Ageing is associated with differences in visual function which can be observed, for example, as a decline in performance on face and object processing tasks. One of the most prominent accounts of age-related decrement in perceptual and cognitive tasks alike is that of a reduction in information processing speed (Salthouse, Psychological Review 1996, 103:403). Differences in myelin integrity in some parts of the cortex, as well as in neuronal responsivity are physiologically plausible as the origins of the age- related slowing-down of information processing. However, little research to date has directly investigated age-related slowing-down of visual information processing in humans. Previously, Rousselet et al. (Frontiers in Psychology 2010, 1:19) reported a 1ms/year delay in face visual processing speed in a sample of 62 subjects aged ~20-80, using event-related potentials (ERPs). This result was replicated in another 59 subjects, and was independent of stimulus luminance and senile miosis (Bieniek et al. Frontiers in Psychology 2013, 4:268). To go beyond differences in average brain activity and interpret previous findings, in the first study (Chapter 2) we investigated what information is coded by early face ERPs in younger and older observers. In a detection task, young and older observers each categorized 2,200 pictures of faces and noise textures revealed through Gaussian apertures ("Bubbles"). Using reverse correlation and Mutual Information (MI), we found that the presence of the left eye elicited fastest detection in both age groups. Older observers relied more on the eyes to be accurate, suggesting a strategy difference between groups. In both age groups, the presence of the eye contralateral to the recording electrode modulated single-trial ERPs at lateral-occipital electrodes, but this association was weaker in older observers and delayed by about 40 ms. We also observed a differentiated coding of the eyes across groups: in younger observers, both the N170 latency and amplitude coded the contralateral eye, whereas it was only the N170 amplitude in older adults. The latency modulation in younger adults was also higher in the right than in the left hemisphere, but very similar across hemispheres in older adults. Our results suggest that face detection in ageing is associated with delayed and weaker processing of the same face features, and point to potential coding differences. On the notion that incomplete or occluded stimuli (such as Bubbled images) might differentially affect older adults' ability to perform a perceptual task, in the second study (Chapter 3) we sought to understand whether the age-related differences in eye sensitivity were preserved in a face context. Two groups of observers, young and older, performed a face detection task in which the visibility of the eye region was modulated in a parametric manner by adding phase noise. This way, we could investigate the modulation of ERPs by increasing information available in the eye region, when the face context was preserved (or absent – in control conditions). In line with behavioural results reported in Chapter 2, modulating the visibility of the left eye had a greater effect on reaction times across older participants, and this modulation increased with decreasing face context information in older adults. Contralateral eye sensitivity was weaker than that reported in Chapter 2 and did not differ between young and older observers, suggesting that coding of the eye by the N170 acts differently when the eye is revealed through Bubble masks and when it is presented in the face context. In Chapter 4, we investigated potential origins of the large N170 responses to textures observed in a sample of older participants before (Rousselet et al. BMC Neuroscience 2009, 10:114), and quantified age-related delays in visual processing speed of stimuli other than faces: houses and letters. Two groups of participants performed three simple detection tasks: face detection, house detection, and letter detection. Perceiving textures in the context of a face detection task, but not house detection or letter detection, influenced ERP responses to textures in older participants only to a small extent and after 200 ms post- stimulus, suggesting that the large N170 responses to textures are unlikely due to a top- down influence of the task at hand. Furthermore, visual processing speed of faces, houses and letters was delayed to a smaller extent than that predicted by the original study and depended on the nature of categorical comparisons made. Overall, our results fill the big gap in the literature concerned with age-related slowing of information processing: using Bubbles, we have presented direct evidence that processing of the same facial information is slower (and weaker) in ageing. However, quantifying visual processing speed using categorical designs yielded mixed evidence for the theory of slower information processing in ageing, pointing to the need for carefully designed visual stimuli in ageing research, and for careful selection of control stimuli for comparisons.


Abstract. In September 2009, Tropical Storm Ketsana (local name: TS Ondoy) hit the Manila metropolitan area (Metro Manila) and brought an anomalous volume of rain that exceeded the Philippines' forty-year meteorological record. The storm caused exceptionally high and extensive flooding. Part of this study was a survey conducted along the stretch of the Marikina River, one of the major rivers that flooded. Post-event resident interviews were used to reconstruct the flooding in the absence of stream gauge data. Hydraulic and hydrologic modeling were carried out to understand the mechanism that brought the flood. Peak floods occurred at different hours along the river resulting from the transmission of water from the main watershed to the downstream areas. Modeled peak flood and flood timing coincided well with actual observations except for downstream stations where actual peak floods were observed to have occurred at a later time. Compounding factors such as other flood sources and stream backflow could have caused this discrepancy. Nevertheless, prediction of flood heights and the use of the known time lag between the peak rainfall and the peak runoff could be utilized to issue timely flood forecasts to allow people to prepare for future flooding.


Recently, machine learning algorithms using quantum computers have been actively developed. Among them, the support vector machine (SVM) specialized for the classification problem is one of the algorithms that are attracting the most attention for improving the performance by the quantum computer. In this study, we propose an SVM that classifies test data according to energy level by using time evolution calculation of Ising model. Furthermore, we propose a method to determine the support vector by applying the concept of DBSCAN and Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm and examining the mixture of surrounding data classes. We show that our algorithm can be classified regardless of the difference in the dimensions of the teacher data, and also the difference between linear and nonlinear data.


The ,j gene of ShigeUla dysenteriae 1 and the rfii genes of Escherichia coli K-12 and SalmoneUla typhimurium LT2 have been studied to determine their relationship to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) core heterogeneity and their role in the attachment of 0 antigen to LPS. It has been inferred from the nucleotide sequence that the up gene encodes a protein of 41,864 Da which has a structure similar to that of RfaG protein. Expression of this gene in E. coli K-12 results in the loss of one of the three bands seen in gel analysis of the LPS and in the appearance of a new, more slowly migrating band. This is consistent with the hypothesis that Rfp is a sugar transferase which modifies a subset of core molecules so that they become substrates for attachment of S. dysenteriae 0 antigen. A shift in gel migration of the bands carrying S. dysenteriae 0 antigen and disappearance of the Rfp-modified band in strains producing 0 antigen suggest that the core may be trimmed or modified further before attachment of 0 antigen. Mutation of rfiaL results in a loss of the rough LPS band which appears to be modified by Rfp and prevents the appearance of the Rfp-modified band. Thus, RfaL protein is involved in core modification and is more than just a component of the 0-antigen ligase. The products of rfaK and rfaQ also appear to be involved in modification of the core prior to attachment of 0 antigen, and the sites of raK modification are different in E. coli K-12 and S. typhimurium. In contrast, mutations in rfaS and raZ result in changes in the LPS core but do not affect the attachment of 0 antigen. We propose that these genes are involved in an alternative pathway for the synthesis of rough LPS species which are similar to lipooligosaccharides of other species and which are not substrates for 0-antigen attachment. All of these studies indicate that the apparent heterogeneity of E. coli K-12 LPS observed on gels is not an artifact but instead a reflection of functional differences among LPS species.


Abstract. – OBJECTIVE: In this study, we studied the expression profile of SOX12 gene in different pathological stages of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and explored the possible downstream genes related to its regulation of HCC invasion and migration. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Bioinformatic data mining was performed in liver cancer cohort in TCGA. HepG2 cells were used as in vitro cell model to assess the effect of SOX12 on CDK4 and IGF2BP1 expression. The association between the expression of SOX12, CDK4 or IGF2BP1 and survival time in HCC patients was also assessed based on the data in TCGA. RESULTS: The regional lymph node metastasis (N1) and distant metastasis (M1) cases had significantly increased SOX12 expression than the lymph node negative (N0) and distant metastasis negative (M0) cases respectively. CDK4 and IGF2BP1 were among the top 20 SOX12 co-upregulated genes in HCC, which have well characterized enhancing the effect on HCC cell growth, invasion, and metastasis. In HepG2 cells, knockdown of SOX12 reduced IGF2BP1 and CDK4 expression, while enforced SOX12 expression significantly enhanced their expression. Low SOX12 or CDK4 expression was associated with significantly better 3-year survival and better 5-year survival. Low IGF2BP1 expression was associated with significantly better 3-year survival in HCC patients. CONCLUSIONS: SOX12 upregulation is associated with regional and distant metastasis of HCC. SOX12 can increase the expression of CDK4 and IGF2BP1, which confer malignant phenotypes to HCC. The expression of SOX12, IGF2BP1 or CDK4 might be potential clinical prognostic markers for HCC.


This paper considers the problem of joint detection in the uplink of cellular multiaccess networks with base-station cooperation. Distributed multiuser detection algorithms with local passing among neighbor base stations are proposed and compared in terms of computational complexity required in the base stations, the amount of serial communications among them, error rate performance, and convergence speed. The algorithms based on the belief propagation algorithm result in complexity and delay per base station which do not grow as the network size increases. In addition, it is observed that these algorithms have near single user error rate performance for the fading channels considered. Thus it is illustrated that using the belief propagation algorithm, it is possible to use non-orthogonal signaling and still achieve near single user performance with moderate computational complexity and a limited amount of message passing between base stations of adjacent cells.


A simple and inexpensive (low-power and low-bandwidth) modification is made to a conventional off-the-shelf color video camera, from which we recover multiple color frames for each of the original measured frames, and each of the recovered frames can be focused at a different depth. The recovery of multiple frames for each measured frame is made possible via high-speed coding, manifested via translation of a single coded aperture, the inexpensive translation is constituted by mounting the binary code on a piezoelectric device. To simultaneously recover depth information, a liquid lens is modulated at high speed, via a variable voltage. Consequently, during the aforementioned coding process, the liquid lens allows the camera to sweep the focus through multiple depths. In addition to designing and implementing the camera, fast recovery is achieved by an anytime algorithm exploiting the group-sparsity of wavelet/DCT coefficients.


The ATLAS Pixel Detector is the innermost detector of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The detector provides hermetic cov-erage with three cylindrical layers and three layers of pixel detectors located in forward and backward direction. It consists of approximately 80 million pixels that are individually read out via chips bump-bonded to 1744 n + -in-n silicon substrates. In this talk, results from the successful operation of the Pixel Detector at the LHC and its status after three years of operation will be presented, including monitoring, calibration procedures, timing optimization and detector performance. The record breaking instantaneous luminosities of 7 . 7 · 10 33 cm − 2 s − 1 recently surpassed at the Large Hadron Collider generate a rapidly increasing particle fluence in the ATLAS Pixel Detector. As the radia- tion dose accumulates, the first effects of radiation damage are now observable in the silicon sensors. A regular monitoring program has been conducted and reveals an increase in the silicon leakage current, which is found to be corre-lated with the rising radiation dose recorded by independent sensors within the inner detector volume. In the longer-term crystal defect formation in the silicon bulk is expected to alter the effective doping concentration, producing type-inversion and ultimately an increase of the voltage required to fully deplete the sensor. The fourth pixel layer at the radius of 3 . 5cm will be added during the long shutdown 2013-2014 together with the replacement of pixel services.


We derive new bounds of fewnomial type for the number of real solutions to systems of polynomials that have structure intermediate between fewnomials and generic (dense) polynomials. This uses a modified version of Gale duality for polynomial systems. We also use stratified Morse theory to bound the total Betti number of a hypersurface defined by such a dense fewnomial. These bounds contain and generalize previous bounds for ordinary fewnomials obtained by Bates, Bertrand, Bihan, and Sottile.


An Eulerian-Lagrangian computational model for simulations of gas-liquid-solid flows in three-phase slurry reactors is developed. In this approach, the liquid flow is modeled using a volume-averaged system of governing equations, whereas motions of bubbles and particles are evaluated by Lagrangian trajectory analysis procedure. It is assumed that the bubbles remain spherical and their shape variations are neglected. The two-way interactions between bubble-liquid and particle-liquid are included in the analysis. The discrete phase equations include drag, lift, buoyancy, and virtual mass forces. Particle-particle interactions and bubble-bubble interactions are accounted for by the hard sphere model approach. The bubble coalescence is also included in the model. The predicted results are compared with the experimental data, and good agreement is obtained. The transient flow characteristics of the three-phase flow are studied and the effects of bubble size on variation of flow characteristics are discussed. The simulations show that the transient characteristics of the three-phase flow in a column are dominated by time-dependent staggered vortices. The bubble plume moves along the S-shape path and exhibits an oscillatory behavior. While particles are mainly located outside the vortices, some bubbles and particles are retained in the vortices. Bubble upward velocities are much larger than both liquid and particle velocities. In the lower part of the column, particle upward velocities are slightly smaller than the liquid velocities, while in the upper part of the column, particle upward velocities are slightly larger. The bubble size significantly affects the characteristics of the three-phase flows and flows with larger bubbles appear to evolve faster.© 2005 ASME


Little research currently examines language instruction educational programs (LIEPs) in states with a more recent growth of the Latino English learner population. To meet this need, the authors examined the content each of the state LIEPs, focusing chiefly on the extent to which the types of language support, as well as the stipulations associated with them, are made explicit. Using US Census data from 1970 and 2009, the authors assessed LIEPs in the context of Latino population patterns and examined the relationship between the degree to which state LIEPs emphasize bilingual education and fourth-grade Latino English learners' achievement patterns in reading, mathematics, and science achievement on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. Latino English learners in states with a higher proportion of Latinos tend to have higher achievement outcomes when policies emphasize bilingual education, but these states also have a longer history of Latino presence. Implications for high-growth states are discussed.


This paper examines the recent phenomenon of social impact bonds as a means of financing public programmes, particularly the implications of this innovation for accounting and accountability. Social impact bonds are an attempt to recruit private sector funds to pay for social programmes. These funds are structured as a bond, with a return on investment paid for by the state, but conditional on the programme attaining certain specified performance goals. Typically, if these goals are not met, the state does not pay the bond interest and the amount invested is lost. This financial innovation carries with it numerous assumptions about the role of the state, and can be regarded as a new attempt to manage the roles of the state, the private sector, and the charitable sector under neoliberalism. The mechanism of social impact bonds explicitly relies on performance measurement and financial incentives to arrange and demonstrate accountability for social outcomes. As such, it is a potentially powerful and potentially problematic use of accounting to enact government policy. This paper examines a specific, early case in which St. Mungo's, a London-based charitable foundation, has undertaken to alleviate homelessness in the United Kingdom. The case is interesting because the problem of homelessness is traditionally regarded as somewhat intransigent, so the success of the new financing initiative relies on the ability of private finance to increase the incentives for innovation within the charitable sector, and the ability of the charitable sector to demonstrate their performance through accounting measures.


Reciprocating devices are key features in macroscopic machines. We have adapted the DNA PX-JX(2) device to a reciprocal format. The PX-JX(2) device is a robust sequence-dependent nanomachine, whose state is established by a pair of control strands that set it to be either in the PX state or in the JX(2) state. The two states differ by a half-turn rotation between their ends. Here we report the construction of a pair of reciprocal PX-JX(2) devices, wherein the control strands leading to the PX state in one device lead to the JX(2) state in the other device and vice versa. The formation, transformation, and reciprocal motions of these two device systems are confirmed using gel electrophoresis and atomic force microscopy. This system is likely to be of use for molecular robotic applications where reciprocal motions are of value in addition its inherent contribution to molecular choreography and molecular aesthetics.


In the pre-specified peer model for key agreement, it is assumed that a party knows the identifier of its intended communicating peer when it commences a protocol run. On the other hand, a party in the post-specified peer model for key agreement does not know the identifier of its communicating peer at the outset, but learns the identifier during the protocol run. In this paper we compare the security assurances provided by the Canetti-Krawczyk security definitions for key agreement in the pre- and post-specified peer models. We give examples of protocols that are secure in one model but insecure in the other. We also enhance the Canetti-Krawczyk security models and definitions to encompass a class of protocols that are executable and secure in both the pre- and post-specified peer models.


Internal ion sources are widely adopted in commercial cyclotrons used for short-life isotopes production. Without beam manipulation provided by the external beam injection line, the central region of this type of cyclotron is more sensitive and should be carefully designed. A design study and beam dynamics simulation for the central region of a 10 MeV compact cyclotron is presented. The OPERA3D/TOSCA code was used to calculate the electric field from a parameterized three dimensional (3D) central region model. With iterative structure optimizations of the central region, the beam centering and vertical focusing is well controlled, and the RF phase acceptance is around 25°. A c++ code for beam simulation in the central region was developed and tested.


Both classical and critical studies of warfare often comment on the relationship between war and excess. However, even in richly theoretical work, this connection is unanalyzed. This article focuses on the link between excess and war, and seeks to deepen our understanding of why excess reappears so frequently in the study of armed conflict and security studies. Specifically, the article turns to the work of Georges Bataille, an overlooked figure in the critical tradition, who extensively theorized linkages between excess and war. In Bataille's thought, excess is a key term for explicating the design, mobilization, and transformation of war. Moreover, Bataille sees the exposure to excess as playing a key part in social attachments to violence and armed conflict. The article unpacks how Bataille theorizes excess and applies his insights to the context of precision warfare. Using the case of the accident in the era of precision war, it reveals how Bataille anticipates many of the dynamics that structure late warfare through his understanding of excess. The article concludes by describing how Bataille's vision of excess would challenge critical war and security studies literatures in relation to the problems of war experience, relationships to death, and scholarship.


The third age universities declare as objectives to promote health, psychological and social well-being and the elderly citizenship. The present study aimed to analyze the reasons that led elderly women to participate of the Third Age University (UNITI/UFRGS) and the changes caused by their participation. The sample consisted of 103 elderly women that answered questions about sociodemographic, their reasons to participate of UNITI and the changes caused by their participation. The sampling process used was the convenience method. The results showed that the reasons that led elderly women to participate of the Third Age University were the search for new knowledge, new friendships, a new sense of life, occupation of their free time and leisure. The participation in this program helped them to reduce the feeling of sadness and increase their self-esteem. They also felt happier and found a new meaning for their lives. The study indicates that the universities of the third age come positively contributing for the well-being of elderly people, acting as a possible predictor of a well-succeeded aging.


The ability to build solid and coherent software from spontaneous, sudden and evanescent involvement is viewed as an enigma by sociologists and economists. The internal heterogeneity of project contributors questions the functioning of collective action: how can commitments that are so dissimilar be put together? Our objective is to consider FLOSS communities as going concerns which necessitate a minimum of order and common, shared, social rules to function. Through an in-depth and diachronic analysis of the Spip project, we present two classical modes of social regulation: a control regulation centred on the product and an autonomous regulation reflecting the differentiated commitments. Our data shows that the meaning, value and legitimacy of contributors' involvements are defined and rated more collectively, through exchanges, judgments, and evaluations. A third regulation mode, called distributed community regulation and aimed at creating and transforming shared rules that produces recognition and stratification, is then presented.


Computer aided diagnostics systems are widely used for diagnosis of skin lesions. This paper discusses a Multi Parameter Extraction and Classification System ( ����� ) to aimed to enable early detection of skin cancer melanoma. The ������adopts a supervised machine learning algorithm for classification. The dermoscopic images are represented by extensive parameter sets extracted using a six phase approach. The paper discusses the operation of the ����� in the training and testing phase. The adoption of the Multilayer Feed Forward Neural Network ( ���� ) classifier is justified, its proficiency in accurately diagnosing and classifying early signs of skin cancer melanoma in dermoscopic images of skin lesions is proved through the experimental results discussed in the manuscript.


Democracy is explicitly engaged in two aspects of the Canadian refugee determination process: state protection findings and Designated Country of Origin determinations. Democracy is also implicitly engaged in the selection of countries as so-called "safe countries." This article reviews the literature on measuring the level of democracy in a given state, and the empirical evidence linking this level to a state's willingness and ability to provide adequate protection to its citizens. The article argues that the Federal Court of Appeal was misguided in taking judicial notice of a correlation between the level of democracy in a given state and its ability to provide state protection. The article also reviews and questions the use of "democratic governance" as a factor in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada's Designated Country of Origin regime, as well as the implicit use of democracy in designating the United States as a "safe" country under the Safe Third Country Agreement. The article contends that the time has come to reconsider how democracy measurements are used in Canada's refugee determination process, and advocates for an individualized approach to state protection determinations: one that eschews the alternative fact presumption of a connection between democracy and protection, and instead focuses on the protective mechanisms available to a refugee claimant based on their unique circumstances.


Within the last decade, the use of wireless technologies has become more prevalent. Wireless networks have flexible architectures with data transferred via radio waves and can be divided into two categories; infrastructure-based wireless networks and mobile ad hoc network. The mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is an autonomous system which can be dynamically built without preexisting infrastructure or a trusted third party (TTP). Due to these infrastructure-less and self-organized characteristics, MANET encounters different problems from infrastructure-based wired network, such as key management, power shortage, and security issues. This paper will further divide MANETs into pure ad hoc networks which do not contain a TTP and organized ad hoc networks which contain an offline TTP, and then focus on the security issues especially the non-repudiation issue between two mobile nodes which communicate in pure ad hoc networks.


Kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) provides a concise set of basis vectors which capture non-linear structures within large data sets, and is a central tool in data analysis and learning. To allow for non-linear relations, typically a full $n \times n$ kernel matrix is constructed over $n$ data points, but this requires too much space and time for large values of $n$. Techniques such as the Nystr\"om method and random feature maps can help towards this goal, but they do not explicitly maintain the basis vectors in a stream and take more space than desired. We propose a new approach for streaming KPCA which maintains a small set of basis elements in a stream, requiring space only logarithmic in $n$, and also improves the dependence on the error parameter. Our technique combines together random feature maps with recent advances in matrix sketching, it has guaranteed spectral norm error bounds with respect to the original kernel matrix, and it compares favorably in practice to state-of-the-art approaches.


Approximate computing is an emerging area for trading off the accuracy of an application for improved performance, lower energy costs, and tolerance to unreliable hardware. However, care has to be taken to ensure that the approximations do not cause significant divergence from the reference implementation. Previous research has proposed various metrics to guarantee several relaxed notions of safety for the design and verification of such approximate applications. However, current approximation verification approaches often lack in either precision or automation. On one end of the spectrum, type-based approaches lack precision, while on the other, proofs in interactive theorem provers require significant manual effort. In this work, we apply automated differential program verification (as implemented in SymDiff) for reasoning about approximations. We show that mutual summaries naturally express many relaxed specifications for approximations, and SMT-based checking and invariant inference can substantially automate the verification of such specifications. We demonstrate that the framework significantly improves automation compared to previous work on using Coq. Our results indicate the feasibility of applying automated verification to the domain of approximate computing in a cost-effective manner.


Aim: The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence, approach and behavior towards medication storage & self-medication practice amongst the youth in Karnataka, India. Methodology: A pre-cross sectional survey was conducted, administering a pre-piloted questionnaire among the target population. Sample size of 150 was analyzed using the percentage method. Results: Out of 150 respondents, 84.62% were found to store medications in their rooms. The prevalence of self-medication was 88.6%. The most common reasons for self-medication were: respondents' knowledge about the illness & its treatment (47.06%), the time saving factor (44.12%), and prescriber's ineffective medications (8.82%). Commonly stored medications included analgesics/anti-pyretic (28.07%) and anti-infectives (17.54%). Others included were ENT drugs (14%), Gastrointestinal (GIT) drugs (14%), skin products (6%), Vitamins (8%), ayurvedic medicines (10%), while remaining were categorized as miscellaneous (15.33%). Other considered parameters include: awareness about proper use & expiry dates, and storage & disposal condition. It was concluded that medication storage and self medication were highly prevalent among students.
Discussion: There is an immediate need to educate people regarding the safe use of drugs. Strict regulatory policies need to be implemented on unrestricted availability of the drugs to ensure safety.


The nature of X-shaped sources is a matter of considerable debate: it has even been proposed that they provide evidence for black hole mergers$ / $spin reorientation, and therefore constrain the rate of strong gravitational wave events (Merritt&Ekers 2002). Based on morphological and spectral characteristics of these sources, currently a strong contender to explain the nature of these sources is the `alternative' model of Lal&Rao (2007), in which these sources consist of two pairs of jets, which are associated with two unresolved AGNs. Detailed morphological and spectral results on milliarcsecond-scales (mas) provide a crucial test of this model, and hence these sources are excellent candidates to study on mas; {\it i.e.}, to detect he presence/absence of double nuclei/AGNs, signs of helical/disrupted jets, thereby, to investigate spatially resolved/unresolved binary AGN systems and providing clues to understanding the physics of merging of AGNs on mas. We conducted a systematic study of a large sample of known X-shaped, comparison FR II radio galaxies, and newly discovered X-shaped candidate sources using Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope and Very Large Array at several radio frequencies. In our new observations of `comparison' FR II radio galaxies we find that almost all of our targets show standard spectral steepening as a function of distance from the hotspot. However, one source, 3C 321, has a low-surface-brightness extension that shows a flatter spectral index than the high-surface-brightness hotspots$ / $lobes, as found in `known' X-shaped sources.


In search of autoantigen-presenting cells that prime the pathogenic autoantibody-inducing Th cells of lupus, we found that CD41+CD151+ cells among Lineage– (Lin–) CD117+ (c-Kit+) CX3CR1– splenocytes depleted of known APCs were most proficient in presenting nuclear autoantigens from apoptotic cells to induce selectively an autoimmune Th17 response in different lupus-prone mouse strains. The new APCs have properties resembling megakaryocyte and/or bipotent megakaryocyte/erythroid progenitors of bone marrow, hence they are referred to as MM cells in this study. The MM cells produce requisite cytokines, but they require contact for optimal Th17 induction upon nucleosome feeding, and can induce Th17 only before undergoing differentiation to become c-Kit–CD41+ cells. The MM cells expand up to 10-fold in peripheral blood of lupus patients and 49-fold in spleens of lupus mice preceding disease activity; they accelerate lupus in vivo and break tolerance in normal mice, inducing autoimmune Th17 cells. MM cells also cause Th17 skewing to foreign Ag in normal mice without Th17-polarizing culture conditions. Several molecules in MM cells are targets for blocking of autoimmunization. This study advances our understanding of lupus pathogenesis and Th17 differentiation biology by characterizing a novel category of APC.


Across six studies, a female mannequin is demonstrated to have negative implications for both male and female consumers low in appearance self-esteem. In particular, consumers who are lower in appearance self-esteem evaluate a product displayed by a mannequin more negatively as compared with consumers higher in appearance self-esteem. As mannequins signal the normative standard of beauty and consumers with low self-esteem in regard to their appearance believe they fail to meet this standard, these consumers become threatened by the beauty standard when exposed to a mannequin and in response denigrate the product the mannequin is displaying. We provide evidence for the underlying process in three ways: 1) through the finding that the effect for male and female consumers with low appearance self-esteem arises only when the mannequin is displaying an appearance-related product, 2) through mediation analysis demonstrating that the mannequin conveys society's standard of beauty and that this negatively impacts product evaluations, and 3) through mitigation of the effect by removing the presence of threat via a self-affirmation task or decreasing the mannequin's beauty (e.g., marking its face, removing its hair, or removing its head). Multiple avenues for future research are forwarded.


In this study, the combined effect of the organic modifier content and mobile phase pH has been used to predict the chromatographic behavior of methicillin, oxacillin, nafcillin, cloxacilin and dicloxacillin. The optimum separation condition of these drugs in acetonitrilewater binary mixture was determined from the mobile phase pH dependence of their retention factor. A Synergy Fusion-RP C18 analytical column (150 mm x 4.6 mm I.D., 4 μm) was preferred to carry out the developed method. Chromatographic measurements were done at 30C with an eluent flow rate of 1 mL min. In order to validate the optimized conditions, these drugs were applied successfully in spiked samples of human urine. Valsartan was chosen as an internal standard. The described method was linear over a concentration range of 2-32 μg mL and 3-48 μg mL for the assay of methicillin, nafcillin, dicloxacillin and oxacillin, cloxacillin respectively. Good linear relationships over the investigated concentration ranges were observed with values of correlation coefficient higher than 0.999 for all of the drugs. The intra-day and inter-day precisions of this method were evaluated with RSD (%) values less than 0,561 and 1,622%, respectively. Optimized assay method was validated according to United States Pharmacopeia (USP) guidelines to confirm linearity, accuracy and precision.


Examples of the do's and don'ts of data presentation Explanations of confusing statistical terminology Templates to get started and avoid writers' block Tips for creating simple graphics and tables Help for those who are not fluent in English Suggestions about getting the most from a poster session Checklists for each section of a manuscript or presentation Advice about authorship and responding to reviewers' comments


In a 21st-century super-diverse world, young children are likely to speak different first languages which are not the majority language of society. For some children, preschool is one of the few environments where they experience this majority language. A pressing issue encountered by preschool teachers is how to communicate with these children and how to help these children acquire the majority language they need for a successful school entry. Building a repertoire of words in the majority language is one of the first steps. Strategies that monolingual children use to map words to their referents in the environment have been of interest for 60 years. However, less is known about the early development of word learning in bilingual children. This thesis, therefore, seeks to understand how monolingual and bilingual children utilise different strategies to learn words using experimental methods and look at how preschool teachers communicate with children in a preschool setting via naturalistic observation. The ultimate goal of this thesis is to identify and develop strategies that preschool teachers can use to foster children's development of the majority language. In two experimental studies, this thesis examined (1) how monolingual and bilingual preschoolers learn words from speakers of different languages through mutual exclusivity and the acceptance of lexical overlap, and (2) whether and how socio-pragmatic cues influence monolingual and bilingual language learners' learning of one-to-one and two-to-one word-object mappings through cross-situational statistics. In two observational studies, this thesis looked into whether and how preschool teachers in a UK setting communicated differently with monolingual preschoolers and preschoolers learning English as an additional language (EAL). The thesis also set out to identify the linguistic features of preschool talk that could predict preschoolers', especially EAL children's, language development. The findings of the experimental studies show a complex interaction between the different word-learning strategies and prior language experience, and the results suggest that word-learning strategies available to monolingual and bilingual learners are the same but used differently. The findings of the observational studies show that preschool teacher talk to EAL children, in terms of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity, affects the children's development of English, suggesting that preschool teachers' language use could scaffold and support EAL children's acquisition of English. The findings of this thesis suggest that matching language input to EAL children's English level and setting up learning situations that closely mimic those of bilingual word learning may be helpful strategies for preschool teachers to support EAL children's English development.


A great deal of controversy still persists as to the method of choice in treatment of shaft fractures of the humerus. This, no doubt, proves that the ideal form of management still has to be found. In order to bring systems of treatment up to date and to better our results at Beekman-Downtown Hospital, we have reviewed our methods of care in 50 consecutive unselected fractures of the shaft of the humerus from 1947 through 1957. This study involved 49 cases, since 2 fractures at different times occurred in the same humerus of a patient who had Paget's disease. The treatment was carried out by different attending staff surgeons,supervising various surgical residents, and took place during the antibiotic era. Incidence and Cause The incidence as to sex, age, and occupation is shown in Table 1. The male to female ratio was 2 to 1. The majority of the fractures


Incremental forming is a complex forming process with continuously local cumulative deformation taking place during its process, and springback that forming quality affected by would occur. The springback evaluation method based on forming error compensation also was proposed, which it can be defined as the difference between theory and the actual amount of compensation along the measured direction. According to forming error compensation evaluation method, experiments was designed and implemented. And from the results that obtained it can be show, the magnitude of springback average (δE) of formed parts was very small, and the forming precision could be significantly improved by adopting compensation method. Based on double tensile stress state in the main deformation area, a hypothesis that there is little springback be arisen by bending behavior on the formed parts that was proposed. Keywords—Sheet metal, incremental forming, springback, forming error compensation, geometric accuracy


Machine translation tools are widely used by companies. The tools are on an increasing demand. Translators need to equip themselves with the knowledge and the mastering of these tools. This study explores two machine translation tools involved in website localization. These tools are Alchemy Catalyst and Trados Tageditor. The study adopts an evaluative methodology to shed light on the intricacies and technicalities of these two localization tools. It discusses some of the cultural issues that localizers come across in the process of localization. In addition, it delves into the technical issues, mainly focusing on localizing into Arabic with a special focus on string, text, lexis, and orthography. The study concludes that the process of localization requires teamwork and involvement of computer engineers, and both localization tools are valuable in achieving a localization task.


Editor's column
 Digitalization and unconventionals production are transforming the oil and gas industry. Shale oil output now accounts for the lion's share of world production increases and has reshaped global energy markets and trading. Partly in response to the severe price downturn that began in 2014, companies are adopting the use of advanced data analytics, machine learning, visualization, and artificial intelligence to reduce costs and to make operations more productive and efficient.
 SPE's mission is to give its members the most current information related to key industry topics and develop programs and publications that are of most relevance to petroleum professionals, offering valuable insight into current and future ways of doing business. A key part of the new SPE Strategic Plan, adopted earlier this year, is to promote expertise in new areas, as well as better understanding of new digital technologies, through increased content offerings. To support this effort, SPE is launching a new online publication and newsletter on data science and digital engineering and a new monthly newsletter on the unconventionals oil and gas sector. The new publication and newsletters are designed to give members in-depth information and insight into these increasingly important sectors, in addition to the coverage these topics receive in SPE's current publications.
 The JPT Unconventional Insights newsletter debuted in November, containing staff-written and curated content (items of interest from non-SPE sources), as well as other information such as key insights from recent technical papers that caught the eye of subject matter experts. The Data Science and Digital Engineering publication and accompanying newsletter will debut in the first quarter of 2019. To receive the newsletters, members and nonmembers must sign up on the SPE preferences page located at www.spe.org/en/preferences/email_preferences.
 Both the unconventionals and digital science topics are likely to dominate industry discussion for the foreseeable future. October marked the 10th anniversary of the first completed horizontal well in the Eagle Ford Shale formation in south Texas. That discovery helped propel a boom over the next several years that turned the region into one of the world's most active oil plays, and was further realization that shale development had even greater potential than originally thought. Now, with Permian Basin output growing so fast that it has outstripped transportation capacity, and huge new plays coming on line in Argentina and China, the shale sector will continue to play a major role in upstream oil and gas for years to come.
 The International Energy Agency reported last month that US crude oil production is expanding at an unprecedented rate thanks to shale. The US is expected to account for 75% of the world's oil production gains to 2025, with an increase of 5 million B/D during the period to 18.5 million B/D, according to the organization's World Energy Outlook 2018. Tight oil production alone will rise to 9.2 million B/D.
 Integrating digitalization and data science into upstream operations has emerged as a strategic priority and will have an inevitable impact on the industry. As consultancy Wood Mackenzie noted in a recent report: "Digitalization is happening. In our view, it is not a choice to do it or not; it is now about the speed and depth of adoption. …Cloud computing, automation and robotics, blockchain, 3D printing, machine learning, and the Internet of Things are all playing increasingly large roles, serving as a platform for data, analytics, and the connectivity of people, machines, and devices."


We read with interest the article by Slater and Raftery (Annals, July 1988, vol 70, p243) evaluating PTFE loop graft patency, complications and patient survival. In addition to their experience we should like to include a further possible complication, brought to light in a recent case. A 36-year-old farmer had a PTFE loop graft inserted into the right groin 6 years previously for haemodialysis. Three years later a successful renal transplant was performed. Since then, over the last 3 years, he had been asymptomatic until jumping down from a tractor. The patient experienced pain and parathesiae of sudden onset in the right foot and calf. Examination revealed an acutely ischaemic leg, a normal femoral pulse, but none below on the affected side. An arteriogram showed a unilateral right common femoral artery occlusion compatible with an acute thrombotic episode. The loop graft was also thrombosed. At operation, his groin was explored and fresh thrombus was found occluding his common femoral artery, with old thrombus extruding from the PTFE loop graft into the lumen of that artery at the anastomotic site. After thrombectomy and removal of the loop graft he made an uneventful recovery. This experience might suggest that the thrombosed loop graft was at fault causing the acute ischaemic episode. A M CLARKE MB BS Senior House Officer M HORROCKS MS FRCS Consultant Surgeon Bristol Royal Infirmary Bristol


This paper explores the impact of the output impedance on the active and reactive power flows between parallelized inverters operating with the droop method. In these systems, a virtual output impedance is usually added to the control loop of each inverter to improve the reactive power sharing, regardless of line-impedance unbalances and the sharing of nonlinear loads. The virtual impedance is usually implemented as the time derivative of the inverter output current, which makes the system highly sensitive to the output current noise and to nonlinear loads with high slew rate. To solve this, a second-order general-integrator (SOGI) scheme is proposed to implement the virtual impedance, which is less sensitive to the output current noise, avoids to perform the time derivative function, achieves better output-voltage total harmonic distortion, and enhances the sharing of nonlinear loads. Experimental results with two 2-kVA inverter systems under linear and nonlinear loads are provided to validate this approach.


Background: Adjuvant chemotherapy for early breast cancer is associated with a small risk of developing MDS and AML. The aim of this study is to determine the risk of developing AML or MDS after modern adjuvant chemotherapy in older breast cancer patients and to further define the risk of individual chemotherapy regimens. Methods: Patients diagnosed with stage I-III breast cancer from 2003 to 2009 were identified in the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER)-Medicare linked database. Development of AML or MDS, chemotherapy use, and comorbidities were identified using ICD-9 and HCPCS codes. A single inpatient or 2 outpatient codes 30 days apart were required for identification of AML or MDS. Analyses included descriptive statistics, Kaplan-Meier method for 5-year AML/MDS rates and Cox proportional hazards models to estimate the hazard of AML and MDS after adjusting for clinically relevant covariates. Results: 68,702 patients were included, of them 166 (0.24%) developed AML and 385 (0.56%) developed MDS. The median time from breast cancer diagnosis to AML or MDS was 924 and 943 days respectively. The 5-year AML rates were 0.23% for the no chemotherapy group, 0.53% for anthracycline (A)-based regimens, 0.48% for anthracycline and taxane (AT)-based regimens, 0.39% for other (O) regimens and 0.09% for those who received docetaxel and cyclophosphamide (TC). 5-year MDS estimates were 0.62%, 1.07%, 0.72%, 1.08 and 0.38% respectively. In the multivariable model using no chemotherapy as the reference category, A (HR 3.03; 95%CI 1.75-5.24) and AT (HR 3.06; 95%CI 1.70-5.52) were the chemotherapy regimens associated with the highest risk for developing AML, followed by O (HR 2.05; 95%CI, 1.13-3.69). No significant increase in risk was observed in patients who received TC (HR 0.91; 95%CI 0.26-4.60). Similar results were observed when evaluating risk of MDS among patients treated with A (HR 2.25; 95%CI, 1.50-3.37), AT (HR 1.67; 95%CI 1.06-2.65), O (HR 2.30; 95%CI 1.61-3.29) and TC (HR 1.22; 95%CI 0.60-2.66). Conclusion: In this large cohort of patients we observed a small but significant increase in risk for AML and MDS with adjuvant chemotherapy. The highest risk was associated with A and AT-based chemotherapy. TC was the only regimen that was not significantly associated with an increased risk. Because of relative recent adoption of TC, longer follow-up is needed to better estimate the risk of MDS and AML in this group of patients. Citation Format: Aron S Rosenstock, Sharon H Giordano, Jiangong Niu, Hui Zhao, Antonio C Wolff, Thomas A Buchholz, Mariana Chavez-MacGregor. AML and MDS after adjuvant chemotherapy: A population based study among older breast cancer patients [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: 2014 Dec 9-13; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(9 Suppl):Abstract nr P3-09-04.


Organic semiconductors (OSCs) have the potential to become ubiquitous in our lives as part of various optoelectronic devices given their low-cost processing, light weight, and the opportunities that they offer for designing new materials with "on demand" properties. Many OSCs have achieved remarkable performances, however, a complete understanding of the fundamental processes that govern their properties is still lacking. One such process is charge carrier trapping, a phenomenon that profoundly impacts the performance and stability of devices. Here we report on a comprehensive study on the physics of traps resulting from microstructure changes by monitoring the generation/annihilation of traps in 2,8-difluoro-5,11-bis(triethylsilylethynyl)anthradithiophene (diF-TES ADT), a high-mobility small molecule OSC. The variations in charge carrier mobility measured in organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) deliberately exposed to solvent vapor are correlated with the density and energetic distribution of the electronic states in the band gap of the OSC in all intermediate states of the microstructural transformations. Given the strong dependence of the electrical properties on the film microstructure, such information is instrumental in identifying performance-limiting processes in devices and subsequently guiding material processing to achieve intrinsic limits. The discovery of defect-tolerant intermediate crystalline motifs may provide new pathways for fabricating stable, high-performance devices for next-generation low-cost electronics.


The right to compensation for the compulsory acquisition of real property is constitutional and most enabling laws
prescribe valuation methods to be adopted in determining the compensation payable. This paper aims at ascertaining the
implications of the constitutional provisions and its impact on the compensation payable. It reviews some legislation,
prescribed compensation rates and a valuation report on the Obite- Ubeta- Rumuekpe (OUR) pipeline acquisition and
analyses the valuation method used. When compared with internationally prescribed standards, the paper concludes that
the compensation determined does not meet the compensation requirements of adequacy and that the use of
predetermined compensation- rates corroborates the inadequate compensation determination and renders agricultural
practices unsustainable. It recommends the adoption of valuation methods that indicate compensation sums that are
equivalent to market realities to sustain agricultural practices.


We provide a definition of undetectable faults in partial scan circuits under a test application scheme where a test consists of primary input vectors applied at-speed between scan operations. We also provide sufficient conditions for a fault to be undetectable under this test application scheme. We present experimental results on finite-state machine benchmarks to demonstrate the effectiveness of these conditions in identifying undetectable faults.


BACKGROUND
Methamphetamine (METH) and amphetamine (AMP) concentrations in 200 plasma and 590 oral fluid specimens were used to evaluate METH pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics after oral administration of sustained-release METH.

METHODS
Eight participants received four oral 10-mg S-(+)-METH hydrochloride sustained-release tablets within 7 days. Three weeks later, five participants received four oral 20-mg doses. Blood samples were collected for up to 24 h and oral fluid for up to 72 h after drug administration.

RESULTS
After the first oral dose, initial plasma METH detection was within 0.25-2 h; c(max) was 14.5-33.8 micro g/L (10 mg) and 26.2-44.3 micro g/L (20 mg) within 2-12 h. In oral fluid, METH was detected as early as 0.08-2 h; c(max) was 24.7-312.2 micro g/L (10 mg) and 75.3-321.7 micro g/L (20 mg) and occurred at 2-12 h. The median oral fluid-plasma METH concentration ratio was 2.0 across 24 h and was highly variable. Neutral cotton swab collection yielded significantly higher METH and AMP concentrations than citric acid candy-stimulated expectoration. Mean (SD) areas under the curve for AMP were 21% +/- 25% and 24% +/- 11% of those observed for METH in plasma and oral fluid, respectively. After a single low or high dose, plasma METH was >2.5 micro g/L for up to 24 h in 9 of 12 individuals (mean, 7.3 +/- 5.5 micro g/L at 24 h); in oral fluid the detection window was at least 24 h (mean, 18.8 +/- 18.0 micro g/L at 24 h). The plasma and oral fluid 24-h METH detection rates were 54% and 60%, respectively. After four administrations, METH was measurable for 36-72 h (mean, 58.3 +/- 14.5 h).

CONCLUSIONS
Perceived advantages of oral fluid for verifying METH exposure compared with urine include simpler specimen collection and reduced potential for adulteration, but urine offers higher analyte concentrations and a greater window of detection.


The inherent speckle which is attached to any coherent imaging system affects the analysis and interpretation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. To take advantage of well-registered multi-temporal SAR images, we improve the adaptive nonlocal temporal filter with state-of-the-art adaptive denoising methods and propose a patch based adaptive temporal filter. To address the bias problem of the denoising results, we propose a fast and efficient multitemporal despeckling method. The key idea of the proposed approach is the use of the ratio image, provided by the ratio between an image and the temporal mean of the stack. This ratio image is easier to denoise than a single image thanks to its improved stationarity. Besides, temporally stable thin structures are well-preserved thanks to the multi-temporal mean. Without reference image, we propose to use a patch-based auto-covariance residual evaluation method to examine the residual image and look for possible remaining structural contents. With speckle reduction images, we propose to use simplified generalized likelihood ratio method to detect the change area, change magnitude and change times in long series of well-registered images. Based on spectral clustering, we apply the simplified generalized likelihood ratio to detect the time series change types. Then, jet colormap and HSV colorization may be used to vividly visualize the detection results. These methods have been successfully applied to monitor farmland area, urban area, harbor region, and flooding area changes.


many years earlier. The new skin looks pink and healthy; it is thicker and no longer Iooks thin and atrophic. Since February 20 the treatment for all three patients has been as follows; (i) bran baths: (ii) the application of plain "Vaseline" until the ulcers healed (this prevented adhering of the bandages and provided minimum therapeutic value); (iii) the administration of one capsule of '''Benadryl'' three times a day (this was continued as it had been in operation ~efore and during the relapse); (iv) intramuscular injections of 5·0 millilitres of T.E.A.B. daily. There is no doubt about the effectiveness of the treatment. It is equally certain that relapse will follow cessation of the T.E.A.B. injections. It will be interesting to see whether continued use of T.E.A.B. causes the drug to lose its effectiveness, and whether the use of "Priscol", which is identical in action with T.E.A.B., will be effective in these cases, because in thin subjects the injections are somewhat painful. "Priscol" is supposed to be effective when given by mouth, and would therefore be ideal.


Nowadays fast and accurate positioning of assets and people is as a crucial part of many businesses, such as, warehousing, manufacturing and logistics. Applications that offer different services based on mobile user location gaining more and more attention. Some of the most common applications include location-based advertising, directory assistance, point-to-point navigation, asset tracking, emergency and fleet management. While outdoors mostly covered by the Global Positioning System, there is no one versatile solution for indoor positioning. For the past decade Wi-Fi fingerprinting based indoor positioning systems gained a lot of attention by enterprises as an affordable and flexible solution to track their assets and resources more effectively. The concept behind Wi-Fi fingerprinting is to create signal strength database of the area prior to the actual positioning. This process is known as a calibration carried out manually and the indoor positioning system accuracy highly depends on a calibration intensity. Unfortunately, this procedure requires huge amount of time, manpower and effort, which makes extensive deployment of indoor positioning system a challenging task.  approach of constructing signal strength database from a minimal number of measurements using Chebyshev wavelets approximation. The main objective of the research is to minimize the calibration workload while providing high positioning accuracy.  The field tests as well as computer simulation results showed significant improvement in signal strength prediction accuracy compared to existing approximation algorithms. Furhtermore, the proposed algorithm can recover missing signal values with much smaller number of on-site measurements compared to conventional calibration algorithm.


Efficient preservation of the donor liver during hepatic transplantation is of crucial importance. Good function of the liver is required immediately after transfer if the patient is to survive liver excision and replacement, because there is no effective means of support in the absence of hepatic function. With auxiliary liver transplantation good function is again required at an early time to reverse the effects of advanced liver failure. Nevertheless, in this situation, the recipient's own liver may retain sufficient function in the early postoperative period to allow the allograft to recover from temporary damage which occurs at the time of transplantation. Laboratory experiments in dogs have shown that at normothermia the ischemic liver becomes unsuitable for transplantation after 20 to 30 minutes.1If the donor is cooled to 30 C before death and the liver perfused from the time of death with cooled electrolyte solution, this time may be


Gas turbines for aircraft are designed for operation with a clean inlet air flow. This ideal operational condition is often violated during take-off and landing, where the probability of particle ingestion is high with sand and dirt being the most commonly observed foreign particles. Current research on particle ingestion has identified several mechanisms that contribute to performance degradation in the turbine: erosion of internal and external surfaces; and flow blockages of film-cooling holes and internal cooling passages. The focus of the study given in this paper is to present a method that identifies the motion of foreign particles within an internal ribbed passage. The method uses a high-resolution, flowfield interrogation method known as Time-Resolved Digital Particle Image Velocimetry (TRDPIV). Observations from the two-phase flows showed that particle collisions occurred more frequently on the upstream surface of the ribs, especially in the inlet region. Results from these collisions included substantial particle breakup and a particle rebounding phenomenon between the upper and lower walls. Comparisons are made to LES predicted particle trajectories indicating some agreement, but also phenomena that are not predicted due to the inherent assumption of the modeling.Copyright © 2009 by ASME


This project is intended to design one kind of automatically reciprocating pedal-powered electricity generator (ARPPEG) in conjunction with the management and control over harvesting the kinetic energy, electricity generation, the electricity storage and the output of electricity. According to the operation testing results, this system has been proved to effective in power generation. In view of the simple structure and low-costs of this system without territory and time limits, the application of ARPPEG designed by us could open a new path to saving the energy and helping build a new energy society.


Component based application design centered, for good reasons, on the computational aspects. However, the data manipulated by the computing activities and which drive the interactions between components are treated as second-class citizens. A data-centric approach provides a different way of viewing and designing applications. It lets us focus on the flow and transformation of data through the application. In this paper, we present an approach that combines both data and computational aspects in a formal manner. A lightweight but expressive formalism provides only a minimal and necessary set of operations to design and implement applications with data-centric principles. It is associated to a service-based component infrastructure built on top of a Peer-to-Peer overlay network. The infrastructure is used as an execution framework for this formalism to handle the non-functional requirements (e.g. communication mechanisms, message queue management and broadcasting messages) with an automatic code generation. This generation offers greater ease to application developers and allows them to focus only on the business logic.


The aim of this paper is to simulate the bloodstream through a network of blood vessels with a Finite Element Method in one dimension. A one dimensional system of partial differential equations is used. This system can be written in hyperbolic conservation form with the state variables cross-sectional area, the flow, the velocity and the pressure. To solve the system of partial differential equations, numerically correct boundary conditions have to be considered. For the input, a pressure function is used. To simulate the load downstream and the compliance of the arterial segments, a Windkessel model consisting of three elements is used. By simulating bifurcations the considered abstract vascular network can be build up. For that a nonlinear system of equations is set up and solved. The partial differential equation system cannot be solved analytically. Hence, to solve it a numerical Finite Element Method is used. In this context, a Taylor Galerkin method of second order with basic functions of first order is used. The model is implemented by using the mathematical software MATLAB. To verify the model, several simulations are done, using an abstract arterial tree built up by thirteen central arterial segments. In all simulations, the parameters of the Windkessel model and the parameters of the arterial segments are based on experiments and on physiological values. In all tests, physiologically realistic results are obtained. It can be concluded that the application of a one dimensional Finite Element Method approach along with the particular implementation presented can describe the effects in a system of human arteries in a realistic way.


It is alleged that pharmaceutical companies sometimes unfairly present clinical trial results. To our knowledge, studies have not explored whether such alleged unfair reporting also occurs in the testing of palliative care agents in cancer patients, a particularly vulnerable group. Therefore, a systematic search was conducted to retrieve all published, prospective clinical trials that used granulocyte colony stimulating factor starting in 2003. Because granulocyte colony stimulating factor can cause severe bone pain - a concerning but historically under-reported symptom in cancer patients - this symptom was assessed to determine whether differences in reporting occurred based on pharmaceutical company-sponsorship. A total of 239 published clinical trials met the present study's eligibility criteria and were retrievable. Within this entire group of studies, 65 (27%) were pharmaceutical company-sponsored, and only 31 (13%) reported on bone pain. However, pharmaceutical company-sponsored trials reported on bone pain at a higher rate compared with other studies: 23% versus 9% (P= 0.005), and this conclusion did not change after adjusting for dose, use of the slow release formulation and year of publication. The reporting of adverse events from cancer symptom control and palliative care interventions should be improved - especially in trials not sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.


Specific heat measurements in zero magnetic field are presented on a homologous series of geometrically frustrated antiferromagnetic Heisenberg garnet systems. Measurements of Gd3Ga5O12, grown with isotopically pure Gd, agree well with previous results on samples with naturally abundant Gd, showing no ordering features. In contrast, samples of Gd3Te2Li3O12 and Gd3Al5O12 are found to exhibit clear ordering transitions at 243 and 175 mK, respectively. The effects of low level disorder are studied through dilution of Gd3+ with nonmagnetic Y3+ in Gd3Te2Li3O12. A thorough structural characterization, using x-ray diffraction, is performed on all of the samples studied. We discuss possible explanations for such diverse behavior in very similar systems.


We investigate the use of capacity and near-capacity achieving LDPC codes on the wire tap channel, where the dual conditions of reliable communications and security are required. We show that good codes for conventional channels (like BSC and BEC) also have interesting and useful security properties. In this paper we show the connection between the decoding threshold of the code and its security against eavesdropping. We also give practical code constructions for some special cases of the wire tap channel and show that security (in the Shannon sense) is a function of the decoding threshold. Some of these constructions achieve the secrecy capacity as defined by Wyner. These codes provide secure communications without conventional key distribution and provide a physical-layer approach for either secure communications or key distribution


In a review process to assess the energy security of supply (SoS) for the EU and individual Member States, standards can provide a common and objective framework in EU energy policy. In particular, they could be useful in the context of the Strategic EU Energy Review as proposed by the European Commission in its recent Green Paper on EU energy policy. Standards should be based on security of supply indicators. This report elaborates the proposed concept of energy security of supply standards. It explains the role of (novel) indicators in the standards and the process for using and developing them. Also the use of SoS standards in a review process of energy supply security is elucidated. The report describes the development of two quantitative indicators that can be used in EU security of supply standards. The first one is the Supply/Demand Index, which is based on a Member State's energy system covering not only the supply of primary energy sources but also the conversion and transport of secondary energy carriers and the final energy demands. The S/D Index is particularly well suited for assessing today's energy security as well as energy security in the medium and longer term. The use of this indicator is illustrated with examples for the EU-25 and for the Member States the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Today's index values for these examples vary from 51 to 78, on a scale of 0 to 100. Indicative 2020 values for these five cases range from 48 to 72, based on the EC Trends to 2030 scenarios published in 2003. The S/D Index is based largely on objective information contained in energy balances combined with weighing factors and scoring rules, using existing indicators to the extent possible. The most important uncertainties are addressed by sensitivity analyses. The second indicator is the Crisis Capability Index. With this indicator the capability of a Member State or the EU as a whole to manage and mitigate short-term supply interruptions can be assessed. Finally, the standard includes qualitative considerations concerning the multilateral measures to secure overall producer/consumer relations and safeguarding vulnerable transport routes for oil and gas.


State programs which provide personal assistance services (PAS) were surveyed to determine how many offer 24-hours of PAS per day if necessary. A total of 103 programs in 44 states were contacted and of these 23 (22.3%) in 7 states said that they offered 24-hour PAS in at least some circumstances. Persons with significant levels of disability who do not have extensive informal supports and live in states which do not offer 24-hour PAS may be placed in nursing homes or other institutions. The research highlights problems in defining 24-hour PAS and determining who needs this level of service. The economic and policy implications of 24-hour PAS are discussed and specific research is recommended on the cost of different models of service provision.


ABSTRACT We studied the breeding biology of the Lesser Grass-Finch (Emberizoides ypiranganus), a bird with a little-known life history, in upland grassland of the Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica) Biome in southern Brazil. We collected data for 93 nests over two breeding seasons (2012–2014). We assessed how some covariates influence the daily survival rates and affect nest survival, building models in Program MARK. Breeding begins in early October, peaks in late November, and continues until early March, lasting approximately 150 days. The mean size of breeding territories was 1.1 ha, and territories located in burned areas were smaller than those in unburned areas. Only the females build the small open-cup nests, in clumps of grass (mainly composed of Andropogon lateralis, Schizachyrium tenerum and Sorghastrum setosum) at 36.2 cm above the ground. The clutch size is three (67%) or two eggs (n  =  52), and laying occurs on consecutive days. Incubation is performed by the female and lasts 13.7 days. The mean period of on-bouts was 73.5 min and the mean period of off-bouts was 39 mins. The hatching is synchronized and the hatching rate was 94%. In most nests, both the female and male fed the nestlings (biparental care). The frequency of visits/hr to feed the young did not differ with nestling age, but the length of visits was longer when the nestlings were younger. Nestlings fledged after 9–12 days. The apparent success was 42%, with 39% and 35% breeding success when calculated with the Mayfield estimate and the MARK software program, respectively. Predation was the main cause of failure, affecting 76% of the unsuccessful nests. The best models included time-specific factors (nest age and year) and nest-site features (nest height and habitat) influencing nest survival. Daily survival rates decreased through the nest cycle, and were much lower in the nestling stage. The re-nesting interval after nest failure was 2.7 days, and the mean distance between consecutive nesting attempts was 104.2 m. Up to four attempts (n  =  5) by the same female were observed in the same breeding season. Although little published information is available for this species, the basic reproductive features are very similar to those found in a population in Argentina. In Brazil, the breeding season is slightly shorter, and clutches of two eggs are more common.


The paper presents the analysis of effect of the Zr to Zr2N layer thickness ratios of 1:1, 1:2, and 1:4 on the
mechanical properties of Zr /Zr2N multilayer coatings. With the increase in the amount of the ceramic phase in
the multilayer coating, an increase in hardness from 11 to 14.5 GPa and Young's modulus from 158 to 211 GPa
was observed. This was accompanied by improved scratch resistance as critical load LC2 raises from 17 to over
30N. A ratio increase from 1:1 to 1:2 caused a 3-fold improvement in the coating wear resistance, which was
also accompanied by a change in the wear mechanism. However, there was no further improvement of this
parameter with a ratio increase to 1:4. Microscopic analysis of wear tracks, using the TEM technique revealed
that the Zr metal layers change the direction of crack propagation. This phenomenon results in the improved
fracture resistance of multilayer coatings compared to single coatings. Such a mechanism was even observed
for the 1:4 coating with the thinnest 58nm Zr layers.


Ventricular arrhythmias are the result of a variety of mechanisms that can occur in many different contexts. Although it would be, in principle, desirable to identify and treat the mechanism, therapy at present is best chosen for the particular context in which the rhythm disturbance develops. It seems probable that no one drug will ever be 'the best' and that the physician must be prepared to be familiar with many different drugs and be aware of the potential benefits of electrical therapy and surgery.


The response of health professionals to the use of health information technology (HIT) is an important research topic that can partly explain the success or failure of any HIT application. The present study applies a modified version of the revised technology acceptance model (TAM) to assess the relevant believes and acceptance of electronic health records (EHR) in Jordan. This paper outlines a research project that will examine EHR acceptance and utilisation by physicians in Jordan. It describes the theoretical basis behind the development of a research model that will be employed to empirically validate the model using substantial quantitative and qualitative data. The theoretical significance of this work is that it uses a thoroughly constructed research model to extend technology acceptance research into the health sector.


Recent research in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has substantiated that some aspects of pragmatics are amenable to instruction in the second or foreign language classroom. However, there are still controversies over the most conducive teaching approaches and the required materials. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relative effectiveness of consciousnessraising video-driven prompts on the comprehension of the three speech acts of apology, request, and refusal on seventy eight (36 male and 42 female) upper-intermediate Persian learners of English who were randomly assigned to four groups (metapragmatic, form-search, role play, and control). The four groups were exposed to 45 video vignettes (15 for each speech act) extracted from different episodes of Flash Forward, Stargate TV Series and Annie Hall Film for nine 60-minute sessions of instruction twice a week. Results of the multiple choice discourse completion test (MDCT) indicated that learners' awareness of apologies, requests and refusals benefit from all three types of instruction, but the results of the Post hoc test of Tukey (HSD) illustrated that the metapragmatic group outperformed the other treatment groups, and that form-search group had a better performance than role-play and control groups.


The dynamics of an inverted wheeled pendulum controlled by a proportional plus integral plus derivative action controller in various cases is investigated. The properties of trajectories are studied for a pendulum stabilized on a horizontal line, an inclined straight line and on a soft horizontal line. Oscillation regions on phase portraits of dynamical systems are shown. In particular, an analysis is made of the stabilization of the pendulum on a soft surface, modeled by a differential inclusion. It is shown that there exist trajectories tending to a semistable equilibrium position in the adopted mathematical model. However, in numerical simulations, as well as in the case of real robotic devices, such trajectories turn into a limit cycle due to round-off errors and perturbations not taken into account in the model.


Electro-optic side-chain polymers have been synthesized by the post-functionalization of methacrylate isocyanate polymers with novel phenyl vinylene thiophene vinylene bridge (FTC) nonlinear optical chromophores. For this application, FTC-based chromophores were modified in their electronic donor structure, exhibiting much larger molecular hyperpolarizabilities compared with the benchmark FTC. Of these new chromophores, absorption spectra, hyper-Rayleigh scattering experiment, and thermal analysis were carried out to confirm availability as effective nonlinear optical units for electro-optic side-chain polymers. The electro-optic coefficients (r33) of obtained polymers were investigated in the process of in situ poling by monitoring the temperature, current flow, poling field, and electro-optic signal. Compared with the nonsubstituted analogue, benxyloxy modified FTC chromophore significantly achieved higher nonlinear optical property, exhibiting molecular hyperpolarizability at 1.9 μm of 4600 × 10−30 esu and an r33 value of 150 pm/V at the wavelength of 1.31 μm. Synthesized electro-optic polymers showed high glass transition temperature (Tg), so that the temporal stability examination exhibited >78% of the electro-optic intensity remaining at 85 °C over 500 h. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2010


Papua New Guinea, which contains nearly three-quarters of the population of the 20 islands, or island groups, studied by the South Pacific Commission has a commensurate proportion of reported cases of syphilis and gonorrhoea. It is a country with an exceptional interest for the venereologist as it exhibits all the facets of venereal disease problems as experienced the world over. With the opening up of communications syphilis has gained a foothold in what were areas previously endemic with yaws; moreover, some yaws still remains (particularly in the offshore islands)--the two conditions tending to be mutually exclusive. In the area around the capital, Port Moresby, the prevalence of Donovanosis is unparalleled.


Aims: The aim of this study was to study the sleep quality of truck and trailer drivers in Yazd and its relation with traffic accidents and associated expenses. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study included nonrandom simple method including 200 truck and trailer drivers. A two-sectional questionnaire was used: the first section included the standard Pittsburgh sleep quality questionnaire, while the second section included demographic characteristics of the subjects. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistical method and T-test analysis through SPSS 17 software. Findings: The mean daily sleep period of the subjects under study was 6.46 ± 1.8 h and the mean of sleep quality score was 7.22 ± 2.72 h. Of the total, 75.5% had a sleep quality score greater than 5 that depicts the low quality of sleep in them. 29.5% had suffered from accidents in the last decade and 28% of those were due to sleepiness. The distribution of the sleep quality score on basis of sleep duration and falling sleep time was meaningful. The distribution of history of cigarettes smoking, narcotics abuse, and use of sedatives on basis of sleep quality score was also significant (P Conclusion: The results showed that 75.5% of the truck and trailer drivers had sleep quality disorders and accidents resulting in injuries. Sleep quality in drivers who had precedence of accidents was lower than the drivers without any accidents so sleepiness can be one of the main causes of accidents among the professional drivers in Iran.


In this journal in 2007, Laurence Dreyfus explored the metaphor of 'performance as interpretation'. Noting that the metaphor was rare prior to the 1840s, and that its dissemination swept across Europe at different speeds in different countries, Dreyfus suggested that as a metaphor it has certain advantages and disadvantages. This essay supplements Dreyfus's valuable historical contribution to performing theory with a philosophical account of why we need other models of performing alongside interpretation, sketching out the issues with reference to (a) the relationship between interpretation and ergonomics and (b) the importance of aesthetic judgement to performing.


According to the "3P model" of insomnia, the variable that mediates the transition from acute insomnia (AI) to chronic insomnia is "sleep extension" (the behavioural tendency to expand sleep opportunity to compensate for sleep loss). In the present analysis, we sought to evaluate how time in bed (TIB) varies relative to the new onset of AI and chronic insomnia. A total of 1,248 subjects were recruited as good sleepers (GS). Subjects were monitored over 1 year with sleep diaries. State transitions were defined, a priori, for AI, recovered from AI (AI‐REC), and for chronic insomnia (AI‐CI). Two additional groupings were added based on profiles that were unanticipated: subjects that exhibited persistent poor sleep following AI (AI‐PPS [those that neither recovered or developed chronic insomnia]) and subjects that recovered from chronic insomnia (CI‐REC). All the groups (GS, AI‐REC, AI–CI, AI‐PPS and CI‐REC) were evaluated for TIB differences with longitudinal mixed effects models. Post hoc analyses for the percentage of the groups that were typed as TIB "restrictors, maintainers, and expanders" were conducted using longitudinal mixed effects models and contingency analyses. Significant differences for pre–post AI TIB were not detected for the insomnia groups. Trends were apparent for the AI‐CI group, which suggested that minor increases in TIB occurred weeks before the declared onset of AI. Additionally, it was found that a significantly larger percentage of AI‐CI subjects engaged in sleep extension (as compared to GS). The present data suggest that transition from AI to chronic insomnia does not appear to be initiated by sleep extension and the transition may occur before the elapse of 3 months of ≥3 nights of sleep continuity disturbance. Given these findings, it may be that the mismatch between sleep ability and sleep opportunity is perpetuated over time given the failure to "naturally" engage in sleep restriction (as opposed to sleep extension).


We investigate the problem of scanning and prediction ("scandiction", for short) of multidimensional data arrays. This problem arises in several aspects of image and video processing, such as predictive coding, where an image is compressed by coding the prediction error sequence resulting from scandicting it. Specifically, given a strongly mixing random field, we show that there exists a scandiction scheme which is independent of the field's distribution, yet almost surely asymptotically achieves the same performance as if this distribution was known. We then discuss the scenario where the Peano-Hilbert scanning order is used, accompanied by an optimal predictor, and derive a bound on the excess loss compared to optimal finite state scandiction, which is valid for any individual image and any bounded loss function.


Nursing work is divided into different dimensions: health care, education, management and research. Considering hospital environment, nurses are in charge of many managerial activities. The following study aimed at analyzing how the managerial dimension in the nursing is described in Brazilian nursing papers through a systematic review on the literature. The papers were researched on the database LILACS and SciELO from 2003 to 2007 with keywords as nursing, work, and management, constituting a 12-papers sample. The results displayed that the managerial practices of the nurses are mainly related to the technical management dimension, emphasizing the activities of coordination, supervision, and control. The precepts of the classical theories of administration still guide nursing management, even though some studies relate a slight transposition of this model and present suggestions for new nursing management ways.


Background: Sirolimus is an inhibitor of mammalian target of rapamycin, which exhibits large interindividual pharmacokinetic variability. We report sirolimus pharmacokinetic data collected as part of a concentration-controlled multicenter phase II clinical trial in pediatric patients with neurofibromatosis type 1. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of growth on age-dependent changes in sirolimus clearance with a focus on cytochrome P450 3A (CYP3A) subfamily mediated metabolism. Methods: Predose blood samples were obtained at steady state from 18 patients with neurofibromatosis type 1. Sirolimus and its 5 CYP3A-dependent primary metabolites were quantified by HPLC–UV/MS. Concentration ratios of metabolites to sirolimus (metabolic ratio) were calculated as an index of metabolite formation. Results: Metabolic ratios of the main metabolites, 16-O-demethylsirolimus (16-O-DM) and 24-hydroxysirolimus (24OH), were significantly correlated with sirolimus clearance, whereas this was not the case for the other 3 metabolites (25-hydroxysirolimus, 46-hydroxysirolimus, and 39-O-demethylsirolimus). The ratios for the 16-O-DM and 24OH metabolites were lower in children than adults. No significant difference in allometrically scaled metabolic ratios of 16-O-DM and 24OH was observed between children and adults. Conclusions: This study suggests that the age-dependent changes in sirolimus clearance can be explained by size-related increases in CYP3A metabolic capacity, most likely due to liver and intestinal growth. These findings will help facilitate the development of age-appropriate dosing algorithms for sirolimus in infants and children.


The nano Ni-Cr thin-film samples with different composition have been fabricated by a double-target magnetron co-sputtering equipment, through controlling the sputtering power, the substrate rotate speed, and the substrate temperature, The results showed that the grains sizes with polycrystalline microstructure were not greater than 10 nm. The crystal microstructure of Ni-Cr thin-films is Face Centered Cubic (FCC). The dominant texture in the Ni-Cr film was Ni (111) under this sputtering condition. The lattice parameters of Ni crystal and the inter-planar distances of Ni (111) increased by Cr solid-soluble in Ni crystal. The surface morphology of the thin-film samples is smooth and compact. The TCR (temperature coefficient of resistance) value of specimen 3 was 84~130 ppm/k, which show the specimen 3 was the most stable.


ABSTRACT Nearly all literature relating to flint clays of Pennsylvanian age in the eastern United States concerns deposits occurring in the lower part of the Pennsylvanian System. This report describes the geologic occurrence and the physical and mineralogical features of flint clay deposits of middle and late Pennsylvanian age in the eastern United States, many of which have not previously been described as flint clay. The brecciated texture, conchoidal fracture, and variegated color--including shades of yellow, brown, gray, green, and red--of these clays make them distinctive. They are composed primarily of well crystallized kaolinite. The flint clays are often closely associated with coals, and at several localities they occur in channels or lenses where the normal continuity of the coal bed has been interrupted by erosion or nondeposition. The flint clay is believed to have formed by alteration of ordinary fine-grained Pennsylvanian sediments in acid swamps in a manner similar to that recently proposed by Patterson and Hosterman (1960) to explain the formation of early Pennsylvanian flint clay in the Olive Hill district, Kentucky.


This paper, written for a conference of the Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues, explores the history of copyright protection for musical compositions. The first modern copyright law did not cover musical works. The role of Johann Christian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johann Neopmuk Hummel in securing legal changes is traced. How Giuseppe Verdi exploited the new copyright law in Northern Italy is analyzed. The paper argues that Verdi, enriched by copyright protection, reduced his compositional effort along a backward-bending supply curve. However, his good fortune may have had a demonstration effect inducing other talented individuals to become composers. An attempt to determine the impact of legal changes on entry into composing is inconclusive. The paper shows, however, that a golden age of musical composition nevertheless occurred in nations that lacked copyright protection for musical works.


Different Penicillium roqueforti strains from the American Type Culture Collection were tested for the production of PR toxin. All four strains were able to produce the toxin on semisynthetic medium at 24 degrees C after certain periods of incubation. The yields were correlated with the pH of the medium. Timing of the harvest influenced both the yield and purification of the toxin.


Anger can be managed by controlling the wrath, forgiving someone mistake, doing ihsan to the one who has tortured, praying and simple in action. By having good capability in controlling anger well, means they have accomplished personal intelligence in fostering good relation with other. In this case they are able to be good person individually and socially. In other words, they have not only "sajadah ilahiyyah", but also "sajadah insaniyyah" which is upheld by yang al-Qur'an that's called Habl Min Allah wa Habl Min al-Nas.  This is appropriate with the function Islamic education that is instilling good character in the children soul when they are growing up by direction and advice. So that their moral becomes one of their capability seeped their soul in the form of virtue, kindness and like to work for the benefit of the country.


Meeting long-term rural community water supply needs requires diligent geohydrological conceptualisation. Study of Malawi's Lake Chilwa Basin, including sampling of 330 water points in Phalombe District, enabled assessment of groundwater quality influence upon supply. The control of larger Lake Chilwa paleo-environments on current Basin groundwater quality is demonstrated. Lacustrine sediment deposition forming high-level deposits under open lake conditions and terrace deposits under open and closed lake conditions significantly control the groundwater major-ion quality and salinity now observed. Paleo-lake extent marks the transition between low-TDS (total dissolved solids) groundwater suitable for water supply at higher elevations and high-TDS brackish groundwater in areas overlain by lacustrine deposits closer to the current lake level. Low-TDS groundwater is limited to mid-to-low reach influent leakage of rivers incising terraces. Permeable fluvial deposits within the deeper paleo-river channel may possibly provide low-TDS water. The conceptual model, whereby paleo-lake controls groundwater salinity, provides science-based evidence to address policy to manage the significant water point functionality concerns quantified at the district and river basin scales. Targeting of the low-TDS groundwater alongside improved use of upland low-TDS stream/river sources with fewer, but larger capacity, and better maintained gravity-fed supply schemes are recommended. This study hence shows the value of paleo-geohydrology interpretation of the lake–groundwater system conceptualisation to inform Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6.5.1)—integrated water resources management policy for rural water supply.


Abstract. The effect of aerosols on lightning has been noted in many case studies, but much less is known about the long-term impact, relative importance of dynamics–thermodynamics versus aerosol, and any difference by different types of aerosols. Attempts are made to tackle all these factors, whose distinct roles are discovered by analyzing 11-year datasets of lightning, aerosol loading and composition, and dynamic–thermodynamic data from satellite and model reanalysis. Variations in the lightning rate are analyzed with respect to changes in dynamic–thermodynamic variables and indices such as the convective available potential energy (CAPE) and vertical wind shear. In general, lightning has strong diurnal and seasonal variations, peaking in the afternoon and during the summer. The lightning flash rate is much higher in moist central Africa than in dry northern Africa presumably because of the combined influences of surface heating, CAPE, relative humidity (RH), and aerosol type. In both regions, the lightning flash rate changes with aerosol optical depth (AOD) in a boomerang shape: first increasing with AOD, tailing off around AOD  =  0.3, and then behaving differently, i.e., decreasing for dust and flattening for smoke aerosols. The deviation is arguably caused by the tangled influences of different thermodynamics (in particular humidity and CAPE) and aerosol type between the two regions. In northern Africa, the two branches of the opposite trends seem to echo the different dominant influences of the aerosol microphysical effect and the aerosol radiative effect that are more pronounced under low and high aerosol loading conditions, respectively. Under low-AOD conditions, the aerosol microphysical effect more likely invigorates deep convection. This may gradually yield to the suppression effect as AOD increases, leading to more and smaller cloud droplets that are highly susceptible to evaporation under the dry conditions of northern Africa. For smoke aerosols in moist central Africa, the aerosol invigoration effect can be sustained across the entire range of AOD by the high humidity and CAPE. This, plus a potential heating effect of the smoke layer, jointly offsets the suppression of convection due to the radiative cooling at the surface by smoke aerosols. Various analyses were done that tend to support this hypothesis.