First paragraphs: Many of us have projects in which we build community around food. Community gardens, food hubs, farm-to-school, farmers' markets, expanding nutrition assistance, policy research and advocacy, and other such projects enhance nutrition, help build the local food system, and increase capacity of local communities. We pick a few aspects of "community" and a few aspects of "food" and tie them together. Josh Trought has taken many aspects of community and many aspects of food and tied them together in D Acres Farm and written about his experiences with this large project in the book  The Community Scale Permaculture Farm. D Acres defies easy categorization. It's a group of people living together on a farm, growing much of their own food and sharing their knowledge. Trought uses the term "intentional community" and "land-based service movement," since "collective" and "commune" bring to mind too many distracting concepts and images. He is looking to do no less than develop a new model for small farming, an alternative in the sense of ag practices but also an alternative to the family farm for those not part of a farming family. Revenue is derived from sales of farm-derived products, educational programs, and grant funds. This book summarizes the experiences of building and operating this entity; this review is about the book, not directly about the entity it describes....


Abstract The effects of five different phosphorus rates (0, 30, 60, 90 and 120 kg ha‐1) and three different harvesting stages (beginning of flowering, full flowering, and seed filling) on forage yield and quality of narbon vetch (Vicia narbonensis L.) were evaluated under the Mediterranean conditions of Turkey in 2005 and 2006 growing seasons. Dry matter (DM) yield, crude protein (CP), N, P, K, Mn, Cu, Fe, Zn, Ca, Mg, acid detergent fibre (ADF) and neutral detergent fibre (NDF) were determined. Phosphorus rates and harvesting stages significantly affectedmost of the quality components determined in narbon vetch. Phosphorus applications increased DM yield, CP, N, P, Ca and Mg contents, decreased K, Fe, ADF and NDF, and had no effect on Mn, Cu and Zn. Harvesting at the late stages caused a reduction in forage quality. Crude protein, N, P, K, Cu, Zn and Mg contents decreased with advancing stages, while Ca, ADF and NDF contents increased.


Vegetables
are considered essential for well-balanced diets. The production and marketing
of vegetables crops are undergoing continuous change globally. This is mainly
due to the growing demands of consumers for safe and healthy vegetables,
increased urbanisation of societies, and the growth in scale and influence of
supermarkets chains. Horticultural science can respond to many of these
challenges through research, breeding and innovation that can seek to gain
more efficient methods of crop production, refined post-harvest storage and
handling methods, newer and higher value vegetable cultivars and
demonstration of their health benefits. Vegetable breeding has to address and
satisfy the needs of both the consumer and the producer. Innovation in
vegetable breeding depends on specific knowledge, the development and
application of new technologies, access to genetic resources, and capital to
utilise them. The driving force behind this innovation is acquiring or
increasing market share. Access to technology, as well as biodiversity, is
essential for the development of new vegetable cultivars. A few multinational
corporations, whose vast economic power has effectively marginalized the role
of public sector breeding as well as local, small/medium-scale seed
companies, dominate the global vegetable seed trade. For most vegetable crops,
only a few multinational seed corporations are controlling large part of the
world market. This situation makes a growing part of the global vegetable
supply dependent on a few seed providers. The multinational seed corporations
ensued from merging some small or medium vegetable breeding programs to reduce costs. There may be fewer vegetable breeders in the future and growers will rely on seeds with a narrow genetic
base. In order to meet future needs of vegetable breeders it is important that
educational programs incorporate rapidly changing new technologies with
classical content and methods. Active and positive connections between the
private and public breeding sectors and large-scale gene banks are required to
avoid a possible conflict involving breeders' rights, gene preservation and
erosion. Horticulturists will need to develop cultural practices and
vegetable breeders to breed vegetables for a multifunctional horticulture (diversity, health promotion, post-harvest, year round suply, etc.) and to cope
with harsher climate conditions and lower inputs than they have come to
expect. Improved production systems that can cope with climate extremes must
allow vegetables to produce under high temperatures, greater drought stress,
increased soil salinity, and periodic flooding. This will involve a combination
of improved vegetable cultivars and modified production systems.


This paper explores the impact fashion has on the development of countries in Africa. Since the dependent variable 'development' and the independent variable 'fashion' are both terms with ambiguous meanings, this is further explained and reconciled in the paper. Development is measured in this context by an increase in the quality of life. Fashion in this context is defined as any form of adornment used to decorate the body, in particular textiles, jewelry, and handbags. My hypothesis is that fashion can have both a negative and a positive impact on development in Africa; however, the negative outcomes can be corrected to create a positive impact from fashion leading to development in Africa. The findings are such that the hypothesis is true, particularly on a micro scale in less developed countries, moving towards a macro scale in more developed countries. The countries researched will include various African countries all across the continent with examples of fashion impacting development. The approach to viewing fashion as a catalyst for development will be viewed through the two lenses of economic and cultural implications. The pros and cons of using fashion as a mechanism to creating development will be laid out, in addition to any implications in the future for how to create development in other African countries through fashion. My values of caring, compassion, equity, respect, and love will be used to guide any concluding decisions on the application of fashion to spur development. The cases compared will be the two organizations Africa Bags and Dsenyo which are based out of the agrarian South African country Malawi. These two different fashion businesses will be compared and contrasted as to which model best suits development and how any negative results can be mitigated.


Plutonium is the enigma of the nuclear age. Its presence and its use are never far from headline news because of the horrendous destruction that it can create. Between them, the military and commercial parts of the world's nuclear industry have created about 1000 tons since the time of its discovery in 1941. Though military production is being scaled back in most of the declared nuclear weapons states, civilian power reactors continue to produce more. The paper highlights many of the problems peculiar to the physical properties of plutonium and the relationships between its uses and its potential for abuse. Following the description of these problems, a brief analysis from a technical viewpoint is presented on the choice of methods available for elimination or disposition of plutonium. A conclusion is drawn from this analysis that a series of global-regional centers could provide the best safeguarding. Finally, the paper stresses the need for the states involved in handling plutonium to develop more democratic mechanisms than have been used in the past for decision making. A vital step in this development is that professional engineers and scientists become more informed about the issues surrounding plutonium so that they can participate fully in the process. This is particularly pertinent for those in the nuclear power industry, which may have to overcome financial disincentives in order to aid the elimination of plutonium.<<ETX>>


Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major worldwide health problem and a cancer with increasing incidence in the United States mainly due to hepatitis C viral (HCV) infections. Approximately 10-30% of HCV carriers develop cirrhosis; patients with cirrhosis have an annual risk of 1-2% for developing HCC and their prognosis is generally poor. The slow development and late detection of HCC suggest that the identification of biomarkers of disease progression and early detection are needed. Glycosylation is the most common post-translational modification of secreted proteins. Alterations in protein glycosylation are associated with different cancers, including HCC. We hypothesized that the site-specific glycosylation of proteins in HCC patients would differ from that of patients with liver cirrhosis and healthy people. Haptoglobin is a liver secreted glycoprotein with four N-glycosylation sites. Its main function is to bind free hemoglobin released by intravascular hemolysis; haptoglobin prevents the loss of iron and subsequent kidney damage. We used mass spectrometry to define site specific glycoforms of haptoglobin in the serum of 15 patients with HCC, 20 patients with liver cirrhosis due to HCV etiology and 15 disease free controls. We used selected reaction monitoring (SRM) quantification to quantify the changes in N-glycosylation. Quantification of 7-10 glycoforms per glycosylation site (approximately 30 glycoforms in total), revealed that site specific glycosylation of haptoglobin is altered in the diseased liver and is associated with liver damage and the presence of HCC. Results also indicated an increase of fucosylated glycans among patients with liver disease. In this pilot case-control study we demonstrated the development of site specific haptoglobin glycoform in the progression of liver disease. If confirmed by larger and prospective studies, site specific glycosylation of haptoglobin and other proteins, in general, could be used as a marker of HCC risk. Citation Information: Cancer Prev Res 2010;3(12 Suppl):B19.


Remote Joint Shopping System is a remote communication prototype for a joint shopping scenario in which the communication always involves the environment and objects. This system is to offer a sensation shared by the two geographically separated users that they are co-located together going for a shopping in the same world. Although it might require varieties of aspects to fully realize such sensation, in this prototype we intend to support users to accomplish a shopping task together with help of gestural interaction so as to make users feel a close connection and aware a certain extent of togetherness. In this paper, we introduce our user study and analysis of the Remote Joint Shopping System. The major purpose of this study is to investigate the human-to-human interaction between users and test whether this system could assist the remote collaboration.


The technological capability of digital natives is thought to have considerable implications on the way they communicate, socialize, think and learn. Some researchers have even suggested that fundamental changes to the educational system are required to cater for the needs of this new cohort of learner, although such claims have little empirical support. In this study, we adopt a structural approach to the investigation of the digital natives' motivations for using technologies in learning. Based on in-depth interviews with 16 digital natives, a cluster analysis was used to segment respondents into two distinct groups: independent learners and traditional learners. Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) was used to develop a hierarchical structural model of technology use motivations for each group. The results show that these two groups are driven to achieve the same learning goals by different paths. Implications are drawn for both educators and managers from both research and practical perspectives.


This is a stimulating and engaging study that ticks a great many (postcolonial scholars') 'boxes'. Based on the author's PhD, it draws together debates on gender, notions about race, processes of identity formation, and discussions of 'Othering', and considers them within the context of late-nineteenth-century British high imperialism in general, and the linkages between England and Egypt in particular. The prism through which all these issues are addressed is that of slavery, a practice that persisted—legitimately—within Egyptian society until the end of the nineteenth century, and which came to generate enormous anxiety for both British officials seeking to suppress the slave trade in the region and the English public back home. The fact that the majority of these slaves were women, destined for the domestic harem, or private quarters within Egyptian homes, meant that the campaign that developed to end the practice 'became a focal point for a number of gender tensions and concerns within the British imperial system' (p. 16). Race was also at stake, since slaves in Egypt fell into different 'racial' categories according to skin colour, and the presence among them of white female slaves 'served as a powerful image that shocked English audiences and helped to highlight the connections between anti-slavery efforts abroad and gender politics' (p. 17) in the metropole itself. Indeed, one of the author's main priorities is to demonstrate the broad extent of the 'connections' that were taking place at the time. Hence, Robinson-Dunn also explores the extent to which ideas about 'Englishness' in the late-nineteenth century were influenced by contemporary perceptions about Islam drawn from the kinds of developments taking place in Egypt, though, according to her, identities that were


This paper attempts to establish a theoretical framework for maintenance management success factors in managing built heritage. Reviews on past literature on the subject were carried out to build the existing research works on the area and to establish critical success factors of built heritage maintenance management best practices. At the end of this paper, a new area of managing heritage building for future direction of this research was identified. A list of critical success factors for maintenance management practices for heritage building was established. Keywords: heritage building, effective maintenance management, critical success factors. 1 Introduction Heritage buildings which are not regularly maintained will become dilapidated, visually unattractive, unsafe, and endanger not only the occupants but also any nearby people. Lack of maintenance also can lead to major problems which can disturb the condition, functions, operation and performance of a building [1]. This is why maintenance should be the primary activity after the building has been listed as a heritage building. But why is maintenance often neglected and how does its importance not become the main activity in managing and protecting such a valuable and non replaceable asset? Even though there is a bundle of literature on the importance of maintenance, the world is still faced with the unending problem after the preservation period. The need of maintenance is not only important in restoring or repairing the failed.


Cities are widely recognised as being pivotal to fight climate change. Cities magnify the drivers of climate change, experience the impacts and also concentrate the highest room for action. Given the 70% of the global emissions that cities are responsible for, national governments are unable to meet their international commitments for addressing mitigation and adaptation without the action and cooperation of cities. In turn, the capacity of local governments to address climate change is largely determined by the institutional architecture within which they are integrated. As a result, the relationship between the different arenas of authority and the integration of cities in national and international networks is considered critical in shaping the global capacity to govern climate change. This work aims to understand how multi-level climate governance and alliances of cities (national and international) are influencing the climate change capacity and performance of municipalities. This has been done by focusing on two national contexts of the European Union, Italy and Spain, in which climate policy, multi-level governance frameworks, the effects of the national and international networks of cities, and the climate response of cities are analysed through an extensive review of scientific and grey literature, and institutional documents. The results concur with existing literature on the importance of constructing collaborative multi-level climate frameworks at the national scale, that fully integrate the local level, in order to support cities to develop consistent climate action and raise awareness of the responsibility they have in this policy field.


Migration has been common throughout human history and has been part of Armenian history for many centuries in varying degrees. However, at the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th century, Armenians experienced an unprecedented rate of migration. The large outflow caused complications that affected many aspects of the social life of Armenians. They had lived in peace throughout the Anatolian territory without any geographical limitations until the last period of the Ottoman Empire when they began to be radicalized by some countries that wished to make Christian Armenians and Muslims enemies. Consequently, Armenians started to migrate abroad from Anatolia. This article examines the reasons for the migration of the Ottoman Armenians before World War I by reference to Ottoman archival documents.


Coinfection by multiple parasites affects human health, parasite dynamics and the efficacy of infectious disease prevention and treatment. The capacity for different parasites (viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, helminths) to interact is poorly understood. Interspecific interactions between coinfecting parasites could occur in many ways, either directly or indirectly with the host's immune system or bodily resources. We aimed to summarise connected resources, parasites and immune system components in coinfected humans using a network approach. The published literature contains thousands of records of coinfections in humans, associated immune responses, as well as parasite resource requirements. We used over 250 publications on human coinfection from 2009 to build an evidence-based parasite-immune system-resource network. We recorded the identity of coinfecting parasites, immune system components, host resources and the reported relationships between them. The network represents the potential for parasites to interact based on observation and theory found in recent coinfection literature. Results show the great taxonomic variety of coinfecting parasites, with particular involvement of viruses. Some parasites were reported in more coinfections, most notably HIV, suggesting that recent disease invasion and induced immunodeficiency may facilitate many parasite interactions. The network can also be used to generate numerous hypotheses for modelling work and suggestions for future observational and experimental research. The use of networks and other research tools to understand parasite interactions within coinfected hosts will help predict the potential for and consequences of disease invasions, as well as improve infectious disease interventions.


Goitre operations were done in 2114 patients; 1648 patients had a simple solitary nodule or multinodular goitre with regressive changes. Malignancies were found in 54 cases with a clear-cut predominance of papillary carcinomas. Nearly half of the goitres diagnosed as solitary nodules preoperatively were shown to be multinodular. This discrepancy was taken into account in the determination of the rate of malignancy. Malignomas were found in 4.6% of "true" solitary nodules and in 2.8% in multinodular goitres. These findings confirm our liberal indications for operation in multinodular goitres with regressive changes also in the area of endemic goitre. The high incidence of microcarcinomas in our patients can thus be explained.


Abstract Due to our increasing awareness of the impact of climate change on our society, unit operations in our manufacturing processes, including those in chemical industry, have to be greenified and made less dependent of fossil resources. This so-called electrification of the chemical industry is still yet in its infancy but there are many scientific and technological challenges to be solved. This article provides some directions for further research for scientists in both academia and industry to move step by step to an e-chemistree. These important but far from trivial energy and materials transitions require not only the introduction of new ways of heat management and other, often not yet fully explored, chemical conversion processes in which green electrons are used, but also the development of new materials including large-scale heating coils, easily chargeable battery systems as well as catalyst materials. For each of these developments, there is the issue of materials scarcity as well as durability as the introduction of these production processes should also be cost effective and overall more sustainable than the existing ones. Graphical abstract


This report provides a quantitative summary of the initial findings in a series of investigations into the validity and reliability of repair behaviour recorded in free conversation in clinical settings between adults who have acquired hearing impairments (HIs) and their frequent communication partners (FCPs). Seven adults who have severe or greater acquired HIs (and who had subsequently been either fitted with hearing aids or undergone cochlear implantation) were audio-recorded undertaking a 20-minute free conversation in a quiet clinical setting with their chosen FCP. Transcriptions of the conversations were analysed for the occurrence of repair sequences following the Conversation Analysis (CA) model. A total of 735 completed repair sequences were identified across the seven conversations, the majority occurring within the same turn as the trouble source. No difference was noted in the frequency with which all but one trajectory was initiated by either the HI or FCP participants. Repairs initiated by the HI participant and repaired by the FCP in response to a trouble source in a previous turn by the FCP occurred significantly more often than the same sequence initiated by the FCPs. The results emphasise the usefulness of framing repair activity arising from acquired HI in the broader conversational act of repairing and the CA model.


The article deals with the dawn of aviation in the early XX century before the First world war. The attention is paid to the airplanes of the monoplane type, analyzed varieties of airplanes, especially their designs. There were involved as materials the specialized literature on the history of the development of airplanes, as well as reference and scientific literature. The study used a set of scientific methods: multi-factoriality and integration, chronology, typology, comparison, etc., which together provide the reliable results on the studied problem. For example, studying the experience of the development of world and national aeronautics, we paid attention to the features of their designs, which subsequently allowed the use of prototypes, both for civil and military purposes. In conclusion, the authors state that the development of monoplanes in the ХХ century, for the most part, took place in european countries. The first experiments of 1906 led after 2–3 years to a series of successes, among which there was the first flight over the English Channel and reaching a speed of 100 km/h. At the same time, there was an increased public interest to the aeronautics, all this in general created the necessary conditions for further improvements of monoplanes. Already by the beginning of the First world war, the accumulated experience was sufficient to apply airplanes effectively on the battlefield.


Purpose: The aim of this paper is to identify the key factors that determine the success andfailure in international inter-firm strategic collaboration with focus on strategic alliances inpharmaceutical industry in Iran.Design/Methodology/approach: After a comprehensive literature review, combined withexpert panel's views, 33 success factors were specified to be studied. The factors were groupedas content and process orientated variables showing the importance of considered factor instrategic and structural configuration or the process of developing an inter-firm collaboration relationship respectively. A combination of quantitative and qualitative (integrative) method was used for data collection and analysis. The quantitative data were gathered by a structured questionnaire, including questions on the respondent's background and 33 success factors.The qualitative database consists of 21 in-depth interviews carried out with managers of nine companies, four of which were international partners. Furthermore, the views of our expert panel have been identical to the study. Due to limited experienced managers in this field in Iran, questionnaires were distributed to 100 managers at different levels in Iranian pharmaceutical manufacturer companies with 79 completed usable questionnaires returned. For statistical treatment of quantitative data, SPSS software was applied. For evaluation of reliability of study, Cronbach alpha value was used, the effectiveness of success factors on (success of) inter-firm cooperation were assessed by binominal analytical tool. The Freidman analysis was used forranking the success factors.Findings: The results of quantitative and quality data showed that mutual understanding of provision of agreed resources from both partners had major importance in making successful co-operations. Considering the gap between importance of each factor and its real situation in current allianceseleven failure factors were specified: the absence of precise definition of parties' rights and duties, the absence of right contribution of partners, lack of any specified strength and resource to be delivered, low strategic flexibility (low flexibility in making strategies compatible withpartner's one), the absence of information and coordination system, the absence of proper control on their core competence and the knowledge transfer way, lack of systematic reviewing the alliance activities (for knowing if any early benefit or for prevention of any potential conflict), showing opportunistic behavior, not trying to make joint values (looking for short term tangible results), incompatible business strategies of two partners and no commitment to partnership. The quantitative findings showed four of very important success factors are process-oriented variables; which mean process of developing an inter-organizational relationship and dealing with matters such as building trust and mutual understanding are much more important in establishing successful pharmaceutical alliances in Iran while eight of found failure factors arecontent-oriented which means most of failed alliances had difficulties in strategic and structuraldesign of the alliance. However, the qualitative data revealed that the soft aspects of alliancesuccess are very important, such as culture of collaboration, open-mindedness, relationship building ability, parties' enough knowledge about each other's business culture and working attitudes as well as effective communication. Furthermore, the study reveals that the local government and public institutes have significant impacts on the success of the alliances, particularly in Iran that government interfere the business significantly. Not surprising, the perception of parties on success or failure of the alliances may be different as well. That is, an alliance being perceived successful by one partner may not be perceived successful by another partner. This finding has implication on future studies.Originality/value: The study provides empirical evidence regarding the key success and failurefactors in international inter-firm collaboration, in pharmaceutical industry in a developingcountry (Iran) and adds depth to the understanding of the reasons behind the failures. The study sheds light on the necessity of considering both parties' perception of success and failure.


Detecting vulnerabilities for a network is an important procedure which ensures that all the data, network-based applications and information communicated in this network, is secure. Detection of network vulnerabilities is used to determine weaknesses of the network, the risk evaluation of attacks, the diagnosis and suggestions to solve the problems. There are several types of scanning tools used to detect vulnerabilities, offering different features. In this paper, we will present a performance comparative study between two most used free, software based, network vulnerability scanning tools: Nessus and Retina. The comparison will be based on three main features: The ability to search, Scanning Time, The ability to detect vulnerabilities. In the conclusions of this paper, both scanners performed very well in vulnerability identification. In terms of speed without active Web Application feature, Nessus performed much faster than Retina; (on the other hand, with active Web Application module, Nessus performs much slower than Retina. In terms of scan depth, Nessus has a small advantage, since it includes a web mirroring tool that is very helpful in HTTP.


With the prevalence of mental health problems today, designing human-robot interaction for mental health intervention is not only possible, but critical. The current experiment examined how three types of robot disclosure (emotional, technical, and by-proxy) affect robot perception and human disclosure behavior during a stress-sharing activity. Emotional robot disclosure resulted in the lowest robot perceived safety. Post-hoc analysis revealed that increased perceived stress predicted reduced human disclosure, user satisfaction, robot likability, and future robot use. Negative attitudes toward robots also predicted reduced intention for future robot use. This work informs on the possible design of robot disclosure, as well as how individual attributes, such as perceived stress, can impact human robot interaction in a mental health context.


OBJECTIVE To estimate the causal association between intake of dairy products and incident type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The analysis included 21,820 European individuals (9,686 diabetes cases) of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-InterAct case-cohort study. Participants were genotyped, and rs4988235 (LCT-12910C>T), a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) for lactase persistence (LP) that enables digestion of dairy sugar, i.e., lactose, was imputed. Baseline dietary intakes were assessed with diet questionnaires. We investigated the associations between imputed SNP dosage for rs4988235 and intake of dairy products and other foods through linear regression. Mendelian randomization (MR) estimates for the milk-diabetes relationship were obtained through a two-stage least squares regression. RESULTS Each additional LP allele was associated with a higher intake of milk (β 17.1 g/day, 95% CI 10.6–23.6) and milk beverages (β 2.8 g/day, 95% CI 1.0–4.5) but not with intake of other dairy products. Other dietary intakes associated with rs4988235 included fruits (β −7.0 g/day, 95% CI −12.4 to −1.7 per additional LP allele), nonalcoholic beverages (β −18.0 g/day, 95% CI −34.4 to −1.6), and wine (β −4.8 g/day, 95% CI −9.1 to −0.6). In instrumental variable analysis, LP-associated milk intake was not associated with diabetes (hazard ratioper 15 g/day 0.99, 95% CI 0.93–1.05). CONCLUSIONS rs4988235 was associated with milk intake but not with intake of other dairy products. This MR study does not suggest that milk intake is associated with diabetes, which is consistent with previous observational and genetic associations. LP may be associated with intake of other foods as well, but owing to the modest associations, we consider it unlikely that this caused the observed null result.


Purpose: A probabilistic finite element (FE) analysis of the L4-L5 and L5-S1 human annulus fibrosus (AF) was conducted to obtain a better understanding of the biomechanics of the AF and to quantify its influence on the range of motion (ROM) of the L4-L5 and L5-S1 segments. Methods: The FE models were composed of the AF and the upper and lower endplates. The AF was represented as a continuous material composed of a hyperelastic isotropic Yeoh matrix reinforced with two families of fibers described with an exponential energy function. The caudal endplate was fully restricted and 8 Nm pure moment was applied to the cranial endplate in flexion, extension, lateral flexion and axial rotation. The mechanical constants were determined randomly based on a normal distribution and average values reported. Results: Results of the 576 models show that the ROM was more sensitive to the initial stiffness of the fibers rather than to the stiffening coefficient represented in the exponential function. The ROM was more sensitive to the input variables in extension, flexion, axial rotation and lateral bending. The analysis showed an increased probability for the L5-S1 ROM to be higher in flexion, extension and axial rotation, and smaller in lateral flexion, with respect to the L4-L5 ROM. Conclusions: An equation was proposed to obtain the ROM as a function of the elastic constants of the fibers and it may be used to facilitate the calibration process of the human spine segments and to understand the influence of each elastic constant on the ROM.


The paper studies valuation ratios of food companies that were part of mergers & acquisitions (M&A) involving at least one French company during the 1996-2001 period. Results converge to value the food company 1.1 to 1.4 times its turnover. There is no significant difference of "valuation to turnover" ratios among M&A involving only French firms and M&A involving companies from different countries. Corporate valuation may differ according to food sub-sector.


For efficient electrocatalysis, the rational construction of unique electrochemical interfaces is very important to enhance the intrinsic activity and expose more active sites. Herein, we demonstrate an atomic-migration-driven in situ thermal sulfurization–phosphorization strategy for the preparation of triple-layer-shelled hollow nanobubbles consisting of defect-rich ultrathin MoS2/MoP outer layers and a porous N-doped carbon inner layer (MoS2/MoP/NC) for efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In this method, (NH4)2MoS4/NaH2PO4-blended polymer nanospheres were prepared via aqueous-phase reaction, followed by a one-step thermal annealing process. During the thermal treatment, the MoS2 outer shell and NC inner layer were first formed at 500 °C; then the temperature was increased to 900 °C and the competitive reaction between the Mo atoms of the MoS2 species formed a strong driving force to transfer P species from the interior to the surface of the porous NC layer and form an intermediate layer of MoP. This strategy realized the formation of ultrathin MoS2/MoP/NC heterointerfaces with a high surface area (954.3 m2 g−1), abundant defect/edge sites, and improved electrocatalytic activity. In both acidic and alkaline solutions, the MoS2/MoP/NC hollow nanobubbles exhibited low overpotentials (151 and 208 mV) to drive a current density of 10 mA cm−2, small Tafel slopes (58 and 62 mV dec−1), and excellent stability for hydrogen production, respectively. This work provides a new route for the construction of active electrochemical heterointerfaces for efficient electrocatalysis.


Nepal is highly vulnerable to a number of disasters for example: earthquakes, floods, landslides, fires, epidemics, avalanches, windstorms, hailstorms, lightning, gla-cier lake outburst floods, droughts and dangerous weather events. Among these disas-ters—earthquake is the most- scary and damaging. The effects of a disaster, whether natural or human induced, are often long lasting. The Gorkha earthquake of 25 April 2015 enormously affected human, socio-economic and other multiple sectors and left deep scars mainly in the economy, livelihood and infrastructure of the country. Besides the natural factors, the damages from disasters in Nepal are in increasing trend due to the human activities and inadequate proactive legislations. Fundamentally, the weak structures have been found as the major cause of damage in earthquakes. This underlines the need for strict compliance of building codes. Thus, proactive disaster management legislation focusing on disaster preparedness is necessary. This paper analyses and shows the critical gaps and responsible factors that would contribute towards seismic risk reduction to enable various stakeholders to enhance seismic safety in Nepal. Additionally, this chapter aims to pinpoint the deficiencies in disaster management system in Nepal with reference to the devastating Gorkha earthquake and suggest appropriate policy and advanced technical measures for improvement.


Producing fuels directly from sunlight using cost effective, and earth-abundant materials, with scalable processes, offers a unique opportunity and design space for long-term, grid-scale energy storage. Efficient solar-fuel devices require synergistic assembly of light absorbers, electrocatalysts, membrane separators and electrolytes. This book chapter summaries key materials, components and device designs that are critical to advance this technology, as well as attempts on integration of materials and components at different length scales during the original phase of JCAP. Not only successful device demonstrations but also failed attempts and lessons learned during the research and development will be presented, including stability and compatibility of various epoxy materials in different electrolytes, experimental handling and integration of ion-exchange membranes, and failed attempts on light absorber materials and lessons learned on electrolyte conditions and constraints. The book chapter is organized as follows: first, the selections of materials and components that constitute efficient, stable, scalable and safe solar fuel devices will be discussed in detail. Then, full device design, characterization and benchmarking will be reviewed and discussed. At the end, a system engineering approach will be introduced and specific examples of hierarchical requirements relating to the solar-fuel devices will be given. Prototyping and benchmarking integrated solar-driven water-splitting devices play a critical role in evaluating newly discovered materials and components in the real world settings and provide technical readiness level for practical development and deployment. Significant efforts in developing standard protocols for benchmarking are still needed to advance photoelectrochemical hydrogen production.


Polynesian settlement of New Zealand (c. 1000 yr B.P.) led directly to the extinction or reduction of much of the vertebrate fauna, destruction of half of the lowland and montane forests, and widespread soil erosion. The climate and natural vegetation changed over the same time but had negligible effects on the fauna compared with the impact of settlement. The most severe modification occurred between 750 and 500 years ago, when a rapidly increasing human population, over-exploited animal populations and used fire to clear the land. Human predation, and destruction of forest habitat eliminated the moa and other large ground birds. Moa appear to have been more abundant in drier conifer-broadleaved forest on fertile lowland sites, than in wetter areas and in cool upland forests. Most forests remaining today are wet mountain land communities, and may never have experienced severe browsing pressure until Europeans introduced browsing mammals. The moderate amount of browsing pressure exerted in them by moa may have been insufficient for the plants to develop browsing adaptations capable of coping with the impact of mammals. Knowledge of these climatic, physical and cultural forces which shaped the biota of present day New Zealand are important for understanding how to manage the remaining estate.


Ciguatera is a common but underreported tropical disease caused by the consumption of coral reef fish contaminated by ciguatoxins. Gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms predominate, but may be accompanied by cardiovascular features such as hypotension and sinus bradycardia. Here, we report an unusual case of junctional bradycardia caused by ciguatera in the Caribbean; to our knowledge, the first such report from the region. An increase in global sea temperatures is predicted to lead to the spread of ciguatera beyond traditional endemic areas, and the globalisation of trade in coral reef fish has resulted in sporadic cases occurring in developed countries far away from endemic areas. This case serves as a reminder to consider environmental intoxications such as ciguatera within the differential diagnosis of bradycardias.


MOTIVATION
In genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of complex diseases, genetic variants having real but weak associations often fail to be detected at the stringent genome-wide significance level. Pathway analysis, which tests disease association with combined association signals from a group of variants in the same pathway, has become increasingly popular. However, because of the complexities in genetic data and the large sample sizes in typical GWAS, pathway analysis remains to be challenging. We propose a new statistical model for pathway analysis of GWAS. This model includes a fixed effects component that models mean disease association for a group of genes, and a random effects component that models how each gene's association with disease varies about the gene group mean, thus belongs to the class of mixed effects models.

RESULTS
The proposed model is computationally efficient and uses only summary statistics. In addition, it corrects for the presence of overlapping genes and linkage disequilibrium (LD). Via simulated and real GWAS data, we showed our model improved power over currently available pathway analysis methods while preserving type I error rate. Furthermore, using the WTCCC Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) dataset, we demonstrated mixed model analysis identified meaningful biological processes that agreed well with previous reports on T1D. Therefore, the proposed methodology provides an efficient statistical modeling framework for systems analysis of GWAS.

AVAILABILITY
The software code for mixed models analysis is freely available at http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/LilyWang.


Europium-doped lutetium oxide (Lu_2O_3:Eu^3+) nanophosphors were synthesized via modified combustion technique using urea as the fuel and metal nitrates as oxidants. The pellets prepared from the calcined nanocrystalline powders were vacuum sintered up to 1750 °C leading to very translucent ceramic. The products were characterized by x-ray diffraction to ascertaun phase purity. The microstructures reveal the nanocrystalline nature of the powders. We have illustrated the crystallite size dependence and the influence of Eu^3+ activation of Lu_2O_3:Eu^3+ nanophosphors on Raman scattering. We have also demonstrated the particle size dependence of emission characteristics of nanophosphors and ceramics. Our results suggest that although the processed ceramics display superior emission characteristics, the nanocrystalline phosphor powders calcined at 1100 °C also display reasonably good emission characteristics, illustrating the possibility of their applications in display technology.


Anemia is a frequent problem in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) who are not yet receiving dialysis and can lead to major health complications is left untreated. The successful management of these patients entails repletion of iron stores, often through use of intravenous iron, particularly in patients receiving erythropoietin therapy. To encourage patient compliance with anemia management protocols, the nephrology nurse can play a key role in patient education in reducing barriers to proper management and in raising the awareness of the benefits of treating this condition.


Collars impregnated with dichlorvos, naled, or stirofos on Persian cats for 10 weeks were tested against the cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis (Bouche). Both the stirofos collar and the naled collar were ineffective, whereas the dichlorvos collar gave good to excellent control. There were no adverse reactions to the stirofos collar, but the dichlorvos collar caused excessive salivation, from which the cat recovered after the collar was removed. After 9 weeks, the cat wearing the naled collar died with signs of organic phosphate toxicosis. This paper reviews the literature on flea collars.


Although kinematic analysis of conventional mechanisms is a well-documented fundamental issue in mechanisms and robotics, the emerging reconfigurable mechanisms and robots pose new challenges in kinematics. One of the challenges is the reconfiguration analysis of multi-mode mechanisms, which refers to finding all the motion modes and the transition configurations of the multi-mode mechanisms. Recent advances in mathematics, especially algebraic geometry and numerical algebraic geometry, make it possible to develop an efficient method for the reconfiguration analysis of reconfigurable mechanisms and robots. This paper first presents a method for formulating a set of kinematic loop equations for mechanisms using dual quaternions. Using this approach, a set of kinematic loop equations of spatial mechanisms is composed of six polynomial equations. Then the reconfiguration analysis of a novel multi-mode 1-DOF (degree-of-freedom) 7R spatial mechanism is dealt with by solving the set of loop equations using tools from algebraic geometry. It is found that the 7R multi-mode mechanism has three motion modes, including a planar 4R mode, an orthogonal Bricard 6R mode, and a plane symmetric 6R mode. Three (or one) R (revolute) joints of the 7R multi-mode mechanism lose their DOF in its 4R (or 6R) motion modes. Unlike the 7R multi-mode mechanisms in the literature, the 7R multi-mode mechanism presented in this paper does not have a 7R mode in which all the seven R joints can move simultaneously.


A 50-year hourly data set of global shortwave radiation, cloudiness and visibility over the Netherlands was used to quantify the contribution of aerosols and clouds to the trend in yearly-averaged all-sky radiation (1.81± 1.07 W m−2 decade−1). Yearly-averaged clearsky and cloud-base radiation data show large year-to-year fluctuations caused by yearly changes in the occurrence of clear and cloudy periods and cannot be used for trend analysis. Therefore, proxy clear-sky and cloud-base radiations were computed. In a proxy analysis hourly radiation data falling within a fractional cloudiness value are fitted by monotonic increasing functions of solar zenith angle and summed over all zenith angles occurring in a single year to produce an average. Stable trends can then be computed from the proxy radiation data. A functional expression is derived whereby the trend in proxy all-sky radiation is a linear combination of trends in fractional cloudiness, proxy clearsky radiation and proxy cloud-base radiation. Trends (per decade) in fractional cloudiness, proxy clear-sky and proxy cloud-base radiation were, respectively, 0.0097± 0.0062, 2.78± 0.50 and 3.43± 1.17 W m−2. To add up to the allsky radiation the three trends have weight factors, namely the difference between the mean cloud-base and clear-sky radiation, the clear-sky fraction and the fractional cloudiness, respectively. Our analysis clearly demonstrates that all three components contribute significantly to the observed trend in all-sky radiation. Radiative transfer calculations using the aerosol optical thickness derived from visibility observations indicate that aerosol–radiation interaction (ARI) is a strong candidate to explain the upward trend in the clear-sky radiation. Aerosol–cloud interaction (ACI) may have some impact on cloud-base radiation, but it is suggested that decadal changes in cloud thickness and synoptic-scale changes in cloud amount also play an important role.


1. Digesta were collected from twenty-three pigs, initially of 30 kg live weight, and fitted with single Ash re-entrant cannulas in either the duodenum, jejunum or ileum. A further twenty-four pigs were used in a conventional digestibility trial. 2. Three approximately isonitrogenous diets were used; they contained: barley, fine wheat offal, white fish meal, minerals and vitamins (diet BWF), starch, sucrose, maize oil, cellulose, minerals, vitamins and either groundnut (diet SSG) or casein (diet SSC). 3. The flow-rates of nitrogen (N), liquid-fraction N (LN) and non-protein liquid-fraction N (NPLN) were measured hourly in the duodenum and jejunum and every 6 h in the ileum during 24 h collection periods. Faeces were collected during 5 d periods. 4. Marked increases in flow of N, LN and NPLN were seen in the duodenum and jejunum after feeding each diet, but not in the ileum. 5. Values for, N output: intake from the duodenal, jejunal or ideal cannulas and in faeces in 24 h periods were respectively: 0.98, 0.88, 0.25 and 0.21 for diet BWF; 1.00, 0.97, 0.22 and 0.24 for diet SSG; 0.98, 0.73, 0.09 and 0.03 for diet SSC. The corresponding values for LN in the duodenum, jejunum and ileum respectively were: 0.53, 0.53 and 0.12 for diet BWF; 0.46, 0.60 and 0.13 for diet SSG; 0.57, 0.50 and 0.06 for diet SSC. The corresponding values for NPLN in the duodenum, jejunum and ileum respectively were: 0.41, 0.38 and 0.09 for diet BWF; 0.35, 0.36 and 0.08 for diet SSG; 0.46, 0.38 and 0.04 for diet SSC. 6. The results are discussed in relation to similar studies, particularly in pigs with duodenal cannulas, in which widely different observations were made.


ABSTRACT Grandparents raising grandchildren in New Zealand are entitled to the unsupported child benefit (UCB) if they meet the conditions for eligibility. To access the support, they are required to attend the offices of Work and Income. In a large survey of such grandparents undertaken in 2016, participants articulated a wide range of qualitative comments around their experiences in accessing this important form of income support. While a proportion had positive experiences, most were critical of the operation of the offices. Between the policy of providing financial support for children unable to live with their own parents, and the practice of being a grandparent looking after such children, lies a complex set of systems of which grandparents were often extremely critical, for a range of reasons which are explored in this paper.


This study examines the factors contributing to a striking increase in information content of quarterly earnings announcements, measured as the absolute magnitude of stock price revision at earnings announcements relative to price revision at other times from 1999 to 2012. We provide evidence that one-day announcement windows exhibit roughly twice the price response observed for three-day windows. Furthermore, we find that management guidance, analyst forecasts, and disaggregated financial statement line items are more frequently bundled with earnings announcements over our sample period, and these variables help to explain the increase in the information content of earnings announcements over time. However, after controlling for these concurrent disclosures, a striking increase in information content of earnings announcements remains. In addition, we compare the price response to earnings announcements without management guidance or analyst forecasts to the response to management guidance or analyst forecasts issued outside earnings announcements. We find that the relative return volatility on stand-alone earnings announcement dates is on average comparable to that on management guidance dates. However, management guidance exhibits a declining pattern of information content, whereas the information content of earnings is increasing and surpasses that of guidance in years 2007 to 2012. Abnormal return variability at stand-alone earnings announcements is more than twice that at analyst forecast dates. Our findings indicate that after controlling for the effects of concurrent disclosures by analysts and management guidance, earnings announcements are increasingly more informative to investors in the 21st century.


This paper develops a two-country model to investigate the circumstances under which it is beneficial to participate in a currency area. It captures both the real and monetary arguments suggested by the optimum currency area literature in a simple monetary model of trade with nominal rigidities. The net benefits that one country expects from participation in a currency union increase with: the correlation of real shocks between countries; the degree of international labor mobility; the degree of adjustment provided by a fiscal tool; the difference between the inflationary bias of the domestic authority and the inflationary bias of the authority of the currency union; the variability of domestic monetary shocks; the extent of the deadweight and efficiency gains deriving from the adoption of a single currency. The same net benefits decrease with: the variability of real shocks; the variability of foreign monetary shocks; and the correlation of monetary shocks between countries. The effect of the degree of openness on the net benefits is ambiguous. This last result contrasts with the usual argument that the more open economies are the better candidates they make for a currency area.


1. With two different methods for assaying the tryptophan oxygenase activity in rat liver homogenates, the effects of some methodological factors on the activity of the enzyme were studied. 2. In fed, but not in starved, rats a compound(s) absorbing at 365 nm, interfering with the reading of kynurenine absorbance, disappeared gradually during incubation. 3. A correction for this tryptophan-independent reaction was necessary in order to determine correct tryptophan oxygenase activity. 4. Blood remaining in liver tissue post mortem can serve as a source of cofactor haem for tryptophan oxygenase, causing spuriously high values for the activity of the holoenzyme form of tryptophan oxygenase. 5. A rapid and progressive activation of tryptophan oxygenase post mortem occurs in undisrupted liver tissue, and this activation is temperature-dependent.


One way to minimize the impacts caused by water deficit (WD) in agriculture is the use of tolerant cultivars. The physiological evaluation of plants through the potential quantum efficiency of photosystem II (Fv/Fm) and estimated chlorophyll content (SPAD index) can be an effective tool in the selection and recommendation of water deficit-tolerant cultivars. Within this context, the aim of this study was to evaluate the physiological responses of sugarcane cultivars classified as tolerant or susceptible to water deficit. The experiment was carried out near the city of Jaú, SP, Brazil in a greenhouse, between July and December 2013. The experimental design was completely randomized in a 4 x 2 factorial arrangement, with four replications. We studied four sugarcane cultivars: RB72454, RB855453 (prone to WD), SP81-3250 and SP83-2847 (WD-tolerant) in two water management regimes (with and without deficit). WD reduced stems dry mass of all cultivars, however, the greatest decreases were observed in susceptible cultivars to WD, where the decrease was 58.3 and 74.5% for cultivars RB855443 and RB72454, respectively. As for the SP81-3250 and SP83-2847 cultivars (tolerant), the reduction was 44.1 and 47.7%, respectively. For water deficit-tolerant cultivars, there was lower reduction in potential quantum efficiency of photosystem II and SPAD index; therefore, the physiological characteristics (Fv/Fm and SPAD index) are features that can aid the identification and selection of water deficit tolerant cultivars, and also help the recommendation of these cultivars for harsh environments, minimizing the effects of water deficit on stem yield on the sugarcane crop.


This proof‐of‐concept study sought to determine the effects of standard of care (SOC) and a topically applied concentrated surfactant gel (SG) on the total microbial load, community composition, and community diversity in non‐healing diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) with chronic biofilm infections. SOC was provided in addition to a topical concentrated SG, applied every 2 days for 6 weeks. Wound swabs were obtained from the base of ulcers at baseline (week 0), week 1, mid‐point (week 3), and end of treatment (week 6). DNA sequencing and real‐time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) were employed to determine the total microbial load, community composition, and diversity of patient samples. Tissue specimens were obtained at baseline and scanning electron microscopy and peptide nucleic acid fluorescent in situ hybridisation with confocal laser scanning microscopy were used to confirm the presence of biofilm in all 10 DFUs with suspected chronic biofilm infections. The application of SG resulted in 7 of 10 samples achieving a reduction in mean log10 total microbial load from baseline to end of treatment (0.8 Log10 16S copies, ±0.6), and 3 of 10 samples demonstrated an increase in mean Log10 total microbial load (0.6 log10 16S copies, ±0.8) from baseline to end of treatment. Composition changes in microbial communities were driven by changes to the most dominant bacteria. Corynebacterium sp. and Streptococcus sp. frequently reduced in relative abundance in patient samples from week 0 to week 6 but did not disappear. In contrast, Staphylococcus sp., Finegoldia sp., and Fusobacterium sp., relative abundances frequently increased in patient samples from week 0 to week 6. The application of a concentrated SG resulted in varying shifts to diversity (increase or decrease) between week 0 and week 6 samples at the individual patient level. Any shifts in community diversity were independent to changes in the total microbial loads. SOC and a topical concentrated SG directly affect the microbial loads and community composition of DFUs with chronic biofilm infections.


Weight Gain in Adolescents and Their Peers Despite the urgent public health implications, relatively little is yet known about the effect of peers on adolescent weight gain. We describe trends and features of adolescent BMI in a nationally representative dataset and document correlations in weight gain among peers. We find strong correlations between own body mass index (BMI) and peers' BMI's. Though the correlations are especially strong in the upper ends of the BMI distribution, the relationship is smooth and holds over almost the entire range of adolescent BMI. Furthermore, the results are robust to the inclusion of school fixed effects and basic controls for other confounding factors such as race, sex, and age. Some recent research in this area asks whether or not adolescent weight gain is caused by peers. We discuss the econometric difficulties in plausibly estimating such effects. Our results do not rule out the existence of these types of social network effects. JEL Classification: I10, I12


Between 1950-2011, thirty-eight Chief Justices have served on the Supreme Court of India. The overwhelming majority of these men became Chief Justice by the norm of seniority, i.e. an unwritten practice which dictates that when the Chief Justice of India retires, the most senior associate judge on the court at the time becomes the next Chief Justice of India. But what is the source of the seniority norm, i.e. did it have historical origins or was it a contemporary innovation? This paper seeks to answer this question by empirically investigating whether the seniority norm existed prior to the establishment of the Supreme Court of India – specifically, on the High Courts of Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Allahabad, Patna, or on the Federal Court of India. I find weak evidence for the existence of the seniority norm on the Allahabad and Patna High Courts, and on the Federal Court of India.


The tandem process of carbon dioxide hydrogenation to methanol and its conversion to hydrocarbons over mixed metal/metal oxide-zeotype catalysts is a promising path to CO2 valorization. Herein, we report three Zn-doped ZrO2 catalysts prepared by co-precipitation of Zn- and Zr-containing salts to obtain three different loadings of Zn (5, 15 and 30 wt%). In the context of bifunctional catalysts, we combined ZrZnOX with two of the most performing zeolite/zeotype catalysts for the methanol-to-hydrocarbons (MTH) reaction: H-ZSM-5 and H-SAPO-34. Catalytic testing at 250–350 °C and 20–40 bar revealed that H-ZSM-5 is more stable and more capable of converting methanol at low temperature, whereas H-SAPO-34 shows the highest C3 selectivity. The best performance was observed for the ZrZnOX sample with 30% Zn, combined with ZSM-5 at 350 °C, 30 bar and H2/CO2/N2 = 6/2/1. Under these conditions, the equilibrium methanol yield was observed after 0.4 s g−1 ml−1 over ZrZnOX alone. Mixing with ZSM-5 in a 1 : 1 weight ratio, methanol was rapidly converted to hydrocarbons, with an optimum C3 productivity of 1.5 mol kg−1 h−1 at 24 000 ml h−1 g−1. An extensive surficial, textural and structural characterization of ZrZnOX alone was carried out by FT-IR spectroscopy, N2 adsorption/desorption at liquid nitrogen temperature, PXRD and XAS. Formation of a ZrZnOX tetragonal solid solution was confirmed for all the samples (PXRD, XAS). The amount of Zr4+ sites at the surface was found to decrease, while the number of oxygen vacancies increased after H2 treatment at 400 °C, coherent with an increase of Zn loading (FT-IR). DFT modelling pointed out that once a stoichiometric oxygen vacancy is induced by the presence of Zn, the formation of extra oxygen vacancies during activation is thermodynamically favored. Moreover, i) the oxygen vacancies were found to play an active role in CO2 hydrogenation, in accordance with experimental data, and ii) methanol is most likely formed via the formate pathway, and is energetically favored compared to CO formation, in agreement with the high methanol selectivity observed experimentally at low CO2 conversion. Importantly, operando-XAS, XPS, TEM and PXRD studies of the as-prepared, pretreated and tested catalysts showed that the structure and composition of the catalyst is not affected by the reaction. Indeed, a final catalytic test carried out on the regenerated ZrZnOX/H-ZSM-5 catalyst showed that the initial performances were completely restored and no Zn exchange in the zeolite was observed neither before nor after testing.


In small cell networks, high mobility of users results in frequent handoff and thus severely restricts the data rate for mobile users. To alleviate this problem, we propose to use heterogeneous, two-tier network structure where static users are served by both macro and micro base stations, whereas the mobile (i.e., moving) users are served only by macro base stations having larger cells; the idea is to prevent frequent data outage for mobile users due to handoff. We use the classical two-tier Poisson network model with different transmit powers (cf [1]), assume independent Poisson process of static users and doubly stochastic Poisson process of mobile users moving at a constant speed along infinite straight lines generated by a Poisson line process. Using stochastic geometry, we calculate the average downlink data rate of the typical static and mobile (i.e., moving) users, the latter accounted for handoff outage periods. We consider also the average throughput of these two types of users defined as their average data rates divided by the mean total number of users co-served by the same base station. We find that if the density of a homogeneous network and/or the speed of mobile users is high, it is advantageous to let the mobile users connect only to some optimal fraction of BSs to reduce the frequency of handoffs during which the connection is not assured. If a heterogeneous structure of the network is allowed, one can further jointly optimize the mean throughput of mobile and static users by appropriately tuning the powers of micro and macro base stations subject to some aggregate power constraint ensuring unchanged mean data rates of static users via the network equivalence property (see [2]).


A problem of state feedback stabilization of discrete-time stochastic processes under Markovian switching and random diffusion (noise) is considered. The jump Markovian switching is modeled by a discrete-time Markov chain. The control input is simultaneously applied to both the rate vector and the diffusion term. Sufficient conditions based on linear matrix inequalities (LMI's) for stochastic stability is obtained. The robustness results of such stability concept against all admissible uncertainties are also investigated. An example is given to demonstrate the obtained results.


We have fabricated Sn : In/sub 2/O/sub 3/ (ITO)-Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ dielectric on Si/sub 1-x/Ge/sub x/-Si metal-oxide-semiconductor tunnel diodes which emit light at around 1.3 /spl mu/m, for x=0.7. The emitted photon energy is smaller than the bandgap energy of Si, thus, avoiding strong light absorption by the Si substrate. The optical device structure is compatible with that of a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, since a conventional doped poly-Si gate electrode will be transparent to the emitted light. Increasing the Ge composition from 0.3 to 0.4 only slightly decreases the light-emitting efficiency.


Health education has to be one of the most effective ways to reduce morbidity and mortality in developing countries. We need to deliver vital messages and information to people at the lower quarter of the society to use changing behaviour and practices which can save and protect their lives. It is in this context, use of mobile phones in delivering vital health information is of significance. This article reviews few projects which successfully use mobile phones for health information delivery.


The objective of this investigation is to develop a method to detect the aerodynamic sound source in the wake of a circular cylinder at Reynolds number 4.0×104. We estimate the intensity of surface pressure which is related to vortex shedding in the wake of circular cylinder by using the coherent output power (COP) in terms of static-pressure and surface pressure on the circular cylinder. Then, we obtain vortices distribution which contribute dipole sound source on the cylinder by measuring COP at various positions in the wake of the circular cylinder. Moreover, we can calculate aerodynamic sound by using the Curle's equation with this estimated surface pressure. We also define the spatial distribution of aerodynamic sound source by means of this method. The result shows the aerodynamic sound generate near the formation region of Karman vortices, that is, X/D=1.5 to 2.0, Y/D=±0.4. Therefore, separated shear flow contributes strongly to the aerodynamic sound generation.


This research object is see execution effectiveness of traffic polite communications forum, ad for and code order ( Formula Satu ) in depressing storey accident of traffic in territory of jurisdiction of Polresta Malang. Where this Forum is new Forum which look for solution concerning problems of traffic. becoming the problem of this research is How program effectiveness / activity "Formula Satu" in the contribution of depressing number accident of traffic? Constraint what is faced by organizer "Formula Satu" in executing step and activity what is conducted for the finishing of constraints? Intention of this research is to know effectiveness execution of program of Formula Satu.
While method which used in this research is sociologis yuridis that is conducting approach by analyzing a problems which isn't it with regulation and attribute to existing fact in practice and social aspect which related to Formula Satu.
Through accurate and circumstantial research, this research get result of that execution of Program of Formula Satu in depressing storey level accident of traffic not effective. Pursuant to research result of note accident of traffic Then Polresta Malang there are improvement of accident of traffic after existence of Formula Satu, which is accidents amount one year before existence of Formula Satu amounting to 126 accidents and one year after existence of Formula Satu amounting to 325 accidents, amount of accidents many are wheels two one year before existence of Formula Satu amounting to 89 while one years after existence of Formula Satu amounting to 245, from various the accident also generate loss of items by dozens that is one year before existence of Formula Satu amounting to Rp. 43.400.000; while one year after existence of Formula Satu reaching Rp.62.510.000. natural of the accident at most are private sector employeeses of four months before existence of Formula Satu amounting to 51 people while four months after existence of Formula Satu reaching 88 people.
While becoming constraint execution of program of Formula Satu it is many matters between him that is often member him do not follow under consideration program, lack of facilities and basic facilities, imprecise of him management of Formula Satu, and there is no legality him existence of Formula Satu.


The articles by DeVries et al in this issue ofThe Journaldocument in the scientific literature the events surrounding the much publicized permanent heart replacement using the Jarvik-7 pneumatically powered artificial heart. Their reports define the serious problems that have cast a dark shadow on the currently available pneumatic heart: thromboemboli and infections. Unfortunately, given the present state of the art and science, these problems will not be readily solved. While the tenor of these articles is positive and DeVries and coworkers imply that additional permanent implants will be performed, the suggested solutions to these problems, primarily alterations in patient management, seem unlikely to reduce substantially the incidence of complications. Accordingly, adding patients to this series will serve only to document further the magnitude of the complications rather than to demonstrate an acceptable life-style in the recipient. During the past several years, similar pneumatically powered mechanical hearts have been


Global food market – new conditions for national sectors. Flexible adaptation of farms to the requirements of the CAP in the new financial perspective after 2014. Phenomena occurring in agriculture of the EU Central and Eastern European countries after 2004 and conclusions for the future. Programming Process of Rural Development Measures 2014-2020 in Austria. Situation in the Czech agriculture after 9 years of EU accession – a research position to strategic challenges for a future policy after 2013. The new CAP reform: an analysis of impacts at the sub-national level. The case of Tuscany. The state and insurance in agriculture– implications for the CAP 2013+. Foreign exchange hedge. Sustainable development of family farming in Poland. The political aspect. Socio-economic view of the contemporary situation in the Czech agriculture and countryside. Institutions acting for rural development – future challenges. Development of biofuels production and food security – Implications for economic policy. Innovation opportunities in Hungarian agriculture and rural development. Analysis of the actual indicators of competitiveness in the Serbian agricultural sector. Alignment of agricultural and rural development policy in the Western Balkans with the European acquis: cases of Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia. Competitiveness of Ukrainian foodstuff. Problems and perspectives of sustainable development in Belarusian Agriculture. The Hungarian horticulture sector: analysis of outdoor and greenhouse farms. Review of some agrostatistical indicators that characterize Bulgarian vegetable production in the context of Common Agricultural Policy. The new solutions


We are interested in understanding the relationship between Bayesian inference and evidence theory. The concept of a set of probability distributions is central both in robust Bayesian analysis and in some versions of Dempster-Shafer's evidence theory. We interpret imprecise probabilities as imprecise posteriors obtainable from imprecise likelihoods and priors, both of which are convex sets that can be considered as evidence and represented with, e.g., DS-structures. Likelihoods and prior are in Bayesian analysis combined with a place's parallel composition. The natural and simple robust combination operator makes all pairwise combinations of elements from the two sets representing prior and likelihood. Our proposed combination operator is unique, and it has interesting normative and factual properties. We compare its behavior with other proposed fusion rules, and earlier efforts to reconcile Bayesian analysis and evidence theory. The behavior of the robust rule is consistent with the behavior of Fixsen/Mahler's modified Dempster's (MDS) rule, but not with Dempster's rule. The Bayesian framework is liberal in allowing all significant uncertainty concepts to be modeled and taken care of and is therefore a viable, but probably not the only, unifying structure that can be economically taught and in which alternative solutions can be modeled, compared and explained.


Ozone depletion over Antarctica has enhanced ultraviolet-B radiation (UVBR, 280 to 320 nm wavelength). We measured the effect of ambient solar UV radiation on the biomass and species composition of phytoplankton, protozoa, bacteria and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in natural microbial assemblages from Antarctic coastal waters. Results were modelled to determine the features of the irradiance responsible for changes in the biomass of these microbial components and responses of individual phytoplankton taxa. Model results showed that changes in phytoplankton biomass were primarily due to dose rate, indicating that their UV-induced mortality resulted from the equilibrium between damage and repair. However, there was considerable variability between individual species in their response to dose and dose rate. Changes in protozoan biomass were mainly due to dose and were likely due to community-level, trophodynamic interactions. UV radiation did not measurably affect bacterial biomass, but resulted in increasing concentrations of DOC. We found a threshold of erythemal irradiance of 28 mW m-2, approximating peak noon-time irradiance at 3.6 m depth near the summer solstice in Antarctic coastal waters, below which no change in the community structure was observed, but above which phytoplankton mortality and protozoan biomass increased. Our results indicate that enhanced UVB radiation in Antarctic waters increases phytoplankton mortality and causes changes in the structure, function and composition of the microbial community that are likely to return more photoassimilated carbon to the atmosphere. © Inter-Research 2006.


was to evaluate the prognostic value of Doppler velocity in the uteroand fetoplacental circulation and perinatal outcome. Methods: 517 low risk pregnancies without congenital anomalies were included. Between 37–41 weeks of gestation one abdominal Dopplersonography of the umbilical artery (n=517) and both uterine arteries (n=374) were performed. In 496 cases the fetal outcome was available (birthweight, umbilical artery pH and mode of delivery). Results: We found a significant regression between the birthweight and the pulsatility index (PI) and resistance index (RI) of the umbilical (p<0.001; r= −0,28) and uterine arteries (p<0.001; r= −0,18). To exclude the gestational age to bias the birthweight and Doppler values a Z-score was calculated and the correlation stayed stable. The delivery mode was not significant correlated to the Doppler values. Furthermore Doppler velocity indices of the uterine and umbilical artery could not predict a postnatal umbilical artery pH < 7.10 (n= 9). Conclusion: Doppler ultrasound of the umbilical and uterine arteries at term was correlated significantly with birthweight, but could not predict the way of delivery or a perinatal hypoxia.


In landscape‐scale experiments at the edge of the Gobi desert, we show that various dune types develop simultaneously under natural wind conditions. Using 4 years of high‐resolution topographic data, we demonstrate that, depending on sand availability, the same wind regime can lead to two different dune orientations, which reflect two independent dune growth mechanisms. As periodic oblique dunes emerge from a sand bed and develop to 2 m in height, we analyze defect dynamics that drive the non‐linear phase of pattern coarsening. Starting from conical sand heaps deposited on gravels, we observe the transition from dome to barchan and asymmetric barchan shapes. We identify a minimum size for arm elongation and evaluate the contribution of wind reversals to its longitudinal alignment. These experimental field observations support existing theoretical models of dune dynamics boosting confidence in their applicability for quantitative predictions of dune evolution under various wind regimes and bed conditions.


ABSTRACT/RESUME It is never a strongly contested view that Canada has "grown up" as a multicultural society. Canada's dynamic process of growth in ethnocultural relations has largely been influenced by three principal forces -- the indigenous peoples, variegated patterns of immigration, and the accommodation of minority nationalities. For the most part, multiculturalism has been distinguished by peaceful social co-existence, underpinned by experience in collective problem solving and passionate public discourse. These frameworks of order and cooperation, characteristic of the Canadian identity, have led to a pragmatic approach in public policy and institution building. Issues relating to multicultural citizenship and integration assimilation, as well as the need for appropriate citizenship education, have been important by-products of this process of growth. The latter, however, are in need of theoretical refinement and a sharper focus on socio-historical points of reference from the minority perspective. On n'a jamais fortement mis en doute l'opinion que le Canada "s'est developpe" comme une societe multiculturelle. Son processus dynamique de croissance dans les rapports ethnoculturels a ete en grande partie influe par trois forces principales -- les peuples autochtones, les caracteristiques bigarrees d'immigration et l'accommodation de nationalites minoritaires. Dans l'ensemble, le multiculturalisme emergent a ete distingue par la coexistence sociale pacifique. soutenue par l'experience dans la resolution des problemes collectifs et un discours public vehement. Ces cadres d'ordre et de cooperation, caracteristiques del' identite canadienne, ont produit beaucoup de pragmatisme dans la politique publique et la construction des institutions. Des problemes qui portent sur la citoyennete multiculturelle et l'integration-assimilation, ainsi que le besoin pour l'education sur la citoyennete convenable, ont ete des consequences secondaires importantes du processus de croissance. Ce sont, cependant, des questions en grande partie disputees. Beaucoup de ces questions ont besoin d'etre theoriquement raffinees et concentrees d'une facon plus penetrante sur les points socio-historiques de reference de la perspective minoritaire. Introduction Increasingly multiculturalism is being perceived in terms of colour, focusing on "visible minorities." This, of course, is a particular perception implicitly accommodated in the language of Canadian public policy and reflected as well in certain of the social demands of the minority constituency. The common currency is acceptance of "cultural diversity" or "cultural pluralism" and the search for solutions to its resulting challenges. According to Kymlicka, multiculturalism in Canada typically refers to the rights of immigrants to express their ethnic identity without fear of prejudice or discrimination. (1) Thus, for visible minorities multiculturalism translates into demands for the recognition of their cultural differences. It represents a desire to integrate into Canadian society and to be accepted as full members of it. It means ensuring their survival as a distinct community without becoming a "separate society." From this perspective, multiculturalism may be seen as a process-driven concept or movement aimed at modifying Canadian laws, institutions, thinking, and other aspects of mainstream society to make them more accommodating of cultural differences. In this sense, multiculturalism may be seen as a social engineering process to shape ethnocultural relations, relying on the central building blocks of "integration," the manipulation of theories of "citizenship," (2) and changing educational philosophy and strategies. (3) Reinforc ing effects may have come from contemporary concepts of "social capital" and "democratic governance" which, in practice, are presumed to be able to mitigate problems of identity and allegiance. In practice, the fact that both social capital formation and democratic governance may be able to adjust the terms of integration and build allegiance for social capital reflects the idea of people working together for collective economic and socio-cultural purposes, sacrificing some individual and group interests in the process. …


To enable the transportation of electricity, gas and water over land in Australia, the transporting company generally requires an easement over the land on which the transportation occurs. Such easements may be granted by the landholder or may be compulsorily acquired. This article reviews the application of capital gains tax and goods and services tax to easements granted and easements compulsorily acquired, and develops a framework to provide guidance to landholders and their professional advisers as to the imposition of CGT and GST. The author concludes that the CGT treatment will vary depending on whether the easement is freely granted or compulsorily acquired. Goods and services tax is likely to apply to consideration received for the granting of an easement or option in relation to an easement, whereas, with compulsory acquisitions of easements, as no supply will be made by the landholder in most cases, there will be no liability to GST.


In 2002 the annual conference of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology was directed at a theme of international interest, Cities in the World, 1500-2000. This volume results from that conference and sets out to investigate a wide range of new archaeological and historical approaches to the development of large towns and cities in Britain, Europe and the World in the early modern period.
Post-Medieval archaeologists working in European contexts should find much of interest in the experiences, investigations and interpretations of 19th and 20th century cities such as Boston, Jamestown and New York in North America and Sydney in Australia. Papers drawing upon recent research provide a contemporary international perspective on recent research in urban historical archaeology.


In this paper, we report a new method to generate amorphous carbon. The growth of amorphous carbons was performed at atmospheric pressure using a high voltage pulsed power supply (20 kV and 25 kHz) under the methane flux. Pulsed discharges of methane gas at atmospheric pressure were generated using high voltage power supply. The pulsed discharge of methane gas was generated between two sharp wolfram electrodes. Three types of carbon was produced by this pulsed plasma namely powder carbon, soft and hard carbon. Carbon samples were investigated by Scanning Electron Microscopy, Energy Dispersive X–ray spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. The carbon samples have amorphous structure according to XRD results without contamination according to EDX results.


A novel method for the manufacture of protein/peptide-containing submicron particles was developed in an attempt to provide particles with increased activity while using high energy input technologies. The method consists of antisolvent co-precipitation from an aqueous solution containing both an amino acid core material (e.g. D,L-valine), and either bovine serum albumin (BSA) or lysozyme (Lys) as model proteins. The aqueous solution was added to the organic phase by means of a nebulizer to increase the total surface area of interaction for the precipitation process. Sonication proved to be an effective method to produce small particle sizes while maintaining high activity of Lys. The use of a polysorbate or sorbitan ester derivatives as stabilizers proved to be necessary to yield submicron particles. Particles with very high yields (approximately 100%) and very high activity after manufacture (approximately 100%) could be obtained. A particle size of 439.0 nm, with a yield of 48.8% and with final remaining activity of98.7% was obtained. By studying various factors using a design of experiments strategy (DoE) we were able to establish the critical controlling factors for this new method of manufacture.


In the present study, bioactive functional gradient coatings were prepared using net-energy controlled plasma spraying technology. The microstructure and phases of the bioactive functional gradient coating were examined by means of transmission electron microscope, scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The results revealed that: (1) as-sprayed coatings contained a large amount of amorphous phases and some nano-sized HA crystals formed during rapid solidification, (2) surface of the coating was very rough with different-sized micropores, and the gradient layer was much denser which firmly bonded to the substrate without gaps and obvious interface between the coating and the substrate


Innovative thinkers within the access-to-justice (ATJ) movement have been experimenting with creative ideas for delivering meaningful legal guidance in an efficient way to clients struggling with civil legal needs. These efforts respond to the long-standing crisis in the delivery of legal services to disadvantaged persons, and the overwhelming need for legal advice in areas such as debt collection, housing, family, and immigration. One such imaginative proposal is what this Article calls "surrogate lawyering." This innovation envisions public interest law firms using some scarce lawyer time to train and advise community-based organization (CBO) staff members to respond, in real time and in context, to the legal problems their constituents encounter. Crafted well, and complemented by technological aids being developed by ATJ entrepreneurs, surrogate lawyering could effect a substantial improvement in the lives of the clients in need.
This Article assesses the ethical implications of the surrogate lawyering venture. It concludes that the lawyers who advise the CBO staffers would not inadvertently trigger an attorney-client relationship with the constituents/clients who benefit from the staffer's guidance. Nor would those lawyers have agency-driven commitments to the constituent/clients. The public interest law firm likely would, though, have attorney-client duties to the CBO, and would need to account for that reality in its operations. The Article does conclude, though, that the surrogacy model generates a significant concern involving the unauthorized practice of law (UPL), and the lawyers' assistance with that activity.
The Article proceeds to critique the UPL concerns, demonstrating that neither the constituent/clients nor the legal profession would be likely to suffer any appreciable harm by permitting surrogate lawyering ventures to operate. The Article closes with suggestions for some adjustments to the usual UPL constraints that would permit surrogate lawyering strategies while minimizing any risks associated with that means of delivering legal advice.


Terrorism is a hazard to human life and material prosperity that should be addressed in a sensible manner whereby the benefits of actions taken to contain it outweigh the costs. Foreign-born terrorists were responsible for 86 percent (or 3,037) of the 3,518 murders caused by terrorists on U.S. soil from 1975 through the end of 2017. Of the other 481 murder victims of terrorists, 413 were murdered by native-born Americans, and 68 were murdered by unidentified terrorists. This paper is an update and expansion of a previous Cato policy analysis of the risk of foreign-born terrorists by the visa categories they used to enter the United States. This updated policy analysis also includes native-born terrorists in a separate category, estimates of injuries sustained in terrorist attacks, the terrorist countries of origin, and terrorist ideologies. This version also corrects minor errors such as the exclusion of some nondeadly foreign-born terrorists and changes in their visa statuses before 1990.

Including those murdered in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), the chance of a person perishing in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil committed by a foreigner over the 43-year period studied here is 1 in 3.8 million per year. The hazard posed by foreigners who entered on different visa categories varies considerably. For instance, the chance of an American being murdered in a terrorist attack by a refugee is about 1 in 3.86 billion per year, while the annual chance of being murdered in an attack committed by an illegal immigrant is zero. By contrast, the chance of being murdered by a tourist on a B visa, the most common tourist visa, is about 1 in 4.1 million per year. Compared to foreign-born terrorists, the chance of being murdered by a native-born terrorist is about 1 in 28 million per year.

There were 192 foreign-born terrorists who planned, attempted, or carried out attacks on U.S. soil from 1975 through 2017. Of those, 65 percent were Islamists, 18 percent were foreign nationalists, 6 percent were right-wingers, 6 percent were non-Islamic religious terrorists, 3 percent were left-wingers, and the rest were separatists or adherents of other or unknown ideologies. By comparison, there were 788 native-born terrorists who planned, attempted, or carried out attacks on U.S. soil from 1975 through 2017. Of those, 24 percent were right-wingers, 22 percent were white supremacists, 16 percent were left-wingers, 14 percent were Islamists, 11 percent were anti-abortion, and 6 percent were others. This expanded terrorism risk analysis can aid in the efficient allocation of scarce government-security resources to best counter the small terrorist threat.


Active noise control (ANC) uses an estimate of the noise affecting a system in order to remove its effect from the output. In some applications, it is possible to directly measure the noise and a feedforward compensator can be used. Other applications require instead that the noise be estimated from its effect on the system. This results in an adaptive feedback ANC, see a previous paper by Gan and Kuo. The identification of the disturbance from the output of the linear system is a deconvolution problem. In this paper, we study a deconvolution technique for the active reduction of the influence of the disturbance on the output of a linear control system. The regulator that we present does not affect the behavior of the system in the absence of disturbances.


This paper presents our attempt to develop a personalized exam preparation tool for Java/OOP classes based on a fine-grained concept model of Java knowledge. Our goal was to explore two most popular student model-based approaches: open student modeling and problem sequencing. The result of our work is a Java exam preparation tool, Knowledge Zoom. The tool combines an open concept-level student model component, Knowledge Explorer and a concept-based sequencing component, Knowledge Maximizer into a single interface. This paper presents both components of Knowledge Zoom, reports results of its evaluation, and discusses lessons learned.


The Elizabeth line will use above-ground sections of existing Great Eastern and Great Western tracks between Stratford and Maidenhead where new overhead line equipment (OLE) and traction power supply will be installed. The OLE is supported by gantries of various types and configurations. In the case of the Great Eastern, the gantries date from the electrification of UK railways in the 1940s. Initial structural assessment carried out had shown that existing gantries on the route were inadequate to carry increased loading from the upgraded OLE. However, a rigorous procedure incorporating detailed non-linear structural analysis was developed that eliminated some of the inherent conservatism in traditional codified approaches. Particular benefit was found in the case of the many types of slender structure where buckling was a governing factor. Using non-linear techniques, it was possible to demonstrate that families of structures were suitable for incorporation in the Crossrail (Elizabeth line) scheme. This paper describes the approach that was used. The project is remarkable for significant programme and cost savings that were accomplished using sophisticated engineering analysis. It is also noteworthy from a sustainability point of view, as it allowed the existing infrastructure to be reused.


Between 1954 and 1961 85 patients were operated on at Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH) for extradural haematomas and between 1968 and 1975 84 operations for this condition were performed. The 169 patients included 22 children; they had a mortality rate of 4,5% (1 death) compared with the 18,9% mortality for the combined total. There were 19 males to each female. The ratio of White to Coloured to Black patients was 3:8:5. Forty-eight per cent of extradural haematomas resulted from assaults, 24% from road traffic accidents and 28% from other injuries; these figures did not differ significantly in the two series. Among the 72 patients operated on within 24 hours of injury the mortality rate was 26,4%, whereas among the 97 operated on later the rate was significantly better--13,4%. The most significant feature was the difference in outcome for the 97 patients admitted direct to the neurosurgical unit at GSH, of whom 12,4% died, compared with 21 transferred from suburban hospitals, where the mortality rate was 33,3%, and the 51 patients sent from rural hospitals, of whom 25,5% died. Although neuroradiological methods are the most reliable means of localizing intracranial haematomas, the advantages gained may be outweighed by the urgency with which decompression is required. This means that the staff of rural and suburban hospitals must be trained to carry out diagnostic burr-holes followed by craniotomy if it should be necessary.


ABSTRACT Introduction: It is recently suggested that titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles can be added to bracket luting agents in order to reduce bacterial activity and protect the enamel. However, it is not known if this addition can affect the shear bond strength (SBS) below clinically acceptable levels. Therefore, this study examined this matter within a comprehensive setup. Methods: This in vitro experimental study was conducted on 120 extracted human premolars randomly divided into four groups (n=30): in groups 1 and 2, Transbond XT light-cured composite with or without TiO2 was applied on bracket base; in groups 3 and 4, Resilience light-cured composite with or without TiO2 was used. Brackets were bonded to teeth. Specimens in each group (n=30) were divided into three subgroups of 10 each; then incubated at 37°C for one day, one month, or three months. The SBS and adhesive remnant index (ARI) were calculated and compared statistically within groups. Results: The SBS was not significantly different at one day, one month or three months (p>0.05) but composites without TiO2 had a significantly higher mean SBS than composites containing TiO2 (p<0.001). The SBS of Transbond XT was significantly higher than that of Resilience (p<0.001). No significant differences were noted in ARI scores based on the type of composite or addition of TiO2 (p>0.05). Conclusions: Addition of TiO2 nanoparticles to Transbond XT decreased its SBS to the level of SBS of Resilience without TiO2; thus, TiO2 nanoparticles may be added to Transbond XT composite for use in the clinical setting.


Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) formed from semifluorinated alkanethiols (SFATs) CF3(CF2)9(CH2)nSH (F10HnSH: n = 2, 11, and 17) on poly-crystalline Au and Ag were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy, and near edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy. SFATs were found to form highly ordered and densely packed SAMs on both substrates. The molecules are strongly bonded to the substrates via their sulfur head groups, in the same manner as conventional alkanethiol (AT) SAMs. The hydrocarbon (except for n = 2) and fluorocarbon parts of the adsorbed SFATs retain the expected planar zigzag and helical conformations of the respective bulk materials. The orientation of the fluorocarbon chains does not depend on the substrate. These entities are almost perpendicular to the substrate in F10H2S/Au and F10H2S/Ag and become slightly more tilted in SFAT SAMs with longer hydrocarbon moieties. However, the alkyl parts of the SFAT films exhibit tilt and twist angles that are similar to those of normal alkanethiol films on Ag and Au substrates despite the reduced packing density in the SFAT films as compared to normal AT SAMs. We suggest that the substrate-related differences in tilt and twist angles for both systems are associated with the different character of the head-group-substrate bonding on Au and Ag.


The ventilation and air conditioning system in the public area of subway station is a complex system which possesses a problem by once setting parameters of PID is difficult to ensure excellent control effect. Therefore this paper proposed an algorithm to adopt parameter tuning that could adjust the PID parameters on real time to ensure good quality of control system. It combined fuzzy logic control with conventional PID control algorithm, with the help of fuzzy tuning of PID parameters on line to change the control effect. By simulation, fuzzy PID controller could get better in control effect, higher in control accuracy, stronger in robustness than before.