Correspondence Fatemeh Farshadpour, Ph.D., The Persian Gulf Tropical Medicine Research Center, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Moallem Street, Bushehr 7514633341, Iran. Email: email@example.com; email@example.com Abstract Coronavirus (CoV) infections are commonly associated with respiratory and enteric disease in humans and animals. In 2012, a new human disease called Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) emerged in the Middle East. MERS was caused by a virus that was originally called human coronavirus‐Erasmus Medical Center/2012 but was later renamed as Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS‐CoV). MERS‐CoV causes high fever, cough, acute respiratory tract infection, and multiorgan dysfunction that may eventually lead to the death of the infected individuals. The exact origin of MERS‐CoV remains unknown, but the transmission pattern and evidence from virological studies suggest that dromedary camels are the major reservoir host, from which human infections may sporadically occur through the zoonotic transmission. Human to human transmission also occurs in healthcare facilities and communities. Recent studies on Middle Eastern respiratory continue to highlight the need for further understanding the virus‐host interactions that govern disease severity and infection outcome. In this review, we have highlighted the major mechanisms of immune evasion strategies of MERS‐CoV. We have demonstrated that M, 4a, 4b proteins and Plppro of MERS‐CoV inhibit the type I interferon (IFN) and nuclear factor‐κB signaling pathways and therefore facilitate innate immune evasion. In addition, nonstructural protein 4a (NSP4a), NSP4b, and NSP15 inhibit double‐ stranded RNA sensors. Therefore, the mentioned proteins limit early induction of IFN and cause rapid apoptosis of macrophages. MERS‐CoV strongly inhibits the activation of T cells with downregulation of antigen presentation. In addition, uncontrolled secretion of interferon ɣ‐induced protein 10 and monocyte chemoattractant protein‐1 can suppress proliferation of human myeloid progenitor cells.


Abstract Although the concentration of long-chain aliphatic constituents is a primary determinant of the oil generation potential of coals, the factors which govern their occurrence in different coals are poorly understood. In this study, Permian coals from the Cooper Basin, Australia, and the Eocene coals from the Taranaki Basin, New Zealand, were compared to determine these factors. The Taranaki Basin coals were deposited in temperate, fluvial-deltaic environments. HI values range from 236–365. Extracts have high pristane/phytane ratios and variable abundances of oleanane and other non-hopanoid terpanes. The extracts and pyrolysates contain high relative concentrations of aliphatic groups >n-C20. These data imply that much of this aliphatic carbon is derived directly from higher plant material. The Cooper Basin coals were deposited in high latitude bogs and contain 40–70 0nertinite. The coals have been severely degraded. Pristane/phytane ratios are low (2.15–6), but HIs are moderate (up to 243 mg g−1 OC). The extracts and pyrolysates both contain high relative concentrations of aliphatic groups; however, the distributions are different from higher plant-derived material. These data imply the bulk of the aliphatic carbon in these coals is derived from microbial biomass (both bacterial and fungal degradation products and algal input). These results show that long-chain aliphatic groups in coals can be derived directly from the higher plant material, from microbial activity in the depositional environment, or from a combination of the two.


Contextual integration is seldom explored in people with Down syndrome (DS). This study aimed to investigate this ability by comparing causal inferences made by people with DS who were presented with homonyms embedded within sentences and asked to choose which of three interpretations (figurative meaning, literal meaning, or unrelated meaning) was correct. Accuracy was the dependent variable. Each homonym was presented in a scenario familiar to the participants. The results revealed that the participants with DS were the least accurate in responding to figurative meanings and erred most compared to matched controls in chronological age and mental age. It was concluded that people with DS were developmentally delayed in causal inferences and weak central coherence is indeed a syndrome-general phenotype across populations with developmental disorders.


It is a big task to provide the accuracy of discovered relevance features in text documents for describing user requirements. Classification of data is biggest issue in more text documents because they have large number of words and data patterns. Most existing popular methods are used by word-based approaches. Still, they have all suffered from the problems of relevance and uncertainty. Over the years, there has been pattern-based methods should perform better result than word-based methods in describing user requirements. But, how to effectively use large scale patterns remains a typical problem in text mining. To overcome this problem, Fuzzy Relevance Feature Discovery Algorithm (FRFDA), classification techniques have been developed for relevance feature discovery. It describes both higher level and low level features based on word patterns. It is also classifies words into categories and updates those word weights based on their relevance and dispensation in patterns. The experimentation result proves that, the proposed FRFDA is better than existing manual and automation methods. The data set Reuters-21578 shows that the proposed model significantly outperforms faster and obtains better extracted features than other methods.


In this thesis, we address the problem of opinion question generation. The motivation behind this task is to provide users with more question samples related to their query when using search engines. In our view, one of the datasets that is closest to peoples' thoughts, informal and casual speech are Community Question Answering (CQA) forums, where one can post questions, and other users can answer them. Specifically, we perform experiments on the Amazon question/answer dataset. Unlike the conventional approaches that have tackled the question generation problem with hand-crafted rules, our approach is entirely data-driven. We model our problem with the sequence to sequence approach using an encoder-decoder structure, which has shown significant improvement in different natural language processing research areas in recent years. Our model benefits from the attention mechanism, which assists the model in focusing on a specific part of the input sentence. Furthermore, we provide solutions to the following problems: repetition of words and generating outside of vocabulary tokens. We provide a detailed explanation of the performance of the system. Experimental results show an improvement in automatic evaluation metrics such as the BLEU score over the state-ofthe-art question generation system.


In attempting to ascertain various impacts on labor market outcomes using categories such as gender, race, ethnicity, and physical ability, a void exists with respect to sexual orientation. Whereas heterosexism and homophobia can explain some of the reasons for the void, the inability to collect data randomly about homosexuals' experiences in the labor market nullifies the basic tenet of all scientific research-random samples. A unique approach is presented which looks at income data for nonrelatives of the same sex, ages 45 to 64, living together in Canada, as a first attempt at comparing same-sex and opposite-sex genders, and is used to demonstrate the contribution of recognizing sexual orientation to economic questions. Other examples based on well-known debates about female labor participation and gender wage gaps are presented to evaluate the usefulness of studying economics recognizing sexual orientation. The need for such study is acknowledged as a measure of the inclusiveness of the economics discipline.


Epidemiological and experimental studies suggest that cardio-vascular risk factors could foster the development of type 2 diabetes (T2D). This could partly be mediated by pancreatic atherosclerosis resulting in pancreatic ischemia. We hypothesized that patients with T2D present with more severe atherosclerosis of pancreas-bound arteries than control patients without T2D. We performed a case-control retrospective study comparing the abdominal computed tomography of patients with T2D and of control subjects matched for gender and for age. Forty-eight patients with T2D and 48 control subjects were included. A calcification score of the splenic artery was defined (from 0: no calcification to 3: continuous linear calcifications). It was higher in patients with T2D than in control subjects (0.6 versus 0.2, p=0.02). The mean number of pancreas-bound branches among the greater pancreatic artery, the dorsal pancreatic artery and the inferior pancreatic artery (from 0 to 3) and of visible intrapancreatic arterial subdivisions (from 0 to 2) was lower in patients with T2D than in control subjects (1.1 versus 1.7, p=0.003 and 0.7 versus 1.3, p=0.0017, respectively). Post-injection enhancement of the pancreas tended to be lower in patients with T2D than in control subjects (57 versus 68 Hounsfield units, p=0.06). None of these differences correlated with the duration of diabetes. Moreover, in control subjects, the pancreas volume was higher and the pancreas density and enhancement were lower with higher BMI. This relationship was not confirmed in patients with T2D. Thus, it could be hypothesized that more powerful factors than BMI could impact pancreas volume and density in patients with T2D. Pancreatic atherosclerosis could be one of these. Patients with T2D present with more anomalies of the pancreatic arterial tree than control subjects. These anomalies do not correlate with the duration of diabetes, which may imply an early role of pancreatic atherosclerosis in T2D natural history. Disclosure L. Alexandre-Heymann: None. M. Barral: None. A. Dohan: None. E. Larger: None.


A hallmark of animal evolution is the emergence and diversification of cell type-specific transcriptional states. But systematic and unbiased characterization of differentiated gene regulatory programs was so far limited to specific tissues in a few model species. Here, we perform whole-organism single cell transcriptomics to map cell types in the cnidarian Nematostella vectensis, a non-bilaterian animal that display complex tissue-level bodyplan organization. We uncover high diversity of transcriptional states in Nematostella, demonstrating cell type-specific expression for 35% of the genes and 51% of the transcription factors (TFs) detected. We identify eight broad cell clusters corresponding to cell classes such as neurons, muscles, cnidocytes, or digestive cells. These clusters comprise multiple cell modules expressing diverse and specific markers, uncovering in particular a rich repertoire of cells associated with neuronal markers. TF expression and sequence analysis defines the combinatorial code that underlies this cell-specific expression. It also reveals the existence of a complex regulatory lexicon of TF binding motifs encoded at both enhancer and promoters of Nematostella tissue-specific genes. Whole organism single cell RNA-seq is thereby established as a tool for comprehensive study of genome regulation and cell type evolution.


This paper presents a ruthenium metal-contact RF microelectromechanical system switch based on a corrugated silicon oxide/silicon nitride diaphragm. The corrugations are designed to substantially reduce the influence of the fabrication-induced stress in the membrane, resulting in a highly insensitive design to process parameter variations. Furthermore, a novel multilayer metal-contact concept, comprising a 50-nm chromium/50-nm ruthenium/500-nm gold/50-nm ruthenium structure, is introduced to improve the contact reliability by having a hard-metal surface of ruthenium without substantial compromise in the contact and transmission-line resistances, which is shown by theoretical analysis of the contact physics and confirmed by measurement results. The contact resistance of the novel metallization stack is investigated for different contact pressures and is compared to pure-gold contacts. The contact reliability is investigated for different dc signal currents. At a measurement current of 1.6 mA, the Ru-Au-Ru contacts have an average lifetime of about 100 million cycles, whereas the Au-Au contacts reach 24 million cycles only. For larger signal currents, the metal contacts have proven to be more robust over the Au-Au contacts by a factor of ten. The measured pull-in voltage is reduced significantly from 61 V for flat diaphragm to 36 V for corrugated diaphragm with the introduction of corrugation. The measured RF isolation with a nominal contact separation of 5 mum is better than -30 dB up to 4 GHz and still -21 dB at 15 GHz, whereas the insertion loss of the fully packaged switch including its transmission line is about -0.7 dB up to 4 GHz and -2.8 dB at 15 GHz.


The main objective of the paper is to improve the throughput and increase the speed of the XTEA (Extended Tiny Encryption Algorithm) which is one of the cryptographic algorithms. The technique used to improve the throughput is parallel processing. In previous, they have used pipelining which increases the overhead that is not desirable. The error detection scheme employed in this paper is RERO (Recomputing with Rotated Operand). The previous error detection REPO (Recomputing with Permuted Operands) occupies more memory than RERO. The embedded systems have been developing with many sensitive nodes like Nano-sensors, Radio Frequency Identification tags, etc. As these systems have many constraints, the required security is given by the light weight block ciphers like PRESENT, XTEA and SIMON. These block ciphers are more suitable for these embedded systems when compared to Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Providing security alone does not give assurance for their reliability while these architectures are liable to malicious and natural faults. Due to hardware failures, various types of faults occur while implementing in hardware. To overcome this, there are many schemes for error detection that can be applied to these ciphers. One of the error detection schemes is RERO (Recomputing with Rotated Operands). Through RERO, error coverage is achieved high. Parallel processing is applied to the XTEA algorithm to increase the throughput. The two halves that are used in the XTEA algorithm are executed at the same time through the parallel processing. Finally, this algorithm is implemented in the Altera FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). The throughput is increased by 60% when compared to previous systems that use sub pipelining. This type of structure finds its application in low resource embedded systems having sensitive nodes like RFID tags and Nano sensors


Timed commitments [Boneh and Naor, CRYPTO 2000] are the timed analogue of standard commitments, where the commitment can be non-interactively opened after a pre-specified amount of time passes. Timed commitments have a large spectrum of applications, such as sealed bid auctions, fair contract signing, fair multi-party computation, and cryptocurrency payments. Unfortunately, all practical constructions rely on a (private-coin) trusted setup and do not scale well with the number of participants. These are two severe limiting factors that have hindered the widespread adoption of this primitive. In this work, we set out to resolve these two issues and propose an efficient timed commitment scheme that also satisfies the strong notion of CCA-security. Specifically, our scheme has a transparent (i.e. public-coin) one-time setup and the amount of sequential computation is essentially independent of the number of participants. As a key technical ingredient, we propose the first (linearly) homomorphic time-lock puzzle with a transparent setup, from class groups of imaginary quadratic order. To demonstrate the applicability of our scheme, we use it to construct a new distributed randomness generation protocol, where n parties jointly sample a random string. Our protocol is the first to simultaneously achieve (1) high scalability in the number of participants, (2) transparent one-time setup, (3) lightning speed in the optimistic case where all parties are honest, and (4) ensure that the output random string is unpredictable and unbiased, even when the adversary corrupts $n-1$ parties. To substantiate the practicality of our approach, we implemented our protocol and our experimental evaluation shows that it is fast enough to be used in practice. We also evaluated a heuristic version of the protocol that is at least 3 orders of magnitude more efficient both in terms of communication size and computation time. This makes the protocol suitable for supporting hundreds of participants.


The purpose of the present study was to identify and analyze studies in health literature about the psychocultural meanings reported by women who experience urinary incontinence (UI). A bibliographical search was executed in the following databases: Lilacs, Medline, Pubmed and Medscape. The present review showed that studies note several meanings. The articles were grouped in three categories defined as significant: according to age experiences, cultural-religious experiences and experiences in self-care. The studies revealed that the degree of anguish and the range of the difficulties experienced are related both with age, ethnic group or religion and with the perception each individual has of her incontinence, which will lead to different levels of emotional disorders and to seeking (or not seeking) treatment. Besides, barriers regarding self-care are perceived. It is concluded that the UI may cause suffering and incontinent women have difficulties to deal with this problem.


The lateral tarsal strip is a mainstay procedure of oculoplastic surgery. The technique is easy to conceive but difficult to master. Awareness of its many indications and its limitations along with a working knowledge of its proper execution is necessary.


Purpose: While circular economy (CE) is fast becoming a political and economic agenda for global urban development, there are still substantial knowledge gaps in possible strategies to speed up such transition, especially in the construction industry. This study analyses literature surrounding CE to unpack current trends possible future research directions to foster CE implementation in the construction industry. Design/methodology/approach: The study undertakes a systematic review of CE literature published between 1990 and 2019. It adopts a five-stage procedure as a methodological approach for the review: formulation of the research question(s), locating and identifying relevant studies, selection and evaluation of studies, analysis or synthesis and results reporting. Findings: The findings on CE research in the construction industry show extensive focus on resource use and waste management. There are limited investigations in other areas of construction such as supply chain integration, building designs, policy, energy efficiency, land use, offsite manufacturing, whole life costing, and risk, cost reduction, cost management, health and safety management. The study findings provide evidence that current CE practice fails to incorporate other areas that would facilitate the network of true circular construction industry. Originality/value: This research provides a comprehensive overview of research efforts on CE in the construction context, identifying areas of extensive and limited coverage over three decades. Besides, it identifies possible pathways for future research directions on CE implementation, towards the accelerated transition to a true circular construction industry for the benefit of funding bodies and researchers.


To comprehend a statement, do people first have to believe it is true? Spinoza argued yes, that people initially assume the truth of a statement and later revise if necessary. Descartes thought otherwise, that understanding comes prior to accepting or denying truth, and there can be initial periods of indecision. Spinoza's view has received empirical support from studies showing that when forced into a quick judgment, participants tend to accept the information as truthful. The "truth bias" evidence is compromised, however, by the fact that participants are only given the choice to say true or false. When participants are forced into making a binary judgment, they do indeed display the Spinozan truth bias, replicating earlier studies. But when allowed to indicate their indecision, raters appear distinctly Cartesian. We conclude beliefs are not automatically accepted, but that they can appear this way when participants are forced into passing judgment.


Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is a practical numerical solution tool which can be utilized in determining the stress state in a pressure vessel, especially in local areas such as cavities, O-ring grooves and other areas which would be difficult to analyze manually. A lot of work has been done in developing various numerical and experimental methods to study stresses in pressure vessels. Generally, these studies focus on structural elastic analysis of the pressure vessels since it is a common design practice to aim at maintaining the induced stresses within the elastic region. However, pressure vessels operate under complex environments such as high pressure and temperature, which may lead to gross plastic deformation and subsequent failure. Again, in autofrettage process, the pressure vessel is pressurized beyond the yield point. As a result, the conventional elastic analysis will not be applicable at internal pressures above the yield point. Therefore, it is important to examine the structural integrity of a thick-walled pressure vessel in both elastic and plastic state of the material. In this study, FE static structural analysis of a presumably uncracked thick-walled pressure vessel has been presented, where stress dis-tribution within the pressure vessel wall and the resulting material deformation were investigated using ANSYS 14.5.7. ANSYS is one of the FE-based design softwares that have become valuable tools in engineering design. Both elastic and plastic analysis were carried out on a plain cylindrical pressure vessel model and on a cylindrical pressure vessel model with a nozzle geometry included. It was observed that the stress distribution in the pressure vessel in the elastic stress state was totally different to that in the plastic stress state. Geometric discontinuity due to a nozzle was found to affect the stress distribution in a large scale. Stress concentration in the areas around the nozzle neck made it impossible to overstrain a thick-walled pressure vessel to a fully plastic state (as required for a fully autofrettaged pressure vessel) without having failed. The FEA results obtained were verified by comparing them with some theoretical results. Better agreement between FEA and theoretical results was obtained for elastic analysis than for plastic analysis. The aim of the study was to contribute to the need of a complete structural analysis of pressure vessels.


1. Eyelids 2. Lacrimal Drainage System 3. Orbit 4. Dry Eye Disorders 5. Conjunctiva 6. Cornea 7. Corneal and Refractive Surgery 8. Episclera and Sclera 9. Lens 10. Glaucoma 11. Uveitis 12. Ocular Tumours 13. Retinal Vascular Disease 14. Acquired Macular Disorders 15. Hereditary Fundus Dystrophies 16. Retinal Detachment 17. Vitreous Opacities 18. Strabismus 19. Neuro-ophthalmology 20. Ocular side-effects of systemic medication 21. Trauma Index


Proton beams of up to 10 MeV have been obtained by the interaction of a 10 Hz "table-top" laser, focused to intensities of 6×10^19 W/cm^2, with 6-μm-thin foil targets. Such proton beams can be used to induce 11B(p,n)11C reactions, which could yield an integrated activity of 13.4 MBq (0.36 mCi) after 30 min laser irradiation. This can be extended to GBq levels using similar lasers with kilohertz repetition rates, making this positron-emission tomography isotope production scheme comparable to the one using conventional accelerators.


Dryland farming is commonplace in Australia so the profitability of dryland farms often depends on the amount and timing of rainfall. With drier weather conditions featuring in climate change projections for southern Australia, it is important to understand the relationships between rainfall, commodity prices and farm profitability. Using correlated farm commodity and input prices from the past nine years, farm profitability was calculated for a range of farm types in southwest Victoria under low, average and high rainfall scenarios. Fourteen representative farms were examined that included production of Merino fine wool, prime lamb, beef cattle, milk, wheat and canola. This paper compares and contrasts the spread of profitability of these farms against the backdrop of price variability and rainfall scenarios. Inferences about the resilience to climate and price volatility of the different farm types are made. The type of metric used to describe profitability is shown to importantly affect the nature of inferences to be drawn through the comparison of farms.


The wetting as a multi scale phenomenon, including micro- and nano-scale aspects, is considered to be the essential step in the evaluation of the transport phenomena during metal/ceramics joining with active filer metal. Micro-scale aspect deals with diffusivity at the interface and into the bulk, as well as mass transfer around the grain boundary grooves (GBG) of the ceramic surface. In that sense, the explanation of mass transport mechanism around the GBG's is presented. Mathematical analysis is based on experimental values taken from literature. Nanoscale wetting aspect is an atomistic approach, which includes the investigation of phase boundary structure. The mathematical model, which enables the contact angle calculation depending on the features of crystal lattice and interactions between atoms and molecules of the liquid and solid phases, is proposed.


In most cases, herbal supplements found in illegal centers and herbal medicine stores have harmful content that causes irreparable damage to people. As a representative of the green chemistry method, a rapid and efficient dispersive micro solid-phase extraction (D-mSPE) method was applied to extract dexamethasone adulterant from handmade supplements sold as power natural enhancing materials. The quantification of the analyte was performed by high performance liquid chromatography with an ultraviolet detector. Effective parameters on the extraction recovery, including the type and amount of adsorbent, the kind of elution solvent, and the time of extraction and elution, were systematically investigated. The limit of detection of the method was 0.05 μg mL−1. Furthermore, inter-day precisions calculated as relative standard deviations were better than 10%. Ten dietary supplements, including liquid, capsule, tablet forms, and powder, were analyzed using the developed method, and four of them were detected as adulterated with dexamethasone. The developed method purifies the complex plant-based samples and results in a clean analysis with separation instruments.


By running an experiment among Germans collecting their passports or ID cards in the citizen centers of Berlin, we find that individuals with an East German family background cheat significantly more on an abstract task than those with a West German family background. The longer individuals were exposed to socialism, the more likely they were to cheat on our task. While it was recently argued that markets decay morals (Falk and Szech, 2013), we provide evidence that other political and economic regimes such as socialism might have an even more detrimental effect on individuals' behavior.


MAX phase materials have unique properties that combine metals and ceramics.These properties stems from the complex structure with extremely strong M-Xbonds and weaker M-A bonds. Physical vapor deposition in form of magnetronsputtering is widely used for thin film syntheses. High Power Impulse MagnetronSputtering (HIPIMS) was introduced in the mid-90s, today it is a state of the artthin film deposition method for researchers all over the world.Combinatorial sputter deposition of Cr2AlC with HIPIMS and direct currentmagnetron sputtering of the chromium target were compared. Aluminum andcarbon were sputtered from individual targets with a shield in between of thethree targets, making the combinatorial method possible.X-ray diffraction showed that Cr2AlC was present at 550oC and scanning elec-tron microscopy showed that there was not big difference in the morphology. Elec-trical measurements indicated that the film deposited with HIPIMS had a signif-icant higher electrical conductivity compared to the film deposited with directcurrent. x-ray photoelectron Spectroscopy gives an idea of the composition of thefilm, in one position there were oxygen through the film, the rest were dense films.By using a combinatorial approach Cr2Al was also found in the films. The twofilms compared deposited with different methods, showed small differences but notthe ones expected.


Background Although biostatistics and clinical epidemiology are essential for comprehending medical evidence, research has shown consistently low and variable knowledge among postgraduate medical trainees. Simultaneously, there has been an increase in the complexity of statistical methods among top-tier medical journals. Aims To develop the Biostatics and Clinical Epidemiology Skills (BACES) assessment by (1) establishing content validity evidence of the BACES; (2) examining the model fit of the BACES items to an Item Response Theory (IRT) model; and (3) comparing IRT item estimates with those of traditional Classical Test Theory (CTT) indices. Methods Thirty multiple choice questions were written to focus on interpreting clinical epidemiological and statistical methods. Content validity was assessed through a four-person expert review. The instrument was administered to 150 residents across three academic medical centres in southern USA during the autumn of 2013. Data were fit to a two-parameter logistic IRT model and the item difficulty, discrimination and examinee ability values were compared with traditional CTT item statistics. Results 147 assessments were used for analysis (mean (SD) score 14.38 (3.38)). Twenty-six items, 13 devoted to statistics and 13 to clinical epidemiology, successfully fit a two-parameter logistic IRT model. These estimates also significantly correlated with their comparable CTT values. Conclusions The strength of the BACES instrument was supported by (1) establishing content validity evidence; (2) fitting a sample of 147 residents' responses to an IRT model; and (3) correlating the IRT estimates with their CTT values, which makes it a flexible yet rigorous instrument for measuring biostatistical and clinical epidemiological knowledge.


Polarized Raman spectra of L-arginine hydrochloride monohydrated single crystal in nine different scattering geometries of the two irreducible representations of factor group C2 were studied at room temperature. The experimental wavenumber values are compared with those obtained from ab-initio calculation and the assignment of the Raman bands to the respective molecular vibrations is also given. Finally, a discussion related to a previously reported phase transition undergone by L-arginine hydrochloride monohydrated single crystal at low temperature is furnished.


Ethical integrity and moral culture are defined, and ethical integrity in leadership, ethical dilemmas and failures, and organizational moral culture are examined. These views are measured against a number of case studies to determine whether there are linkages between organizational moral culture and the ethical or unethical integrity of leadership. A number of conclusions are drawn from the case studies. There appears to be a direct link between ethical leadership and organizational moral culture, although in some cases, considerable time may be needed to change the moral culture of an organization. Shareholders and the public appreciate and reward organizations with high ethical principles and moral culture whereas regulators are increasingly taking legal action against companies which flout share-holders' and the public's trust. The article questions whether codes of conduct, regular performance and audit reviews or other mechanisms to maintain ethics inhibit employees' right to moral autonomy. Finally, it is noted that inconsistencies exist in correlating private standards and behaviour as important predictors or determinants of ethical business conduct.


Glucose and insulin are important regulators of islet beta-cell growth and function by activating signaling pathways resulting in transcriptional changes that lead to adaptive responses. Several immediate early genes have been shown to be rapidly induced by glucose-activated depolarization in islet beta-cells. The current studies address aspects of glucose-regulated transcription: 1) the number and characteristics of these genes, 2) if depolarization is the major mechanism, and 3) if glucose-stimulated insulin secretion is responsible, because insulin per se can activate transcription. Here, the expression profiles of glucose-responsive insulinoma cells 45 min after the addition of glucose, KCl to induce depolarization, or insulin were assessed by endocrine pancreas cDNA microarrays. Glucose activated more than 90 genes, representing diverse gene ontology functions, and most were not previously known to be glucose responsive. KCl activated 80% of these same glucose-regulated genes and, along with the effects of pretreatment with diazoxide, suggested that glucose signaling is mediated primarily via depolarization. There were >150 genes activated by insulin, and remarkably 71% were also regulated by glucose. Preincubation with a phosphatidylinositol (PI) 3-kinase inhibitor resulted in almost total inhibition of depolarization and insulin-activated transcriptional responses. Thus, through gene expression profiling, these data demonstrate that glucose and insulin rapidly activate a PI 3-kinase pathway, resulting in transcription of a common set of genes. This is consistent with glucose activation of gene transcription either directly or indirectly through a paracrine/autocrine effect via insulin release. These results illustrate that expression gene profiling can contribute to the elucidation of important beta-cell biological functions.


Five dibenzylbutyrolactones were isolated from a methanol extract of Arctii fructus (Arctium lappa L.) by bioassay-guided isolation, using the interleukin- 1β converting enzyme (caspase-1, ICE) production inhibitory assay in vitro. These compounds were spectroscopically identified as lappaol E (1), lappaol A (2), matairesinol (3), arctigenin (4), and arctiin (5). Among the compounds tested, arctigenin (4) showed the strongest inhibitory activity for ICE production in IL-1β-induced proliferation of D10S cells. Western blot analysis demonstrated that the arctigenin suppressed the expression of ICE protein in a dose-dependent manner. To estimate the biotransformation of Arctii fructus in vivo by human intestinal bacteria, we carried out an anaerobic incubation of the Arctii fructus extract with a human fecal suspension. From the HPLC analysis of metabolites, Arctiin (IC 50 =74.2 μg/ml), a major component of Arctii fructus, was transformed to aglycone, arctigenin (IC 50 =12.5 μg/ml), by human intestinal bacteria. The ICE production inhibitory activity of Arctii fructus would be much stronger in vivo than in vitro due to the biotransformation by human intestinal bacteria.


The College of Emergency Medicine (2014) has highlighted that non-technical skills have a vital role to play in Emergency Medicine practice both to help reduce human error and enhance risk management in order to improve patient care and safety. Over recent years the demand on Emergency Departments has continued to increase. Trainers have recognised that the transition from junior positions to a middle grade role is extremely stressful. A survey was undertaken of all CT2 and CT3 in the region regarding their concerns and previous trainee experience of this transition, in addition to collating a list of common difficulties for new registrars as perceived by senior staff nurses in Emergency Medicine in this region. The study day revolves around of a table top exercise with breakout simulation scenarios. The board represents the layout of an emergency department and a faculty member feeds patient cards into the department in real time. Several simulation scenarios branch out from the exercise room with multiple scenarios involving mannequins, simulated patients and role players running parallel in a ward based surrounding. The day is divided into six sections representing a time-lapse of a twelve hour nightshift. Each of the scenarios and evolving challenges presented to the participants reflect one or more specific concerns identified by the trainees from the survey. After each segment, the debrief addresses any specific issues raised and the experienced faculty provide guidance as to a method to approach them. Feedback was collated from both faculty and participants with high Likert score means for coverage of management topics and 100% strongly agreement that the day met its objectives to ease transition into first middle grade posts. Higher level trainees involved as faculty commented that they would have appreciated such a training experience prior to starting their higher training posts.


The DC electrical tomography (ERT) is still a method scarcely diffused for the study of masonry of recent and ancient buildings, in spite of the very high resolution power of this methodology. The major limitation on ERT applicability on precious surfaces (like masonries or floors with fresco or mosaic covering) depends on the method of current injection: usually it is necessary to drive electrodes (small nails) into small perforations on the surfaces, to obtain sufficiently high current values (to produce good signal to noise ratio). An interesting application of the MYG array (that reduces significantly, compared to other classical arrays, the number of electrodes utilized for current injection) has been carried out on a wall of the fountain room of the Zisa Palace (Palermo, XII century A.D.), covered by a mosaic wall suffering important detachment of tesserae due to internal moisture. The results seem to suggest that ERT investigation with the MYG array has important applicative potentiality in study of precious walls or floors in artistic buildings, because of the low-invasivity and high resolution power as well as velocity of acquisition.


Plasmids replicating by the rolling circle mode usually possess a single site for binding of the initiator protein at the origin of replication. The origin of pMV158 is different in that it possesses two distant binding regions for the initiator RepB. One region was located close to the site where RepB introduces the replication-initiating nick, within the nic locus; the other, the bind locus, is 84 bp downstream from the nick site. Binding of RepB to the bind locus was of higher affinity and stability than to the nic locus. Contacts of RepB with the bind and nic loci were determined through high-resolution footprinting. Upon binding of RepB, the DNA of the bind locus follows a winding path in its contact with the protein, resulting in local distortion and bending of the double-helix. On supercoiled DNA, simultaneous interaction of RepB with both loci favoured extrusion of the hairpin structure harbouring the nick site while causing a strong DNA distortion around the bind locus. This suggests interplay between the two RepB binding sites, which could facilitate loading of the initiator protein to the nic locus and the acquisition of the appropriate configuration of the supercoiled DNA substrate.


Consequent upon increased generation of electricity through thermal route involving combustion of pulverized coal/ignite, concurrent generation of fly ash/pond ash in bulk quantities is a matter of serious concern not only because of issues associated with its disposal and utilization, but also because of its threat to public health and ecology. Though a lot of research has been carried out for the effective utilization of flyash like its use in construction industry etc, little literature is available on pond ash utilization particularly its use as a constituent material for concrete in construction industry. Hence pond ash - a waste material, if supplements shortage of fine aggregate (river sand) in mortar and concrete, reduces the demand for disposal of thermal power plant waste, reduces its environmental impact with proper utilization of huge quantity of waste in construction industry. Researches are being carried out worldwide which shows the suitability of Pond Ash as FA. This paper summerises various characteristics of Pond Ash as fine aggregate in concrete with its engineering properties such as its shape, gradation, texture, physical, chemical and also morphological aspects when used in concrete


In modern military operations the emphasis is on smaller teams and more ad hoc teamwork. This requires greater agility both in terms of capturing actionable intelligence as well as appropriate dissemination and fusion of that information to coalition team members based on their tasks and need to know. In previous research and development we have explored the potential for a controlled natural language (CNL), acting as the sole knowledge representation language to facilitate cooperative working among human and machine agents. In this paper we envision a "living database" to support situation understanding, enable intelligence reporting, fusion and dissemination based on context. The human and machine users of the system have the ability to add, remove, or edit existing information using the CNL, including extensions to the model (or schema) in real-time. In this paper we describe various examples undertaken using this approach along with initial experiments using a conversational software agent to enable the field user to interact with such information in full natural English language.


Current clinical recommendations are that hormone therapy for the treatment of menopausal symptoms be limited to a few years. Our lab previously reported that both transient (40 days) and sustained (80 days) estradiol (E2) treatment initiated immediately after midlife ovariectomy (OVX) in Long Evans rats similarly attenuated OVX-induced increases in blood pressure (BP). This study indicated that the benefits of E2 could be maintained long after treatment cessation. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to determine whether E2 duration similarly protected against renal damage. We hypothesized that both transient and sustained E2 treatment exert positive effects on renal health in midlife OVX Long Evans female rats. Female retired breeders underwent OVX at 11 months of age and received an implant of E2 or vehicle (veh). After 40 days, implants were replaced comprising the following groups: veh>veh (n=9), E2>E2 (n=7), E2>veh (n=10). Animals were placed in metabolic cages at both the 40 and 80 day treatment time points to measure proteinuria, urinary peptides, and creatinine excretion. At the end of the 80 day treatment tissue weights were obtained. Interestingly, kidney hypertrophy was significantly increased in the E2>E2 when analyzed as raw wet weight (veh: 1.0 ± 0.05 g; E2>veh: 0.95 ± 0.02; E2>E2: 1.2 ± 0.04; P veh: 2.5 ± 0.03; E2>E2: 2.9 ± 0.11; P veh: 6.4 ± 0.4; E2>E2: 7.6 ± 0.7; P=0.29). However, there was a significant increase in proteinuria measured by the Bradford assay in the E2>E2 group (veh: 2.0 ± 0.8 mg/mgCr; E2>veh: 0.9 ± 0.3; E2>E2: 6.8 ± 2.6; P E2 group also had a significantly lower percentage of urinary peptides (veh: 96 ± 0.8%; E2>veh: 97 ± 0.7%; E2>E2: 79 ± 8.1%; P<0.05), indicating impaired renal function. These results indicate that in midlife OVX Long Evans rats, sustained E2 lowered BP but exerted detrimental effects on kidney function. In contrast, transient E2 treatment lowered BP without renal impairment. Overall, our results indicate that the period of exposure to estradiol may be important for renal health in aging postmenopausal women.


The rotation of the physical Earth is far more complex than the rotation of a biaxial or slightly triaxial rigid body can represent. The linearization of the Liouville equation via the Munk and MacDonal perturbation scheme has oversimplified polar excitation physics. A more conventional linearization of the Liouville equation as the generalized equation of motion for free rotation of the physical Earth reveals: 1) The reference frame is most essential, which needs to be unique and physically located in the Earth; 2) Physical angular momentum perturbation arises from motion and mass redistribution to appear as relative angular momentum in a rotating Earth, which excites polar motion and length of day variations; 3) At polar excitation, the direction of the rotation axis in space does not change besides nutation and precession around the invariant angular momentum axis, while the principal axes shift responding only to mass redistribution; 4) Two inertia changes appear simultaneously at polar excitation; one is due to mass redistribution, and the other arises from the axial near-symmetry of the perturbed Earth; 5) The Earth at polar excitation becomes slightly triaxial and axially near-symmetrical even it was originally biaxial; 6) At polar excitation, the rotation of a non-rigid Earth becomes unstable; 7) The instantaneous figure axis or mean excitation axis around which the rotation axis physically wobbles is not a principal axis; 8) In addition to amplitude excitation, the Chandler wobble possesses also multiple frequency-splits and is slow damping; 9) Secular polar drift is after the products of inertia and always associated with the Chandler wobble; both belong to polar motion; 10) The Earth will reach its stable rotation only after its rotation axis, major principal axis, and instantaneous figure axis or mean excitation axis are all completely aligned with each other to arrive at the minimum energy configuration of the system; 11) The observation of the multiple splits of the Chandler frequency is further examined by means of exact-bandwidth filtering and spectral analysis, which confirms the theoretical prediction of the linearized Liouville equation. After the removal of the Gibbs phenomenon from the polar motion spectra, Markowitz wobbles are also observed; 12) Error analysis of the ILS data demonstrates that the incoherent noises from the Wars in 1920-1945 are separable from polar motion and removable, so the ILS data are still reliable and useful for the study of the continuation of polar motion.


The theory developed in this study seeks to construct an attention-based view of knowledge integration that underscores the importance of IS interface design. The assumption is that presenting ideas via user interface plays a key role in enabling and motivating knowledge integration in electronic brainstorming groups. Building on the attention-based view and motivation-ability framework, the current theory focuses on two major attributes of user interface: visibility and prioritization. While the first attribute is concerned with enabling knowledge integration via directing attention to a limited set of knowledge items, the second attribute intends to enhance the motivation for knowledge integration by exposing prioritized ideas to individuals' attention. Knowledge integration at the group level is an essential process for establishing knowledge-based capabilities. To harness the collective value of the knowledge owned by individuals, organizations must facilitate knowledge integration. Lack of knowledge integration significantly reduces the value of knowledge sharing, which has long been the focus of organizational research. Unless attended to, processed, and integrated by recipients, the shared knowledge does not guarantee any benefit to the organization. However, pervasive use of online collaborative knowledge creation platforms (e.g., discussion boards, technical forums) has brought about an abundance of information that competes for attracting individuals' attention. This information abundance made available electronically, calls for revisiting knowledge presentation via user interface to enhance knowledge integration. If not properly presented via user interface, information abundance distorts individuals' attention and overshadows good ideas that are stored electronically among many others. This distortion will adversely influence individuals' ability and motivation for knowledge integration. This theory developed in this study is distinct from previous research of computer-mediated knowledge integration in at least two ways: the frameworks explicitly separates knowledge integration and knowledge sharing and focuses exclusively on knowledge integration. Second, the attention-based view of knowledge integration is used to construct a motivation-ability framework for knowledge integration in the context of IS user interface.


Severe vesicouretheral reflux sometimes causes terminal renal failure which then requires renal transplantation. In these patients it may be necessary to perform bilateral nephrectomy when associated to serious hypertension or urinary infections with a significant clinical impact. This paper presents the clinical picture of a patient with a corpse renal transplantation, due to terminal renal failure secondary to reflex nephropathy, in whom it was necessary to perform bilateral nephrectomy due to the uncommon urinary infections requiring hospitalization for treatment. The bilateral nephrectomy was done through transperitoneal laparoscopic approach, using seven points for trocars introduction. The procedure lasted 4 hours and the patients was discharged within 48 hours with no complications. Accumulate experience in the use of laparoscopy in urology has allowed this technique to be feasible. After designing the experimental model, our group has had the chance to accomplish laparoscopic nephrectomies in humans. We believe that this is the first case of bilateral nephrectomy conducted in our country using the laparoscopic approach.


BACKGROUND
Abelmoschus manihot, a single medicament of traditional Chinese medicine, has been widely used to treat kidney disease. This is the first randomized controlled clinical trial to assess its efficacy and safety in patients with primary glomerular disease.

STUDY DESIGN
Prospective, open-label, multicenter, randomized, controlled, clinical trial.

SETTING & PARTICIPANTS
From May 2010 to October 2011, a total of 417 patients with biopsy-proven primary glomerular disease from 26 hospitals participated in the study.

INTERVENTIONS
A manihot in the form of a huangkui capsule, 2.5 g, 3 times per day; losartan potassium, 50mg/d; or combined treatment, a huangkui capsule at 2.5 g 3 times per day, was combined with losartan potassium, 50mg/d. The duration of intervention was 24 weeks.

OUTCOMES & MEASUREMENTS
The primary outcome was change in 24-hour proteinuria from baseline after treatment. Change in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) from baseline after treatment was a secondary outcome. The 24-hour proteinuria was measured every 4 weeks and eGFR was measured at 0, 4, 12, and 24 weeks.

RESULTS
Mean baseline urine protein excretion was 1,045, 1,084, and 1,073 mg/d in the A manihot, losartan, and combined groups, respectively, and mean eGFR was 108, 106, and 106 mL/min/1.73 m2, respectively. After 24 weeks of treatment, mean changes in proteinuria were protein excretion of -508, -376, and -545 mg/d, respectively (P=0.003 for A manihot vs losartan and P<0.001 for the combined treatment vs losartan). Mean eGFR did not change significantly. The incidence of adverse reactions was not different among the 3 groups (P>0.05), and there were no severe adverse events in any group.

LIMITATIONS
Results cannot be generalized to those with nephrotic syndrome or reduced eGFR.

CONCLUSIONS
A manihot is a promising therapy for patients with primary kidney disease (chronic kidney disease stages 1-2) with moderate proteinuria.


This study examined public trust in the media through focus groups with young, educated urbanites in Rwanda. Despite the fact media in Rwanda incited violence during the 1994 genocide, results revealed that the Rwandan public highly trust their local news, especially state-run media. The findings suggest frameworks for studying media trust should consider the public's trust in government, as the two might be linked, and also suggest scholars think deeply about conceptualizations of trust in different socio-political contexts, as trust is part of the culture of a polity, not simply a citizen's judgment on how well news media are doing.


OBJECTIVES
To determine, in a population of predominantly Latino children with asthma 6 to 18 years old, whether parent and child reports of asthma symptoms with exercise differ and to evaluate the validity of child and parent reports of symptoms.

DESIGN
Data obtained from child and parent interviews; pulmonary function tests (forced vital capacity, forced expiratory volume in 1 second, forced expiratory flow25-75, peak expiratory flow), and observation of symptoms after exercise.

SETTING
Three summer camps for minority children with asthma in Los Angeles County.

PARTICIPANTS
A total of 97 children with asthma (78% Latino, 12% non-Latino White, 9% Other; 6 to 18 years of age) and their parents.

INTERVENTION(S)
None.

PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES
Child and parent reports of cough and wheezing with exercise and pulmonary function tests before and after exercise. While at camp, children underwent spirometry after completing the self-administered survey. The pulmonary function tests were conducted and interpreted according to the pediatric specifications for spirometry, and results >80% of predicted, adjusted for gender, age, height, and race, were considered normal. Six peak expiratory flow rates (PEFR) by peak flow meter also were recorded by trained research assistants immediately before spirometry, and values >80% of predicted based on height were considered normal. To observe child symptoms with exercise, children participated in a relay running race of 200 feet followed by a swimming race of 300 feet. Research assistants measured heart rate and 6 PEFRs using ASSESS portable peak flow meters immediately before and after each exercise. A positive exercise challenge was defined as a 15% reduction in mean PEFR and/or observed asthma symptoms (cough, wheezing, chest pain, asthma attack).

RESULTS
Of the children, 18% reported never having a cough when they exercised, 46% reported having it occasionally when they exercised, and 36% reported having it quite often or always when they exercised. For wheezing, 20% of children reported never having wheezing when they exercised, 35% having it occasionally when they exercised, and 45% having it quite often or always when they exercised. Parents reported fewer symptoms than did their children. Of the parents, 34% reported that their children did not have cough with exercise, 37% reported few to some days, and 29% reported most days or every day. Forty-seven percent of parents reported that their child did not wheeze with exercise in the last 2 months, 35% reported wheezing on a few days to some days, and 17% reported wheezing most days to every day. Parent and child reports of cough or wheezing after exercise correlated mildly with each other (parent/child cough r = 0. 23; kappa = 0.03; parent/child wheezing r = 0.21; kappa = 0.14). Children were more likely to report cough: 59 of 71 (83%) of children versus 44 of 71 (62%) of parents. The 22 children who reported cough when their parents did not account for most of the disagreement between parents and children. Children were more likely than were their parents to report wheezing; 55 of 69 (80%) children versus 36 of 69 (52%) parents reported that the child wheezed. The 24 children who reported wheezing when their parents did not account for most of the disagreement between parents and children. Forty-seven percent of the children had a value <80% of predicted for at least one of the four spirometry tests; 29% of mean baseline PEFRs were <80% of predicted. Overall, 86% of the children met one or more of the following: any percent of predicted pulmonary function tests <80% or any symptom or PEFR reduction of 15% after exercise, or other occurrence of nonexercise symptoms during camp. Almost all child reports of cough and wheezing correlated significantly with the criterion validity criteria. For example, child reports of wheezing were, as expected, correlated negatively with the percent of predicted FEV1 (r = -0.28) and correlated positive


Specially designed for your managerial accounting course if you place emphasis on relating management accounting to other subject areas. The text thoroughly integrates issues that have emerged during the past ten years. By taking a value chain approach and stressing management accounting as an employee and management empowerment tool, this text is relevant, interesting, and usable for students whose primary concerns are something other than financial reporting. Easily covered in one semester.


Drug discovery is a costly process of searching for new candidate medications. Among its various stages, lead optimization easily consumes more than half of the pre-clinical budget. We propose an automated lead optimization workflow that uses data mining methods in components such as execution of molecular simulations, feature extraction, and clustering with convolutional variational autoencoder. The end-to-end execution produces protein-ligand binding affinity of atoms in the lead molecule which serves as metrics for identifying modifiable atoms. In contrast to known methods, our method provides new hints for drug modification hotspots which can be used to improve drug efficacy. Our workflow can potentially reduce the lead optimization turnaround time from months/years to several days compared with the conventional labor-intensive process and thus will become a valuable tool for medical researchers.


Electrical resistivity measurements have been carried out on hexagonal FeGe (B 35), which is a uniaxial antiferromagnet with TN=411 K. The resistivity parallel to the c-axis exhibits a hump below TN, which arises from the magnetic superzones cutting and distorting different contributions to the Fermi surface. For the current in the basal plane a mere change in slope is observed in the resistivity at the Neel temperature. Critical scattering, as well as imperfections, tend to smooth out the transition behaviour and an attempt is made to determine the critical exponent in d/dT = Ce-λ, where e = |T-TN|/TN. For current parallel to the c-axis λ ≈ 0.8 for T>TN and λ ≈ -0.4 for T<TN. The case of resistivity perpendicular to the c-axis is less amenable to detailed analysis. The strong ferromagnetic ordering in the basal plane gives rise to long-range spin fluctuations, while the weak antiferromagnetic interactions along the c-axis give mainly short-range fluctuations above TN.


This thesis contains three essays in evolutionary game theory. In the first chapter, we study the impact of switching costs on the long run outcome in 2X2 coordination games played in the circular city model of local interactions. We find that for low levels of switching costs, the risk dominant convention is the unique long run equilibrium. For intermediate levels of switching costs the set of long run equilibria contains the risk dominant convention but may also contain conventions that are not risk dominant. For high levels of switching costs also nonmonomorphic states will be included in the set of LRE.
 We study the impact of location heterogeneity on neighborhood segregation in the one-dimensional Schelling residential model in the second chapter. We model location heterogeneity by introducing an advantageous node, in which a player's utility is impartial to the composition of her neighborhood. We find that when every player interacts with two neighbors, one advantageous node in the circular city will lead to a result that segregation is no longer the unique LRE. When players interact with more neighbors, more advantageous nodes are necessary to obtain the same result.
 In the third chapter, we consider a model of social coordination and network formation, where players of two groups play a 2X2 coordination game when connected. Players in one group actively decide on whom they play with and on the action in the game, while players in the other group decide on the action in the game only. We find that if either group's population size is small in comparison to the linking restriction, all players will choose the risk dominant equilibrium, while when both groups are sufficiently large in population, the players of two groups will coordinate on the payoff dominant action.


Carp is a highly invasive bottom-feeding fish that pollutes and dominates lakes by releasing harmful nutrients. Recently, biologists started studying the behavior of carp by tagging the fish with radio emitters. The biologists search for and localize the radio-tagged fish manually using a global positioning system (GPS) and a directional antenna. We are developing a novel robotic sensor system in which human effort is replaced by autonomous robots capable of finding and tracking tagged carp. In this article, we report the current state of our system. We present a new coverage algorithm for finding tagged fish and active localization algorithms for precisely localizing them. In addition to theoretical analysis and simulation results, we report results from field experiments.


Location-based applications are growing in importance as agencies are placing more and more computing into their field applications. The development of software for these applications needs to consider the wide range of user skills. The present work looks at the impact of spatial ability on a typical Census Bureau application (address verification). A study of a text guided software system for address verification was conducted. The participants were tested to determine their logical reasoning, visualization, and perspective taking abilities. The participants performed a set of address verification tasks using a tablet in a stationary environment. The study and results are presented and discussed.


ACME is a set of abstractions for the input and output of "continuous media" (audio and video) by a network window system. In ACME continuous media (CM) data is handled by user-level software in both the client and server, and is conveyed on network connections. The ACME design has the goals of network transparency, device independence, support for concurrency, and management policy independence. The ACME abstractions include strands (streams of audio or video data), ropes (combinations of several strands), logical time systems (reference frames in which several strands or ropes can be played synchronously), and logical devices (representing microphones, speakers, video cameras, and video windows).


Written during the last decade of her life, Light in the Dark represents the culmination of Gloria E. Anzaldua's mature thought and the most comprehensive presentation of her philosophy. Throughout, Anzaldua weaves personal narratives into deeply engaging theoretical readings to comment on numerous contemporary issues—including the September 11 attacks, neocolonial practices in the art world, and coalitional politics. She valorizes subaltern forms and methods of knowing, being, and creating that have been marginalized by Western thought, and theorizes her writing process as a fully embodied artistic and political practice. Resituating Anzaldua's work within Continental philosophy and new materialism, Light in the Dark takes Anzalduan scholarship in new directions.


Task-Technology Fit (TTF) model has been widely used in many researches for understanding the compatibility of task characteristics and technology characteristics. Applying TTF in mobile retail (m-retail) context from the perspectives of retailers might give the insights of their intention to adopt mobile cloud application technology for online business operations. Since it is currently common for retailers such as textile cyberpreneurs to conduct m-retail via the uses of certain mobile applications and devices, it is essential to investigate the usage intention based on task-related factors. Therefore, the objective of this study is to examine the compatibility of textile cyberpreneurs' tasks and characteristics of cloud-based m-retail application (CBMA) along with their usage intention to adopt the technology for their online business transactions. This research model surveyed 348 Malaysian textile cyberpreneurs. The results show that both task characteristics and technology characteristics have positive significant effects on task-technology fit. Further analysis also suggests the fitness between task and technology has positively influenced textile cyberpreneurs' intention to adopt cloud-based m-retail application. The findings contributed in acknowledging the usage intention among textile cyberpreneurs based on task-related factors which might be useful for service providers in delivering the right services for end-users. The directions for future research are also discussed.


Protein kinases are key regulators of cellular processes. In spite of considerable effort, a full understanding of the pathways they participate in remains elusive. We globally investigated the proteins that interact with the majority of yeast protein kinases using protein microarrays. Eighty-five kinases were purified and used to probe yeast proteome microarrays. One-thousand-twenty-three interactions were identified, and the vast majority were novel. Coimmunoprecipitation experiments indicate that many of these interactions occurred in vivo. Many novel links of kinases to previously distinct cellular pathways were discovered. For example, the well-studied Kss1 filamentous pathway was found to bind components of diverse cellular pathways, such as those of the stress response pathway and the Ccr4-Not transcriptional/translational regulatory complex; genetic tests revealed that these different components operate in the filamentation pathway in vivo. Overall, our results indicate that kinases operate in a highly interconnected network that coordinates many activities of the proteome. Our results further demonstrate that protein microarrays uncover a diverse set of interactions not observed previously.


Combined field ion and electron microscopy and mass-spectrometry have revealed the presence of linear carbon chains at the surface of sharpened carbon fibers treated by electric fields of the order of 1011 V m−1. Linear chains attached to carbon tips consisting of more than ten atoms can be produced in situ in a field emission microscope using low-temperature pulsed-voltage field evaporation. The process of field evaporation is sporadic with an anomalously large instant rate of evaporation. Current versus voltage field electron characteristics of monoatomic carbon wires were investigated. By employing molecular dynamics simulation it was shown that atomic C-chains can be produced during the high-field unraveling of nanofibers. These chains are perfectly resolved both in electron and ion modes of the field emission microscope.


Simple delay solutions are usually used to prevent transient overreach caused by the transient error of a capacitor voltage transformer (CVT), which is very harmful to the safety and stability of operation of the power system. A proposed real-time CVT transient error estimation approach based on the chosen fundamental wave algorithm and the rated CVT parameters consists of two stages. The first stage obtains the error coefficient. The second stage estimates the measured error of the voltage amplitude according to the secondary side voltage. A novel adaptive distance relay approach is proposed, which can adjust operating thresholds according to the error. The approach hardly affects the performance for lines of normal length and operates rapidly for short lines with close-in faults, which is verified by the simulation studies. The overall performance is improved greatly in comparison with the general approach for distance relays


With ever more complex automotive systems, the current approach of using functional tests to locate faulty components results in very long analysis procedures and poor diagnostic accuracy. Built-In Self-Test (BIST) offers a promising alternative to collect structural diagnostic information during E/E-architecture test. However, as the automotive industry is quite cost-driven, structural diagnosis shall not deteriorate traditional design objectives. With this goal in mind, the work at hand proposes a design space exploration to integrate structural diagnostic capabilities into an E/E-architecture design. The proposed integration is performed non-intrusively, i. e., the addition and execution of tests (a) does not affect any functional applications and (b) does not require any costly changes in the communication schedules.


Many researches in foreign country for finding similar texts are in progress using the semantic language resources like WordNet. However, in the domestic situation, the language resources like WordNet are still insufficient and so, researches for finding similar texts methods based on it or the methods for utilizing it are insufficient, too. Most of the previous domestic researches for finding similar texts used only the words that occur in texts. In this paper, we propose the semantic based method of finding similar texts by determining the meaning of the words, using semantic similarity measurement with U-WIN.


Researchers often regard remanufacturing as an environmentally beneficial end-of-life option. There have been, however, few environmental measurements performed in the area. The aim of this paper is to identify general environmental pros and cons with remanufacturing. This is done through the analysis of practical examples in remanufacturing industries. Life Cycle Assessment methodology has been used for the environmental validations. The first conclusion, based on the industrial cases and the literature review, is that remanufacturing is preferable from a material resource perspective when compared with manufacturing of new products. The second conclusion is that remanufacturing is preferable from a more overarching perspective for some of the investigated cases, but it is not possible to draw any general conclusions since the companies studied are few and benefits from remanufacturing are highly context-related.


We discuss the process of quark fragmentation placing a particular emphasise on the change of the fragmentation spectrum due to kinematical effects when light quarks are replaced by heavy ones. After investigating different methods of data extraction, we compile the data on heavy quark fragmentation from various collaborations. These data are compared with various models of heavy quark fragmentation for charm and bottom quark fragmentation. In our comparison we first separate the fragmentation models into two categories in accordance with their behaviour at large values of the fragmentation parameter. Models that are in agreement with the dimensional counting rules have a softer behaviour than some popular models which axe not in agreement. This point is crucial in the case of heavier quarks. However, due to the large errors in experimental data, it is hard to make a firm judgement about the merits of these models. We study the spin properties of heavy quark fragmentation and obtain the fragmentation functions for different polarisation states. The fragmentation function for an unpolarised state is then taken to be a combination of the longitudinal and the transverse fragmentation functions. We also give a model in which the transverse momentum of the constituent quarks is taken into account. The effect of the increase in the constituent transverse momentum is to soften the fragmentation by a limited amount, since there is a small probabability that the constituents of a bound state will have a large relative momentum. Finally we give a rather detailed Monte Carlo study of the effect of different fragmentation models on the momentum spectrum of heavy mesons, and the final state leptons resulting from heavy quark production in hadron colliders at CERN and FNAL. We find that the effect on the lepton spectrum is more significant.


Although the Hubbard model is widely investigated, there are surprisingly few attempts to study the behavior of such a model in an external magnetic field. Using the projector quantum Monte Carlo technique, we show that the Hubbard model with an easy axis exhibits metamagnetic behavior if an external field is turned on. For the case of intermediate correlations strength $U$, we observe a smooth transition from an antiferromagnetic regime to a paramagnetic phase. While the staggered magnetization will decrease linearly up to a critical field ${B}_{c},$ uniform magnetization develops only for fields higher than ${B}_{c}.$


Identification of a subpopulation of lymphocytes producing lymphokines was attempted by fractionating the lymph node cells from guinea pigs immune to DNP-BSA by velocity sedimentation at 1 × G. Each of six fractions obtained by this procedure was cultured with or without the presence of antigen, and the culture supernatants that were separated 24 hr later were assayed for various lymphokine activities. Most of the lymphokines, including migration inhibition factor, chemotactic factor for neutrophils, mitogenic factor, and lymphotoxin were generated by the first two fractions of lymphocytes, which represented the largest, most rapidly sedimenting cells. Although the procedure of cell separation does not depend on cell surface properties, the larger cells contained more cells with T cell surface markers and the smaller contained more cells with B cell surface markers. Proliferative response of those lymphocytes measured by 3H-thymidine uptake, however, has shown that the largest two subpopulations responded poorly either to specific antigens or to mitogens (PHA and LPS), and rather that the medium size cells responded most strongly to the both stimulants. These results indicated that the production of some lymphokines confined to certain subpopulations of lymphocytes which are large in size. Further, these cells are readily separable from the medium sized cells that respond strongly to antigenic and mitogenic stimuli with mitogenic responses.


A key process in planet formation is the exchange of angular momentum between a growing planet and the protoplanetary disc, which makes the planet migrate through the disc. Several works show that in general low-mass and intermediate-mass planets migrate towards the central star, unless corotation torques become dominant. Recently, a new kind of torque, called the thermal torque, was proposed as a new source that can generate outward migration of low-mass planets. While the Lindblad and corotation torques depend mostly on the properties of the protoplanetary disc and on the planet mass, the thermal torque depends also on the luminosity of the planet, arising mainly from the accretion of solids. Thus, the accretion of solids plays an important role not only in the formation of the planet but also in its migration process. In a previous work, we evaluated the thermal torque effects on planetary growth and migration mainly in the planetesimal accretion paradigm. In this new work, we study the role of the thermal torque within the pebble accretion paradigm. Computations are carried out consistently in the framework of a global model of planet formation that includes disc evolution, dust growth and evolution, and pebble formation. We also incorporate updated prescriptions of the thermal torque derived from high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations. Our simulations show that the thermal torque generates extended regions of outward migration in low-viscosity discs. This has a significant impact in the formation of the planets.


Recent evidence has shown that the incidence of long-term illnesses in young people aged 10–24 years is increasing. It is essential to highlight the importance of long-term health conditions in this age group and understand young people's health needs to be able to improve current support for young people. Pharmacists, as medicine experts, are in a unique position to promote young people's health. The role of primary care pharmacists in the management of chronic illnesses in young people has not been widely researched. The aim of this review was to explore the current role of primary care pharmacists in the management of chronic illnesses in young people aged 10–24 years. A systematic review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and Embase subject headings (Emtree) terms, covering three main themes: Pharmacists, young people and chronic illnesses. Articles were critically appraised using Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tools. Eight articles were included in this review. Seven articles included original research studies (one observational study, two surveys, two qualitative interview studies and two interventions). The remaining article was a literature review. All of the articles made reference to community pharmacists, while there was no information about GP pharmacists. Roles that community pharmacists identified as high-priority in their practice when dealing with young people included supporting young people to develop generic healthcare skills, counselling and building trusted relationships directly with young people, helping young people to find credible health information and the provision of specialist services. Community pharmacists feel that they have a role to play in supporting young people with chronic illness and have identified many areas where they can provide services and support.


Rally cars are driven on many different types of surfaces. Each type of surface demands a special type of damper setup. In order to achieve optimum performance on the snow covered and icy Swedish roads, the gravel of the Spanish rallies and the smooth tarmac of the German rallies, a large flexibility in the possible damper settings is required. Prodrive, a British motorsport group, has been racing two Mini Countryman as factory team cars for BMW Mini as of Rally D'Italia in Sardinia in May 2011 and has requested that Ohlins Racing AB equips these cars with dampers. Ohlins Racing AB has been developing a damper for rally applications called the TPX. This damper is equipped with an Active Rebound Control system (ARC). The ARC allows for high levels of grip to be achieved together with good chassis control. The TPX damper with its ARC system is quite complex in structure. As there are many parts in the damper which can be altered, optimizing the damper would require a very large number of tests. A physical model of the TPX damper with its ARC system would reduce the time spent in the lab and help speed up the development of the damper. Prodrive would also like to a have a model of the damper that they can use in their model of the entire car which they use to setup the cars for races and to develop the car. The goal of this Master's Thesis was therefore to create a model based in MatLab Simulink that qualitatively but not necessarily quantitatively replicated the dampers behavioral trends. Components which are very difficult to model, such as shim stacks, needed not be modeled. Their characteristics could be measured in the lab. During this Master's Thesis project a model for the TPX damper was created using Simulink to model most of the physical parts of the damper. The rest of the model including its inputs and control were taken care of by a GUI. The model functions so simulations can be performed. Plotting the results of the simulations together with data from experimental tests was also made easy by the GUI. The results from comparisons between the simulated damper and the real object indicate that refinements need to be made to the model before it can be put to use as a tool for helping in optimizing the TPX damper's construction. Hysteresis in the form of friction as well as damper flexibility does not seem to be negligible. The variation of the oil's compressibility and the dynamic behavior of the check valves also need to be looked into. The graphs from the simulations seem to replicate the real dampers performance trends as intended. The numerical magnitudes of the data produced by the simulation are however not accurate. Overall the model produced during this master's thesis seems to be a good step forward on the path to producing a useful model. Some suggestions for the next steps in improving the model are provided.


Relational fact extraction aims to extract semantic triplets from unstructured text. In this work, we show that all of the relational fact extraction models can be organized according to a graph-oriented analytical perspective. An efficient model, aDjacency lIst oRiented rElational faCT (DIRECT), is proposed based on this analytical framework. To alleviate challenges of error propagation and sub-task loss equilibrium, DIRECT employs a novel adaptive multi-task learning strategy with dynamic sub-task loss balancing. Extensive experiments are conducted on two benchmark datasets, and results prove that the proposed model outperforms a series of state-of-the-art (SoTA) models for relational triplet extraction.


The overall aim of this thesis is to explore and assess the risks that patients with carotid artery disease, whether asymptomatic or symptomatic, are exposed to, and to explore whether patients that may be subject to relatively higher risk can be identified by imaging. Although large randomized trials have proven carotid endarterectomy (CEA) to be beneficial compared to best medical treatment alone, revascularization of patients with asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis (ACAS) remains a matter of debate. Therefore risk stratification of these patients is clinically important. First we identified that patients who suffered from ipsilateral cerebrovascular symptoms, but underwent CEA longer than 6 months after the index event, have a relatively unstable plaque composition compared to patients who never experienced ipsilateral symptoms. Second, patients with ACAS have a low risk of developing ischemic stroke. Patients with severe ACAS developing an occlusion were rare during long-term follow-up. However, occlusion was an independent prognostic risk factor for occurrence of stroke in this study. We showed in a pilot study of patients with severe ACAS that revascularisation slightly improved perfusion of the ipsilateral hemisphere as measured by ASL perfusion. However, clinical implication of this improved perfusion needs to be investigated in larger cohorts. For patients with symptomatic carotid artery stenosis CEA is the treatment of choice in patients with a severe (≥70%) stenosis. Surgery has been shown to be most effective in recurrent stroke prevention when performed within two weeks after transient ischemic attack (TIA) or ischemic stroke. In the UMC Utrecht delay to carotid surgery has shortened significantly over the years, but still exceeds 14 days in majority of patients. For further shortening of this delay specific attention should be paid to the pre-hospital phase. In literature, both CAS and CEA proved to be feasible revascularization techniques with low risk for TIA or stroke in patients with previous irradiation. Therefore the choice for revascularization therapy should be considered on an individual basis. Besides, we identified carotid stenotic lesions in patients with previous cervical radiation are less inflammatory and more fibrotic than carotid atherosclerotic lesions in non-radiated patients. The final part of this thesis outlines imaging of carotid artery stenosis. Before MRI can be routinely implemented in diagnostic work-up for these patients, clinical application for plaque characterisation would require consensus regarding MRI settings and confirmation by histology. This thesis has given more insight in risk management of the patient with carotid artery stenosis. Still, more research is warranted to accurately identify the specific risk groups in patients with carotid artery stenosis. Our studies and the suggested new research might result in more precise risk stratification for patients with carotid artery stenosis. We believe diagnosing and treating patients with carotid artery stenosis is a multidisciplinary, complex and ongoing process, which needs to be evaluated over time to keep up-to-date and sufficient.


Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) incorporating different metal nanoparticles or conductive additives are expected to possess desirable catalytic performance. Herein, we report a novel 3D microporous Co(II)-MOF, [Co1.5(TTAB)0.5(4,4′-bipy)(H2O)] (denoted CTGU-9), based on 3,4,5-tricarboxylic-(3′,4′,5′-tricarboxylazophenyl)benzene (H6TTAB) and 4,4′-bipyridine (4,4′-bipy) ligands. To improve electrical conductivity, a series of composites was integrated by the assembly of CTGU-9 and acetylene black (AB), and shows distinct electrocatalytic activity for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Strikingly, the AB&CTGU-9 (3 : 4) composite exhibits superior HER performance with a very favorable onset potential of 98 mV, an overpotential of 128 mV at 10 mA cm−2, a small Tafel slope of 87 mV dec−1 and long-term stability of at least 21 h. These results indicate that the integration of MOFs with conductive cocatalysts could produce an effective candidate electrocatalyst for HER. Additionally, the gas sorption behavior for N2, CO2, and CH4 is also investigated.


Innovation can be regarded as one of the most important factors in enhancing economic development. However, innovation management policies are extremely complex and dynamic in the sense of constant change and uncertainty. This complexity is significantly compounded by the fact that the public sector itself is constantly changing as well. In broad terms, this is about the transformation processes in policy making both in developing and developed countries, where the hierarchical model of government as the predominant organisational model to fulfill public goals is losing its power to market mechanisms with supposed creative and specialised capacity of enterprises, quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations (quangos), third sector etc. The inadequacy, if not absence, of scholarly attention to the effect that aforementioned organisations have on the implementation of innovation policy is the most important aspect in the context of this paper. As the actual effect of quangos on a NSI remains unclear from the literature and as the effect is very much context-specific, the analysis of two case studies is carried through to explore the theoretical implications in practice. Derived from this, in more narrow terms, this paper is to explore how increasing usage of quangos has affected the functioning of a NSI and its performance in two 'core technologies' in Estonia: on the one hand, in biotechnology (especially the Estonian Genome Project), and on the other hand, in information and communication technology (e-Learning initiatives). Both areas are stated as the priority areas in the development process of catching up and building up the knowledge-based society in Estonia. This paper argues that the decentralised organisational set-up has caused serious problems in policy impact and can be seen rather as a tool used by the government to shift responsibility (including financial) from itself.


The advantages of renewable energy sources are available freely in nature, inexhaustible, produce either no or little pollution and low gestation period. Among all renewable energy sources, wind energy has become one of the leading resources for power production in the world as well as in the India. According to WWEA, the wind turbine installation capacity in the world has been reached over 539.291GW by the end of 2017. The entire wind power installed capacity by the end of 2017 covers more than 5% of global demand of electricity. In India, the present wind power installation capacity on October, 2017 was over 32.7GW and wind energy contribution is 55% of the total renewable energy capacity in the country. Inspite of having sharp growth rate in wind in India, only a fraction of wind energy has been tapped until now out of 302 GW wind potential which is available above 100 m height on shore. Practical horizontal axis wind turbine converts kinetic energy in the wind into useful energy by using airfoil blades. Blade element momentum (BEM) theory becomes very popular due to its simplicity in mathematical calculation as well as accuracy. Hydraulic pitch actuation system has certain advantages due to its versatility, ability to produce constant force and torque irrespective of the disturbances outside of the system, ease and accuracy of control, simplicity, safety and economy. In the present study a semi rotary actuator has been utilized for turbine pitch actuation. In order to extract maximum power from available wind, fractional order PID controller (FOPID) has been developed for pitch control of wind turbine rotor blade. The performances of PID as well as FOPID controller have been compared with available wind data. The performance of FOPID controller was satisfactory compare to PID controller.


The functional confirmation of availability of Ca2+ transport initially-active systems in the embryo cells of loach Misgurnus fossilis L. has been obtained. Using thapsigargin, the specific inhibitor of endoplasmic reticulum of Ca2+, Mg(2+)-ATPase, this enzyme activity was divided into thapsigargin-sensitive (actually endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+, Mg(2+)-ATPase) and thapsigargin-insensitive (plasma membrane Ca2+, Mg(2+)-ATPase) constituents. The Ca(2+)-independent Mg(2+)-dependent ATPase activity makes above 39.7% of the common Ca2+, Mg(2+)-ATPase activity of embryo loach. The periodic changes of Ca2+, Mg(2+)-ATPase activity (except for the changes of plasma membrane Ca2+, Mg(2+)-ATPase activity) were found out, which coincide with periodic [Ca2+]i oscillations during the synchronous divisions of loach blastomers embryos.


Gleason grading is the most widely used system for determining the severity of prostate cancer. The Gleason grade is determined visually under a microscope from prostate tissue that is most often stained with Hematoxylin-Eosin (H&E). In an earlier study we demonstrated that this stain is not ideal for machine learning applications, but that other stains, such as Sirius-hematoxylin (Sir-Htx), may perform better. In this paper we illustrate the advantages of this stain over H&E for blind color decomposition. When compared to ground truth defined by an experienced pathologist, the relative root-mean-square errors of the color decomposition mixing matrices for Sir-Htx are better than those for H&E by a factor of two, and the Pearson correlation coefficients of the density maps resulting from the decomposition of Sir-Htx-stained tissue gives a 99% correlation with the ground truth. Qualitative examples of the density maps confirm the quantitative findings and illustrate that the density maps will allow accurate segmentation of morphological features that determine the Gleason grade.


One of the main challenges in combating the spread of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is a lack of effective public health education among affected populations in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Difficulties include resistance to official sources of information, mistrust of government, cultural norms, linguistic barriers, and illiteracy. In this paper we describe the development and initial deployment of a voice-based, multilingual mobile phone application to spread reliable public health information about Ebola via peer-to-peer sharing. Our hypothesis is that we can overcome mistrust and disseminate important health information via the power of social learning and suggestion from friends, family, and local communities. In collaboration with partners on the ground in Conakry, Guinea, we have launched two parallel mobile phone services known as Polly Game and Polly Health to enable message sharing in several Guinean languages. We discuss a variety of strategies we have tried to encourage the spread of the application and data on uptake to date.


: Twenty two varieties were isolated as a result of studying the world assortment of garden roses, from which many natural bud variations (sports) were selected. The genealogy of these varieties and variations of flower coloration in their sports were studied. It was shown that flower coloration may have a certain direction, depending on the origin of initial forms, i.e., on their genotype. The possible genetic causes of changes in the flower coloration in a certain predominant direction upon mutation are discussed.


What I want to think about at this moment is the teacher in the classroom, and I want to think about the presence and effect of hate in the classroom. I want to suggest that hate exists there, but not hate as it might be thought of as an emotion that exists irrationally as active antagonism—sometimes violently enacted¾between racial or ethnic or religious groups; or between boys and girls; or even between Packer and Viking fans. That presence I will refer to as rage that stems from anger! Rather, I am going to talk about the important and necessary hate (that also, indeed, stems from anger) that is experienced between teachers and students even as that similar hate necessarily manifests itself between parents and children. In the classroom, teachers exist in relationship with students, and so I think now to explore the nature of that relationship, some of which is obvious and some of which—the part I mean to consider here¾ remains significant but often unacknowledged. Alan Block enters his 28th year in the Department of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Stout after teaching for eighteen years in the high schools of suburban New York. He has published eight books, numerous articles and book chapters on curriculum and teaching.


Historical climate change caused shifts in species' distributions in eastern North America. Pleistocene glaciations shrunk ranges into refugia, from where they later spread northward following recession of the ice. I analyzed the post-glacial history of the declining native medicinal forest understory plant American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius L., Araliaceae). My research objectives were to 1) test the hypothesis that P. quinquefolius shows a phylogeographical break east and west of the Appalachian Mountains, 2) infer the locations of glacial refugia in the species' range during the Last Glacial Maximum 3) identify regions of high genetic diversity and 4) develop conservation recommendations. I sequenced fourteen regions of chloroplast DNA from 158 populations across the eastern North American range of P. quinquefolius to reveal six mutations and seven haplotypes. I found weak phylogeographical structure due to an overlap of lineages within the Appalachian Mountains. The center of diversity was in the southern Appalachian Mountains, indicating possible southern refugia for P. quinquefolius. In addition, I found two unique lineages, signifying potential refugia, in the Blue Ridge and Ozark Mountains. Future research is necessary to define Evolutionarily Significant Units. Conservation efforts should focus on preserving each unique lineage in germplasm banks and in the wild.


Self-balanced prestressed shell structure assembled with elements is a new spatial system composed by prestressed cable and strut elements. The structure can achieve the latticed shell design that the large span without the center column by the rational use of high strength bars and prestressed technology. This paper illustrates the design idea, stress mechanism and structure characteristics of the self-balance prestressed latticed shell. The current research status of self-balanced prestressed shell structure assembled with elements on structure form, shaping method, static and dynamic performances are briefly described in the presented work; It is seen that the research on test of structure mechanical properties, molding technology and structure dynamic performance is an urgent work to be solved in the development of the self-balanced pre-stressed latticed shell structure theory.


matching introduces confounding rather than controlling it. The latter chapters are devoted to statistical techniques for the analysis of epidemiological data, and contain sections which will be beyond the less mathematically inclined. However, they should not be omitted, because interspersed between the equations are many words of wisdom. As a penetrating and comprehensive review of epidemiological methods this work stands ahead of all others. I shall return to it again and again.


This study was conducted to identify effective temporary marking removal methods and procedures on concrete and asphalt pavements. Pavement markings provide guidance to road travelers and can lead to accidents when not properly removed. Current state guidelines on removal do not provide clear and objective methods of measurement. After testing the most common removal methods, this research concluded that removing markings by chemical was not only cost and results-oriented effective compared to other methods, but it was also safe to the environment and road users. Finally, a baseline of measurements was developed by the research team for this project, along with the feasibility of using digital image processing to objectively determine whether or not a removal method could be deemed effective.