; she financed voyages through public subscription, paid for others out of her own pocket, and inspired even the president of the United States to contribute to the search. In 1854, when explorer John Rae returned from the Arctic with news that the final survivors of the Franklin expedition, while starving to death, had degenerated into cannibalism, Jane enlisted the celebrated Charles Dickens to repudiate him. She then sent Leopold McClintock to the area Rae had specified, and he brought back the evidence she sought, exonerating Franklin personally and opening the way to her creation of a legend.


Abstract Human dipeptidyl peptidase III (DPP III) is a member of the metallopeptidase family M49, involved in protein metabolism and oxidative stress response. DPP III crystal structure shows the two lobe-like domains separated by a wide cleft. The human enzyme has a total of six cysteines, three in the lower (Cys19, Cys147, and Cys176) and three in the upper (Cys509, Cys519, and Cys654), catalytic, domain containing the active-site zinc ion. To elucidate the molecular basis of this enzyme's susceptibility to sulfhydryl reagents, biochemical analysis of a set of Cys to Ala mutants was used, supported by mass spectrometry. Cys176, a residue 44 Å apart from the catalytic center of the ligand-free enzyme, was found responsible for the inactivation with the submicromolar concentration of an organomercurial compound, and three additional cysteines contri\xadbuted to sensitivity to aromatic disulfides. Upon treatment with oxidized glutathione [glutathione disulfide (GSSG)], cysteine residues at positions 147, 176, and 654 were found glutathionylated. The mutational analysis confirmed the involvement of Cys176 and Cys654 in human DPP III inactivation by GSSG. Observation that Cys176, a residue quite distant from the active center, contributes to enzyme inactivation, indicates that the substrate-binding site of human DPP III comprises both lower and upper protein domain.


In an experiment involving 3-person laboratory groups (N = 56), we examined the combined effect of group members' value orientation and their general mindset on group creativity. We induced a collectivistic (vs. individualistic) value orientation via a group-based (vs. individual-based) incentives. We also induced an independent (vs. interdependent) mindset by activating a focus on uniqueness and differentiation (vs. similarity and assimilation). Consistent with a synergy model of individualism-collectivism (Choi, Cho, Seo, & Bechtoldt, 2018), we found that groups generated more original ideas when members combined a collectivistic value orientation with an independent mindset than with an interdependent mindset. By contrast, no significant effects emerged when an individualistic value orientation was induced. We also found that this effect was mediated by the thinking process conducive to creativity (i.e., low fixation), thereby illuminating the underlying cognitive mechanism of the synergy effect. Implications of these findings for research on culture and group creativity are discussed.


Power grid vulnerability analysis is often performed through solving a bi-level optimization problem, which, if solved to optimality, yields the most destructive interdiction plan with the worst loss. As one of the most effective operations to mitigate deliberate outages or attacks, transmission line switching recently has been included and modeled by a binary variable in the lower level decision model. Because this bi-level problem is a challenging nonconvex discrete optimization problem, no exact algorithm has been developed, and only a few recent heuristic procedures are available. In this paper, we present a novel trilevel reformulation of this bi-level problem, as well as its singlelevel equivalent form, and describe a finitely-convergent cutting plane algorithm to derive an exact solution. Numerical results are provided and benchmarked against existing ones, which confirms the quality of solutions and the computational efficiency of our algorithm.


Osteomas represent the most common benign neoplasm of the paranasal sinuses. Rarely, these tumors are symptomatic, and even more rarely, they present with complications including intracranial invasion with pneumocephalus. The surgical management of paranasal sinus osteomas causing intracranial complications, like pneumocephalus, has classically been described with open craniofacial approaches. Here, we discuss the management of a case of pneumocephalus caused by a large fronto-ethmoid osteoma. In this case, surgical management consisted of an entirely endoscopic, endonasal approach using only the left nasal and sinus cavity as the surgical corridor.


Our previous study suggested that hetero-oligomer formation of guinea pig liver UDP-glucuronosyltransferases (UGTs) 2B21 and 2B22 enhances UGT2B21-catalyzed morphine-6-glucuronidation. In this work, further evidence for a functional hetero-oligomer between UGT2B21 and UGT2B22 was provided by studies of the glucuronidation of chloramphenicol with dual expression in COS-7 cells. UGT2B21 expressed in COS cells was capable of glucuronidating the 3-hydroxyl group of morphine, 4-hydroxybiphenyl, borneol, testosterone, androsterone, and estriol, whereas it had some effect on chloramphenicol. On the contrary, UGT2B22 does not exhibit any significant activity toward these typical substrates tested in this study. When UGT2B21 and UGT2B22 were expressed simultaneously, the chloramphenicol glucuronidation was enhanced to 4.5-fold, whereas the activities toward other substrates were little affected except that for the 6-hydroxyl group of morphine. The protein expression level of UGT2B21 was comparable when UGT2B21 was expressed with or without UGT2B22. These results suggest that simultaneous expression of UGT2B21 and UGT2B22 enhances UGT2B21-catalyzed chloramphenicol glucuronidation. Hetero-oligomer formation of UGT2B21 and UGT2B22 may act by fine-tuning the catalytic glucuronidation of chloramphenicol.


The AML16 trial evaluated the combination of the farnesyltransferase inhibitor, tipifarnib, and low dose cytarabine (LDAC) in older acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) patients in a 'Pick a Winner' design. The aim was to double remission rates compared to LDAC, with initial evaluation after 100 patients. Failure to improve remission would result in discontinuation. A total of 65 patients, median age 74 years (range 62–86), were randomized. After reviewing the first 45 patients, the Data Monitoring Committee concluded that the overall aspirations would not be met and recommended closure. The addition of tipifarnib had no effect on response, toxicity or survival.


The lacuna around race in (white) Christian theological anthropology has often been pointed out. The canon of academic systematic theology seldom reflects on the implication of modern race and racism for our theological anthropologies and, therefore, fails to provide adequate resources for dealing with one of the most fundamental problems of modern theological anthropology – that the modern human was conceived through a white racial lens. Black theology, in its various streams, has responded with a theological anthropology that consciously disrupted a modern anthropology which thought of 'man' as white (and male). This article analyses the sustained work around theological anthropology of South African Black Theologian Simon Maimela. Maimela over a number of years attempted to articulate the theological problem of white anthropology, or the anthropological problem of white theology, in South Africa. Two dominant pillars are identified in Maimela's theological anthropology and these are connected to the influence of Black theology and African theology on his work, and his attempt at drawing these traditions together. Maimela's theological critique on whiteness will be discussed and key contemporary implications noted. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: While the article is most explicitly situated in the discipline of systematic theology, it challenges dominant narratives on what the theological problem with apartheid was, which also has implications for the broader fields of whiteness studies and critical race studies in South Africa.


still a main diagnostic challenge. Standard methods include: taking a history, clinical examination, auscultation and radiological procedures. But for many reasons, such as exposure to ionizing radiation and the inability to apply at bedside the chest radiography is not any more 'Gold standard' to acute respiratory insufficiency. Lung ultrasound (LUS) has been shown to have great sensitivity and specificity in the differential diagnosis of the most common respiratory conditions. This method can be applied bedside, it can be used even outside of hospitals, follow up is easy and does not expose the patient to harmful ionizing radiation. According to a diagnostic algorithm called 'BLUE protocol' established by Daniel Lichtenstein lung ultrasound has been proven to be accurate in finding the true cause of respiratory insufficiency in a large number of cases. Major acute respiratory disorders are pulmonary edema, pulmonary inflammation, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), pulmonary embolism, asthma exacerbation and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pleural effusion and pneumothorax. Aim To demonstrate the role of lung ultrasound (LUS) as the first line of pulmonary condition diagnosis, to define the role of LUS during folow-up visits in order to prevent complications, to increase awareness of LUS importance in relation to the most frequent pulmonary disease in pediatric patients. Materials-methods We have described the LUS examination technique as normal LUS images and LUS findings in the most frequent pulmonary pediatric diseases. Results and conclusion LUS has been proven to be a very important diagnostic tool in almost all lung disease in pediatric disease described but obviously still need continuous research to explore its potential.


Author(s): Smith, Thomas Horace | Advisor(s): Trejo, JoAnn | Abstract: G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are transmembrane proteins that allow cells to respond to extracellular stimuli. GPCR activation occurs when a ligand binds to the extracellular portion of the receptor. The ligand-bound receptor undergoes a conformational change that allows the intracellular domain of the receptor to engage and activate signaling effectors. The protease-activated receptors (PARs) are a family of GPCRs that are activated by proteases such as thrombin. Unlike traditional GPCRs, which can return to their inactive state after signaling, PARs are irreversibly activated. Therefore, the eventual fate of an activated PAR is degradation. The internalization and endocytic sorting of PARs play key roles in their signal regulation.Trafficking has been well-characterized for PAR1, the prototypical thrombin receptor. PAR4 was the last of the four thrombin receptor to be discovered, and has in large part been relatively under-studied. Recent studies have shown that PAR4 plays distinct roles that differ from those of PAR1, and as such may represent a potential drug target. Thus, understanding the mechanisms that regulate PAR4 signal regulation is important.In this dissertation, I characterized the role that trafficking and heterodimerization play in regulating PAR4 signaling. I found that adaptor- protein complex-2 (AP-2) is a key mediator of PAR4 agonist-induced internalization, and that AP-2 binds to intracellular loop 3 (ICL3) of PAR4. Disruption of PAR4 internalization resulted in enhanced and prolonged ERK1/2 activation, suggesting that endocytosis may mediate PAR4 signal attenuation.I also characterized the role of heterodimerization with the puringeric receptor P2Y12 in modulating PAR4 signaling. Previous studies had demonstrated that PAR4 and P2Y12 coordinate β-arrestin-dependent Akt activation. My work strongly suggests that PAR4 and P2Y12 physically associate basally and co-internalize in response to activation of PAR4. I also demonstrate that β-arrestin is recruited to the co-internalized PAR4-P2Y12 complex. In contrast to the effect on ERK1/2 activation, disruption of PAR4 internalization diminished Akt activation. Taken together, the studies summarized in this dissertation highlight the importance of PAR4 internalization in modulating activity of functionally and spatially distinct signaling pathways.


AbstractMany opinions are divided on what religious freedom should protect and the area is unexploredin preschool. Is it the parents, the child or preschool teacher right? The aim of the studywas to investigate Maria klasson Sundin´s concept and theoretical models of religious freedomfor children through three Swedish preschool settings and also how three teachers interpretsand expresses children's freedom of religion. Through a qualitative interview study theaim was to investigate how the concepts of religion, autonomy and freedom is interpreted andexpressed by the teachers so a picture through this three concepts can categorise the teachersin a model; freedom of thought, tradition and life interpretation model so a broader picturecan be made to understand how the children's freedom of religion is expressed in the preschoolsetting and how the teachers work. The Result showed through the analysis that themodels fail to categorise the teachers in any theoretical model but on the other hand the understandingof preschool teacher's expression and interpretation of the concept of religion,autonomy and freedom showed both diversity and lack of knowledge on the subject mattersreligious freedom which fall within the child rights issues. Furthermore the analysis showsthat children in preschool lack religious freedom, it can be interpreted rather in terms of afreedom of parents and preschool teachers. Further research is needed in the area of children'srights and religious freedom for preschool children and their teachers in (e.g.) investigate differenceof public municipal and private preschools, religious, and non-religious.


Many stiff clays forming part of natural slopes and earth dams exist in the fissured state. When these cracks are subjected to gravity induced normal and shear stresses they may propagate. The present discussion presents a numerical method to study the propagation direction of cracks under stress fields similar to those found in the field. Not only did the results on one crack propagation direction obtained from the numerical method and the analytical results agree well, but numerical results have been used to investigate the mechanisms of the whole process of two horizontal cracks initiation and propagation and coalescence in stiff soils.


The Drosophila antimicrobial response is one of the best characterized systems of pattern recognition receptor-mediated defense in metazoans. Drosophila senses Gram-negative bacteria via two peptidoglycan recognition proteins (PGRPs), membrane-bound PGRP-LC and secreted/cytosolic PGRP-LE, which relay diaminopimelic acid (DAP)-type peptidoglycan sensing to the Imd signaling pathway. In the case of PGRP-LC, differential splicing of PGRP domain-encoding exons to a common intracellular domain-encoding exon generates three receptor isoforms, which differ in their peptidoglycan binding specificities. In this study, we used Phi31-mediated recombineering to generate fly lines expressing specific isoforms of PGRP-LC and assessed the tissue-specific roles of PGRP-LC isoforms and PGRP-LE in the antibacterial response. Our in vivo studies demonstrate the key role of PGRP-LCx in sensing DAP-type peptidoglycan-containing Gram-negative bacteria or Gram-positive bacilli during systemic infection. We also highlight the contribution of PGRP-LCa/x heterodimers to the systemic immune response to Gram-negative bacteria through sensing of tracheal cytotoxin (TCT), whereas PGRP-LCy may have a minor role in antagonizing the immune response. Our results reveal that both PGRP-LC and PGRP-LE contribute to the intestinal immune response, with a predominant role of cytosolic PGRP-LE in the midgut, the central section of endodermal origin where PGRP-LE is enriched. Our in vivo model also definitively establishes TCT as the long-distance elicitor of systemic immune responses to intestinal bacteria observed in a loss-of-tolerance model. In conclusion, our study delineates how a combination of extracellular sensing by PGRP-LC


In this paper, we propose two-dimensional (2-D) systolic-array infinite-impulse response (IIR) and finite-impulse response (FIR) digital filter architectures without global broadcast, by the hybrid of a modified reordering scheme and a new systolic transformation. This architecture has local broadcast, lower-quantization error, and zero latency without sacrificing the number of multipliers, as well as delay elements under the satisfactory critical period. Furthermore, we extend this new architecture to a useful 2-D systolic cascade-form architecture and provide the comprehensive error analysis for the proposed architectures.


To sustain perpetual operation, systems that harvest environmental energy must carefully regulate their usage to satisfy their demand. Regulating energy usage is challenging if a system's demands are not elastic and its hardware components are not energy-proportional, since it cannot precisely scale its usage to match its supply. Instead, the system must choose when to satisfy its energy demands based on its current energy reserves and predictions of its future energy supply. In this paper, we explore the use of weather forecasts to improve a system's ability to satisfy demand by improving its predictions. We analyze weather forecast, observational, and energy harvesting data to formulate a model that translates a weather forecast to a wind or solar energy harvesting prediction, and quantify its accuracy. We evaluate our model for both energy sources in the context of two different energy harvesting sensor systems with inelastic demands: a sensor testbed that leases sensors to external users and a lexicographically fair sensor network that maintains steady node sensing rates. We show that using weather forecasts in both wind- and solar-powered sensor systems increases each system's ability to satisfy its demands compared with existing prediction strategies.


Endometriosis is a common gynecological condition which affects 5–10% of women of reproductive age and up to 50% of women with pelvic pain and infertility. The most commonly affected areas are the pelvic peritoneum, ovaries and rectovaginal septum. Isolated endometriosis of the sciatic nerve is very rare. Our patient suffered from worsening right hip and buttock pain with severe exacerbation during menstruation. Several different imaging modalities (ultrasound of her pelvis and right hip, as well as X-rays and computed tomography scans of her right hip and lumbosacral spine) failed to identify any pathology. Magnetic resonance imaging scans of her pelvis revealed a 3.5 cm endometriotic lesion over the pelvic segment of her right sciatic nerve. Following a multidisciplinary discussion, the patient underwent laparoscopic excision of endometriosis. The patient recovered well from her surgery. She successfully conceived with in vitro fertilization 3 years after her surgery, following a failed course of Clomid (Clomiphene citrate) for ovulatory dysfunction.


From archaeological evidence it is clear that the Mycenaean's enjoyed widespread commercial relations with the countries of the East Mediterranean, and this thesis is a study of the material objects of this trade. Their distinctive pottery appears to have been the most important commodity exported by the Mycenaean's: fragments and whole vases have been excavated at scores of Late Bronze Age sites in the East Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, Cyprus, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. The majority of the vases found belong to the 14th and 13th Centuries and their distribution is one of our strongest proofs for the existence of flourishing trade relations at this time. Commerce thrived because these 200 years represented a period of stability in the East Mediterranean. The great ports of the Levant and Cyprus were visited not only by Mycenaean traders but by merchants from all the neighbouring countries. Pottery was not the only commodity featured in the trade. Bronzes from Greece indicate that the Mycenaean's had an extensive metal industry and their supplies of copper and tin were imported. The copper came from Cyprus in the form of ingots. These metals were essential to a Late Bronze Age civilisation, but other finds from excavated graves and settlements on the Mainland prove that the Mycenaean's also obtained luxury materials such as gold, silver, ivory and semi-precious stones. These were imported as raw materials and then fashioned by Mycenaean craftsmen. The Linear B tablets, although they do not discuss foreign trade, throw light on some of the types of materials which must have been traded, including certain perishable goods which have not survived to be excavated by the archaeologist. Each chapter deals with a particular commodity featured in the trade, and in the conclusion the extent of trade with each country is summed up. An accompanying folder contains maps and photographs.


The consequences of the illicit use of firearms are a global issue. Every year over 200,000 people are unlawfully killed using firearms outside of conflict zones. Terrorist attacks using firearms are also more deadly than those using other weapons, such as incendiary devices. This textbook explores the many dimensions of this issues taking a global perspective. Students are not only introduced to the core issues related to the trafficking, manufacture, availability and criminal use of firearms, but also issues such as firearms markets; national and international legal frameworks to control firearms; the response of the criminal justice system; the role of civil society in affecting change; and how students can get involved through research and action. The text uses international case studies, activities and on-line resources in order to help students and academic staff bring these issues to life, and gain a deeper understanding of this complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon.


In pattern recognition, computer vision, and image processing, many approaches are based on second order operators. Well-known examples are second order networks, the 3D structure tensor for motion estimation, and the Harris corner detector. A subset of second order operators are quadratic operators. It is lesser known that every second order operator can be written as a weighted quadratic operator. The contribution of this paper is to propose an algorithm for converting an arbitrary second order operator into a quadratic operator. We apply the method to several examples from image processing and machine learning. The advantages of the alternative implementation by quadratic operators is two-fold: The underlying linear operators allow new insights into the theory of the respective second order operators and replacing second order networks with sums of squares of linear networks reduces significantly the computational burden when the trained network is in operation phase.


Cross-flow microfiltration (MF) was investigated as a viable option for separating colloidal particles from electroplating wastewater. Filtration experiments with Cr(OH)3 suspension as synthetic electroplating wastewater were performed on a pilot filter unit equipped with a backpulse device using porous alumina ceramic membranes of various pore sizes (0.2-5.0 µm). The membranes were characterized by nitrogen and clean water permeation. In filtration with Cr(OH)3 suspension, water permeate flux decreases with decreasing membrane pore size and increasing solute concentration in suspension. All membranes are fouled in filtration primarily due to the cake formation. With backpulse in operation, a constant water permeate flux can be maintained using membranes with pore size smaller or larger than the size of solid aggregates in the suspension. The rejection coefficient of suspended solid is about 100% for the smaller pore membranes but drops to only 70% for the larger pore membrane. The backpulse is not effective in maintaining a constant water permeate flux for filtration using membranes of pore size close to the suspension aggregate size due to entrapment of fine aggregates in the membrane pores. The fouled membranes could be completely regenerated by a chemical rinsing method with NaOH and HNO3 solutions.


A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the award of the Degree of Master of Science (Integrated Watershed Management) in the School of Pure and Applied
Sciences, Kenyatta University. November, 2016


The chemical composition of eight Tunisian Rosmarinus officinalis L. populations (A–H) from different bioclimatic areas has been examined by gas chromatography (GC) and GC-mass spectrometry. The essential oils are characterised by high amounts of oxygenated monoterpenes (58.2–71.7%) followed by monoterpene hydrocabons (15.1–26.7%). 1,8-Cineole, camphor, α-pinene and borneol are the main representative components. The antioxidant activity was investigated by 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical (DPPH), ferric reducing ability power assay and β-carotene bleaching test. Samples showed antiradical activity by inhibiting DPPH radical with IC50 values ranging from 375.3 to 592.8 μg mL− 1 for samples F and A, respectively. Sample A also showed the most promising activity in β-carotene bleaching test (IC50 of 31.9 μg mL− 1). The essential oils were also screened for acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) inhibitory activity. Sample G showed the highest activity against AChE (IC50 of 64.7 μg mL− 1) while sample D (IC50 of 29.5 μg mL− 1) exhibited the most potent activity against BChE.


Batteries and supercapacitors (SC) complement one another; a battery has a relatively high energy density but a low power density, whereas an SC has a relatively high power density but a low energy density. In order to offset their opposing limitations, an active battery/SC hybrid energy storage system (HESS) using a dc/dc converter has been proposed. The major problem concerning an active HESS is in how to control the current flow in order to achieve two objectives: the minimization of the magnitude/fluctuation of the current flowing in and out of the battery and the energy loss seen by the SCs. This problem has not been analytically investigated for an optimal solution regarding these two goals. In this paper, we present an optimal energy management scheme for active HESS. In order to obtain the optimal solution, we formulate the problem as an optimization problem concerning these two objectives. Observing that the feasibility and optimality of the solution critically depends on the boundary parameters of the problem, we present an algorithm that effectively adjusts the parameter values. The proposed algorithm is based on the multiplicative-increase- additive-decrease principle, which guarantees a feasible optimal solution. Through MATLAB simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme can optimally minimize the magnitude/fluctuation of the battery current and the SC energy loss.


Abstract. Beams of Almost Monoenergetic Ions (AMI) in the energy range from 20 to 800 keV were discovered in the DOK-2 experiment (Interball project) in the magnetosheath and upstream of the Earth's bow shock. This work summarizes the analysis results of ~730 AMI events registered in 1995–2000. Statistics of AMI properties, their nature and origin are considered. The analysis of a large array of new data confirmed our earlier suggested ideas on the AMI nature, origin, and their acceleration model. These ideas were further developed and refined. According to this model, AMI are a result of solar wind ions acceleration in small regions with a potential electric field arising due to disruptions of the bow shock current sheet filaments. It has been found that the reason of the current filaments disruptions in most cases was the Hot Flow Anomaly phenomenon (HFA) caused by an interaction of a tangential discontinuity in the solar wind with the Earth's bow shock. It is shown that the study of AMI can provide new information on large-scale properties and dynamics of the bow shock current sheet.


In this paper a new strategy for real time detection of plasma instabilities, called MARFEs, is proposed through real-time image processing on plasma video sequences. These sequences are recorded by a vision system based on a charge coupled device (CCD) camera installed at Frascati Tokamak Upgrade (FTU). The strategy used to perform the task is based on a new family of nonlinear analog processors, digitally programmable, implemented into the so-called Cellular Neural Network Universal Machine (CNN-UM). The basic idea deals with a system capable to carry out safer nuclear fusion experiments, preventing the plant from excessive mechanical and thermal stress which occurs during plasma instability phenomena (i.e., disruptions). Experimental results, obtained on the FTU machine, are reckoned fully satisfactory.


This paper investigates the dynamics of comparative advantage in agri-food products between Nigeria and the European Union (EU28). Using 'products mapping' approach based on trade balance index (TBI), Balassa index (BI), Lafay index (LFI) and other descriptive approaches, the findings show that Nigeria substantially recorded adverse TBI in trading both with the world and the EU28. The share of total Nigerian food exports and imports which the EU28 accounted for, declined from 72% and 40% to 37% and 27% between 1995 and 2017, respectively. The findings of both BI and LFI reveals that between 1995 and 2017, Nigeria's comparative advantages in trading in the world market declined from 12/46 to 8/46 food products. Similarly, Nigeria's trade with the EU28 comparative advantages reduced from 12/46 to 9/46 food products. Inversely, the food products that Nigeria has comparative disadvantages and negative TBI in trading with the EU28 rose from 31/46 to 35/46. For Nigeria, to boost its exports and competitiveness, especially in products that the country has natural advantages in producing, there is an urgent need for increasing investment and implementing policies on domestic agricultural and food value chains.


Solar-driven interfacial water evaporation, which concentrates solar heating at the water surface, has attracted increasing interest in pursuing highly efficient solar desalination. The rapid evaporation of water at the light absorber surface would induce a high concentration comparable with that of brine underlying the interface, which however has been paid much less attention and has never been proposed to produce electricity. Here in this work, we proved that, the theoretical real-time salinity power generated between the surface water and bulk seawater could be 12.5 W m−2 during steam production under one sun illumination. By employing a hybrid system based on a piece of carbon nanotube modified filter paper and a commercial Nafion membrane, we achieved a maximum solar thermal efficiency of up to 75% and derived extra electricity power of ∼1 W m−2 under one sun illumination. These results provide a novel avenue for blue energy utilization, demonstrating the potential for solar desalination and electricity generation under natural sunlight simultaneously.


Sensors based on the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) effect are known as sensitive methods for refractive index measurements or for detection of specific binding reactions in biosensing due to a variation in layer thickness. Fiber based arrangements are able to perform such measurements with very small analyte volumina. A generalization of this concept for a multiplexed measurement of different biomolecules in a single fiber could be an attractive approach. We discuss the possibility of selectively sensitizing the inner surfaces of a suspended core fiber with two different metallic nanoparticle types in monolayers for such multiplexed measurements.


The present investigation revealed that peanut hulls (Arachis hypogaea Linn.) can be an inexpensive, excellent biosorbent for the removal of zinc (II) ions from aqueous solutions. FTIR analysis of biosorbent confirmed that hydroxyl, carbonyl and carboxyl group, so that the cell wall surface of the biosorbent that may interact with the zinc (II) ions. The SEM represents a porous structure with large surface area.The optimal parameters such as solution pH, biosorbent dose, initial zinc (II) ions concentration, contact time and temperature determined in the experiment were effective in determining the efficiency of zinc (II) ions onto peanut hulls(Arachis hypogaea Linn.). The maximum zinc (II) ion loading capacity (qm) of peanut hulls (Arachis hypogaea Linn.) was found to be 14.492 mg g with perfect fit to Langmuir isotherm model and follows pseudo-second order kinetics. The thermodynamic study confirmed that reaction of biosorption of zinc (II) ions onto peanut hulls (Arachis hypogaea Linn.) is spontaneous, endothermic and increasing randomness of the solid solution interfaces. From these observations it can be concluded that peanut hulls (Arachis hypogaea Linn.) has considerable biosorption capacity, available in abundant, nonhazardous agro material could be used as an effective indigenous material for treatment of wastewater stream containing zinc (II)


One common claim in second language (L2) acquisition research is that attention is crucial for development to occur. Although previous empirical research supports this claim, methodological approaches have not been able to directly measure attention. This thesis utilized eye-tracking to directly measure attention and thus provide converging evidence in support of previous research.

Additionally, this study explored how the distinction between external and internal attentional mechanisms, as posited by cognitive psychology theory, may play out in L2 development. These mechanisms are aligned with attentional manipulations established through the L2 instructional interventions of input enhancement and structured input practice. How such manipulations affect attention and whether they lead to development were addressed by the following experimental design.

Beginning learners of Spanish learned a novel target-form: direct-object pronouns—e.g., lo, ('him') in lo besa Maria ('Maria kisses him')—which represents the theme in the sentence. Practice consisted of two variations of a picture-sentence matching activity where participants had to choose which image (from a pair) best depicted a written sentence. The two variations were: an external condition, where sentences presented in the matching activity included the target-form in a different color, as in input enhancement, and an internal condition, where exposure to two initial pictures that differed only in relation to the direct object preceded the matching activity, as in structured input practice. Immediate and delayed interpretation tasks assessed In all conditions, participant attention will be operationalized using three measures of eye movement: (a) total time fixating the pronoun, (b) total number of fixations on the pronoun, and (c) skipping rate of the pronoun.L2 development.

To assess effects of attention, eye-tracking measures recorded during the two conditions were compared to those recorded on control trials (with no manipulation of attention). For the external condition, attention was directed to the pronoun as participants skipped the pronoun less, and L2 development was found at the delayed interpretation task. For the internal condition, attention was directed to the pronoun as participants skipped the pronoun less and total time looking at the pronoun increased. Furthermore, L2 development was found at immediate and delayed interpretation tasks for this condition. Although both conditions appear to effectively manipulate attention, results suggest that different manipulations differentially affect attentional allocation, which may have implications for the amount of resulting L2 development.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the outcomes of a group of 15 and 16 year old school students who participated in a service learning project, referred to as the 'Adopt a School' project. This study was undertaken to understand what effect the project had on these students, and how it impacted on them as people. This study focused on the experiences these students had during their field trip in Sri Lanka in September 2005. A qualitative methodology incorporating the grounded theory was selected to analyse the data. The study identified that service learning engagement provides powerful and deep learning experiences which encourage students to reflect on their beliefs, attitudes and relationships with others, especially on their life as teenagers in Australia and, as a result, what they had come to take for granted or have not questioned. A core finding from this study was that service learning involvement promoted identity formation. Immersion in the host community facilitated new and more complex thinking about their personal and social identities, the construction of identity in relation to serving others, and the kinds of commitments participants wanted to make in their lives. Because students were introduced to and developed relationships with, individuals and experiences with which they were unfamiliar, previously held notions of self and other were challenged, and reconstructed. Implications for education have been drawn from the results of this study.


Virtual currencies pose a serious threat to be used for money laundering, weakening the European Union's financial system. Directive (EU) 2018/843 (the fifth anti-money laundering Directive) intends to mitigate these risks by introducing a definition of virtual currencies within Union law. Some service providers connected to virtual currencies are made subject to anti-money laundering law. Member States are required to transpose this Directive into national law by January 2020. Consultations on national level are currently ongoing. This article analyses how the Directive applies to current forms of cryptocurrencies, their adjacent services and intermediaries. It highlights the Directive's imprecise wording as well as its limited scope. If Member States transpose it verbatim, they will create legal uncertainty and loopholes for relevant entities. Therefore, this article seeks to contribute to the national consultations of Member States by providing concrete legislative recommendations on how to fix the Directive's shortcomings.


The design of urban bus transit systems aims to determine a network configuration with a set of bus lines and associated frequencies that achieve the targeted objective. This paper presents a methodology framework to formulate and solve the bus transit network design problem (TNDP). It first proposes a TNDP taking into account the travel time stochasticity. A robust optimization model is formulated for the proposed problem, which aims to minimize the sum of the expected value of the operator cost and its variability multiplied by a weighting value. A heuristic solution approach, based on k-shortest path algorithm, simulated annealing algorithm, Monte Carlo simulation, and probit-type discrete choice model, is subsequently developed to solve the robust optimization model. Finally, the proposed methodology is applied to a numerical example. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.


Lithuania is currently undergoing a reform of the residential care, which is a major challenge for the system of care for persons with disabilities. This system has been formed during the Soviet times and still functions despite criticism for human rights violations and irrational use of financial resources. Currently this is the the only available form of care for persons with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities who are in need of a long-term care. Authors of the article employ the institutional theory and analyse resistance of the system to the reform. They conclude that social care organisations aim to keep the existing power and invoke financial, human and technical resources as well as the conjunctive relations. Authors also notice the vicious circle of the institutional functioning, while the necessity to isolate persons with disabilities is justified by lack of their self-support as well as lack of tolerance in the society. In the meantime, the institutions themselves exclude persons with disabilities and reduce their authonomy.


Abstract. The 12 April 1998 Mw = 5.6 Krn Mountains earthquake with a maximum intensity of VII–VIII on the EMS-98 scale caused extensive environmental effects in the Julian Alps. The application of intensity scales based mainly on damage to buildings was limited in the epicentral area, because it is a high mountain area and thus very sparsely populated. On the other hand, the effects on the natural environment were prominent and widespread. These facts and the introduction of a new Environmental Seismic Intensity scale (ESI 2007) motivated a research aimed to evaluate the applicability of ESI 2007 to this event. All environmental effects were described, classified and evaluated by a field survey, analysis of aerial images and analysis of macroseismic questionnaires. These effects include rockfalls, landslides, secondary ground cracks and hydrogeological effects. It was realized that only rockfalls (78 were registered) are widespread enough to be used for intensity assessment, together with the total size of affected area, which is around 180 km2. Rockfalls were classified into five categories according to their volume. The volumes of the two largest rockfalls were quantitatively assessed by comparison of Digital Elevation Models to be 15 × 106 m3 and 3 × 106 m3. Distribution of very large, large and medium size rockfalls has clearly defined an elliptical zone, elongated parallel to the strike of the seismogenic fault, for which the intensity VII–VIII was assessed. This isoseismal line was compared to the tentative EMS-98 isoseism derived from damage-related macroseismic data. The VII–VIII EMS-98 isoseism was defined by four points alone, but a similar elongated shape was obtained. This isoseism is larger than the corresponding ESI 2007 isoseism, but its size is strongly controlled by a single intensity point lying quite far from others, at the location where local amplification is likely. The ESI 2007 scale has proved to be an effective tool for intensity assessment in sparsely populated mountain regions not only for very strong, but for moderate earthquakes as well. This study has shown that the quantitative definition of rockfall size and frequency, which is diagnostic for each intensity, is not very precise in ESI 2007, but this is understandable since the rockfall size is related not only to the level of shaking, but also depends highly on the vulnerability of rocky slopes.


A channel-select filter with on-chip PLL tuning for CDMA IS-95 has been integrated in a 0.35-/spl mu/m digital CMOS technology. To achieve both low power and robustness, dynamic range scaling is implemented on an elliptic ladder prototype. The dynamic range scaling is based on the special requirement for the wireless receiver. A new method to analyze the trade-off between filter noise and power consumption is presented. The filter and PLL dissipate 2.9 mW and 1.6 mW from a 3-V supply, and the die area is 1.06 mm/sup 2/. The filter achieves 61 dB stopband rejection, 0.05 dB/0.2/spl deg/ I/Q gain/phase mismatch, 100 /spl mu/Vrms input-referred noise, 20 dBm IIP3, and 58 dB SFDR.


: Eighty-seven unselected gall stones were examined radiologically and by ultrasound in vitro. No relationship of diagnostic value could be established between the amount of calcification and stone demonstration, the sonogram being influenced by the size of the stone, its surface contour and its position in the ultrasound beam. Sonography is therefore not suitable for selecting those patients on whom litholysis could be carried out. Sonography appears to be useful only in a negative way by establishing the exact size of the concretion.


With the development of integrated circuit technology, it is more and more difficult for debugging circuits. Generally, to achieve a powerful debugging capability of circuits is often at the expense of larger cost of hardware overhead .This paper propose a method of debugging structure designed in full-custom CPU based on scan-set testability methods and combed with the boundary-scan technology. This debugging structure can reduces much scan chains hardware overheads and is applicable to all general-purpose CPU chips. Moreover, it owns a powerful debugging capability which is observing and controlling the internal registers of circuits from JTAG port. This structure only increases the difficulty of the circuit logic design, but greatly decreases the cost of hardware.


Major changes in the technologies of power generation and distribution systems have been introduced in recent years due to concern over rapid climate change. Therefore, disturbances in the large-scale generation, transmission, and distribution of energy are expected to occur in the near future. This is due to the difficulty in controlling the transmission and distribution of energy produced from renewable energy sources (RESs), caused by the instability of these sources and the intermittent nature of their energy. As a result, maintaining the dynamic stability of wind power flow and control of the network frequency is becoming more challenging due to the high penetration impacts of RESs. In this paper, a control algorithm using the power-sharing method is proposed for a wind-based energy storage system to maintain the dynamic stability of wind power flow and control of frequency in the power network. To maintain the network stability, a storage system (battery) was installed to store the excess wind power without throwing it into the Secondary/Dump Load (SL) and minimize losses in power generated by the wind turbine. The results show, the transient time of wind power flow and the fluctuation rate of frequency are reduced significantly using a Fuzzy Logic (FL) controller compared to the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller.


The mechanism of CD4+ cell loss in lymphoid organs is unknown. In this study, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection of human fetal thymus/liver implants in severe combined immunodeficient mice was used to investigate the mechanism of HIV-induced depletion of CD4-bearing cells in vivo. The implants were assessed for depletion of CD4+ thymocytes, apoptosis, and viral burden. We detected two phases of CD4 cell depletion, an initial rapid phase and a more gradual later phase. Compared to mock-infected implants, HIV-infected implants did not demonstrate detectable increases in the levels of apoptosis while severe depletion of CD4-bearing cells was ongoing. During peak loss of CD4+ cells, high viral burden was observed, suggesting that loss of CD4+ cells in this in vivo system is due to direct killing of infected thymocytes. Increased levels of apoptosis were observed during the later phase of thymocyte depletion; however, these apoptotic cells lacked CD4. This finding suggests that a second indirect mechanism may be responsible for the destruction of CD4- CD8+ thymocytes in vivo. Taken together, these results suggest that CD4+ and CD4- cells may die by different mechanism(s).


Survey data are potentially affected by cheating interviewers. Even a small number of fabricated interviews might seriously impair the results of further empirical analysis. Besides reinterviews some statistical approaches have been proposed for identifying fabrication of interviews. As a novel tool in this context, cluster and discriminant analysis are used. Several indicators are combined to classify 'at risk' interviewers based solely on the collected data. An application to a dataset with known cases of cheating interviewers demonstrates that the methods are able to identify the cheating interviewers with a high probability. The multivariate classification is superior to the application of a single indicator such as Benford's law.


Digitalization in agri-food supply chain has become increasingly important since safe and secure food supply is a priority for stakeholders. ICT-based (Information and Communication Technologies) business solutions have an impact on the whole food supply chain and separately the participants (producers, processors, distributors, retailers and consumers). Advanced technologies support many business activities as proving traceability and transparency, improving internal business processes, simplifying cooperation with partners and establishing the capability to develop supplementary value-added services. The main objective of the current paper is to determine the development potentials of digitalized business processes related to the operation of companies related to the production and processing of agricultural products and food. For this aim, we analysed the differences between food producers and food processors regarding their evaluation of ICT solutions in their partnerships and for certain business activities. Institute of Applied Informatics and Logistics at University of Debrecen has prepared a questionnaire for a survey on the assessment of ICT by food producer and food processor enterprises (n=500). We go into a little bit more depth about the role of information share with the final consumers as they are more and more conscious about their food and may have special information requirements for food products. Thus, we supplemented our research with another questionnaire that was aimed at young food consumers (n=376) to survey their attitude to the main food information and the opportunities to support their choice. For the analyses, we used descriptive statistical methods and Mann-Whitney test. Our results show that both enterprise categories assessed the variables tested as being rather medium importance. Statistically, processors evaluated two variables significantly higher compared to producers these were the 'Fast evaluation of business performance' (Sig(2-tailed=0,010) and 'Operating high-quality website' (Sig(2-tailed)=0.012). For the respondent consumers, food component list is one of the most important product information. The importance of this variable was the third during the purchase (after price and quality) and second in product comparison (after price). The majority (64%) often or always read this information on the package. Most respondents indicated a willingness to use such mobile applications that may support easy information access.


In this study, austenitic stainless steel and copper materials were bonded through the diffusion welding method, one of the solid-state welding processes. The welding process was carried out at 875°C temperature for 30 minutes under 3 MPa pressure. Two different methods were employed in the welding process. In the first method, the conventional diffusion welding procedure was followed. In the second one, an external electrical current was applied to the parts to be joined with the help of a system that was added to the conventional system. By doing so, the aim was to determine the diffusion amount and length for the specimens obtained with and without current. The weld quality of the diffusion welded specimens was examined using the tensile and hardness test. In addition, microstructural analyses were done using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS). The highest hardness value was obtained in regions next to the interface and it was decreased gradually as the distance from the interface increased on both sides of the interface. The results indicated that the highest interface strength was obtained for the specimens joined when the external current was applied. According to the EDS and EDS line element analyses results, it can be seen that the specimens joined by applying the external current had a higher amount of diffusion and length than the specimens joined by the conventional technique.


Suppose one wishes to construct, use, and maintain a knowledge base (KB) of beliefs about the real world, even though the facts about that world are only partially known. In the AI domain, this problem arises when an agent has a base set of beliefs that reflect partial knowledge about the world, and then tries to incorporate new, possibly contradictory knowledge into this set of beliefs. We choose to represent such a KB as a logical theory, and view the models of the theory as representing possible states of the world that are consistent with the agent's beliefs.

How can new information be incorporated into the KB? For example, given the new information that "b or c is true," how can one get rid of all outdated information about b and c, add the new information, and yet in the process not disturb any other information in the KB? The burden may be placed on the user or other omniscient authority to determine exactly what to add and remove from the KB. But what's really needed is a way to specify the desired change intensionally, by stating some well-formed formula that the state of the world is now known to satisfy and letting the KB algorithms automatically accomplish that change.

This paper explores a technique for updating KBs containing incomplete extensional information. Our approach embeds the incomplete KB and the incoming information in the language of mathematical logic. We present semantics and algorithms for our operators, and discuss the computational complexity of the algorithms. We show that the incorporation of new information is difficult even without the problems associated with justification of prior conclusions and inferences and identification of outdated inference rules and axioms.


This article critiques the proposed radical changes to the civil service system at the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense. It also summarizes the civil service problems and assesses whether the proposed changes would be likely to address those problems. It identifies the difficulties that one of the critical changes (merit pay or pay-for-performance) has encountered in the past. The article is critical of the proposed termination of the General Schedule system, which has served the civil service system so well in the past. It expresses concern about the proposed weakening of rights of employee appeals, protections, and meaningful union participation. The article argues that there are a number of problems facing the civil service, but that most of the changes do not address those problems. It lauds the major achievements of the federal service and cautions against radical changes that will have the effect of weakening it.


continent. 1.1 (2011): 52-59. Introduction Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Adam Staley Groves is a poet of thought. I say this with the greatest sincerity. Hence a thorough reading of even this small selection of his work in the length of an introduction is impossible. Such is the diligent reader's task! Nevertheless, my choice for Staley Groves, like all choices, demands a justification, which I would like to formulate as follows. Staley Groves fits in the heroic tradition of poets that have engaged philosophy on its own terrain, the surface of being. It is of utmost importance for the circulation and development of philosophy that these poets exist and continue to challenge the assumptions and axioms of philosophy, especially in times in which nearly the whole field of thought has fallen prey to irrelevant scholastic disputes. In his first publication, Imaginality, Conversant and Eschaton , Staley Groves clearly states his intentions when he asks of us to "consider surfaces without metaphyics" (22), "this landscape of surface(s) and concentric perfection, history of scribbles, of scribblers, true tauto-scribes—this flat world of ladders blown up and blown down on." (170). A surface without metaphysics is a thought of being with all the ladders of metaphysics flattened. Just like with Wittgenstein, the reader "must throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it." (§6.54). Staley Groves inserts himself in the tradition of poetry hailed by Wallace Stevens in his essay "The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet" as the "unofficial view of being." Unofficial, but no less serious. And just like Stevens, Staley Groves appeals to the idea of imagination as the place from which both poetry and philosophy originate. At the end of the unpublished collection 33 poems from 2008 he says, "Poetry should agitate the imaginary whose foundation is of the nothing apart and conversant with such." Poetry is, contrary to most metaphysical philosophy, non-exclusive and should be able to imagine what or who imagines the "apart," the exclusions of and from language. This should be done by means of, and I really admire this word, an "aesthtic" reasoning. A reasoning that conflates the categories of ethics and esthetics, "That is the overturning of the structure onto violence / into the transmission of imaginary kalidescopically." The following selection of poems has been made from Staley Groves's upcoming publication of his first collection of poetry, entitled Poetry Vocare . Fortuitously—and Stevens taught us, every true metaphor is fortuitous—the first poem from the section "galata bridge" deals with the theme of this inaugural issue of continent. : the "greased isthmus" of the Bosphorus, the locus classicus of the East-West divide, a "night's milk water / between 'worlds.'" Again we encounter Staley Groves's theme of the "nothing apart" of poetry's imagination when he concludes that "only aura / only aural sun, / of world / no walls remain / the modern kaleidoscope, crushed in stanbul." The Galata Bridge, connecting the ancient and modern parts of Istanbul, crossing the isthmus between Ottoman Byzantium with the Christian world of merchants, here becomes emblematic of one of the many tasks of poetry. In a broader political perspective: the overcoming of all the real and fantasmatic walls dividing so-called terrorists from enlightened humans, dividing god-sent settlers from invaders, dividing desperate people from luxury swimming pools. This can be done, for in a section from "glass language" he assures us that "Walls hold aspiration." And "gusting plaster wall, hear crumbles, between slats, / crumbs between walls. / Sense prints vacant space." Therefore, Staley Groves is most of all an affirmative poet. A poet who affirms the imaginative power of poetry. "allspeed! back into essence," the first poem from "galata bridge" ends. This is an appeal that speaks to us from within poetry. It is an appeal to "town squares, / integrate circles." Prishtine, Kosovo October 14, 2010 Staley Groves's Poetry Vocare will be available from March, 2011 as the first publication of Uitgeverij . Selected Poems from Poetry Vocare Adam Staley Groves from GALATA BRIDGE (in the world alive life in the world) plying wall in summer of "world" sea borne holes, a great catastrophe open your wall have it open, do not withhold Mehmed, Mehmed: stands in steel against the slit Bosporus a globe, at his feet against, facing he's fac?'d-up, to a murk of, constelling waters, leaky, greased isthmus, open pagination a night's milk water between "worlds" cisternal nectar, lispy pages bound spine of the wall, brok'd flow peering-in plied fibers in its flex, over ages a crown on hill skull hill of skies in thou , sands drown in fervor move , ment mean unbracketed leaves fallen plans from skies no walls remain, leaves us Now, as it were the fire on skull, only aura, only aural sun, of world no walls remain the modern kaleidoscope, crushed in stanbul allspeed! back into essence. from GLASS LANGUAGE The air fills with glass shreds the lungs. see more closely what designs 'view'. Not aspect, mere aspection, rationing sight. worm aurora rings fiber, glass fire halo of the philosopher, stealing up shoes, to journey, and meet poet's wife's husband put on your hat, lift up your coat, hear the hook bounce gusting plaster wall, hear crumbles, between slats, crumbs between walls. Sense prints vacant space. Walls hold aspiration. Citations of poetry, sensible wall, cited by hanging pictures. hung pictures behind evenings. Philosophers are sperm, poetry erupts sperm and dribbles, philosopher recodes term, to terminate, poet, glass text, ure language, insubstantial aspect love vis-able termination. A glass supposes something dramatic about others: finite torsion of onlooker, seeing their reflection seeing beyond, contorted. And as a circle, circumference, a tower, for the master, for the captured, for the thinker, for the clouds. It was philosopher, whom philosopher picks up, who takes a view of the glass, there: a fly in the glass, that can see beyond, cannot escape, overturned glass. A glass language has nothing to do with speaking, rivulet reflections, atomized filling, nostrilling horns, concentric orders and bursting text of lip's face. It says much about position, of the fly, and the position, of the philosopher. In deed not simple. from POETRY VOCARE poetry is not vocation, mere vocare , the center evacuated. in poetry evacuation, phlebotomy of the plan: evac au tion, to dislocate, correction: evacuation. venesection. venation, vena, to splice center and centers of the central world. the street dispersal, phlebotomy of venations. voidance and evacuation: carefully splice voi and dance ; call-dance, kehy-dance, dence ? poetry means not plans, mere evacuated and beyond call of poetry the evacuation, phlem-botomy of the throwing to the voice in the dispersal of the street. if you are spilt you are split. it is the rising without view for which streets disperse its centers . poetry vocare , plan in,tense futurist claim in,tense, and return to, tense claim of, the call in the collision, thrown phlegm. in the call after call. the splitter and the drinker are in,circled, but we town squares, integrate circles.


Streptococcus (S.) pneumoniae is the most common cause of community‐acquired pneumonia. The Nod‐like receptor family pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome, consisting of NLRP3, ASC (the adaptor apoptosis‐associated speck‐like protein containing a CARD) and caspase‐1, has been implicated in protective immunity during pneumonia induced by high doses of S. pneumoniae serotype 2. Here we investigated the role of the NLRP3 inflammasome in the host response during lethal airway infection with a low dose of serotype 3 S. pneumoniae. Mice were euthanized at predefined endpoints for analysis or observed in survival studies. In additional studies, Tlr2−/−/Tlr4−/− mice and Myd88−/− mice incapable of Toll‐like receptor signaling were studied. In stark contrast with existing literature, both Nlrp3−/− and Asc−/− mice showed a strongly improved host defense, as reflected by a markedly reduced mortality rate accompanied by diminished bacterial growth and dissemination. Host defense was unaltered in Tlr2−/−/Tlr4−/− mice and Myd88−/− mice. These results show that the NLRP3 inflammasome impairs host defense during lethal pneumonia caused by serotype 3 S. pneumoniae. Our findings challenge the current paradigm that proximal innate detection systems are indispensable for an adequate host immune response against bacteria.


We make observations that improve processor utilization and decrease communication overhead for several parallel sorting algorithms. These lead to constant factor improvements on the best previous parallel sorting bounds for both mesh-connected and linearly connected parallel architectures [2,12] (Previous bounds were within a constant factor of optimal.). These improved bounds are achieved using fewer processors with greater processor utilization.


Health monitoring data are vital for failure prognostic and maintenance planning. The continuous monitoring data or frequent inspections can provide a large amount of information on degradation evolution and therefore ensure the quality of deterioration modeling and the lifetime prognostic accuracy. However, they are usually very costly and sometimes impracticable in real engineering applications. Therefore, it is essential to address the issue of the appropriate amount of monitoring data. This paper proposes a new methodology to help the companies improving their actual inspection/monitoring policy to reduce the operation and maintenance costs but also ensure the information quality. We investigate different types of inspection policies including the periodic or nonperiodic ones by considering multiples functions of the system degradation state that are linear, concave, or convex. The best policies are chosen based on a multiobjective optimization problem dealing with the inspection cost and the information level. The advantages and disadvantages of the proposed methodology are discussed through numerous numerical examples for different types of degradation process, particularly the Wiener and Gamma processes that have been largely addressed in the framework of degradation modeling.


Demodex folliculorum (D. folliculorum), found in the pilosebaceous unit, is the most common ectoparasite of humans. Various clinical forms such as pustular folliculitis, papulopustular scalp eruptions, perioral dermatitis, and blepharitis have been defined, although in general, the disease has been classified into three main groups as "pityriasis folliculitis", "rosacea‐like demodicidosis", and granulomatous rosacea‐like"demodicidosis gravis". Our aim was to test for the presence of D. folliculorum in pathogenic numbers in patients who came to our clinic with non‐specific symptoms such as facial itching with or without erythema, seborrheic dermatitis‐like or perioral dermatitis‐like lesions, papulopustular lesions, and an acneiform clinical appearance without telengiectasia or flushing. Twenty‐eight (87.5%) female and 4 male (12.5%), patients and 33 age‐and‐sex matched healthy subjects enrolled in this study. D. folliculorum was sought in the lesion sites using the noninvasive method known as the Standardised Skin Surface Biopsy (SSSB). The discovery of more than five parasites in an area of 1 cm2, was evaluated as pathogenic. For treatment, 5% permethrine cream was applied twice daily for 15 to 30 days. The clinical symptoms of the patients were classified into clinical groups and evaluated as facial itching in 2 (6.3%), nonspecific erythema and itching in 21 (65.6%), erythema and pityriasiform squamous lesions in 3 (9.4%), acneiform in 3 (9.4%), papulopustular lesions in 1 (3.1%), granulomatous rosacea‐like in 1 (3.1%), and perioral dermatitis‐like symptoms in 1 (3.3%), D. folliculorum density was determined as 5>D/cm2 in all clinical lesions. A significant clinical healing and density of D. folliculorum at <=5 D/cm2 was determined in all but two patients after treatment. We consider that D. folliculorum presentation with different symptoms and signs than classical forms is not rare. For this reason, we suggest that it is useful to test for D. folliculorum in patients with non‐classical presentations like facial itching, itching accompanied by non‐specific erythema, itching and non‐specific pityriasiform squamous lesions, and acneiform lesions.


Gold particles several tens of micrometers in size were welded onto a gold substrate. High voltages of 4 kV or more were applied to a tungsten needle in contact with the particle on the substrate at a very low contact pressure. The particle was welded to the substrate in an instant with sparks. The needle was then retracted to 20 !m above the particle and a high voltage of about 2kV was applied to the needle. An electric discharge between the needle and the substrate enveloped the particle, and the joint was strengthened. The joint strength was measured, and the fractured surface was examined by scanning electron microscopy and scanning laser microscopy. The mechanism of joint strengthening is discussed. It is clear that an inert gas flow during the electric discharge is necessary to strengthen the joints.


Search engines for domain-specific media collections often rely on rich metadata being available for the content items. The annotations may not be complete or rich enough to support an adequate retrieval effectiveness. As a result, some search queries receive only a small result set (low recall) and others might suffer from reduced relevance (low precision). To alleviate this, we present a framework that exploits external knowledge to provide entity-oriented reformulation suggestions for queries that contain entities. We propose that queries be added as surrogate nodes to an external Knowledge Graph (KG) via the use of state-of-the-art entity linking algorithms. Embedding methods are invoked on the augmented graph, which contains additional edges between surrogate nodes and KG entities. We introduce a new evaluation setting to evaluate the quality of these embeddings. Experimental results on seven datasets confirm the effectiveness of the approach.


This paper presents a control method of the modular multilevel converter - high-voltage direct current (MMC-HVDC) system to regulate grid voltage on the basis of the Jeju Island power system. In this case, the MMC-HVDC system is controlled as a static synchronous compensator (Statcom) to exchange the reactive power with the power grid. The operation of the MMC-HVDC system is verified by using the PSCAD/EMTDC simulation program. The Jeju Island power system is first established on the basis of the parameters and measured data from the real Jeju Island power system. This power system consists of two line-commutated converter - high-voltage direct current (LCC-HVDC) systems, two Statcom systems, wind farms, thermal power plants, transformers, and transmission and distribution lines. The proposed control method is then applied by replacing one LCC-HVDC system with a MMC-HVDC system. Simulation results with and without using the MMC-HVDC system are compared to evaluate the effectiveness of the control method.


G‐protein‐coupled receptors (GPCRs) are key cellular signaling proteins and have been targeted by approximately 30–40% of marketed drugs for treating many human diseases including cancer and heart failure. Recently, we directly observed activation of the M2 muscarinic receptor through long‐timescale accelerated molecular dynamics (aMD) simulation, which revealed distinct inactive, intermediate and active conformers of the receptor. Here, FTMAP is applied to search for 'hot spots' in these activation‐associated conformers using a library of 16 organic probe molecules that represent fragments of potential drugs. Seven allosteric (non‐orthosteric) binding sites are identified in the M2 receptor through the FTMAP analysis. These sites are distributed in the solvent‐exposed extracellular and intracellular mouth regions, as well as the lipid‐exposed pockets formed by the transmembrane α helices TM3‐TM4, TM5‐TM6 and TM7‐TM1/TM2. They serve as promising target sites for designing novel allosteric modulators as receptor‐selective drugs.


Specification-based intrusion detection combined with cryptography methods for mobile ad hoc networks FOI is an assignment-based authority under the Ministry of Defence. The core activities are research, method and technology development, as well as studies for the use of defence and security. The organization employs around 1350 people of whom around 950 are researchers. This makes FOI the largest research institute in Sweden. FOI provides its customers with leading expertise in a large number of fields such as security-policy studies and analyses in defence and security, assessment of different types of threats, systems for control and management of crises, protection against and management of hazardous substances, IT-security and the potential of new sensors.


The required courses for agribusiness degrees at forty-three school were divided into six categories. Large ranges in the percentage of required credits by category were found. Comparisons with other curricula surveys showed that some changes occurred during the last ten to twelve years. Emphasis on business skills has increased while course work in technical agriculture has decreased. By considering customer needs and competitor innovations, departments can attempt to add more value to their educational products.


Traditionally, the world wide businesses has being applied customer lifetime value (CLV) model for estimating their profitability by counting contribution of customer toward the business. The strategic used of CLV model is for understand and analyzing the lifetime values of each customer directly on their spending and purchasing activities. Currently, managing CLV has faced some current issues and challenges specifically on predicting a specific category of customer, called 'free customer'. In fact, 'free customer' is non-database customer and their information is not available to any business. This category of customer always neglect and un-counting contribution, as well as them lifetime value that could be potentially affects the future prospect of the business. The study is aimed to explore current issues and challenges on implementations of CLV model with specific reference to 'free customer' of the hypermarket business. Secondly, the theoretical point of view on CLV will reviewed by using previous selected literature, as well as to explain the current issues and trends of CLV of the study. The method used is semi structured interview with the key person of Industrial Expertise. Meanwhile, the International Hypermarket at Seberang Perai of Pulau Pinang, Malaysia is selected as a reference location regarding the interview session. At the end, suggestion will be made for using geographical information system (GIS) approach for strengthening the traditional ways of understanding CLV of 'free customer' where it used map as platform of visualization the location of 'free customer'. Key words: Lifetime value; Free customer; International hypermarket; Seberang Perai of Penang


Richter hernia also known as partial enterocele is the protrusion or/and strangulation of only a part of the circumference of the intestinal antimesenteric border through a small defect of the abdominal wall. These comprise around 10 percent of strangulated hernias, which itself represent a small percent in overall hernia cases, hence are very rare. If left untreated, the affected bowel segment becomes ischemic and finally gangrenous, and it should be kept in mind that patients with Richter hernia develop gangrene much faster than 'ordinary' strangulated hernias. This is a case report of a 69-year-old male with a history of herniorrhaphy for left inguinal hernia 22 years back presenting with swelling in left groin region for 4 days with sudden onset of left-sided acute abdominal pain and vomiting for 1 day. Ultrasound Abdomen suggested left sided obstructed inguinal hernia with enterocele with fatty liver. X-Ray abdomen showed multiple air fluid levels. The swelling was explored through incision located over it. Sac was identified and a Richter-type hernia was seen deep inside with small bowel strangulated only in a part of its circumference. Resection and anastomosis of approx. 10 cm was done for the gangrenous part and gut reduced back into abdominal cavity and sac closed. Richter's hernia is associated with a strikingly high death rate which emphasizes the seriousness of this condition. Once the diagnosis is made, urgent operation must be carried out to avoid morbidity and mortality.


People believe that the new is better than the old, that the advanced is better than the simple, that more is better than little. How good is plasma glucose screening? Statistical medicine, sold all over as very scientific originates from scandal of poor research says Douglas G Altman, head of the medical statistics, London. Ayurvedic health care providers following International diagnostic criteria of Diabetes Mellitus for diagnosis of Madhumeha (Diabetes Mellitus). This was recently proved to be disease mongering and selling sickness. Many studies have consistently demonstrated that history taking and physical examinations are the most important factors in arriving at correct diagnosis, whereas lab tests play only minor role and too often palpably illogical laboratory findings are accepted without question. Ayurvedic physicians should strictly follow classical method of diagnosis of Madhumeha. The quotation from a Cardiologist Mimi Guarneri "Beyond the power of most sophisticated medical equipment is a physician's humanity-the listening ear, the healing touch, the devices of healers throughout time", holds good at this juncture.