Explosions in chemical, gas and petroleum industries are still a significant problem
leading to injuries, death, destruction of equipment and downtime. In the chemical,
hydrocarbon and gas process industries, a large variety of cases can be found where
internal gas explosions, confined explosion, may occur. As a consequence there is a need
to protect gas pipelines against propagation of unwanted combustion phenomena such as
deflagrations to detonations transmission (DDT). However, a review of the literatures
revealed that flame acceleration of hydrocarbons/air, hydrogen/air, hydrocarbonshydrogen/
air and hydrogen-inhibitors/air mixtures with wild range of concentration in
tee pipelines are still unclear. Thus, given the gaps in the literature, this research was
carried out to investigate the dynamics of flame propagation of premixed gas mixtures
deflagration in tee pipelines for determining the most critical point(s) of tee pipelines
based on the rate of pressure rise with respecting ignition positions. In this research study,
the fuel/air mixtures were ignited at six different ignition positions in two different tee
pipes' configuration. The results of pure hydrocarbons/air and hydrogen/air mixtures
show that, while there is no significant difference in the maximum pressure and rate of
pressure rise in both the tee-pipe arrangements investigated, the bending pipe consistently
produces the worst set of results in terms of maximum pressure and flame speeds, in pipe
explosions involving the most reactive mixtures. In addition, the detailed records of
pressure traces and blast waves show that the duration of flame acceleration, the flame
direction and the initial ignition point depend on the tee junction placement along the pipe
length, as this gives a different overall profile of the flame acceleration mechanism.
Moreover, for the overall observation of hydrocarbons-hydrogen/air mixture, it can be
said that the flame reactivity of ethylene-hydrogen/air and NG-hydrogen/air was much
higher. The kinetic reaction of these mixtures contributed to the overall explosion
development. However, the dynamics of flame deployment in the tee junctions had a significant effect on the recorded maximum overpressure and flame speeds along the
pipes. The obtained data show that the lower distance between tee junction and the
ignition point caused a higher explosion severity in terms of the rate of pressure rise. The
results show that, when ignited at the furthest distance, the tee junction area is most
vulnerable to the critical pressure impact of gas explosion. However, no similar trend was
observed at the other ignition positions. In addition, mixtures with compositions of 95%
H2-2.5% Ar-2.5% N2/air, 95% H2-5% N2/air, H2/air and 95% H2-5% Ar/air showed the
highest risks due to the higher diffusivity ratio and the associated rate of pressure rise.
The results show that mixtures with CO2 lead to lower severity than other hydrogeninhibitors/
air mixutures (~ 50% reduction), as the average recorded maximum flame
speed for this particular mixture was lower at all of the ignition points. This suggests that
the effectiveness of the inhibitors should be in the order of Ar < N2 < CO2.


So long as the UK government liberates itself from the protectionist mindset of the EU and reduces trade barriers after Brexit, and UK businesses respond positively to the challenge of increased international competition (through increased productivity), the prospects for UK trade and prosperity post-Brexit are very bright indeed. The EU itself acknowledges that 90% of future growth in global GDP will be outside the EU. The costs of remaining in the EU are very high and not all purely economic: the EU is no longer a force for global liberalisation. On the basis of both international and EU law, the monetary costs to the UK of leaving the EU should be fairly low. Similarly, the frictional costs to both the UK and the EU of their post-Brexit relationship should also be low. However, as a consequence of both the concessions made to date by the UK in order to demonstrate its goodwill and the hard line taken by the EU in order to discourage other member states from leaving, these costs could well end up being much higher than they need be for both sides. Of particular concern is the EU's 'level playing field' demand, laid out in its negotiating Guidelines for a future trading relationship. This would effectively prevent the UK from achieving regulatory autonomy or from pursuing an independent trade policy.


In this study, a boundary-value problem is considered, which is generated by Sturm–Liouville differential equation, parameter-dependent boundary conditions and discontinuity (or jump) conditions. The properties of the eigenvalues of this problem are investigated. Uniqueness theorems for the solution of inverse problem according to the Weyl function and spectral data are proven.


Abstract Variability of rates of mammary arterial blood flow was studied in four dry unbred Holstein cows fitted with electromagnetic blood flow transducers around the right mammary artery. Cows were assigned to a 4×4 Latin square design balanced for residual effects. Treatments were estradiol 17 β (.1 mg/kg body weight), progesterone (.25 mg/kg body weight), estradiol and progesterone combination, or alcohol. Rates of blood flow for cows resting appeared to be related to previous milk production or age. Rates of blood flow differed among cows, days, and treatments. However, time of day measurement was taken had no detectable influence on mammary blood flow. Residual variances attributed to cow, day, hour, and treatment were heterogeneous. Heterogeneity was greatest for cows and days; range was about threefold (high/low). Scale effects were not evident. Coefficients of variation were low with a range of 17 estimates from .63 to 1.51%. These coefficients are about 10% of those for goats. Variance of a single measurement taken during a 15-min recording was 36.48 when mean flow was 674.3 ml/min and systematic effects from time were removed. Residual variance during a 15-min period not adjusted for systematic time trends was 41.40. Heterogeneity of variance suggests caution in testing treatment effects on mammary blood flow because of possible excessive significant F tests.


Local governments are expanding their revenue portfolios and becoming less dependent on property taxes. It should not be assumed, however, that this diversification is increasing the stability of local governments' own source revenue, as previous research suggests. It is thus important for local government officials to know how this process will affect the stability of their own source revenue, as they are almost certainly diversifying away from a stable tax, the property tax (Groves and Kahn, 1952; McCubbins and Moule, 2010), and moving toward a more volatile tax, such as the sales tax. Using county-level data in thirty-five states, I examine the effect of local option sales taxes (LOSTs) on the volatility of own source revenue and find that greater use of LOSTs increases revenue volatility.


One of the applications of a Si nanocrystals (nc-Si) embedded in a SiO2 matrix is in the area of nonvolatile memory devices based on the charge storage in the material system. However, whether the charge trapping mainly occurs at the nc-Si∕SiO2 interface or in the nc-Si is still unclear. In this work, by x-ray photoemission spectroscopy analysis of the Si 2p peaks, the concentrations of both the nc-Si and the Si suboxides that exist at the nc-Si∕SiO2 interface are determined as a function of thermal annealing, and the charging effect is also measured by monitoring the shift of the surface C 1s peak. It is observed that the annealing-caused reduction of the total concentration of the interfacial suboxides is much faster than that of both the C 1s shift and the nc-Si concentration. In addition, the trend of the C 1s shift coincides with that of the nc-Si concentration. The results suggest that the Si nanocrystal, rather than the nc-Si∕SiO2 interface, plays the dominant role in the charging effect.


Health innovations are generally oriented on a techno-economic vision. In this perspective, technologies are seen as an end in themselves, and there is no arrangement between the technical and the social values of innovation. This vision prevails in sanitary crises, in which management is carried out based on the search for punctual, reactive, and technical solutions to remedy a specific problem without a systemic/holistic, sustainable, or proactive approach. This paper attempts to contribute to the literature on the epistemological orientation of innovations in the field of public health. Taking the Covid-19 and Ebola crises as examples, the primary objective is to show how innovation in health is oriented towards a techno-economic paradigm. Second, we propose a repositioning of public health innovation towards a social paradigm that will put more emphasis on the interaction between social and health dimensions in the perspective of social change.


"Young Children, Pedagogy and the Arts is an innovative text that describes practices and research that cross all five strands of the arts—visual, drama, music, dance, and media—and illuminates ways of understanding children and their arts practices that go beyond the common traditions. The book:

- Offers practical and rich illustrations of teachers' and children's work based on international research that integrates theory with practice;

- Brings a critical lens to arts education;

- Includes summaries, reflective questions, and recommended further readings with every chapter.

Young Children, Pedagogy and the Arts provides a more nuanced understanding of the arts through an exploration of specific instances in which committed teachers and researchers are discovering what contemporary multimodal tools offer to young children. Chapters contain examples of 'doing' the arts in the early years, new ways of teaching, and how to use emerging technologies to develop multiliteracies, equity, agency, social and cultural capital, and enhance the learning and engagement of marginalized children."--publisher website


The Child-to-Parent Aggression (CPA) is an area of growing interest. Previous studies suggest that a variety of family factors can act as explanatory elements of the CPA, such as exposure to violence, emotional neglect and permissive parenting style. This study examined the association of these factors with the occurrence of severe physical and psychological CPA. A total of 1698 adolescents (870 boys and 828 girls), aged between 12 and 17 years, answered CPA measures, exposure to violence, affection and communication, parental abandonment and permissive parenting style. Results of logistic regression analysis showed that low levels of affection and communication were associated with all forms of severe CPA. Witnessing family violence was associated with the physical VFP against fathers whereas direct victimization in family was associated with physical CPA against mothers, and psychological CPA against both parents. The permissive style was associated with the severe psychological CPA but not with the physical CPA.


Surveillance is the radar of public health. It has provided the foundation for public health planning, intervention, and prevention. Important ethical issues regarding privacy--the extent to which name-based reporting violates the trust and assumptions made about how personal medical information will be treated--are raised by public health surveillance. This policy forum looks at the contexts of differing responses from the public health communities and general public to surveillance efforts.


In 2018-2019, the STIMTEC hydraulic stimulation experiment was conducted at the Reiche Zeche underground laboratory in Freiberg, Saxony/Germany, to investigate the role of hydro-mechanical processes for the often required enhancement of hydraulic properties in deep geothermal projects. We applied the same injection protocol to each of the ten stimulated intervals in the 63 m-long injection borehole. Yet, we observed significant small-scale variability in the seismic and hydraulic responses to stimulation and in parallel stress field heterogeneity on the meter scale. While acoustic emission (AE) activity was high in the upper part of the injection borehole, no AE events were detected in its deepest part, ending in a high-permeability damage zone.

To investigate the stress field and seismic variability throughout the experimental volume and their interrelation further, we started the follow-on experiment STIMTEC-X. The initial phase involved eleven local stress measurements performed in October 2020 in three existing boreholes, previously used for monitoring purposes, with varying orientations and lengths. This phase of the experiment was seismically monitored in real-time using an adaptive, high-resolution seismic monitoring network comprising six AE-type hydrophones, six regular AE sensors and four accelerometers. The hydrophones were installed in combination with hydraulic gauges or the double packer probe used for localized injection to make best use of the existing infrastructure. Hydrophones were optimally placed for each measurement configuration anew with at least one deployed in the direct vicinity (~3-4 m) of the injection interval. We detected low-magnitude AE activity (M<-3.5) at high resolution, spatially distributed between distinct clusters identified previously during the STIMTEC experiment. Overall, these records indicate a doubling of the seismically active volume. We also performed eight dilatometer tests to determine deformation characteristics of induced hydrofracs and pre-existing fractures. A circulation experiment between the injection borehole and two newly drilled boreholes of 23 m and 30 m depth is pending. Here, we present the seismicity associated with the STIMTEC and STIMTEC-X hydraulic stimulation campaigns and focal mechanism solutions. We focus on how they contribute to 3-D volumetric stress field characterisation between local stress measurement points.

Figure 1: Borehole layout (cyan - injection borehole, yellow: seismic monitoring boreholes, green: hydraulic monitoring borehole, red: mine-back validation boreholes) and acoustic emission (AE) events during the STIMTEC (yellow and orange circles) and STIMTEC-X (purple circle) experiments at the Reiche Zeche underground laboratory in Freiberg, Germany. Damage zones (transparent red) and hydraulically stimulated (dark blue rings) and/or hydraulically tested intervals (light blue rings) are shown. Stimulation of the intervals resulted in >11000 AE events with most events occurring during the periodic pumping sequences following the hydrofracturing. The seismic clouds extend about 5 m radially around the boreholes.


Background: A building's stability is a critical design element that structural engineers must understand. Utilization of Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) in steel structures can significantly diminish seismic residual deformations, which will facilitate postseismic retrofitting. Objective: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the seismic behavior of 7-story and 15-story steel frames with a moment frame system having a chevron concentric brace equipped with Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs). Braces containing various amount of alloy (including 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100%) were applied to study the effect of SMAs on structural performance. Relatively persistent displacement of the structure as well as its relative maximum displacement under the earthquake imposing on frame models, were investigated using non-linear dynamic analysis by OpenSees finite element software. The earthquakes were in nearfault nine accelerographs, which involved various maximum accelerations. Results: Results indicated a reduction in relatively persistent displacement using 20% SMAs in braces. Additionally, more amount of alloy resulted in less relative displacement as compared to steel braces. Conclusion: Applying SMAs brace showed a reduction in persistent structural displacement in any type of frame. Furthermore, adding more than 20% SMAs to the brace, resulted in a decrease in structural displacement.


The IPv6 over the TSCH mode of IEEE 802.15.4e (6TiSCH) Working Group released 6TiSCH minimal configuration (6TiSCH-MC) standard for 6TiSCH network bootstrapping. 6TiSCH-MC allocates only one shared cell per slotframe, known as a minimal cell, to transmit all types of control packets. Our Markov Chain-based probabilistic analysis reveals that few network parameters have a high impact on the performance of 6TiSCH network formation due to increasing congestion in the minimal cell with the increased number of nodes. This work aims to improve the 6TiSCH network formation process by reducing congestion in the minimal cell. For this, the Trickle algorithm, which is used for controlling the rate of routing information-carrying packet transmission is modified so that sufficient routing information can be provided without congesting the minimal cell. To reduce the congestion further, a slotframe window (SW)-based adaptive scheme is proposed by which nodes are restricted to transmit their control packets frequently. The proposed dynamic Trickle algorithm and SW-based scheme are implemented on Contiki-NG and evaluated using FIT IoT-LAB testbed. The experimental results show that both the proposed schemes together improve the joining time and energy consumption of the pledges compared to the state-of-the-art schemes. Additionally, both the proposed schemes provide fair control packet transmission opportunities among the nodes in a network.


This paper sets out to present a non-specialist overview of what fault tolerant systems are intended to achieve, the various possible approaches (from simple to complex) which are followed, how well they meet the goals and the particular problems or advantages they possess. The source data for the paper and its background is aviation gas turbine controls but the principles are of general application.Fault tolerance is aimed at obtaining greater system availability without compromising safety. Many different system configurations have been postulated or tried out. The paper considers 11 and deals in detail with several of them, covering a wide range of cost and complexity. The choice between these diverse systems depends upon application, installation, the powerplant/vehcile configuration and most importantly on the complexity of the control hardware. It involves choices of actuation system, monitoring methods, failure recovery and, in digital systems, software. The paper explains the rationale and the significance of each influence.Each configuration can be applied more or less successfully to a range of control uses. The discussion indicates which special features are advantageous and which are disadvantageous in different regions of the applications spectrum.Relative representative cost and reliability figures are given for each configuration and, for aviation types of design, relative sizes and weights.There is no single, generally applicable "fault tolerant system". The issues are basically simple but frequently confused. It is the aim of the paper to clearly present these issues and the merits of various configurations in general terms and to promote wider and better informed discussion of them.Copyright © 1983 by ASME


Aim of the study : To identify the lines of research initiatives and programmes on forest ecosystem and trees and shed lights on the need of new insights in forestry sector. Area of Study : Eastern Mediterranean countries (i.e. Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey). Materials and Methods : Online assessment through search on Google, Science Direct, Tandfonline, Forestry related journals, PLOS ONE, FAOSTAT, FAO-Agris, Unasylva, and Research Gate. Direct contacts were made with researchers at universities and professionals from international development organisations. Main results : The highest contribution in research is recorded in Turkey, followed by Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Forest ecosystem functioning was ranked first in the research thematic areas, followed by forest ecosystem management. Research interest focuses on limited genera of coniferous and broadleaf trees. Emerging needs feature the execution of comprehensive national and regional stocktaking exercises to harmonize research agendas; ensuring synergies between international agreements' goals (e.g. SDGs) and national policies instruments (e.g. NBSAPs); alignment of research agendas with national and international related frameworks; revisiting governance structure and regulatory measures and laws in the forestry sector. Research highlights : Insights put in the interface a new outlook on the leadership profile and foundation of interdisciplinary communities of practices. Rethink academic forestry related programmes and transform the approaches adopted to aim for more inclusiveness leading to stronger knowledge and coherent and successful practices in forestry.


ABSTRACT This commentary aims to take stock of the 2016 presidential elections in the Philippines that led to the landslide victory of the controversial Rodrigo Duterte. It argues that part of Duterte's electoral success is hinged on his effective deployment of the populist style. Although populism is not new to the Philippines, Duterte exhibits features of contemporary populism that are befitting of an age of communicative abundance. This commentary contrasts Duterte's political style with other presidential contenders, characterises his relationship with the electorate and concludes by mapping populism's democratic and anti-democratic tendencies, which may define the quality of democratic practice in the Philippines in the next six years.


Evidence of the impact of sustainable schools is supported by growing research, policy, and practitioner literature, in the main from the UK but also internationally. Multiple sources of evidence now show that being a sustainable school raises standards and enhances well-being. This publication sets out the educational and social benefits to young people of learning in a sustainable school. It is written for leadership teams in primary and secondary schools and other educational settings across England. Under five themes, it sets out 15 top tips based on the impact of sustainable schools and education for sustainable development on school improvement and young people's well-being as defined by Every Child Matters outcomes. It is hoped these will be useful in the context of schools striving to enable learners to become successful, confident individuals, and responsible, caring citizens. Each theme sets out the tips together with a short summary of the evidence. The sources of evidence are listed at the end of the booklet.


The fibrin-specific thrombolyticum tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA) has proven to be a potent drug in several clinical trials, but its clinical application is complicated by the rapid clearance of t-PA from the circulation. The rapid plasma clearance of t-PA results from the uptake of t-PA in the liver. t-PA consists of several domains which may be involved in the interaction with the liver. Three domain-deletion mutants, which were produced by the use of a cassette gene system, were studied in vivo and in vitro for their capacity to bind to the various types of rat liver cells. The three mutants lacked, in comparison to control t-PA, the epidermal growth factor (G) domain, the finger (F) domain or the G domain plus the first kringle (K1). The plasma clearance of the three mutants was slower than that of control t-PA. The slower plasma clearance resulted from a decreased liver uptake: 50 and 80% for t-PA mutants and control t-PA respectively. It was found that the K1 domain was of major importance for the uptake of t-PA by liver endothelial cells in vivo and in vitro. The high-affinity binding of t-PA (and t-PA mutants) to parenchymal liver cells depended largely on the presence of the G domain. Other domain(s), like the F, K2 or protease domain, may be responsible for low-affinity, t-PA-specific binding to rat parenchymal liver cells.


11-Azaartemisinin (11-Aza) is a potent anti-malarial drug more readily able to form cocrystals than its parent compound. 13 new 1 : 1 and 2 : 1 cocrystal phases from 25 mono- and bi-functional acids are reported here in excellent yield and purity by liquid assisted grinding. X-ray structures of several of these cocrystals reveal R22(8) heterosynthons with short OH–OC H-bonds ≤2.60 A between the 11-Aza lactam and the coformer acid groups. The new phases can show enhanced aqueous solubility of 11-Aza of 3× after 12 h. Notably diastereospecific cocrystal formation can occur, with the DL-mandelic acid system yielding solely the 11-Azaart : D-mandelic acid 1 : 1 product.


Meningioma, the commonest intracranial tumor, undoubtedly invades the contiguous skull producing hyperostosis in 25% of cases, and rarely it extends through the cranium into the soft tissues (Bain and Shnitka 2 ). Ectopic meningiomas are, however, an extremely rare entity, 15 cases having been reported in the world literature so far. The presentation of the case record of another ectopic meningioma is justified from the clinicopathological point of view. Report of Case A 7-month-old male infant was brought with a painless swelling over the upper part of the right side of the nose to the Professor of Clinical Surgery's unit of the Government Medical College, Patiala, on Oct 31, 1963. According to the mother, the lump was present at birth and had been progressively increasing in size. The development of the infant had been normal and the mother did not give any history of nasal discharge or fever. The family history


In the world of visual storytelling, narrative development relies on a particular temporal ordering of shots and sequences and scenes. Rarely is this ordering cast in stone. Rather, the particular ordering of a story reflects a myriad of interdependent decisions about the interplay of structure, narrative arc and character development. For storytellers, particularly those developing their narratives from large documentary archives, it would be helpful to have a visualization system partnered with them to present suggestions for the most compelling story path. We present Storied Navigation, a video editing system that helps authors compose a sequence of scenes that tell a story, by selecting from a corpus of annotated clips. The clips are annotated in unrestricted natural language. Authors can also type a story in unrestricted English, and the system finds possibilities for clips that best match high-level elements of the story. Beyond simple keyword matching, these elements can include the characters, emotions, themes, and story structure. Authors can also interactively replace existing scenes or predict the next scene to continue a story, based on these characteristics. Storied Navigation gives the author the feel of brainstorming about the story rather than simply editing the media.


This thesis deals with the problematic of the business systems systemic purpose definition. The definition of the systemic purpose, which is regarded as the utmost expression of the system's purposefulness, is to be achieved by ensuring the participation of all the stakeholders, if possible, who affect or they are affected by the business system's operations. The nature of participation, defined as a process of the stakeholders' perceptual exchanges, is deemed to be problematic in itself due to the influence exerted upon it by organisational power, coercion and false consciousness. The main focus of the thesis then is to make aware and provide the stakeholders with an explicit philosophical pedestal and a set of principles upon which a meta- epistemological framework for the enquiry of the business system's purposeful behaviour is developed. In addition, the thesis focuses on the development of a methodology that can be used by the stakeholders to achieve self-knowledge through the critical and systemic examination of their normative presuppositions, about the business system, at both sociological as well as the psychological levels concurrently and the subsequent development of an organisational intrinsically motivated information system. According to the critical systems philosophy and principles, developed in this thesis, normative presuppositions define the stakeholders' perceptions about the purposeful behaviour of the business system they perceived as having a material, an informational and/or an emacipatory stake (human interest) in. The methodology will provide Information Systems that demonstrably improve coordination of organisational activities by enabling the development and maintenance of a single/multifaceted view of purpose throughout organisations.


A frequently encountered query type in multimedia databases is the k-nearest neighbor query which finds the k-nearest neighbors of a given query. To speed up such queries and to meet the user requirements in low response time, approximation techniques play an important role. In this paper, we present an efficient approximation technique applicable to distance measures defined over flexible feature representations, i.e. feature signatures. We apply our approximation technique to the recently proposed Signature Quadratic Form Distance applicable to feature signatures. We performed our experiments on numerous image databases, gathering k-nearest neighbor query rankings in significantly low computation time with an average speed-up factor of 13.


Review of A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, by Nicholas Wade. New York: Penguin Press, 2013. x + 278 pp. 978-1-5942-0446-3 (hardcover). US $27.95.


Using a large database of US institutional investors' trades in the equity market, this paper explores the effect of simultaneous executions on trading cost. We design a Bayesian network modelling the inter-dependencies between investors' transaction costs, stock characteristics (bid-ask spread, turnover and volatility), meta-order attributes (side and size of the trade) and market pressure during execution, measured by the net order flow imbalance of investors meta-orders. Unlike standard machine learning algorithms, Bayesian networks are able to account for explicit inter-dependencies between variables. They also prove to be robust to missing values, as they are able to restore their most probable value given the state of the world. Order flow imbalance being only partially observable (on a subset of trades or with a delay), we show how to design a Bayesian network to infer its distribution and how to use this information to estimate transaction costs. Our model provides better predictions than standard (OLS) models. The forecasting error is smaller and decreases with the investors' order size, as large orders are more informative on the aggregate order flow imbalance (R2 increases out-of-sample from -0.17% to 2.39% for the smallest to the largest decile of order size). Finally, we show that the accuracy of transaction costs forecasts depends heavily on stock volatility, with a coefficient of 0.78.


ABSTRACT The EVM1 protein encoded by Ectromelia virus is a member of a highly conserved family of poxvirus chemokine binding proteins that interfere with host immune surveillance processes. EVM1 is abundantly expressed early during mousepox infection and is able to selectively bind CC chemokines and inhibit their interactions with host receptors. Here, we characterize the interaction between EVM1 and the human and murine chemokines CCL3 (MIP-1α), CCL2 (MCP-1), and CCL5 (RANTES). Each of these CC chemokines binds EVM1 with 1:1 stoichiometry and equilibrium dissociation constants ranging from 29 pM to 20 nM. The interactions are characterized by rapid-association kinetics between acidic EVM1 and generally basic chemokines with half-lives enduring up to 30 min. The 2.6-Å crystal structure of EVM1 reveals a globular β sandwich with a large, sequence-conserved surface patch encircled by acidic residues on one face of the protein. To determine whether this conserved cluster of residues is involved in chemokine engagement, a structure-based mutational analysis of EVM1 was employed. Mapping of the mutational results onto the surface of EVM1 reveals that a cluster of five residues (I173, S171, S134, N136, and Y69) emanating from one β sheet is critical for CCL2 and CCL3 sequestration. Additionally, we find that the extended β2-β4 loop flanking this conserved cluster is also essential for high-affinity, lasting interactions with chemokines. This analysis provides insight into the mechanism of CC-chemokine inhibition employed by the poxvirus family of chemokine decoy receptors.


The fundamental mechanisms of a metal-dielectric transition are examined. The multiband theory of the metal-dielectric transition is reviewed, as based on realistic models of the band structure of a set of oxides and sulfides of the 3d-metals in which the transition is accompanied by structural and magnetic phase transitions. In the multiband case new phases arise that were absent in the simplest single-band theories, yet at the same time are known experimentally. The metal-dielectric transition is studied in the Shubin-Vonsovskiĭ model. It is shown that allowance for screening of the long-range Coulomb interaction leads to a first-order transition. We describe the concept of the metallic order parameter, which is proportional near the transition point to the density of states at the Fermi level. The theory enables one to explain qualitatively many experimental data, mainly thermodynamic, on the oxides of vanadium and titanium and the sulfides of 3d-metals having a metal-dielectric transition. The pathways are discussed of further development of the theory for fuller description of all physical properties of the materials being studied. Cases are analyzed in which localized magnetic moments exist and are manifested alongside the band states.


Abstract. Today, possibilities of artificial intelligence allow us to see the emergence of autonomous cars. However, there are still many problems in this area at present. Often, such vehicles are "too slow to think", are not able to reliably process data from video cameras in the event of reflections, glare, and there are also questions about the safety of such driving in difficult weather conditions or in heavy traffic. At the same time, the human factor plays a major role in accidents of driven vehicles. Many accidents involve driver fatigue, distraction, or even falling asleep. At the same time, it is potentially possible to monitor the state of a person behind the wheel by a video sequence received from a camera installed in the car's interior and registering the driver's face in video sequence. In this paper, the existing databases of images of faces and eyes are considered, and an algorithm is presented that detects the state of closed eyes based on Haar detectors and convolutional neural networks.


How are volunteers who provide assistance to refugees socialized into their organizations? Known as the process through which newcomers evolve from organizational outsiders into insiders, socialization is particularly crucial among volunteers, as they often help vulnerable groups such as refugees. To examine this issue, which is critical to both scholars and practitioners, we draw on a large-scale qualitative study conducted in France and Australia. Based on triangulated data from 42 in-depth interviews, 17 hours of participant observations and document analysis, we shed light on the socialization of volunteers. We identify a three-stage process during which volunteers become insiders: (i) familiarizing with the role; (ii) bonding with the group; and (iii) embedding into the organization. Each stage consists of tactics, learning domains, emotions and outcomes that are particularly salient to the volunteer experience. With only slight differences between the two countries, our model extends organizational socialization theory by uncovering a process that allows volunteers to feel confident in their role, integrated into their team and part of a larger purpose. We also contribute to debates on volunteer management by highlighting organizational tactics that fit the volunteer experience.


The last few decades have seen an increasing popularity in naturalistic planting. It is widely accepted to be attractive and beneficial to wildlife. It is, however, still unusual to see it in inner city parks, where mown grass, trees, shrub beds and colourful annual planting still predominate. This two-part study aims to identify where barriers are to naturalistic planting. Firstly, it explores park users' attitudes to naturalistic planting, both in the broadest sense and at vegetation level. It uses quantitative survey methods to explore how demographic factors such as age, gender and occupation, and behavioural factors, such as park visit frequency, reason for being in the park and access to other types of open space, might influence preference and acceptance of naturalistic planting. Park users in two cities were asked about areas of naturalistic vegetation specially grown for this study. The second part is an exploration of the attitudes of professionals within the Green space sector; both local authority employees and professionals from specialist organisations. This qualitative study takes an ethnographic approach; attitudes towards naturalistic planting are explored within the context of the personal, professional motivations of employees within the Green space sector. It is hoped that by probing deeper into the culture of organisations, and the individuals that work in them, a greater understanding of naturalistic planting, in inner city parks, might be gained. It was found that park users almost universally embrace the idea of naturalistic planting, that factors such as age, familiarity and context influence park users' views about planting. Diversity and "wildlife" were found be important to park users generally and the more familiar they are with these the more it influences their preference. Local authority employees were found to hold professional attitudes about naturalistic planting that did not reflect the attitudes held by the park users. Greenspace managers, while expressing approval of naturalistic planting, did not prioritise it as a vegetation choice. This study found that barriers to naturalistic planting are environmental and institutional. These can be overcome by champions for naturalistic planting within local authorities and outside them, strong relationships of trust between experts in the field and local authorities which incites motivation to innovate in vegetation management.


Cerebral event-related potentials arise from synchronous neural activity associated with cognitive processing. The P3 is a late positive component that is related to task complexity and is directly proportional to stimulus evaluation time. P3 latency and amplitude were examined after oral administration of diazepam, a commonly prescribed medication with known cognitive side effects. Latency of the P3 was significantly increased after a single dose of both 5 and 10 mg of diazepam but not after placebo. P3 amplitude decreased slightly, but not significantly after 10 mg of diazepam. Changes in P3 occurred in the absence of significant changes in the preceding evoked waves (N1, P2). These findings should be considered when the P3 is obtained for clinical or research purposes from medicated patients.


The transport control protocol(TCP) does not perform well in a wireless communication system where packets are usually lost due to bit errors, not congestion. This paper summarizes several traditional TCP protocols for wireless links and points out the advantages and disadvantages of each method, and proposes a new approach that adopts the agent of TCP-Acknowledge to improve TCP performance over wireless links, aims at reducing RTT to increase throughput, makes wireless link more robust, and saves bandwidth for uplink services. At last, the paper compares all these methods mentioned in this paper and draws a conclusion..


Abstract Using six plastid regions, we present a phylogeny for 26 species of the heterosporous fern genus Marsilea. Two well-supported groups within Marsilea are identified. Group I includes two subgroups, and is relatively species-poor. Species assignable to this group have glabrous leaves (although land leaves may have a few hairs), sporocarps lacking both a raphe and teeth, and share a preference for submerged conditions (i.e., they are intolerant of desiccation). Group II is relatively diverse, and its members have leaves that are pubescent, sporocarps that bear a raphe and from zero to two teeth, and the plants are often emergent at the edges of lakes and ponds. Within Group II, five subgroups receive robust support: three are predominantly African, one is New World, and one Old World. Phylogenetic assessment of morphological evolution suggests that the presence of an inferior sporocarp tooth and the place of sporocarp maturation are homoplastic characters, and are therefore of unreliable taxonomic use at an infrageneric level. In contrast, the presence of a raphe and superior sporocarp tooth are reliable synapomorphies for classification within Marsilea.


This paper reports measurements of processes: e+e-→γKS0K±π∓, e+e-→γK+K-π0, e+e-→γϕη, and e+e-→γϕπ0. The initial-state radiated photon allows to cover the hadronic final state in the energy range from thresholds up to ≈4.6  GeV. The overall size of the data sample analyzed is 232  fb-1, collected by the BABAR detector running at the PEP-II e+e- storage ring. From the Dalitz plot analysis of the KS0K±π∓ final state, moduli, and relative phase of the isoscalar and the isovector components of the e+e-→KK*(892) cross section are determined. Parameters of ϕ and ρ recurrences are also measured, using a global fitting procedure which exploits the interconnection among amplitudes, moduli, and phases of the e+e-→KS0K±π∓, K+K-π0, ϕη final states. The cross section for the OZI-forbidden process e+e-→ϕπ0, and the J/ψ branching fractions to KK*(892) and K+K-η are also measured.


Abstract Aim: A questionnaire has been used repeatedly in cross-sectional studies to determine the prevalence of asthma, allergic rhinoconjunctivitis (AR) and eczema among schoolchildren in Nordland County, Norway. The current study was designed to validate the questionnaire against clinical assessment as the diagnostic gold standard and to investigate the extent of possible misclassification. Methods: A subsample of 801 schoolchildren of 4150, whose parents had answered a questionnaire covering asthma and atopic diseases, underwent a detailed clinical evaluation including a standardized interview, a clinical examination, skin prick tests (SPT), blood samples, spirometry an exercise treadmill test (EIB test) and measurement of exhaled nitrogen oxide (FeNO). Results: The questionnaire had a sensitivity of 0.96 and a specificity of 0.87 for the diagnosis of asthma ever compared to clinical assessment. The overall agreement (kappa) was 0.80. After clinical assessment the prevalence of asthma ever was adjusted from 17.6 % to 16.9 % (95% CI: 15.8–18.0). The most sensitive and specific questions in identifying asthmatic children by the questionnaire were questions asking about diagnosis ('Has the child ever had asthma?') rather than those covering asthma symptoms such as wheeze, shortness of breath and/or cough. A positive exercise test increased the post-test probability for the asthma diagnosis only to a minimal degree. Conclusion: Based on the good agreement between the questionnaire responses and the clinical assessments, it is concluded that the questionnaire had good validity and served as a useful epidemiological tool. Detailed clinical testing added little additional information.


The space economy encompasses the totality of activities resulting from and in the presence of humankind in space and, in addition to its governmental and research components, it also features a critical and crescent business and market-oriented segment. The number of space systems, especially those in Earth orbit, has augmented significantly, leading to a surge in satellite services that has strikingly outstripped global economic growth. The huge demand for communications, data gathering, navigation, positioning and timing services grows exponentially with the development of new applications with terrestrial debouche and encouraged by state actors seeing this field as a strategic force multiplier and area for competition/competitiveness. This research observes that even if costs continue to fall (on the technological "supply-side") and reliance on circum-terrestrial space-based facilities continues to rise (on the "demand-side"), there are international institutional hurdles against the unleash of space quest for fear that uneven chances to accede in space will ignite old terrestrial conflicts. Special attention will be drawn on the reasons for the potential prolongation of the image of cosmic space as a "museum" rather that a "laboratory", and a "laboratory" rather than an "workshop", discussing whether the just / efficient paradigm in the outer space governance / ownership / sovereignty is "entrepreneurial liberal capitalism", "egalitarian social democracy" or "reactionary conservatism".


We use high spatial resolution maps of stellar mass and infrared flux of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) to calibrate a conversion between 3.6 and 4.5 μm fluxes and stellar mass, M* = 105.65F2.853.6F−1.854.5(D/0.05)2 M☉, where fluxes are in Jy and D is the luminosity distance to the source in Mpc, and to provide an approximate empirical estimate of the fractional internal uncertainty in M* of , where N is the number of stars in the region. We find evidence that young stars and hot dust contaminate the measurements, but attempts to remove this contamination using data that are far superior to what are generally available for unresolved galaxies resulted in marginal gains in accuracy. The scatter among mass estimates for regions in the LMC is comparable to that found by previous investigators when modeling composite populations, and so we conclude that our simple conversion is as precise as possible for the data and models currently available. Our results allow for a reasonably bottom-heavy initial mass function, such as Salpeter or heavier, and moderately disfavor lighter versions such as a diet-Salpeter or Chabrier initial mass function.


We present a case of multifocal endobronchial carcinoid tumor and review the literature on multifocal endobronchial carcinoid tumors. Our patient was admitted with complaints of paroxysmal cough and recurrent lower respiratory tract infections. Computed tomography of the chest showed tubular densities in the bilateral lower lobes and a 15-mm soft-tissue mass in the right lower lobe without any enlargement in the mediastinal lymph nodes. On positron emission tomography scan, there was no fluorodeoxyglucose uptake in any of these lesions. Bronchoscopy showed multiple endobronchial tumors with hypervascularity. The pathologic examination of biopsies showed neuroendocrine neoplasm and typical bronchial carcinoid tumor. Although the only effective treatment for a bronchial carcinoid is complete surgical excision of the tumor, surgical resection was not performed in our patient because of multiple, bilateral, biopsy-proven endobronchial tumors. Radiation and chemotherapy are generally reserved for symptomatic and metastatic disease, which was the treatment of choice for our patient.


The last several years have seen extensive study of the treatment of acute anuria, which has been summarized in thoughtful1-3and comprehensive4reviews. At the same time the technical aspects of hemodialysis have been refined and simplified to a point where the artificial kidney is applied in many centers routinely without significant morbidity or intolerance of the procedure.5-9 The initial scepticism concerning the beneficial aspects of this treatment11-16has been supplanted by a recognition of its life-saving potentialities by ever-widening circles of clinicians.4,9,17-22In view of the widespread interest in the artificial kidney it is surprising that agreement concerning the indications for it was in individual patients with acute anuria is lacking and that, indeed, indications for dialysis are entirely omitted in a recent review.1Are the signs and symptoms which form the clinical indication for use of the artificial kidney so elusive and


This paper presents a continuation of the work published in Technical Report no. 496. The results of that paper have been extended to include the effect of aerodynamic balance and the effect of a tab added to the aileron. The aerodynamic coefficients are presented in a form convenient for application to the flutter problem.


ABSTRACT Using data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (1994, 1998, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2012), we utilise latent class analysis to develop time-use class membership to characterise the degree to which women in Cebu are subject to the double burden of work and family responsibilities in mid- and later life. Results suggest that close to a third of the sample are engaged in high-intensity work for pay (either outside or home-based), while combining it with a substantial amount of household chores and with a low level of personal time in a span of 18 years. Our latent transition analysis also shows that, with the addition of grandchildren into the household, some women experience a shift in time-use class membership by becoming high-intensity care-givers or by completely transitioning out of the work arena, while others remain double-burdened with active involvement in both work and family responsibilities.


The cause(s) of ubiquitous cognitive differences between American self-identified racial/ethnic groups (SIREs) is uncertain. Evolutionary-genetic models posit that ancestral genetic selection pressures are the ultimate source of these differences. Conversely, sociological models posit that these differences result from racial discrimination. To examine predictions based on these models, we conducted a global admixture analysis using data from the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition, and Genetics Study (PING; N = 1,369 American children). Specifically, we employed a standard methodology of genetic epidemiology to determine whether genetic ancestry significantly predicts cognitive ability, independent of SIRE. In regression models using four different codings for SIRE as a covariate, we found incremental relationships between genetic ancestry and both general cognitive ability and parental socioeconomic status (SES). The relationships between global ancestry and cognitive ability were partially attenuated when parental SES was added as a predictor and when cognitive ability was the outcome. Moreover, these associations generally held when subgroups were analyzed separately. Our results are congruent with evolutionary-genetic models of group differences and with certain environmental models that mimic the predictions of evolutionary-genetic ones. Implications for research on race/ethnic differences in the Americas are discussed, as are methods for further exploring the matter.


David I. Spanagel explores the origins of American geology and the culture that helped give it rise, focusing on Amos Eaton, the educator and amateur scientist who founded the Rensselaer School, and on DeWitt Clinton, the masterful politician who led the movement for the Erie Canal. DeWitt Clinton and Amos Eaton shows how a cluster of assumptions about the peculiar landscape and entrepreneurial spirit of New York came to define the Empire State. Spanagel sheds light on a particularly innovative and fruitful period of interplay among science, politics, art, and literature in American history. New Yorkers' romantic views of natural majesty and ideas about improving the land influenced scientific ideas and other features of contemporary culture. The life of Amos Eaton provides a lens through which readers gain fresh awareness of scientific knowledge, economic planning, and cultural values during the first half of the nineteenth century. Scientists of the time were fascinated by questions such as: How old is the earth? When did time begin? How might the passage of time have shaped and reshaped the original landscape? In the United States, New Yorkers of the mid-1820s mounted the most concerted effort to find answers to these large questions of natural history. Both geographic conditions and historical forces led Amos Eaton and his wealthy patron Stephen Van Rensselaer to open the Rensselaer School at Troy, New York, in 1826. Eaton thus gave America its first generation of professional scientists, many of whom formed professional organizations and standards of practice still active today. Deeply researched, this book will interest historians of nineteenth-century American arts and science, politics, and technological development.


The growth of large interconnected power systems demands a high degree of security for normal operation. This requirement emerges from the fact that the possible disturbances in large power systems could have catastrophic results. Therefore it is the duty of power system control center to retain the operating point within secure boundaries. In order to control the security of system, one has to monitor and analyze the level of system security and enhance it in case it does not fulfill the system security requirement. The pattern recognition technique which is proposed in this paper is a method suitable for fast, on-line. security assessment. Most of the literature in this area concerns the use of steady state variables for identification purposes; the use of transient measurements, however, has been found to be better suited for the fast classification of operating points with minimal error. One of the salient conclusions of this paper is that the pattern recognition technique is a serious candidate for on-line applications. This favorable conclusion is based on the inclusion of transient state variables in the feature vector.


Within the framework of Ginzburg–Landau theory, the effect of multiplicity correlation between the dynamical multiplicity fluctuations is analyzed for a first-order phase transition from quark–gluon plasma to hadrons. Normalized factorial correlators are used to study the correlated dynamical fluctuations. A scaling behavior is found among the factorial correlators, and an approximate universal exponent, which is weakly dependent on the details of the phase transition, is obtained.


Although inequalities in health and socioeconomic status have an important influence on childhood educational performance, the interactions between these multiple factors relating to variation in educational outcomes at micro-level is unknown, and how to evaluate the many possible interactions of these factors is not well established. This paper aims to examine multi-dimensional deprivation factors and their impact on childhood educational outcomes at micro-level, focusing on geographic areas having widely different disparity patterns, in which each area is characterised by six deprivation domains (Income, Health, Geographical Access to Services, Housing, Physical Environment, and Community Safety). Traditional health statistical studies tend to use one global model to describe the whole population for macro-analysis. In this paper, we combine linked educational and deprivation data across small areas (median population of 1500), then use a local modelling technique, the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system, to predict area educational outcomes at ages 7 and 11. We define two new metrics, "Micro-impact of Domain" and "Contribution of Domain", to quantify the variations of local impacts of multidimensional factors on educational outcomes across small areas. The two metrics highlight differing priorities. Our study reveals complex multi-way interactions between the deprivation domains, which could not be provided by traditional health statistical methods based on single global model. We demonstrate that although Income has an expected central role, all domains contribute, and in some areas Health, Environment, Access to Services, Housing and Community Safety each could be the dominant factor. Thus the relative importance of health and socioeconomic factors varies considerably for different areas, depending on the levels of each of the other factors, and therefore each component of deprivation must be considered as part of a wider system. Childhood educational achievement could benefit from policies and intervention strategies that are tailored to the local geographic areas' profiles.


Students' Perspective. The Main Factors That Contribute To Students' Dropouts.
This qualitative study aims at analyzing the factors that contribute to dropout among students. The research was conducted on six different campuses ( University of Camerino - Italy, University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest - Romania, University Panepistimio Thessalias - Greece, Socialini? Moksl? Kolegija - Lietuva, Spain Zaragoza's University - Spain, Cukurova University - Turkey) and consisted of an open-ended interview with a sample of students. Data from the interviews were analyzed using a thematic constant comparison approach. The analysis of the data was based on Qualitative Content Analysis. The main themes were identified. The results reveal that the factors contributing to dropout were mainly related with the personal characteristics of the students, such as gender, age, the type of institution, and the knowledge of the institution. These characteristics were also related to the attitudes of the institution and the faculty toward the students. College factors that can hinder students were also identified.
The students' perspective is helpful in assisting the school and the parents to discover the causes of dropout. The school and the parents should be aware that dropouts have negative effects on their personal development by delaying the students' academic development. The school should also take care of the students' personal relationships with teachers, classmates, parents, and siblings. They should take care of the students' personal relationships with classmates and with teachers.A survey was conducted with 540 students who had completed the clinical clerkship. The response rate was 84%(475 valid answers)


Although sport psychology research has revealed differences in motivational orientation among athletes from various ethnic groups (Duda, 1985, 1986a; Whitehead, 1986), no work has addressed the impact of within-group variation in acculturation on motivational goal perspectives. Multiple regression analyses were conducted on data generated from young Mexican-American male (n = 83) and female (n = 80) athletes. Among males, the acculturation dimensions of media use (f3 = .265, P < .001) and ethnic social relations (f3 = .188, P < .001) significantly predicted a task goal perspective, explaining 32% of the variance, whereas increased ego involvement among female athletes was significantly predicted by language use (f3 = .336, P < .01) and ethnic social relations (f3 = -.259, P < .05) , accounting for 29% of the variance. 80th statistical and theoretical explanations are offered for the observed gender differences. These preliminary results suggest that acculturation differentially impacts how Mexican-American male and female athletes derive their perceptions of competence within the competitive sport setting.


An accurate representation of the spatial distribution of stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in modern precipitation is required for many hydrological, paleoclimate, and ecological applications. No standardized method for achieving such a representation exists, and potential errors associated with previously employed methods are not understood. Using resampling, we test the accuracy of interpolated δD and δ18O estimates made using four methods. Prediction error for all methods is strongly related to number of data and will likely decline with the addition of new data. The best method lowers estimation error by 10–15% relative to others tested and gives an average error, using all available data, ≈2.5% of the global range. We present and interpret global maps of interpolated δD, δ18O, and deuterium excess in precipitation and the 95% confidence intervals for these values created using the optimal method. These depict global and regional patterns, make evident the robustness of interpolated isotopic patterns, and highlight target areas for future precipitation sampling.


Current research in biology heavily depends on the availability and efficient use of information. In order to build new knowledge, various sources of biological data must often be combined. Semantic Web technologies, which provide a common framework allowing data to be shared and reused between applications, can be applied to the management of disseminated biological data. However, due to some specificities of biological data, applying these technologies to life science is a real challenge. This chapter shows that current Semantic Web technologies start to become mature and
can be used to develop large applications. However, in order to get the best from these technologies, improvements are needed both at the level of tool performance and knowledge modeling.


Abstract. – OBJECTIVE: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have critical roles in the progression of prostate cancer (PCa) and have the potential to be used as prognosis biomarkers. In this study, we aimed to investigate the role of miR-425-5p in the progression of PCa. PATIENTS AND METHODS: miR-425-5p expression in PCa tumor tissues and cell lines was measured by Quantitative Real-time PCR (RT-qPCR). Effects of miR-425-5p expression on PCa cell proliferation, colony formation, cell migration, and cell invasion were measured. RESULTS: We found miR-425-5p expression was elevated in both PCa tissues and cell lines. Importantly, we found overexpression of miR425-5p promoted proliferation, colony formation, migration and invasion of PCa cell lines in vitro. Forkhead box J3 (FOXJ3) was validated as a downstream target of miR-425-5p. Finally, we found the stimulation effects of miR-425-5p on PCa cell behaviors were fulfilled through directly regulating the expression of FOXJ3, which validated FOXJ3 as a functional target of miR-4255p in PCa. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, our results demonstrated miR-425-5p may contribute the malignancy progression of PCa in a mechanism involving FOXJ3, implicating miR-425-5p may be developed as therapeutic target for PCa in the future.


In this study, some metals (aluminium, chromium, copper, iron, manganese, lead, zinc and vanadium) and metalloid (silicon) were determined in water, sediment and some tissues of fish Cyprinus carpio from Mogan Lake. Fish samples were caught in March 2007. As a result of the examination of metals in the water aluminium has the lowest and silicon has the highest concentration. In sediment samples taken from Mogan Lake it was determined that silicon had the highest and lead had the lowest concentrations. Respectively accumulation of metals in gills, muscles and livers was observed to follow the order of Zn > Fe > Si > Al > Mn > Pb > Cr > V, Si > Fe > Zn > Al > Pb > V > Cr > Mn and Fe > Zn > Al > Si > Pb > Mn > V > Cr > Cu.


In this paper, we introduce and study an extended mixed equilibrium problem by using auxiliary principle technique. A generalized predictor-corrector iterative algorithm is defined for solving extended mixed equilibrium problem. The convergence of the method mentioned requires some condition (∗), g-relatively relaxed Lipschitz continuity and relatively g-relaxed monotonicity of the mappings.


Now that Western Oregon and Washington have been identified as being subject to massive if infrequent "subduction zone" earthquakes and that the vulnerability of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings to damage or collapse in a major earthquake has been documented, the owners of URM apartment buildings can expect to face gentle but inevitable pressure from casualty insurers, mortgage lenders and the local government to seismically reinforce their buildings. The challenge facing such owners is that the (1) cost of a standard seismic retrofit of an URM building will in many cases approach 20 percent of the value of that building, but (2) the retrofit adds little to the cash flow of the building aside from marginally lowering earthquake insurance premiums and mortgage interest rates. Given the large number of and historic/ architectural importance of URM apartments to Portland, URM building owners, architectural preservationists, structural engineers, mortgage lenders and insurers, and city and state officials need to work collaboratively to reduce impediments to and increase incentives for seismically upgrading URM apartments.


This study seeks to assess gender inequality in and correlates of time poverty among 360 rural households in Southwest, Nigeria. A person is deemed to be time poor if (s)he works more than 10.5 hours per day, the internationally accepted threshold. Using the time allocation domain of the Abbreviated Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index, the study found that on the average, rural women and men spent about 10.3 hours and 8 hours, respectively, on work activities on a daily basis. Work activities for women were found to be diverse, spreading across reproductive and productive domains largely farming, own business e. g. trading, cooking and domestic work, while for men, work activities centred on productive economic activities, dominated by farming. Using a Probit regression model, the study found experience in agriculture and adoption of television to reduce the likelihood of time poverty among rural men. Surprisingly, participation in empowerment projects was found to increase the likelihood of time poverty among rural women. In conclusion, empowerment programmes should be expanded to address the non-material aspects of human well-being. Hence, the study recommends a gender-sensitive approach to intervention programmes in agriculture and adoption of a broader definition of empowerment which not only focus on expanding access to markets and increasing income but enhances control over time. This is more important for women who are already under the double burden of paid and unpaid domestic work.


This study describes the development of a high throughput purification process of nucleic acid using amino-functionalized silica coated ferrite nanoparticles. The magnetic ferrite nanoparticles were synthesized and coated by a silica precursor in controlling the coating thicknesses and sizeses. The surface modification was performed with amino-functionalized organic silanes on silica coated magnetic nanoparticles. The spectroscopic measurements such as a FT-IR (ATR-method) and Vibrational Sample Magnetometer (VSM) were used to characterize the chemical structures and magnetic strengths. To elucidate the relationship between surface area, pore size distribution and reactivity of the materials, BET and Zeta potential were used. The use of functionalized self-assembled magnetic ferrite nanoparticles for a nucleic acid separation process provides a lot of advantages compared to the conventional silica based process.


We propose that category membership can operate as a collective market signal for quality when low-quality producers face higher costs of gaining membership. The strength of membership as a collective signal increases with the sharpness of the category boundary, or contrast. Our empirical study focuses on biodynamic and organic viticulture in


Unemployment in the whole world is at an all-time high. But nowhere is the employment challenge greater than in the developing world, particularly in Africa. Former studies already suggested that in order to reduce poverty you have to take care of a country's employment situation. Even though, when it comes to development policy and analysis, research mostly concentrates on trade and investment issues. In the case of CGE (Computable General Equilibrium) modeling the focus mostly lies on the welfare and GDP effects of a trade policy change; i.e. no variable is explicitly concerned with labor or employment issues. No wonder, since those issues are highly under represented in the existing general equilibrium models. First of all this paper points out the importance of labor market issues in development policies. Particularly in the course of globalization trade and liberalization of export oriented policies are taken into consideration, but generally the focus lies on those labor market policies which are applied in the developing world at most. Secondly, the paper provides a review of various approaches of labor market modeling and introduces some starting points of integrating the labor market and corresponding policies, like minimum wages, in the CGE model GTAP (Global Trade Analysis Project). Finally, some specific simulations are carried out with the extended but also with the standard model, in order to compare the results and elucidate the influence of the new implemented components.


The author considers the resources required to implement robot trajectory, kinematic, dynamic, and servo algorithms at rates high enough to ensure that the computation rate does not limit performance. He examines current computer architectures in general and those intended for robot control. He then describes a very-long-instruction-word (VLIW) processor designed for robot control. This processor, called JIFFE, was designed to run close to its peak performance even on the random scalar operations characteristic of robotics algorithms. JIFFE performs nearly 20 MFLOPS (million floating-point operations per second) on practical scalar robotics code, while maintaining high performance on poorly structured code and executing some matrix code at 40 MFLOPS. Because JIFFE was designed to be a good research tool, it can be easily programmed in C. A variety of compiler features help generate efficient code, even from voluminous machine-generated expressions.<<ETX>>


Nonlinear lattice differential equations (also known as differential‐difference equations) appear in many applications. They can be thought of as hybrid systems for the inclusion of both discrete and continuous variables. On the basis of an improved version of the basic (G′/G)‐expansion method, we focus our attention towards some Toda type lattice differential systems for constructing further exact traveling wave solutions. Our method provides not only solitary and periodic wave profiles but also rational solutions with more arbitrary parameters. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Sign at Fenton airstrip. Other photos which were originally part of this collection have now been included in NACL Q 994.295 DOO (DOOLAN, J.K. Historical Assessment, Victoria River District).


Objective This study aimed to describe the pattern of recurrence and survival related to prognostic variables, including type of surgery as a clinical variable, in patients surgically treated for early cervix cancer. Methods Records of 2124 patients who underwent a radical hysterectomy for International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics stage I/IIA cervical cancer between 1982 and 2011 were reviewed. Clinical-pathologic prognostic variables, also including extent of parametrectomy, were identified and used in a multivariable Cox proportional hazard model to explore associations between disease-free survival (DFS) and prognostic variables. Results The 5-year DFS for the total group was 86%. Large tumor diameter, nonsquamous histology, lymph node metastases, parametrial involvement, lymph vascular space invasion, deep stromal invasion, and less radical surgery were independent poor prognostic variables for survival. Disease-free survival was independently associated with the type of radical hysterectomy with pelvic lymphadenectomy in favor of more radical parametrectomy (hazard ratio, 2.0; 95% confidence interval, 1.6–2.5). This difference was not found in tumors with a diameter of at least 20 mm. Conclusions This study confirms that variables such as large tumor diameter, nonsquamous histology, lymph vascular space invasion, deep stromal invasion, positive lymph nodes, and parametrial infiltration are poor prognostic variables in early cervix cancer treated by surgery. The extent of parametrectomy had no influence on survival in tumors of 20 mm or less. For larger tumors, a more radical hysterectomy might be associated with better DFS. Taking into account the possible bias in this study as a result of its retrospective design, ideally a prospective cohort study with clear definition of radicality is necessary to answer this important clinical question.


Energy balance and the AKT pathway are important in colorectal cancer development and regulate p27 (cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor-1B/CDKN1B/KIP1), which plays a role in preventing cell cycle progression. However, little is known on the clinical outcome or prognostic significance of p27 alterations in relation to patient body mass index (BMI). Among 630 colon cancers (stage I-IV) in two prospective cohort studies, we detected p27 alterations (cytoplasmic p27 localization or p27 loss) in 500 tumors (79%) by immunohistochemistry. The remaining 130 (21%) tumors were "p27-nuclear+." Cox proportional hazard models computed hazard ratios (HR) of deaths, adjusted for patient and tumoral characteristics, including p53, p21, cyclin D1, KRAS, BRAF, PIK3CA, cyclooxygenase-2, fatty acid synthase (FASN), β-catenin, microsatellite instability (MSI), CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP), and long interspersed nucleotide element-1 (LINE-1) hypomethylation. Compared with p27-nuclear+ patients, p27-altered patients experienced low colon cancer–specific [adjusted HR, 0.63; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 0.42-0.94] and overall mortality (adjusted HR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.51-0.95), independent of FASN, MSI, CIMP, LINE-1 methylation, and other potential confounders. The effect of p27 alteration on overall mortality significantly differed by BMI (Pinteraction = 0.013); adjusted HR (p27-altered versus p27-nuclear+ tumors) was 0.28 (95% CI, 0.13-0.59) for BMI ≥30 kg/m2, 0.67 (95% CI, 0.40-1.14) for BMI 25 to 29 kg/m2, and 0.91 (95% CI, 0.57-1.46) for BMI <25 kg/m2. Obesity was associated with inferior overall survival among p27-nuclear+ cases (adjusted HR, 3.07; 95% CI, 1.49-6.32; versus nonobese cases), but not among p27-altered cases (adjusted HR, 1.08). In conclusion, p27 alterations in colon cancer are associated with superior prognosis. Adverse prognostic effect of obesity seems limited to patients with nuclear p27 expression, suggesting a host-tumor interaction. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(6):1849–58)


Abstract In this study, the issue of system reliability assessment (SRA) based on component failure data is considered. In industrial statistics, the delta method has become a popular approach for confidence interval approximation. However, for high reliability systems, usually the assessment is confronted with very limited component sample size, variant multi-parameter lifetime models, and complex system structure. Along with strict requirement on assessment accuracy and computational efficiency, existing approaches barely work under these circumstances. In this article, a normal approximation approach is proposed for determining the lower confidence limit of system reliability using components' time-to-failure data. The polynomial adjustment method is adopted to construct higher-order approximate confidence limit. The main contribution of this work is constructing an integrated methodology for SRA. Specifically, a reliability-based Winterbottom-extended Cornish-Fisher (R-WCF) expansion method for log-location-scale family is elaborated. The proposed methodology exceeds the efficient limitation of Cramer Rao's theory. Numerical studies are conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, and results show that the R-WCF approach is more efficient than the delta method for highly reliable system assessment, especially with ultra-small sample size. Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of IISE Transactions.


Trifunctional nickel tin sulfide (NixSn2xS4x) with a thiospinel-like structure composited with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) (M-NixSn2xS4x) was synthesized by a facile method. The unit cell arrangement of the prepared composite was studied by density functional theory, and the theoretical interpretation satisfactorily inferred the presence of a synergistic effect between the thiospinel and MWCNTs. The high metallic conductivity and superior electrocatalytic activity of the M-NixSn2xS4x composite endow it with diverse applications. The composite shows promise as a counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells (efficiency of 4.67% for fluorine-doped indium tin oxide compared to 5.23% for platinum); an efficient catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction with good cycling stability and a low overpotential of -41 mV at a cathode current density of 10 mA cm2 and a Tafel slope of 43 mV dec-1 on a graphite sheet electrode; and an impressive capacitance material on a graphite sheet electrode alternative to expensive current collectors such as Ni foam, with a specific capacitance value of 1200 F g-1 at a current density of 1 A g-1 and a long life span of 92.6% that is retained for up to 15 000 cycles.


Robotic grasping is a challenging task that has been approached in a variety of ways. Historically grasping has been approached as a control problem. If the forces between the robotic gripper and the object can be calculated and controlled accurately then grasps can be easily planned. However, these methods are difficult to extend to unknown objects or a variety of robotic grippers. Using human demonstrated grasps is another way to tackle this problem. Under this approach, a human operator guides the robot in a training phase to perform the grasping task and then the useful information from each demonstration is extracted. Unlike traditional control systems, demonstration based systems do not explicitly state what forces are necessary, and they also allow the system to learn to manipulate the robot directly. However, the major failing of this approach is the sheer amount of data that would be required to present a demonstration for a substantial portion of objects and use cases. Recently, we have seen various deep learning grasping systems that achieve impressive levels of performance. These systems learn to map perceptual features, like color images and depth maps, to gripper poses. These systems can learn complicated relationships, but still require massive amounts of data to train properly. A common way of collecting this data is to run physics based simulations based on the control schemes mentioned above, however human demonstrated grasps are still the gold standard for grasp planning. We therefore propose a data collection system that can be used to collect a large number of human demonstrated grasps. In this system the human demonstrator holds the robotic gripper in one hand and naturally uses the gripper to perform grasps. These grasp poses are tracked fully in six dimensions and RGB-D images are collected for each grasp trial showing the object and any obstacles present during the grasp trial. Implementing this system, we collected 40K annotated grasps demonstrations. This dataset is available online. We test a subset of these grasps for their robustness to perturbations by replicating scenes captured during data collection and using a robotic arm to replicate the grasps we collected. We find that we can replicate the scenes with low variance, which coupled with the robotic arm's low repeatability error means that we can test a wide variety of perturbations. Our tests show that our grasps can maintain a probability of success over 90% for perturbations of up 2.5cm or 10◦. We then train a variety of neural networks to learn to map images of grasping scenes to final grasp poses. We separate the task of pose prediction into two separate networks: a network to predict the position of the gripper, and a network to predict the orientation conditioned on the output of the position network. These networks are trained to classify whether a particular position or orientation is likely to lead to a successful grasp. We also identified a strong prior in our dataset over the distribution of grasp positions and leverage this information by tasking the position network to predict corrections to this prior based on the image being presented to it. Our final network architecture, using layers from a pre-trained state of the art image classification network and residual convolution blocks, did not seem able to learn the grasping task. We observed a strong tendency for the networks to overfit, even when the networks had been heavily regularized and parameters reduced substantially. The best position network we were able to train collapses to only predicting a few possible positions, leading to the orientation network to only predict a few possible orientations as well. Limited testing on a robotic platform confirmed these findings.


Twelve patients and a foetus with congenital bile duct cysts suggested in the majority of cases at routine upper abdominal sonography were examined by two or more of the following investigations: ultrasonography (10 patients), computed tomography (5 patients), CT-cholangiography (2 patients), oral cholecystography (7 patients), intravenous cholangiography (4 patients), endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) (6 patients) and cholescintigraphy (2 patients). The sensitivity of each investigation for the diagnosis of bile duct cysts was: ultrasound 40 per cent, computed tomography 20 per cent, CT-cholangiography 100 per cent, oral cholecystography 17 per cent, intravenous cholangiography 75 per cent, ERCP 83 per cent and cholescintigraphy 50 per cent. When a bile duct cyst has been suggested by ultrasonography or other examinations, without a conclusive diagnosis being made, CT-cholangiography is recommended as the next examination. In patients with impaired biliary excretion of contrast medium, ERCP may be required to achieve the diagnosis.


Objectives : To present a programme for a psoriatic arthritis (PsA) register (SwePsA) and to report the early experiences of a test period. Methods : Patients with symptoms and/or signs consistent with PsA or resembling PsA are enrolled into a follow-up programme, provided the disease duration at inclusion is not longer than two years. Results : Ninety-two patients were included into the programme during the test period. Sixty patients were classified as having PsA, 39 mono/oligoarticular, 19 polyarticular and two predominant axial. Thirty-two patients were classified as possible PsA. Thirty-two of the 92 included patients were followed for one year. Seven of 18 with mono/oligoarticular PsA had advanced to polyarticular PsA. Four of nine patients initially classified as possible PsA evolved into definite polyarticular PsA. Patients with polyarticular PsA had evidence of more severe disease than had patients with mono/oligoarticular PsA. Conclusions : The programme was easy to administrate and not very time-consuming in daily clinical practice. The preliminary experiences emphasize the importance of early diagnosis and the need for reliable outcome predictors for this potentially severe disorder.


The quality of angling sites is important for attracting tourists who enjoy recreational angling. In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis investigating which attributes of angling sites are particularly important for attracting tourist anglers from abroad. We conduct an online survey of 968 German anglers who have recently been abroad on a holiday trip in which they went angling. We focus on the particularly dedicated anglers who state that recreational angling is important for their choice of holiday destination. A stated choice experiment is employed to investigate their preferences for environmental attributes, catch attributes, and social relation/distance attributes of the angling site. We find that preferences are heterogeneous across different angler segments. Three distinct segments of tourist anglers are identified, characterised as "catch oriented" anglers (57 %), "nature oriented" anglers (24 %) and "trophy oriented anglers (19 %)". All three angler segments have the strong preferences for water quality. However, they differ with respect to catch preferences and preferences for social interaction on the angling site. The catch oriented focus on the hunting aspects of angling. A high catch rate as very important for them, but the size of fish is not important. Moreover this segment prefers angling in solitude without disturbance from other anglers. For the "nature oriented" it is very important that the angling takes place in "natural" conditions, the catches rates are not important but they hope to catch large fish, and it is no problem for this group if there are a few other anglers at the angling site. For the "trophy oriented" anglers it is very important to catch large fish, while the catch rate is of moderate importance and they do not mind if there are many anglers at the site. To attract tourist anglers an angling site manager may use this information to target marketing efforts towards segments of tourist that prefer the type and quality of angling characteristics of the angling site in the managers possession. Additionally, he may seek to adjust and improve the angling sites in a way that suits the preferences of specific segments.


The work of the document examiner is often aided through the use of specialized analytical instruments. One such instrument, in use at the Immigration & Naturalization Service Forensic Document Laboratory (INSFDL), is the Nanometrics 10S Microspectrophotometer, manufactured by Nanometrics, Inc., of Sunnyvale, CA. This pseudo-dual-beam spectrophotometer performs nondestructive color analysis of objects down to 2 μm in size. First, an object to be examined (such as an ink line) is viewed through a microscope and the light reflected from it is measured over the visible spectrum. The reflected energy is then compared with a standard stored in the system's microprocessor, and a spectral curve is provided which is characteristic of the color of the object examined. At INSFDL, the Nanospec 10S™ has been successfully used to differentiate similarly colored printing inks, stamp pad inks, and fibers found on various travel and identity documents. Examples from recent cases will be demonstrated.


The directive of the European Parliament and of the European Council on road infrastructure safety management was transposed to the 19.12.2010 into German regulations which are compulsory for roads of the Trans European Network. It provides descriptions and regulations for preventive methods like safety impact assessments, road safety audits and road safety inspections as well as for reactive methods to rank and manage the road network in operation from a traffic safety point of view. In order to support the ambitious road safety target set by the European Commission to reduce the number of traffic fatalities within the next 10 years the actual methods and regulations shall particularly be developed further. Road safety inspection aims to detect obvious defects of the condition of the roads in operation. In order to support those responsible for road safety inspections the method and the process have to be optimized. Thus to further establish the set of rules for road safety inspections the Scientific Committee AK 2.7.1 "Recommendations for the Execution of a Road Safety Inspection" at the German Road and Transportation Research Association (FGSV) was set up. The work of this Committee is supported by the research and development project "Tools for the execution of the road safety inspection and extended form regular control of the road administration" financed and managed by the German Federal Highway Research Institute BASt). A proposal how this method could be adapted for an application in China is the subject of this presentation.


Manipur, a jewel land of India and known for its rich cultural heritage and traditional arts, has become a place where violence and bloodshed is common feature of the state today. The problem is so much pronounced that people from other states widely recognise this small state through its prevailing problem of unrest. Insurgency threatens the existing development process and has become major obstacle for development of the state. In fact, insurgency emerged in the late sixties and seventies of the last century. Later on, it started giving tremendous pressure and lots of destruction in the systematic functioning of the state as well as central government. In due course of time, numbers of insurgent groups and factional groups have mushroomed due to differences in ideology among themselves. They have been continuously fighting against each other. On the other hand, for the purpose of controlling insurgency activities in the state, armed forces have been deployed in Manipur, equipped with wide range of powers. Ultimately, common men are suffering due to such activities and they are at the receiving end whether it is the activities of insurgency or that of the army. The present paper highlights the rise of insurgency and how innocent people's right to live in freedom has been curtailed due to unrest in the state.


A tetraurea aryl extended calix[4]pyrrole with four appended azobenzene groups dimerizes by encapsulating a bis-N-oxide acting as a template. The assembly can be detected by 1H NMR spectroscopy only when all eight azobenzene units are in their trans forms. The light-induced trans-to-cis-isomerization of a single azobenzene moiety within the assembly triggers capsular disintegration, probably through a disassembly process. The reassembly of the encapsulation complex is achieved by cis-to-trans relaxation of the azobenzene photoswitches in the dark.


Growth management attempts to improve the ordering of development to improve outcomes. To taxpayers, growth management promises more efficient delivery of public facilities and services. To developers, growth management promises more certainty. To citizen activists, growth management promises resolution of development problems in advance, instead of on an ad hoc basis. These promises are heroic. Nonetheless, even if only partly successful, communities engaged in growth management should out-perform other communities in overall economic output. This paper evaluates the economic performance of 182 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) with 1990 populations between 100,000 and 500,000 over the period 1972 to 1992 with respect to presence or absence of growth management efforts such as urban growth boundaries, urban service limits, and state or regional oversight of local planning. We find a positive association between the presence of growth management and economic performance; communities engaged in growth management realized marginal improvements in economic performance relative to other communities, ceteris parnbus.


Commodity trading is one of the most popular resources owning to its eminent predictable return on investment to earn money through trading. The trading includes all kinds of commodities like agricultural goods such as wheat, coffee, cocoa etc. and hard products like gold, rubber, crude oils etc.,. The investment decision can be made very easily with the help of the proposed model. The proposed model correlation based multi layer perceptron feed forward adaline neural network is an integrated method to forecast the future values of all commodity trading. The correlation based adaline neuron is used as an optimized predictor in the multi layer perceptron feed forward neural network. The correlation is used for feature selection before building the predictive model. The aim of the paper is to build the predictive model for commodity trading. The model is created using correlation based feature selection and adaline neural network to prognosticate all future values of commodities. The adaptive linear neuron is formed with the help of linear regression. To implement the proposed model the live data is captured from mcxindia. The mcxindia is considered as one the popular website for doing commodities and derivatives in India. To train the proposed model, few random samples are used and the model is evaluated with the help of few test samples from the same data set.


Albert Thomas, the first director of the International Labor Office (ILO), promoted the development of specific competencies addressing the problems of economic modernization and its social consequences. His interest in "Scientific Management" or "Rationalization" was a means to better understand the transformations produced by the development of mass production and consumption. The creation (thanks to the aid of the American-based Twentieth Century Fund) of an International Management Institute (IMI) created a novel place for the discussion and appropriation of Taylorist ideas in proximity to the League of Nations. For a while, this Institute developed a dialogue between various international players concerning the controversial question of how economic modernization could be reconciled with the implementation of social reform. This general approach led the IMI to reflect on various forms of "Social Economic Planning". Even though the IMI was forced to close its doors in 1934, its work influenced ILO research and politics in the thirties and even after the Second World War.


The results of the work of the center for controlling the spread of HIV infection are discussed. The analysis of the epidemiological situation and the work on the projects, envisaging preventive measures among intravenous drug users permitted the realization of educational and behavior-changing programs in the city in 1999. The results of this work demonstrate the effect of various preventive measures, manifested by a decrease in the rate of the spread of HIV infection in the city not only among drug users, but also among other groups of the population.


The basic references and textbooks of organic farming describe this agricultural method as aiming at and using the benefits of a certain farm structure. Similar concepts and ideas of a farm have been described both by the pioneers of organic farming and by the pioneers of agricultural sciences, although using various terms: agricultural individuality (Steiner in 1924), self-sufficient organic whole (Lord Northbourne in 1940), the proportioned farm (Young in 1770), the farm organism (Koepf in 1976), the branches of a farm are like organs in a body (Aereboe in 1920) having a certain size and being dependent from each other (Brinkmann in 1922). The various terms, ideas and aspects are explained and compared with each other.

In the 1970s and 1980s, some decades later than most of these references have been published, scientific activities called ecosystem research have been undertaken to investigate the structures and processes in natural or almost natural ecosystems as well as in agricultural ecosystems. Particularly, the effects and the significance of human impact (e.g. tillage, fertilization, plant protection) as regards structure, functioning and long-term stability or productivity of agroecosystems have been investigated. These results considered in the light of experiences gained in both organic and conventional farming practice can explain the linkage between structures and functions of a farm, i.e. why not only a certain diversity but also a ceratin set of operation ("impacts") is necessary for the long-term fertility and sustainability of a farm if it is managed organically.

Different, partly the opposite consequences can be observed with the specialisation versus the diversification of the farm organism. The effects of agronomic tools and techniques mainly depend on whether they support the ability of self-regulation in agroecosystems or they act as an external (anthropogenic) regulation, as different types of feedback can be provoked in the system.

The paper is a contribution to the general concept of organic farming and to the present tendency in organic farming practice to accept more simple, specialized farms.


We have used a set of four local properties based on semiempirical molecular orbital calculations (electron density (ρ), hydrogen bond donor field (HDF), hydrogen bond acceptor field (HAF), and molecular lipophilicity potential (MLP)) for 3D-QSAR studies to overcome the limitations of the current force field-based molecular interaction fields (MIFs). These properties can be calculated rapidly and are thus amenable to high-throughput industrial applications. Their statistical performance was compared with that of conventional 3D-QSAR approaches using nine data sets (angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE), acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AchE), benzodiazepine receptor ligands (BZR), cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors (COX2), dihydrofolate reductase inhibitors (DHFR), glycogen phosphorylase b inhibitors (GPB), thermolysin inhibitors (THER), thrombin inhibitors (THR), and serine protease factor Xa inhibitors (fXa)). The 3D-QSAR models generated were tested thoroughly for robustness and predictive ability. The average performance of the quantum mechanical molecular interaction field (QM-MIF) models for the nine data sets is better than that of the conventional force field-based MIFs. In the individual data sets, the QM-MIF models always perform better than, or as well as, the conventional approaches. It is particularly encouraging that the relative performance of the QM-MIF models improves in the external validation. In addition, the models generated showed statistical stability with respect to model building procedure variations such as grid spacing size and grid orientation. QM-MIF contour maps reproduce the features important for ligand binding for the example data set (factor Xa inhibitors), demonstrating the intuitive chemical interpretability of QM-MIFs.