ASTROSAT is an astronomy satellite designed for simultaneous multi-wavelength studies in the Optical/UV and a broad X-ray energy range. With four X-ray instruments and a pair of UV-Optical telescopes, ASTROSAT will provide unprecedented opportunity for simultaneous multi-wavelength observations, which is of immense value in study of highly variable sources, especially X-ray binaries and active galactic nuclei. The Large Area X-ray Proportional Counters (LAXPC) of ASTROSAT, which has the largest effective area in the hard X-ray band compared to all previous X-ray missions, will enable high time resolution X-ray measurements in the 2–80 keV band with moderate energy resolution. Here we give a brief summary of the payload characteristics of ASTROSAT and discuss some of the main science topics that will be addressed with the LAXPC, and with simultaneous observations with the UVIT telescopes, with particular emphasis on X-ray binaries and compact objects. The possibility of aiding gravitational wave experiments is also briefly mentioned.


Objectives: To replicate a study by Schutze and colleagues on a headache sample, rather than a heterogenous chronic pain sample, investigating whether level of mindfulness predicts key components in the Fear-Avoidance Model of chronic pain (pain intensity, negative affect, pain catastrophizing, pain-related fear, pain hypervigilance, and functional disability); to investigate the relationships between level of mindfulness and headache/migraine pain intensity, frequency, and duration. Materials and Methods: Participants were 217 individuals who self-reported chronic headache/migraine (51 male, 166 female), aged between 18 and 65 years. Participants completed an online survey measuring demographics, mindfulness, the key components of the Fear-Avoidance Model, and headache pain intensity, duration, and frequency. Results: Mindfulness had significant negative correlations (P<0.05) with all variables except headache pain intensity and headache frequency. Mindfulness significantly predicted negative affect, pain catastrophizing, fear of pain, pain hypervigilance, and headache duration (P<0.05). Mindfulness remained a significant predictor of negative affect and pain hypervigilance after controlling for other key components and background characteristics (P<0.05). Mindfulness did not moderate the relationship between pain intensity and pain catastrophizing (P=0.204). Discussion: Findings suggest that mindfulness may be integrated into the Fear-Avoidance Model of chronic pain for individuals with chronic headache/migraine. Directions for future research are discussed.


Australian allodapine bees provide excellent material for comparative approaches to understanding social evolution. The subgenus Exoneurella occupies a cladistically basal position in the Australian Exoneura group and comprises only four species. We describe sociality in one Exoneurella species, E. setosa, and combine this with other data to infer some patterns of social evolution in allodapines. E. setosa rears a first brood solitarily, although staggered brood production and the production of a second brood in some nests leads to a situation where older, recently emerged brood have the ability to help rear their younger siblings and this overlaps with opportunities to lay eggs. This is similar to the situation for two other phylogenetically distal species of Exoneurella, as well as for members of the genus Braunsapis, which is used as an outgroup for Exoneura. When combined with other studies, our results suggest that the opportunity for sib-rearing is a plesiomorphic trait for Australian allodapines and this has been largely lost in a distal subgenus, Exoneura sensu stricto. Instead, multifemale brood-rearing colonies in this latter group mostly comprise individuals of the same generation, and species exhibit large group size, univoltinism and kin cofounding. This suggests that evolution can favour semisociality and quasisociality, even when eusociality has already arisen.


Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies have received extensive attention recently. Massive data has been stored on permission-less blockchains. The analysis of massive blockchain data can bring huge business values. However, the absence of well-processed up-to-date blockchain datasets impedes big data analytics of blockchain data. To fill this gap, we collect and process the up-to-date on-chain data from Ethereum, which is one of the most popular permission-less blockchains. We name such well-processed Ethereum data as XBlock-ETH, which consists of transactions, smart contracts, and cryptocurrencies (i.e., tokens). However, it is non-trivial to partition and categorize the collected raw Ethereum data to the well-processed datasets since the whole processing procedure requires sophisticated knowledge on software engineering as well as big data analytics. Moreover, we also present basic statistics and exploration for each of the well-processed datasets. Furthermore, we also outline the possible research opportunities based on XBlock-ETH, with the data and code released online.


Additive manufacturing (AM) offers designers access to the entire volume of an artifact during its build operation, including the embedding of foreign objects, like sensors, motors, and actuators, into the artifact to produce multifunctional products from the build tray. However, the application of embedding requires extensive designer expertise in AM. This research aims to develop a tool to automate design decisions for in situ embedding, eliminating the need for ad hoc design decisions made by experts. Two unique approaches are proposed in this work: shadow projection and voxel simulation. Both of these approaches follow a three-stage methodology to achieve design automation by (1) identifying the optimum orientation for the object, (2) designing cavity, and finally (3) designing the shape converter for a flush surface at the paused layer. The two approaches differ in Stages 2 and 3. Where the shadow projection approach employs a series of point cloud manipulation to geometry of the embedded object, the voxel simulation approach simulates the process of insertion of the embedding geometry into the part voxel by voxel. While both proposed approaches are successful in automating design for embedding complex geometries, they result in tradeoffs between final designs and the time for computation. Computational experiment with six test cases shows that designers must strategically choose from one of the approaches to efficiently automate the digital design for embedding.


During the construction of Heda expressway, the Ermi landslide, which occurred on section K377, has interrupted the construction of the expressway. Additional engineering geological investigation became necessary. The direct economic losses are over 3 million US dollars. This paper analyzed the Ermi landslide from the aspects of formation process, engineering geological conditions, the structural characteristics and stability analysis of the landslide. The results show that the formation of the Ermi landslide is mainly due to geological conditions in project area. Because the structure of the sliding body is loose and some weak interlayer exists in the slope, the shear strength of the sliding surface and sliding body is low. As cut-slope excavating, the resistant of the slope body reduced. Eventually the slope lost its stability and a landslide formed. In the stability analysis of the slope, the shear strength parameters of the sliding surface was determined by anti-analysis. Therefore, the result of the evaluation is closer to the actual conditions. Analyzing the stability of the three sliding surfaces respectively, the stability factors for initial slope are between 1.211 and 1.468, and the stability factors for current slope are between 0.958 and 1.076. Hence, the cut-slope excavation is the direct cause of the landslide.


Alcohol provokes different molecular pathways contributing to a clinically significant neurotoxicity in different brain areas. Affected cognition in alcoholics can influence both daily life functioning and alcohol craving management abilities. Preventing alcohol-induced neurotoxicity with different neuroprotective pharmacological interventions is receiving strong scientific backgrounds from published evidences done on animal models. But the question is how we can translate these evidences into clinical applications for active alcohol users. Cognitive rehabilitation with targeted and graded exercises has provided clinicians with new hopes for helping affected clients to retain their functions for a normal healthy life. Moreover, rehabilitation protocols for patients who have serious cognitive impairments due to chronic alcohol use disorder, current available interventional packages and future horizons for further studies in Iran should be addressed.


This paper discusses emancipatory systems approaches with regard to IT adoption in organizations. Emancipatory systems approaches' emphasis is on IT adoption problem situations which are perceived to be associated with issues of power relations that affect decision-making in organizations. This paper explores user perceptions on emancipatory systems approaches during IT adoption in organizations. The paper is based on two case studies. The study was guided by the following questions: What are the users' perceptions of emancipatory systems approach during IT adoption in organizations? What are the perceived users' expected benefits of emancipatory systems approach during IT adoption in organizations? The results indicate that emancipatory systems approaches may be useful during IT adoption in organizations. The results suggest that emancipatory systems approaches may have a potential to improve IT adoption success in organizations through emancipating and empowering discriminated stakeholders.


A number of approaches have been proposed in literature to collect and classify patient related information for purpose of better clinical diagnosis and thus safer treatment and administration of related activities. This type of data collection and classification benefits doctors and the corresponding hospitals. However, no effort is made, as to our knowledge, to classify accumulated data within insurance company databases to facilitate doctors as well as insurance companies for better analysis and cost-effective treatment of patients suffering from chronic (and expensive to treat) diseases such as related to oncology. In this study, a customized self-organized data classification model is applied to an insurance company database to build clusters based on age, patient condition, tests done, etc. These clusters provide integrated analysis to doctors in providing patient-specific, disease-specific, etc., and thus cost-effective treatment. On the other side, it saves on costs to be incurred on repeated tests to be done on the patient. An experimental setup is developed to train such a network, and testing results are presented. The practical constraints are also discussed.


Interaction graphs, such as those recording emails between individuals or transactions between institutions, tend to be sparse yet structured, and often grow in an unbounded manner. Such behavior can be well-captured by structured, nonparametric edge-exchangeable graphs. However, such exchangeable models necessarily ignore temporal dynamics in the network. We propose a dynamic nonparametric model for interaction graphs that combine the sparsity of the exchangeable models with dynamic clustering patterns that tend to reinforce recent behavioral patterns. We show that our method yields improved held-out likelihood over stationary variants, and impressive predictive performance against a range of state-of-the-art dynamic interaction graph models.


In order to evaluate the salinity tolerance of grafted watermelon, two sets of experiments were conducted in a growing chamber where 'Esmeralda' varieties were grafted onto interspecific squash (Cucurbita maxima Duch. × Cucurbita moschata Duch.) and Lagenaria siceraria rootstocks. Both non-grafted and self-garfted plants were used for control. For salt stress, 2.85 and 4.28 mM/l substrate doses of NaCl were added with each irrigation in 2 day intervals for a duration of 23 days. Interspecific-grafted plants showed the highest salinity tolerance as plant biomass and leaf area were not decreased but improved by salinity in most cases. Furthermore, transpiration and photosynthesis activity did not decrease as much as it did in the case of other grafting combinations. Interspecific and Lagenaria rootstocks showed sodium retention, as elevation of Na+ content in the leaves of these grafting combinations was negligible compared to self-grafted and non-grafted ones. Presumably abiotic stress tolerance can be enhanced by grafting per se considering measured parameters of self-grafted plants did not decrease as much as seen in non-grafted ones.


One of the major hurdles I face as the head of a computational biology laboratory is convincing my research team—particularly those pursuing exclusively mathematical and computational modeling—that they need to keep a laboratory notebook. There seems to be a misconception in the computational biology community that a lab notebook is only useful for recording experimental protocols and their results. A lab notebook is much more than that. It is an organizational tool and memory aid, which serves as the primary record of scientific research and activity for all scientists. It also serves as a legal record of ownership of the ideas and results obtained by a scientist. Here, I present the best practices (summarized as ten rules) for keeping a lab notebook in computational biology, for scientists pursuing exclusively "dry" research.


Sand boils are a long-recognized phenomenon associated with soil liquefaction. Deep liquefied sand is acknowledged to be able to burst through overlying impermeable layers. However, the exact conditions required to produce sand boils are unclear, as is their relative importance to engineering structures. To investigate the phenomenon further, a series of simple model tests were performed. The models consisted of small sand samples containing one or more layers of consolidated silt, visible in profile, which are then vibrated. Visual monitoring was taken of structural settlement and the influence of multiple layering, and the ensuing water films and sand boils observed. It was found that relatively heavy foundations over relatively thin silt layers were susceptible to sand boils. If the silt layer was too thick to be unduly strained by the foundation then the occurrence of water films was suppressed. Buried silt layers were seen to experience a hitherto unobserved phenomenon whereby silt was carried up towards the soil surface with the pore fluid during shaking. It is concluded that the relative importance of sand boils and associated layered-soil phenomena is an area requiring further investigation.


In this paper, we discuss the fundamental problem of representation learning from a new perspective. It has been observed in many supervised/unsupervised DNNs that the final layer of the network often provides an informative representation for many tasks, even though the network has been trained to perform a particular task. The common ingredient in all previous studies is a low-level feature representation for items, for example, RGB values of images in the image context. In the present work, we assume that no meaningful representation of the items is given. Instead, we are provided with the answers to some triplet comparisons of the following form: Is item A more similar to item B or item C? We provide a fast algorithm based on DNNs that constructs a Euclidean representation for the items, using solely the answers to the above-mentioned triplet comparisons. This problem has been studied in a sub-community of machine learning by the name "Ordinal Embedding". Previous approaches to the problem are painfully slow and cannot scale to larger datasets. We demonstrate that our proposed approach is significantly faster than available methods, and can scale to real-world large datasets.
Thereby, we also draw attention to the less explored idea of using neural networks to directly, approximately solve non-convex, NP-hard optimization problems that arise naturally in unsupervised learning problems.


Objectives: Trajectory planning is the most vital procedure in every continuous path control based application of robotic arm type manipulators. This paper presents the methodology adopted for planning a trajectory required to be followed by the eye-in-hand camera mounted near the end-effector of a six axis manipulator. The basic purpose is to acquire a sequence of images by translating the camera along the optical axis of the camera which is meant to be used by an algorithm inspired by Shape from Focus (SFF). Methods/Statistical Analysis: The movement of the camera (the end effector) is controlled in the task space of the robot a Cartesian space approach is presented where-in the inverse kinematics computations needs to be performed at run time. All the trajectory planning and simulation of the robot's movements are demonstrated in the simulation where the cues for camera motion are obtained from the SFF-inspired algorithm. Since the SFF-inspired algorithm requires a linear trajectory to be followed by the camera and manipulator is an all-revolute joint based one, careful understanding of the workspace of the robot for singularities is of prime importance. The ability of the manipulator to orient in three axes at the various reachable positions of the workspace is estimated by a manipulability measure. The linear trajectory to be followed by the end-effector is planned in the region of the workspace which has the highest manipulability. Findings: The paper describes the various steps involved in the process of understanding the manipulability of the workspace and planning of the trajectory in accordance with the manipulability index. The details of the trajectory planning to meet the requirements are clearly illustrated. Application/Improvements: Though the intended purpose of planning the trajectory is specific to a computer vision task, the methodology demonstrated is applicable for any application involving linear trajectories. The scope for future work in continuation of the current work is in the direction of dynamics affected trajectory planning.


Many real networks as the World Wide Web, the telephone and electrical networks and transportation (including air routes), biological or social systems belong to a category called ―small-world scale-free‖. The features of these networks are a huge local node concentration, also called clustering (this means that the nodes have lots of common neighbours) and at the same time they have a small diameter (the maximum distance between two pair of nodes); and also the fact that the number of links in a node follows a power law.
In this TFC we study the characteristics of the global network of airports and we model this network through an optimization process starting from a lattice network with a similar number of nodes and links. For this study we use Python ( version 2.7) and the package NetworkX (v 1.4) designed for the study of networks. In the first part of this TFC we analyze the properties of the airports network and verify that it is a small world scale free network. In the second part we consider models obtained from a toroidal grid by randomly changing links while optimizing a certain cost function (based on distance and traffic). The results of the tests show that the networks obtained do not follow the expected degree distribution and are similar to random networks.
In conclusion we can say that modeling the airports network requires a more complex study with a more elaborated cost function and the inclusion of other parameters accounting for the evolution processes that has followed the original network.


1. Five healthy subjects took a daily supplement of 20 ml of linseed oil for 2 weeks. After a break of at least 6 weeks, the same subjects took a similar amount of MaxEPA (a fish oil fraction) for 2 weeks. The linseed oil supplement provided 9.38 g of linolenic acid (18:3 ω3) and the MaxEPA supplement provided 3.03 g of eicosapentaenoic acid (20:5 ω3) and 2.93 g of docosahexaenoic acid (22:6 ω3). The effects of the supplements on plasma lipid concentrations and on the fatty acid composition of platelet phosphoglycerides were studied. 2. In a second experiment, five male subjects took 5, 10 and 20 g of MaxEPA/day in random order for 3 week periods; each experimental period was separated by a break of at least 6 weeks. These doses of MaxEPA provided 0.83, 1.67 and 3.33 g of 20:5 ω3 and 0.80, 1.61 and 3.22 g 22:6 ω3 respectively. The effects of these supplements on plasma lipid concentrations, the fatty acid composition of platelet phosphoglycerides, template bleeding time and platelet aggregation induced by collagen and the prostaglandin analogue compound U46619 were studied. 3. In the platelet lipids, the proportion of 20:5 ω3 was increased by the 20 ml linseed oil supplement but the increase was small compared with the increase brought about by even 5 g of MaxEPA/day. The proportion of arachidonic acid (20:4 ω3) was substantially decreased by the MaxEPA supplement but not by the linseed oil supplement. The ratio of 20:4 ω6/20:5 ω3 fell from 32:1 in the control periods to 11:1 with 5 g, 7:1 with 10 g and 5:1 with 20 g of MaxEPA/day. The MaxEPA supplement also led to increases in the proportions of 22:5 ω3 and 22:6 ω3 and decreases in those of 20:3 ω6 and 22:4 ω6. 4. Bleeding times tended to be prolonged with the MaxEPA supplement but did not follow any dose-dependent trend. Platelet aggregation induced by both collagen and compound U46619 was not inhibited in vitro . 5. Plasma triglyceride concentrations were lowered by the MaxEPA supplement but not by the linseed oil supplement. Plasma triglyceride concentrations were substantially lowered by 10 g and 20 g of MaxEPA/day. Total plasma cholesterol concentrations were slightly lowered and HDL cholesterol concentrations were slightly increased by 20 g of MaxEPA/day. No other significant differences were noted.


Fiscal policies can lay the foundation for low-carbon and climate-resilient development. Building on more than two decades of research in development and environmental economics, this book argues that fiscal instruments are crucial for mitigating and adapting to climate change while raising human welfare. By implementing environmental tax reforms, developing countries can reap a "triple dividend": cutting pollution, raising economic activity, and generating development co-benefits, such as cleaner water, safer roads, and improvements in human health. These reforms need not harm competitiveness. Empirical evidence, including from Indonesia and Mexico, suggests that raising fuel prices can increase firm productivity. In addition, risk management strategies are needed to bolster economic resilience to climate-induced natural disasters. Modelling suggests that preventive public investments and measures to build fiscal buffers can help safeguard stability and growth in the face of rising climate risks. In this way, environmental tax reforms and climate risk-management strategies can lay the much-needed fiscal foundation for development and climate action.


In William Wordsworth and the Ecology of Authorship, Scott Hess explores Wordsworth's defining role in establishing what he designates as ""the ecology of authorship"": a primarily middle-class, nineteenth-century conception of nature associated with aesthetics, high culture, individualism, and nation. Instead of viewing Wordsworth as an early ecologist, Hess places him within a context that is largely cultural and aesthetic. The supposedly universal Wordsworthian vision of nature, Hess argues, was in this sense specifically male, middle-class, professional, and culturally elite -- factors that continue to shape the environmental movement today.


Apple is among the most consumed fruits worldwide. It is available on the market for the whole year being a major source of dietary polyphenols. Several studies suggested that apple polyphenols could play a role in prevention of degenarative diseases. The action of these compounds has been partially ascribed to their antioxidative ability, and fruit antioxidants profile is influenced by apple variety and by the postharvest storage. In this work, the polyphenols composition of the flesh of four apple varieties cultivated in southern Italy were investigated by HPLC, and a flow injection MS/MS procedure to quantify cholorogenic acid and catechins was set up. Phenolic composition and the radical scavenging activity were monitored during a postharvest storage of four months. The quantification by flow injection procedure gives results comparable to those obtained by HPLC, and the increase of the antioxidant activity during storage correlated with an increase of the concentration of catechin and phloridzin. This trend is particularly evident for the variety "Annurca" which is a typical product cultivated in the area around Naples. The genetic characteristics of the Annurca variety together with the anticipated harvest time and the peculiar postharvest conditions are likely responsible for this increase of the antioxidant activity.


ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of bilateral imperfect competition between processors and retailers and of import supply on optimal advertising intensity, advertising expenditures, and checkoff assessment rates. First, comparative static analyses were conducted on the newly developed optimal advertising intensity formula. Second, to consider the endogenous nature of optimal advertising, a linear market equilibrium model was developed and applied to the U.S. beef industry. Results showed that the full consideration of retailer‐processor bilateral market power lowered the optimal values of assessment rates, advertising expenditures, and advertising intensity for the checkoff board whereas consideration of importers increases the optimal values. The results indicate that ignoring the import sector in optimal generic advertising modeling should underestimate these optimal values, whereas ignoring the bilateral market power between processors and retailers overestimates the values.


The recent torrential rains and monsoon rain that hit several states in the East Coast of the Peninsular caused massive flooding, never witnessed in Malaysia before. The sheer catastrophic consequences of the floods were akin to an inland tsunami, as commented by several officials in the country. Official reports and media release estimated that the recent floods would cost Putrajaya and State Governments more than RM 1 billion. Although floods occur annually in Malaysia, there exists a low level of perception about flood disaster risk in Malaysia. This is because many people have considered the prevention and management of natural disaster as one of the government's responsibilities. Nevertheless, individuals are likely to employ different coping strategies in responding to such disasters. This study posits an inclusive approach to disaster risk reduction (DRR) by arguing that the perspectives of those affected by flood are relevant to formulating and implementing DRR strategy. Thus, there is need to understand the factors underlying people's abilities to minimise the impact of disasters and the extent to which they are vulnerable to such disaster. This is expected to support the development of risk communication and reduction strategies that can address the specific need of the affected people. Based on the social psychological perspective, we suggest that resilience is dependent on individual characteristics and community supportive networks. Accordingly, the former is delineated into individual coping strategy and self-efficacy, while the latter is expressed as the individual's perception of social support. Furthermore, vulnerability is proposed as the moderator of the relationship between resilience and the underlying factors. The hypothesized model will be tested with data to be collected from the survey of those affected by the recent flooding across two states in Malaysia (i.e. Kelantan and Pahang).


A prospective observational study was performed to assess the feasibility of the technique of laparoscopic oophorectomy-ina bag for the safe removal of ovarian masses that do not meet the standard guidelines for laparoscopic management of adnexal pathology. Ovarian lesions were selected preoperatively by: age of the patient, ultrasound appearance, bilaterality and size. None of the women had ascites or matted bowel on ultrasound, and all had normal serum tumour markers. There were no stigmata of malignant disease in any of the cases at the time of surgery. Twenty women were recruited. Eighteen procedures (90·0%) were completed successfully laparoscopically. In two cases the bag could not be removed laparoscopically and minilaparotomy was performed. Nineteen of the tumours (95·0%) were removed without intra-abdominal spillage; the bag ruptured in one case. There were no major complications. One case of borderline ovarian tumour (stage Ia) was discovered. We conclude that laparoscopic oophorectomy-in-a bag allows for the safe removal of suspicious ovarian tumours. The advantages of this approach are that women can be treated locally, a laparotomy is avoided, and the subgroup with ovarian malignancy can be identified to be referred to an oncological centre.


Objective: Association patterns between body composition, fat distribution and hormonal levels were examined in lean and obese women suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
Methods: 10 lean and 10 overweight women aging between 18 and 30 years (x=24.7yrs Sd=3.3) suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome were enrolled in the present study. Weight status was classified according to the body mass index categories of the World Health Organization. Body composition was determined by DEXA measurements, fat distribution patterns were quantified by the fat distribution index. Serum levels of estradiol, LH, FSH, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA-S, androstendione, SHBG, TSH, thyroxin, and growth hormone were determined. Additional hormone stimulation tests were performed.
 Results: Lean and overweight PCO patients differed highly significantly in all body composition parameters and in fat distribution. Overweight PCOS patients exhibited a significantly higher amount of body fat, especially in the upper body region. Furthermore among overweight PCOS patients a centralized or android fat patterning prevails. The majority of lean PCOS patients exhibited an android or intermediate fat distribution; however 30% of the lean women showed a gynoid fat patterning. Overweight PCOS Patients showed significantly higher androgen levels than their lean counterparts. Body fat correlated significantly positively with thyroxin levels, but significantly negatively with growth hormone levels and SHBG levels. Testosterone correlated only insignificantly positively with the amount of body fat and android fat patterning.
Conclusion: Among lean as well as overweight PCOS patients a centralized fat patterning prevails. Hormonal levels are significantly associated with body composition parameters.


The potential of pellets made of soy hulls (SH) and corn gluten feed (CGF) to replace starchy pelleted supplement in diets of lactating cows was measured in a feeding regime comparable to automatic milking systems. Twenty-four cows were divided into 2 equal groups and fed for 7 wk in individual feeders monitored by computer on one of the 2 experimental diets. Both diets contained 75% basic total mixed ration plus an additional 25% of pelleted supplement (17% CP), being either high starch pellets (HST) in treatment, or pellets made of SH + CGF (2:1) (SHCG) in treatment. In vitro dry matter digestibility was higher in the HST pellets, whereas neutral detergent fiber (NDF) digestibility was higher in the SHCG pellets. The NDF content was higher in the SHCG diet. Individual cow behavior at the feeding lane was analyzed during the experimental period. Average number of meals and daily eating duration of the SHCG cows were significantly greater, as compared with the HST group. However, intake per meal and rate of eating were greater in the HST cows, whereas meal duration was similar in both groups. Feeding behavior resulted in significantly higher daily dry matter and NDF intake by the SHCG cows (27.1 and 11.1 kg, respectively) as compared with the HST group (24.8 and 7.61 kg, respectively). Consequently, significantly higher milk fat content, milk fat yield, and 4% FCM yield were obtained in the SHCG cows. Milk and milk protein yields were similar in both treatments. Data suggest potential advantages of the SHCG pellets for herds using automatic milking systems.


In an asynchronous direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) communication system, the parameter estimation problem, i.e., estimating the propagation delay, attenuation and phase shift of each user's transmitted signal, may be complicated by the so-called near-far problem. The near-far problem occurs when the amplitudes of the users received signals are very dissimilar, as the case might be in many important applications. In particular, the standard method for estimating the propagation delays will fail in a near-far situation. Several new estimators, the maximum likelihood, an approximative maximum likelihood and a subspace-based estimator, are therefore proposed and are shown to be robust against the near-far problem. No knowledge of the transmitted bits is assumed, and the proposed estimators can thus be used for both acquisition and tracking. In addition, the Cramer-Rao bound is derived for the parameter estimation problem.


Although social advertising has grown to be one of the major online advertising channels in recent years, its effectiveness is not been fully understood. In this study, we use data from a large-scale field experiment on a major social media platform (WeChat Moments) to investigate how the display of social cues (friends' likes) in an advertisement affects users' responses. In the experiment, we randomly manipulate the presence of social cues in ads shown to 37 million users. We distinguish two types of consumer response: publicly observable responses that reveal whether a user has liked an ad, and private responses whereby a user clicks on an ad. We find that on average, displaying the first social cue significantly enhances the liking and clickthrough rates. However, while showing additional social cues can further increase users' tendency to like, it does not increase the clickthrough rate any further. This empirical pattern is consistent with the coexistence of informational social influence and normative social influence in social advertising. We find evidence that informational influence has a greater impact on the clickthrough rate, whereas normative social influence has a more prominent effect on the liking rate. Our results provide rich implications for advertisers and social media platforms in designing social advertising policies.


This paper presents a multi-agent system framework that performs system restoration to Navy ship. If Navy surface combatants' electric power supply interruption is caused by a fault, it is important to restore the power system as soon as possible to a target network configuration after the fault. The system views the problem as the interaction of simple independent agents. The approach is implemented using visual c++/JAVA and KQML programming language. Simulation results have demonstrated that is method is able to reach target configurations.


This paper explores the differences and similarities of the three library schools educating librarians and information professionals in Greece. The structure of higher education in Greece has recently undergone major changes (2002) integrating technological institutions and universities under one umbrella that of higher education. As a result, technological institutions today are still struggling to find their identity, whilst universities are trying hard to assert their differentiation. Library schools, existing within both types of institution, provide a very good example of how these changes are affecting education processes, field work, professionals, and jobs for graduates. Although Library Schools are all categorized as higher education institutions, they enjoy different status. Library schools spread across two similar, but yet of different types of organisation within the higher education system of Greece also face the challenge of establishing the professional image of their graduates, of modernizing the curricula and of keeping up with the rapid changes demanded by their European and international counterparts. At the same time affiliations of the schools have shaped the corresponding curricula and have marked the image of the profession within the country.


We analyze the quantum Hall effect in single layer graphene with bilayer stripe defects. Such defects are often encountered at steps in the substrate of graphene grown on silicon carbide. We show that AB or AA stacked bilayer stripes result in large Hall conductivity fluctuations that destroy the quantum Hall plateaux. The fluctuations are a result of the coupling of edge states at opposite edges through currents traversing the stripe. Upon rotation of the second layer with respect to the continuous monolayer (a twisted-bilayer stripe defect), such currents decouple from the extended edge states and develop into long-lived discrete quasibound states circulating around the perimeter of the stripe. Backscattering of edge modes then occurs only at precise resonant energies, and hence the quantum Hall plateaux are recovered as twist angle grows.


INTRODUCTION
Over the last 20 years, the surgical management of ureteropelvic junction obstruction (UPJO) has been revolutionised by the development of endourological instrumentation and several minimally invasive procedures including: antegrade or retrograde endopyelotomy, retrograde balloon dilatation, and laparoscopic pyeloplasty. Currently, in our department, we offer percutaneous antegrade endopyelotomy (PAE) as primary treatment of UPJO in adults, believing it offers less morbidity, better cosmetic results, and quicker operating time compared with open pyeloplasty.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We performed a retrospective audit of our results for the 14 patients who underwent percutaneous antegrade endopyelotomy between January 2000 and May 2004.

RESULTS
Mean operative time was 53 min (range, 30-80 min), mean in-patient stay was 3.8 days (range, 2-7 days), and there were no major postoperative complications for this series with mean follow-up of 31.8 months (range, 12-52 months). Eleven out of the 14 patients (79%) showed radiological improvement on their 3-month MAG 3 (mercaptoacetyl-triglycyl) renogram, and 13 out of the 14 (93%) patients reported significant reduction or resolution of pain, compared with their preoperative state.

CONCLUSIONS
The majority of urologists still offer open pyeloplasty as primary treatment for UPJO with laparoscopic pyeloplasty currently an evolving procedure in the UK. Our series reports comparable success rates for PAE compared to other series. Despite these results, we feel that the future role of percutaneous endopyelotomy will be as a salvage procedure following failed open or laparoscopic surgery. However, in patients with concurrent stone disease or requiring antegrade ureteric access, percutaneous endopyelotomy would be suitable as a primary treatment option.


Mechanical loading is an important regulatory factor in bone homeostasis, and
plays an essential role in maintaining the structure and mass of bone throughout a
lifetime. Although the exact mechanism is unknown the data presented in this thesis
supports the concept that substrate signals influence MSC growth and differentiation. A
better understanding of the cellular and molecular responses of bone cells to mechanical
stimuli is the key to further improvements to therapeutic approaches in orthopaedics,
orthodontics, periodontics, bone repair, bone regeneration, implantology and tissue
engineering. However, the mechanisms by which cells transduce mechanical signals are
poorly understood. There has also been an increased awareness of the need for
improvement and development of 3-D in vitro models of mechanotransduction to mimic
the 3-D environment, as found in intact bone tissue and to validate 2-D in vitro results.
The aims of the project were (i) to optimize a model system by which bone cells
can survive in 3-D static culture and their responses to mechanical stimuli can be
examined in vitro, (ii) to test the effects of intermittent mechanical compressive loading
on cell growth, matrix maturation and mineralization by osteoblastic cells, (iii) to examine
the role of the primary cilia, (iv) to assess the effect of dynamic compressive loading on
human mesenchymal stem cells in the 3-D environment.
The optimized model system has the potential to be used in in vitro studies of
bone in 3-D environments including a better understanding of the mechanically
controlled tissue differentiation process and matrix maturation in the engineered bone
constructs. It has less complicated equipment and techniques compared to dynamic
seeding and culture systems making it easy to use in the laboratory. In addition, cells are
not pre stimulated by any mechanical stimuli during seeding and culture which enables
the researcher to study selected mechanical stimuli and mechanotransduction in bone
tissue constructs. The model can mimic the bone environment providing a better
physiological model than cells cultured in 2-D monolayer.
Using our 3-D system, several loading regimens were compared and it was
shown that intermittent short periods of compressive loading can improve cell growth
and/or matrix production by MLO-A5 osteoblastic cells during 3-D static culture. This
VI
suggests that the cells are responding to the mechanical compression stimulus either by
directly sensing the substrate strain or the fluid shear stress induced by flow through the
porous scaffold. We also demonstrated that our mechanical loading system has the
potential to induce osteogenic differentiation and bone matrix production by human
MSCs in the same way as treatment with dexamethasone. Although the exact
mechanism is unknown the data presented supports the concept that the dynamic
compressive loading influence MSC growth, differentiation and production.
In further experiments, we used the optimized 3-D model system to study the
effects of mechanical loading on primary cilia, which have recently been shown to be
potential mechanosensors in bone. We demonstrated that mature cells lacking a cilium
were less responsive, less able to upregulate matrix protein gene expression and did not
increase matrix production in response to mechanical stimulation suggesting that the
primary cilia are sensors for mechanical forces such as fluid flow and/or strain induced
shear stress.


Strips of the seagrass Thalassia testudinum were used in a field bioassay to assess herbivory on 11 coral reefs scattered throughout the Caribbean. Patterns of herbivory on overfished reefs in Haiti and the United States Virgin Islands were compared to patterns on seven less fished reefs (United States Virgin Islands, Panama, Honduras, Belize, and the Bahamas). On the overfished reefs, the rate of Thalassia removal increased significantly with depth, urchin densities were high, and urchin grazing was equal to, or greater than, fish grazing in shallow (<10 m deep) habitats. On reefs subject to little fishing pressure, the rate of Thalassia removal decreased with depth, urchin densities were low, and herbivorous fishes were responsible for almost all Thalassia removal. Previous studies assessing the importance of urchin grazing in the Caribbean have been conducted on overfished reefs where urchin densities were unusually high and the density of grazing fish unusually low. It is doubtful that the intensity of urchin—algal and urchin—coral interactions observed on these heavily fished reefs occurs on reefs unaffected by humans.


Epidemiological data confirm that the number of elderly with an impaired dentition is increasing. The treatment of patients with an impaired dentition should be focused on maintaining oral function during life-time. However this goal is hardly achievable because of the complicating factors in an impaired dentition. This article describes the Nijmegen Dental School approach in the treatment of impaired dentition and stresses the importance of the preliminary treatment in order to answer the question whether restoring or extracting teeth is the most appropriate treatment modality.


ABSTRACT Heavy metals released into the environment continue to receive attention over with advances of technology, but with variations in concentration. Heavy metals released into the environment in various concentrations continue to receive attention, fostered by advances in technology. Lead, one of the best-known heavy metals, can be found at high levels in industrial wastewater, is nonbiodegradable, and is a neurotoxic metal. To remove Pb(II) ions from aqueous solutions, the adsorption process of Pb(II) ions was optimized by using response surface methodology (RSM). The effects of initial pH, initial concentration of lead, and temperature on the adsorption efficiency (E, %) were investigated. pH was the most significant factor that affected the removal of lead. Central composite design (CCD) can be successfully applied to the removal of Pb(II) ions from aqueous solutions.


ABSTRACT
 The Neotropical ant Ectatomma tuberculatum (Olivier) shows a polymorphic social organization with strictly monogynous or facultative polygynous populations along its distribution range. The causative factors of these variations in social organization are unknown but biotic and abiotic environmental factors might explain the differences. In particular, recent studies have suggested that parasites and parasitoids could have an impact on host colony phenotype. Here, we report on eucharitid wasps and mermithid nematodes that attack the only known Mexican polygynous population of E. tuberculatum in Veracruz, Mexico. The results were compared with those previously obtained from a monogynous population in Chiapas, Mexico; the aim being to investigate environmental influences on colony social organization. The rather similar prevalence of parasitism between the 2 populations suggests that the hypothesis of an increased resistance to parasites and parasitoids as one of the factors responsible for the emergence of polygyny in E. tuberculatum populations does not apply. More likely, other kinds of environmental stress or constraints facilitate the development of polygyny, such as nest site limitations, risks of dispersal and/or high rates of predation.


Empirical studies have documented a decline in indicators of social participation in the last five decades. The responsibility of social disengagement has often been attributed to pervasive busyness and the increasing pressure on time. In this paper we argue that computer-mediated interaction, and partic- ularly online networking, can help mitigate this downward trend. We develop a logical framework for assessing the role of the Internet in the evolution of social participation. We analyze an economy where agents can develop their social interactions through two main modes of participation, one encompassing both online networking and face to face interactions, and the other solely based on physical encounters. We study the interdependence between the increase in the pressure on time and the variation in the relative performance of the two strategies of participation.


Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to determine the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) that is expected of oil-multinationals by the host-communities in which they operate in Nigeria's oil-rich Delta region. It also suggests how the aggressive opposition of the host-community to the oil exploration activities of oil companies may be curbed. Design/methodology/approach - The method is purely review of extant literatures and deductive arguments that will give insights to how conflict situations arising from denial of rights can be resolved through CSR and stakeholder's perspective. Findings - The paper concludes that the major determinant of success of most companies in the world rest in the performance of their CSR to the host-community, stakeholders and the society in general. Practical implications - The oil-companies operating in the Niger Delta region have to re-assess their CSR objectives towards improving their delivery to the intended beneficiaries otherwise the pervasive violent conflicts in the region will persist with adverse consequences on the corporate image, reduced profits of the oil-companies and high cost of the product due to disruptions in production. Originality/value - The paper usefully points out that the Niger Delta region that hosts Nigeria's oil upstream sector has been enmeshed in violent conflicts essentially due to the adverse socio-environmental effects the industry has on their communities. The companies however assert that they operate as responsible corporate entities and as such their operations and activities benefits their host-communities rather than induce violent conflicts.


To make an object transparent implies that its internal features become better visible. It also means that the surface of that same object becomes less discernable. I apply this analogy to argue that the current preoccupation with transparency allows certain ideological movements to hide controversial agendas from public scrutiny. Focusing on evangelical Christian aid to Kyrgyzstan, this article traces how post-Soviet liberalization enabled evangelicals to gain a strong footing in this Muslim-majority society. Their emphasis on religious rights served to legitimize their missionary agendas, while the adoption of development rhetoric allowed evangelicals to present themselves as "transparent" civil society players. As such, this empirical case illuminates the ideological workings of "empty" and ostensibly value-free political imageries.


A new method is developed for calculating the vibration-rotation-tunneling spectra of molecular clusters consisting of rigid monomers. The method is based on generation of optimized bases for each monomer. First, a sequential symmetry adaptation procedure is developed for relating the symmetries of monomer basis functions with the symmetries of the eigenstates of the cluster. Then this symmetry adaptation procedure is used in the generation of optimized bases and combining them for finding the eigenstates. Symmetry adaptation problems related to the generation of optimized bases are identified and solutions are suggested. The method is applied to the water dimer by using the SAPT-5st potential surface. The results are encouraging for application to bigger clusters.


The quantitative and qualitative increase of the agricultural production is an important concern world wide. In the context of the world's increasing population, of the prognosis according to which the world's population will double until 2030 and of the diversification of requirements for agricultural raw materials in industry, the agricultural development becomes a primary goal at a global level and also at a local level for each country in particular. In terms of scientific foundation of the complex effects in the food chain, all agricultural systems are perfectible and can't fully achieve the objectives imposed by the human society, by the consumers and by the increasing requirements for the soil fertility. Through this study we want to clear some aspects concerning the organo-mineral fertilization effect on the maize production, hybrid-Monsanto Dekalb 4626, having a production potential of 8-14 t/ha. The experiments were conducted in 2012 on a chernozem type of soil (SRTS-2003), having a high towards a very high production potential. The vegetation period in 1012 was characterized by less favorable climatic conditions for obtaining a big, quality production due to a low rate of precipitation (much below the regular rate for that specific time of the year) and also due to high temperatures, events that led to productions that were very much below the production potential of the hybrid used in the experiments (2,6 - 4,6 t/ha maize). The differentiated fertilization variants included effects of mineral fertilizers originated from mineral NP fertilizers (in differentiated doses), of organic fertilizers originated from partially fermented stable manure (20t/ha) and partially fermented poultry manure (12t/ha). The production results revealed the beneficial nature of the organic-mineral combinations, where significant production increases were obtained in comparison with the unfertilized witness variant, below the production potential of this hybrid. The unfavorable climatic conditions led to an incomplete binding in the fructification phenophase, in some variants and at the variants that were fertilized with a maximum NP dose during the blooming phenophase, to the specific symptom in potassium deficiency, meaning that the "marginal necrosis" in corn leaves was emphasized. The agrochemical analysis on the corn leaves showed, at the variants that were fertilized with 150-200 kg active substance/ha, nitrogen and phosphorus, an accumulation that was close to the critical threshold regarding the nitrogen level and low towards poor regarding the potassium level. The importance of this study is resulting from the link between the accumulations of nutrients in corn plants at different nitrogen doses and climatic conditions during the corn vegetation period, even though the soil has an optimum level of nutrients from an agrochemical point of view.


Many new technologies are being developed to improve the fuel consumption of gasoline engines, including the combination of direct fuel injection with turbocharging in a so-called 'downsizing' approach. In such spark ignition engines operating on the Otto cycle, downsizing targets a shift in the operating map such that the engine is dethrottled to a greater extent during normal operation, thus reducing pumping losses and improving fuel consumption. However, even with direct injection, the need for turbine protection fuelling at high load in turbocharged engines-which is important for customer usage on faster European highways such as German Autobahns-brings a fuel consumption penalty over a naturally-aspirated engine in this mode of operation. In addition to the continual increase in permissible turbine inlet temperature that metallurgical development has provided, both cooled exhaust manifolds and the use of diluents (principally cooled EGR) have been shown to reduce the need for high-load component protection fuelling. This paper reports test work performed using a state-of-the-art 1.5 litre close-spaced direct injection turbocharged engine, fitted as standard with an exhaust manifold integrated into the cylinder head, aimed at exploring any synergies from combining this base engine technology with increased turbine inlet temperature or cooled EGR.


Cybersecurity threats have been on the rise lately, along with the digital revolution. In the industrial area and the supply chains, the disruptions that have already occurred require the search for solutions that minimize the impact of those threats without hampering the digital transformation, equally and globally recognized as bringing enormous benefits. At the heart of the solutions is the ability to manage information security conveniently. To this end, it is essential to put a safety assessment program in place using a set of appropriate metrics. In this article and through an analysis of work already carried out in the area, we propose a metrics framework suitable for supply chains and in the industrial context. Additionally, and to promote the level of trust between the nodes of a supply chain, it is also elaborated on a model of continuous safety assessment, using the same metrics and goals related to certification (based on the IEC 62443 standard). In addition to the contribution to the trust level, the proposed framework can also facilitate the certification process from the perspective of the technological infrastructure. The work is part of a European project (FISHY) that aims to increase resilience in supply chains.


: Three groups of calves aged 6 months were completely protected against oral challenge with Taenia saginata eggs following immunisation by three different methods. These were hyperimmunisation with six serial inoculations of a homogenate of T. saginata strobila in Freund's complete adjuvant, a single intramuscular inoculation with hatched T. saginata eggs or a single oral dose of unhatched T. saginata eggs. The calves immunised with tapeworm homogenate developed the strongest haemagglutinating and precipitating antibody response to the complex of antigens in an extract of tapeworm strobila, cysticercus tissue or cysticercus fluid. The orally infected calves developed a moderate antibody response to these antigens but the calves inoculated with hatched eggs showed only a very weak antibody response. The calves infected orally with eggs developed a peripheral eosinophilia but the other two methods of immunisation did not evoke this response. After challenge infection all groups showed an increase in peripheral eosinophil counts except the group immunised with tapeworm homogenate.


Conodont elements are important in biostratigraphy, in palaeoenvironmental and palaeobiogeographical analyses, and in assessing the thermal history of Lower Palaeozoic strata throughout the Caledonian belt. The differentiation of Ordovician conodont faunas into the North Atlantic and North American Midcontinent provinces is not closely comparable with the provincial patterns shown by other faunal groups and does not relate clearly to criteria for recognizing continental separation across the Iapetus Ocean. Some species associations adapted to cool, normal marine waters were able to cross the ocean at the time of its presumed maximum extent. The colours of conodont elements reflect the thermal history of strata and can be used in studies of low-grade metamorphism. In S. Wales, for example, metamorphic temperatures indicated by conodont colour are too high to he accounted for by simple burial beneath the known stratigraphical overburden under normal heat flow conditions. Elsewhere, conodont colour trends also serve to constrain and test models of metamorphism that involve sedimentary burial in subsiding basins, tectonic burial under nappes, or the thermal effects of intrusions.


The leaf and shoot growth of Acacia karroo plants defoliated by goats was compared to that of plants in which leaf only or leaf plus shoot-tips were removed by hand, to simulate goat browsing. There were no differences in leaf or shoot production between plants whose leaf only was removed compared to those that had both leaf and shoot-tips removed. Leaf growth on the plants defoliated by goats at moderate levels was approximately three-fold that on plants defoliated moderately by hand. The plants defoliated by hand produced approximately twice the amount of leaf that the undefoliated plants produced. Heavy defoliation by both hand and goat, produced approximately half the leaf growth that moderately defoliated plants produced, following equivalent defoliation. Shoot production of all plants defoliated by hand was no different to that of the undefoliated control plants and was considerably less than that of the plants defoliated by goats. Keywords: acacia karroo; browse production; browsing; clipping; defoliation; goats; growth stimulation; leaf growth; leaves; shoot growth; shoot production


The hybrid vehicle is currently one of the research focuses of automotive industry. The mode of 'engine start/stop strategy' has become a crucial part in (hybrid) vehicle control strategy. In this paper, both home and abroad researches of the 'engine start/stop control strategy' were summed up. From automotive engineering perspective, several aspects were in-depth analyzed and discussed, including the engine providing control energy or power resources, substitutability of energy and the negative problems brought by starting/stopping the engine. According to economy and overall loss, the objective function of optimization of the strategy was proposed. For solving the related engineering application problems caused by using the engine start/stop strategy on hybrid vehicles, the appropriate additional solutions were given from three aspects such as adding power source, controlling and switching clutch program of power source, and coupling and connection of the engine and auxiliary energy, providing an important reference for related study.


The recent phenomenal success of language models has reinvigorated machine learning research, and large sequence models such as transformers are being applied to a variety of domains. One important problem class that has remained relatively elusive however is purposeful adaptive behavior. Currently there is a common perception that sequence models"lack the understanding of the cause and effect of their actions"leading them to draw incorrect inferences due to auto-suggestive delusions. In this report we explain where this mismatch originates, and show that it can be resolved by treating actions as causal interventions. Finally, we show that in supervised learning, one can teach a system to condition or intervene on data by training with factual and counterfactual error signals respectively.


Temperatures at the soil–atmosphere interface influence ecosystem function by driving nonlinear terrestrial biogeochemical, ecohydrological, and micrometeorological processes. Whilst climate, soil and vegetation controls on spatially average ecosystem temperatures are recognised, how interacting and heterogeneous ecosystem layers create spatio-temporal complex thermal ecosystems has not been determined. Such thermal hot spots and hot moments may underpin the capability of ecosystems to support biological and biogeochemical diversity and control the likelihood of tipping points in system-regulating feedbacks being locally exceeded. This is of notable importance in peatlands, where soil temperatures control the storage of their associated globally important carbon stocks. Here, through the application of high spatio-temporal resolution surface temperature data and peat thermal modelling, we assess the impact of system heterogeneity (spatio-temporal impact of the following system layers: tree, shrubs, microtopography, groundcover species and sub-surface ice) on surface temperature regimes. We show (a) that peat-surface thermal hotspot intensity and longevity is linked to system heterogeneity and (b) that not all system layers have an equal influence over the peat-surface thermal regime and extreme temperatures; thermal heterogeneity increases up to a maximum of five layers of heterogeneity and decreases thereafter. The results crucially demonstrate that such changes in the spatio-temporal thermal dynamics and extremes may occur without significant changes in median temperatures. This is important to the conceptual understanding of peatland responses and ecosystem resilience to disturbance. It emphasises the need to determine the potential for transitions in magnitude, longevity and locality of small-scale thermal extremes to induce functional transitions that propagate through given ecosystems, and to characterise the impact of such small-scale spatio-temporal complexity on ecosystem scale biogeochemical and ecohydrological function.


BACKGROUND
Avulsion of the tibial insertion of the posterior cruciate ligament is commonly repaired via open reduction and internal fixation with a screw, Kirschner's wire, and suture. In the case of a major bony fragment, this technique is adequate to achieve rigid fixation. In the case of an avulsion fracture with a small bony fragment, however, it is not uncommon to break the bone fragment during screw fixation. We describe a new technique for fixation of an avulsion fracture with a small bony fragment. The technique uses a double bundles pull-through suture technique that repairs the anterolateral and posteromedial components of the posterior cruciate ligament simultaneously.

METHODS
From March 1994 through May 1997, 12 patients with small tibial avulsion fractures of the posterior cruciate ligament were treated using this technique.

RESULTS
At an average of 18 months after surgery (range, 12-24 months), the preliminary clinical and radiographic results were satisfactory. Eleven patients could return to the same or a higher level of preinjury sports activity. According to the International Knee Documentation Committee rating system, 10 of the 12 patients had normal or nearly normal ratings.

CONCLUSION
The double bundles pull-through suture technique can avoid the risk of breakage of the small bony fragment, does not require the removal of hardware, and can achieve adequate repair in the anatomic situation. Our clinical experience suggests that it is a good choice for fixation in cases of avulsion fracture with a small bony fragment.


This paper compares the annual and monthly components of the simulated energy budget from the North American Land Data Assimilation System phase 2 (NLDAS‐2) with reference products over the domains of the 12 River Forecast Centers (RFCs) of the continental United States (CONUS). The simulations are calculated from both operational and research versions of NLDAS‐2. The reference radiation components are obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Surface Radiation Budget product. The reference sensible and latent heat fluxes are obtained from a multitree ensemble method applied to gridded FLUXNET data from the Max Planck Institute, Germany. As these references are obtained from different data sources, they cannot fully close the energy budget, although the range of closure error is less than 15% for mean annual results. The analysis here demonstrates the usefulness of basin‐scale surface energy budget analysis for evaluating model skill and deficiencies. The operational (i.e., Noah, Mosaic, and VIC) and research (i.e., Noah‐I and VIC4.0.5) NLDAS‐2 land surface models exhibit similarities and differences in depicting basin‐averaged energy components. For example, the energy components of the five models have similar seasonal cycles, but with different magnitudes. Generally, Noah and VIC overestimate (underestimate) sensible (latent) heat flux over several RFCs of the eastern CONUS. In contrast, Mosaic underestimates (overestimates) sensible (latent) heat flux over almost all 12 RFCs. The research Noah‐I and VIC4.0.5 versions show moderate‐to‐large improvements (basin and model dependent) relative to their operational versions, which indicates likely pathways for future improvements in the operational NLDAS‐2 system.


With the rapid development of economy and the speedy process of urbanization, many new districts have been developed to meet the needs of urban development. However, for pursing the speed of construction and economic effectiveness, the effectiveness of ecological environment were ignored, which led to the result that the environment of original ecology and natural resources were damaged and shocked severely in the process of new urban district development and construction. As the philosophy of development which emphasizes natural coexistence, Low Impact Development is the reflection to achieve sustainable development, green city, and ecological city. With the development of the principle of Low Impact Development and the example of Hujia new district, this paper will study the strategies about ecology, economy, and traffic of new urban construction with the principle.


Transformers are powerful for sequence modeling. Nearly all state-of-the-art language models and pre-trained language models are based on the Transformer architecture. However, it distinguishes sequential tokens only with the token position index. We hypothesize that better contextual representations can be generated from the Transformer with richer positional information. To verify this, we propose a segment-aware Transformer (Segatron), by replacing the original token position encoding with a combined position encoding of paragraph, sentence, and token. We first introduce the segment-aware mechanism to Transformer-XL, which is a popular Transformer-based language model with memory extension and relative position encoding. We find that our method can further improve the Transformer-XL base model and large model, achieving 17.1 perplexity on the WikiText-103 dataset. We further investigate the pre-training masked language modeling task with Segatron. Experimental results show that BERT pre-trained with Segatron (SegaBERT) can outperform BERT with vanilla Transformer on various NLP tasks, and outperforms RoBERTa on zero-shot sentence representation learning. Our code is available on GitHub.


We describe an experiment conducted in Bangalore, India, for incentivizing a population of commuters to travel at less congested times. The goals were to reduce the travel times and increase the travel comfort of commuters, and to reduce congestion, fuel consumption and pollution. The project, called INSTANT (for the Infosys-Stanford Traffic project), ran for six months from Oct 6, 2008, to April 10, 2009 and incentivized the employees of Infosys Technologies, Bangalore. We describe the background, the incentive mechanism and the results. The INSTANT project involved about 14,000 commuters and succeeded in incentivizing many commuters to travel at uncongested times, thereby significantly reducing their commute times. Our approach of providing incentives to decongestors contrasts with the current practice of charging congestors. It also contrasts with prior work on "selfish routing" which focusses on the reaction of commuters to a spatial choice of routes (same time, different routes) as opposed to a temporal choice (same route, different times).


Osteoporosis is a leading public health problem that is responsible for substantial morbidity and mortality. A major determinant of the risk for osteoporosis in later life is bone mineral density (BMD) attained during early adulthood. BMD is a complex trait that presumably is influenced by multiple genes. Recent linkage of three Mendelian BMD‐related phenotypes, autosomal dominant high bone mass, autosomal recessive osteoporosis‐pseudoglioma, and autosomal recessive osteopetrosis to chromosome 11q12–13 led us to evaluate this region to determine if the underlying gene(s) could also contribute to variation in BMD in the normal population. We performed a linkage study in a sample of 835 premenopausal Caucasian and African–American sisters to identify genes underlying BMD variation. A maximum multipoint LOD score of 3.50 with femoral neck BMD was obtained near the marker D11S987, in the same chromosomal region as the three Mendelian traits mentioned above. Our results suggest that the gene(s) underlying these Mendelian phenotypes also play a role in determining peak BMD in the normal population and are the first using linkage methods to establish a chromosomal location for a gene important in determining peak BMD. These findings support the hypothesis that a gene responsible for one or more of the rare Mendelian BMD traits linked to chromosome 11q12–13 has an important role in osteoporosis in the general population.


In seventeenth-century literature on the Grand Tour, the ghetto of Venice appears as a place of cross-cultural exchange and misunderstanding, a contact zone that stimulates interrogation and translation, comparison and projection, prejudice and discovery. The ghetto goes into eclipse in the English letters of the Enlightenment, to re-emerge in a number of Victorian texts. The essays of this forum show how the renewed interest in the Italian Ghettoes served two late Victorian writers, Israel Zangwill and Amy Levy, to reflect on their own modern British and Jewish identity.


Due to the increasing deployment of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) in real-world security-critical domains including autonomous vehicles and collision avoidance systems, formally checking security properties of DNNs, especially under different attacker capabilities, is becoming crucial. Most existing security testing techniques for DNNs try to find adversarial examples without providing any formal security guarantees about the non-existence of such adversarial examples. Recently, several projects have used different types of Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) solvers to formally check security properties of DNNs. However, all of these approaches are limited by the high overhead caused by the solver.
In this paper, we present a new direction for formally checking security properties of DNNs without using SMT solvers. Instead, we leverage interval arithmetic to compute rigorous bounds on the DNN outputs. Our approach, unlike existing solver-based approaches, is easily parallelizable. We further present symbolic interval analysis along with several other optimizations to minimize overestimations of output bounds.
We design, implement, and evaluate our approach as part of ReluVal, a system for formally checking security properties of Relu-based DNNs. Our extensive empirical results show that ReluVal outperforms Reluplex, a state-of-the-art solver-based system, by 200 times on average. On a single 8-core machine without GPUs, within 4 hours, ReluVal is able to verify a security property that Reluplex deemed inconclusive due to timeout after running for more than 5 days. Our experiments demonstrate that symbolic interval analysis is a promising new direction towards rigorously analyzing different security properties of DNNs.


Words like 'humanity', 'courtesy', 'virtu' and 'pastoral' have traditionally been acknowledged in studies of Book VI of The Faerie Queene as banners, or pre-ordained guidelines. For the reader of Spenser's long narrative poem, to come out of the barren world of Book V and find that, all of a sudden, the effort of interpretation is re-directed toward pastoral expectations supposes somehow a critical relief. In this vein, the assurance about the mechanics of the pastoral world offers an opportunity to re-organize historical materials - the court, Irish world, patronage - but fails to consider the textuality of Book VI beyond the limits of a world of shepherds. Spenser's atavistic return to such world, almost at the end of his literary career, and the discourteous nature of some of the episodes in the so-called 'Book of Courtesy' might, perhaps, indicate that author and work seek to re-define their connections with their circle of readers. The intersection of narrative recognition with the wish for authorial recognition in Book VI dismantles the pretence of harmonious pastoral while showing Spenser's discontent with the transference of his literary merits into the tangible circle of the court.


Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts were detected in feces of dairy calves raised in Rio de Janeiro State and the risk factors involved in the infection were determined. A hundred calves aging up to 12-month-old from 13 dairy farms were sampled. Polymerase chain reaction was used to detect the presence of oocysts. The zoonotic C. parvum species was detected in 45% animals. Statistical risk factors analyses revealed an association between infection and animals raised in technical systems such as the use of milking equipment, milking cooler, and water trough(P<0.05)


Abstract. Evapotranspiration is one of the major components of the water balance and has been identified as a key factor in hydrological modelling. For this reason, several methods have been developed to calculate the reference evapotranspiration (ET0). In modelling reference evapotranspiration it is inevitable that both model and data input will present some uncertainty. Whatever model is used, the errors in the input will propagate towards the output of the calculated ET0. Neglecting the information about estimation uncertainty, however, may lead to improper decision-making and water resources management. One geostatistical approach to spatial analysis is stochastic simulation, which draws alternative and equally probable, realizations of a regionalized variable. Differences between the realizations provide a measure of spatial uncertainty and allows to carry out an error propagation analysis. The aim of this paper is to assess spatial uncertainty of a monthly reference evapotranspiration model resulting from the uncertainties in the input attributes (mainly temperature) at a regional scale. A case study was presented for the Calabria region (southern Italy). Temperature data were jointly simulated by a conditional turning bands simulation with elevation as external drift and 500 realizations were generated. Among the evapotranspiration models, the Hargreaves-Samani model was used. The ET0 was then estimated for each set of the 500 realizations of the input variables, and the ensemble of the model outputs was used to infer the reference evapotranspiration probability distribution function. This approach allowed for the delineation of the areas characterised by greater uncertainty, to improve supplementary sampling strategies and ET0 value predictions.


The present article investigates in laboratory conditions the effect of cyclic freezing and thawing (CFT) on characteristics of the neat bitumen and bitumens modified with different polymers, as well as stone mastic asphalt concretes prepared with the use of the neat and the modified bitumens. Maximal and minimal temperature in cycles of freezing and thawing (FT) is accepted equal to +20 °C and −18 ± 2 °C respectively. Characteristics of low temperature resistance of bitumens (stiffness S and m-value) have been determined on bending beam rheometer at the temperatures of −24 °C, −30 °C, and −36 °C. Strength at direct tension of the stone mastic asphalt concretes has been evaluated in the device TRAVIS (Infratest Ltd., Brackenheim, Germany) at the temperatures of 0 °C, −10 °C, −20 °C, and −30 °C. Resistance of stone mastic asphalt concretes to rutting has been determined on a Hamburg wheel tracking machine. The characteristics of the bitumens have been determined in the initial condition and after 25 and 50 cycles of FT, and the characteristics of stone mastic asphalt concretes, in the initial condition and after 50 cycles of FT. The results obtained experimentally have shown that CFT impacts essentially on the investigated characteristics of bitumens and stone mastic asphalt concretes. Modification with polymers improves the mechanical characteristics of the bitumens and decreases the effect of CFT. It is also found out that when selecting a bitumen for specific climatic conditions it is necessary to take into account both the number of cycles of FT and the characteristic low temperature.


The photocatalytic reduction of CO2 could be achieved over Cu/S-TiO2 under UV and visible light irradiation. S-TiO2 was fabricated via calcination of TiO2 precursor and thiourea, Cu species were plated on the surface of S-TiO2 by electroless plating method. XRD revealed that S-TiO2 was anatase phase, UV-Vis absorption spectrum showed an excellent visible light absorption of Cu/S-TiO2. Cu species plated on S-TiO2 by electroless plating method could facilitate the photogenerated charges capture, separation and transfer. The products of CO2 photocatalytic reduction involved gas phase of methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and liquid phase of methanol, formic acid and acetic acid. The in-situ IR spectra indicated that the OH radical acted as an intermediate participating in the photocatalytic reaction.


The P2Y12 antagonist clopidogrel has a well-established role as an antithrombotic agent in the settings of percutaneous coronary intervention and acute coronary syndromes. However, several challenges remain, including the relatively slow onset of action of clopidogrel and the phenomenon of clopidogrel response variability or "resistance". Novel P2Y12 antagonists, including prasugrel, AZD6140, and cangrelor, have a faster onset of action, as well as more potent, and less variable, inhibition of platelet function ex vivo. Whether this promise will be translated into clinical benefit for patients will be determined by the results of ongoing phase 3 clinical trials. (Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2008;28:000-000.)


Modern machine learning models are complicated. Most of them rely on convoluted latent representations of their input to issue a prediction. To achieve greater transparency than a black-box that connects inputs to predictions, it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of these latent representations. To that aim, we propose SimplEx: a user-centred method that provides example-based explanations with reference to a freely selected set of examples, called the corpus. SimplEx uses the corpus to improve the user's understanding of the latent space with post-hoc explanations answering two questions: (1) Which corpus examples explain the prediction issued for a given test example? (2) What features of these corpus examples are relevant for the model to relate them to the test example? SimplEx provides an answer by reconstructing the test latent representation as a mixture of corpus latent representations. Further, we propose a novel approach, the Integrated Jacobian, that allows SimplEx to make explicit the contribution of each corpus feature in the mixture. Through experiments on tasks ranging from mortality prediction to image classification, we demonstrate that these decompositions are robust and accurate. With illustrative use cases in medicine, we show that SimplEx empowers the user by highlighting relevant patterns in the corpus that explain model representations. Moreover, we demonstrate how the freedom in choosing the corpus allows the user to have personalized explanations in terms of examples that are meaningful for them.


BACKGROUND
Scientific data provide the evidence that secondary K-RAS mutations do not occur during anti-epidermal growth factor receptor therapy in colorectal cancer patients. This multicenter phase II prospective study aims to investigate the activity of a retreatment with a cetuximab-based therapy.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We enrolled 39 irinotecan-refractory patients who had a clinical benefit after a line of cetuximab- plus irinotecan-based therapy and then a progression of disease for which underwent a new line chemotherapy and finally, after a clear new progression of disease, were retreated with the same cetuximab- plus irinotecan-based therapy.

RESULTS
Median number of therapeutic lines before accrual was 4. Median interval time between last cycle of first cetuximab-based therapy and first cycle of the retreatment was 6 months. Overall response rate was 53.8% with 19 partial responses (48.7%) and 2 complete responses (5.1%). Disease stabilization was obtained in 35.9% of patients and progression in four patients (10.2%). Median progression-free survival was 6.6 months. The correlation between skin toxicity during first cetuximab therapy and during cetuximab rechallenge was significant (P = 0.01).

CONCLUSION
Rechallenge with the same cetuximab-based therapy may achieve a new important clinical benefit further delaying the progression of disease and improving the therapeutic options.


Hydrogen storage is one of the attractive research interests in recent years due to the advantages of hydrogen to be used as energy source. The studies on hydrogen storage applications focus mainly on investigation of hydrogen storage capabilities of newly introduced compounds. The present paper aims at characterization of CaXH3 (X: Mn, Fe, or Co) perovskite‐type hydrides for the first time to understand their potential contribution to the hydrogen storage applications. CaXH3 compounds have been investigated by density functional theory studies to reveal their various characteristics and hydrogen storage properties. CaXH3 compounds have been optimized in cubic crystal structure and the lattice constants of studied compounds have been obtained as 3.60, 3.50, and 3.48 Å for X: Mn, Fe, and Co compounds, respectively. The optimized structures have negative formation enthalpies pointing out that studied compounds are thermodynamically stable and could be synthesized experimentally. The gravimetric hydrogen storage densities of X: Mn, Fe, and Co compounds were found in as 3.09, 3.06, and 2.97 wt%, respectively. The revealed values for hydrogen storage densities indicate that CaXH3 compounds may be potential candidates for hydrogen storage applications. Moreover, various mechanical parameters of interest compounds like elastic constants, bulk modulus, and Poisson's ratio have been reported throughout the study. These compounds were found mechanically stable with satisfying Born stability criteria. Further analyses based on Cauchy pressure and Pugh criterion, showed that they have brittleness nature and relatively hard materials. In addition, the electronic characteristics, band structures, and associated partial density of states of CaXH3 hydrides have been revealed. The dynamic stability behavior of them was verified based on the phonon dispersion curves.


Simplified expressions for the parameter controlling the load-point compliance and strain energy release rate were obtained for the edge crack torsion (ECT) specimen for Mode III interlaminar fracture toughness. Data reduction methods for Mode III toughness based on the present analysis are proposed. The effect of the transverse shear modulus G23 on Mode III interlaminar fracture toughness characterization was evaluated. Parameters influenced by the transverse shear modulus were identified. Analytical results indicate that a higher value of G23 results in a lower load point compliance and lower Mode III toughness estimation. The effect of G23 on the Mode III toughness using the ECT specimen is negligible when an appropriate initial delamination length is chosen. A conservative estimation of the Mode III toughness can be obtained by assuming G23 = G12 for any initial delamination length.


Micro-sprinkler Irrigation which emitter are laid in hanging position was one's alternative on water given technology to getting high and uniform irrigation efficiencies. Sprinkler irrigation efficiency determined by the value of a Coefficient of Uniformity (CU) and value of Distribution Uniformity (DU). This research purpose is seeking to locate and test placement pattern and the distance spaces between sprinkler to obtain a better value of irrigation efficiency on each type of micro sprinkler. This research was carried out in September-October 2012, which are located  in the greenhouse of Faculty of Agriculture, Padjadjaran University. The method of performed on this research is descriptive analysis, with a two pattern of the placement that are tested which is a square in a serial manner and square in parallel, with three spaces between the tested sprinklers i.e. 55%, 60% and 65% of the wetting diameter on three kinds of micro sprinkler in three repetitions. This research concluded that the best distance spaces between the sprinkler on hanging position the type of microspin ie equal to 4,8 meters (60 %), on the type of modular the best sprinkler distance spaced amounting to 5,2 meters (65 %) and a square parallel pattern was the best sprinkler placement pattern on both of this type . Whereas on the type of spray jet the best sprinkler spaces are 1,65 meters (55%) and a pattern of a square series is the best pattern on the type of this . the value of a coefficient of uniformity (CU ) and distribution uniformity (DU) there are most properly on the type of microspin with the result of the value of CU amounting to 91,43 % , and the results value of DU by 86,52 % .


: The paper is concerned with principal know-how aspects in production of sour milk food for infants and subjects on diet. Ingredients of dry (Rostok, Rostok 1) and liquid (Kislomolochny, Biolact) mixtures are listed. Increased production of the above food will help to meet the requirement of children and diet-keeping adults in dairy produce in Russia.


Abstract : The soil of fields should be regarded as a composite material for composite soil which contains plant's root. By the effect of root, mechanical properties of the composite soil are different from those of usual soil. Then, it may be necessary to estimate and to recognize qualitative and quantitative influences of this difference i.e. root's effect to the trafficability, especially that of low ground contact pressure tractor such as the crawler type. The mechanical properties of composite soil was discussed as a first step to achieve this purpose in this paper. Some experimental results of paddy field's soil as a kind of composite soils showed that the effect of root appeared evidently in the extension and low stress deformation processes. Because plastic deformation also occurred remarkably in these stress states, the composite soil was classified mechanically into the elasto-plastic body. Based on these results, an elasto-plastic model, which was modified one for soil, was introduced and examined qualitatively its behaviours.


The misuse of antibiotics plays a role in increasing of antimicrobial resistance. The plants, of traditional use, then become an alternative solution to deal with this public health issue. Ocimum gratissimum L. is a widely used plant in Togo for several diseases. The objective of this work was to evaluate the antibacterial activity of the hydro-ethanolic and aqueous extracts of the leaves of this plant, by measuring the diameter of inhibition, from the method of the wells on agar medium and the determination of the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), and the bactericidal (MBC) concentration. For this purpose, clinical strains of Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus were used. The inhibition diameters were between 10.00 ± 0.58 and 14.67 ± 0.58 mm, and the MICs between 6.25 and 25.00 mg/ml. The results obtained show that the hydro-ethanolic and aqueous extracts have been active on all the strains tested with a bactericidal activity on the majority. However, the hydro-ethanolic extract was significantly more effective than the aqueous extract (P = 0.049) on all strains. This work has provided us a scientific basis of the use of O. gratissimum L. in our environment, particularly for the treatment of bacterial infections.

 Key words: Ocimum gratissimum L, hydro-ethanolic and aqueous extracts, antibacterial activity, multi-resistant strains, Togo.


Software architectures shift the focus of developers from lines-of-code to coarser-grained architectural elements and their overall interconnection structure. Architecture description languages (ADL) have been proposed as modeling notations to support architecture-based development. There are, however, many features of the distributed software which make the development methods of distributed software quite different from the traditional ways. Furthermore, the, traditional centralized ways with fixed interfaces are unable to adapt to the flexible requirements of distributed software. Our goal is to provide some solutions to these problems. In this paper, the AG (which stands for "attributed grammar") is first extended to refine the characters of distributed software, and then we define a BNF expression to describe the architecture of a distributed software.


This paper addresses the problem of joint state and boundary condition estimation in linear data assimilation. By approximating the equations of an optimal estimator for linear discrete-time state space systems with unknown inputs, an efficient recursive filtering technique is developed. Unlike existing boundary condition estimation techniques, the filter makes no assumption about the initial value or the time evolution of the boundary conditions. However, the derivation is based on the assumption that measurements at the boundary are available. Furthermore, it is assumed that the spatial form of the boundary condition can be expanded as a linear combination of a limited number of predefined basis vectors. A simulation example on a linear heat conduction model shows the effectiveness of the method.


A review of theoretical articles demonstrates that the theoretical claims of the identity status model have been greatly moderated over the past 30 years. It has been established that the model is not sufficiently specific to qualify as a developmental theory, and a teleological and unidirectional interpretation of identity development has been abandoned. The development does not have a fixed end-target, achievement, and is also not unidirectional, i.e., always proceeding from the low statuses to the high: a reverse developmental pathway is also possible. The moderation outlined here does not mean that a dominant direction in development must be denied, nor does it conflict with the fundamental developmental hypothesis of the identity status model, which (1) assumes a decrease in diffusion and foreclosure and an increase in achievement during the course of development and (2) specifies a pattern of identity status transitions underlying this progressive development. Reviews of empirical studies on identity development support the first assumption of the fundamental developmental hypothesis but not the second, owing to lack of research. An analysis of empirical studies on the relationship between identity status and psychological well-being further specifies the developmental hypothesis. In view of its associated level of psychological well-being, foreclosure emerges as another possible end-point of identity development, in addition to achievement. The developmental hypothesis and the relationship between identity status and psychological well-being are again addressed in a longitudinal study investigating relational and societal identity in a sample of 1538 Dutch adolescents. Four new identity statuses are used in this study: diffusion, closure, moratorium, and achieving commitment. The results support the first assumption of the developmental hypothesis, although not completely. For relational identity we find a decrease in diffusion and an increase in achievement and for societal identity a decrease in diffusion and an increase in closure. This means that a direction can in fact be indicated in the development of identity, but that closure can also serve as the end-point of the development, particularly for societal identity. Moreover, the domain of societal identity in general displays a less pronounced development than relational identity. This difference between relational and societal identity can be interpreted in terms of the distinction between open and closed domains of identity. In order to test the second assumption of the developmental hypothesis, the patterns of identity development were investigated for the first time in identity status research using log-linear analyses. A number of the status transitions proposed by the developmental hypothesis do not occur, and the developmental pathways are also less comprehensive. We found no indications that identity development proceeds faster in a certain period of adolescence than in other periods. However, the stability of relational identity increases, particularly in postadolescence, and a slow development of identity results in a lower level of psychological well-being.


The deformation of a circular, inextensible elastic cell is examined when the cell is placed into two different background potential flows: a uniform stream and a circulatory flow induced by a point vortex located inside the cell. In a circulatory flow a cell may deform into a mode m shape with m-fold rotational symmetry. In a uniform stream, shapes with 2-fold rotational symmetry tend to be selected. In a weak stream a cell deforms linearly into an ellipse with either its major or its minor axis aligned with the oncoming flow. This marks an interesting difference with a bubble with constant surface tension in a uniform stream, which can only deform into a mode 2 shape with its major axis perpendicular to the stream (Vanden-Broeck & Keller 1980b). In general, as the strength of the uniform stream is increased from zero, solutions emerge continuously from the cell configurations in quiescent fluid found by Flaherty et al. (1972). A richly-populated solution space is described with multiple solution branches which either terminate when a cell reaches a state with a point of self-contact or loop round to continuously connect two different possible cell states under identical conditions in the absence of flow.


Complex shapes from chemical lithography Lithographic printing of semi-conductors builds up complex patterns one layer at a time. The process involves multiple steps to mask, print, and etch each layer. Luo et al. tweaked the same process used to grow silicon nanowires to pattern them into complex three-dimensional (3D) shapes. Gold acted as a catalyst to grow and elongate silicon nanowires from the vapor phase. Varying the pressure of the growth process altered the rate of gold diffusion along the surface of the wire. Upon etching the wires, the non-uniform coating of gold acted as a lithographic mask. The authors were thus able to make complex-shaped silicon spicules with a series of ridges and notches by strictly chemical means. Science, this issue p. 1451 Diffusively patterned gold atoms are coated on silicon as a way to chemically pattern complex shapes. Three-dimensional (3D) mesostructured semiconductors show promising properties and applications; however, to date, few methods exist to synthesize or fabricate such materials. Metal can diffuse along semiconductor surfaces, and even trace amounts can change the surface behavior. We exploited the phenomena for 3D mesoscale lithography, by showing one example where iterated deposition-diffusion-incorporation of gold over silicon nanowires forms etchant-resistant patterns. This process is facet-selective, producing mesostructured silicon spicules with skeletonlike morphology, 3D tectonic motifs, and reduced symmetries. Atom-probe tomography, coupled with other quantitative measurements, indicates the existence and the role of individual gold atoms in forming 3D lithographic resists. Compared to other more uniform silicon structures, the anisotropic spicule requires greater force for detachment from collagen hydrogels, suggesting enhanced interfacial interactions at the mesoscale.