Introduction: Malnutrition and tuberculosis are the major concerns of underdeveloped regions of the world. Undernutrition increases the risk of tuberculosis (TB) and in turn TB can lead to Malnutrition. Undernutrition is therefore highly prevalent among people with TB. It has been demonstrated that undernutrition is a risk factor for progression from TB infection to active TB disease and severe form viz. MDR-TB. Undernutrition is a predictor of increased risk of death and TB relapse. Objectives: To study the effect of nutrition in MDR-TB patients at DR-TB centre, Dehradun. Methodology: The Observational cross sectional study was conducted at Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (DR-TB) Centre of HIMS, Dehradun over a   period of 12 months to include all the cases reported from 1st October, 2011 (start of DR-TB Centre at HIMS, Dehradun) to 30th April, 2014. 376 Subjects were recruited from 1598 suspected MDR TB subjects who were screened by Drug Susceptibility Testing (DST) results. Results: Out of 376 MDR-TB patients, 258 (68.6%) subjects were found to be undernourished. The mean body mass index (BMI) was 17.33+1.99 kg/m 2 . Though undernutrition was more common among Males (61.2%) but female's BMI was more affected by MDR in comparison to males. Treatment success was better amongst males between 21- 60 year age group with normal BMI having mono drug resistance with no adverse reaction. The majority 47 (18.2%) of adverse effect was found in undernourished patients. Treatment outcome was also poor among undernourished (76.9%) MDR-TB patients. Conclusion: Prevalence of undernutrition was high (68.6%) among subjects and the mean BMI was lower in female. Adverse drug reaction, poor treatment outcome are attributes of Undernutrition.


This paper presents new evidence on how the annuitization decision is
affected by changes in the annuity's value. We take advantage of an
unprecendented change in policy, which in 2004 moderated the supermandatory Swiss occupational pension scheme: The 20 percent reduction in the rate at which retirement capital is translated into a life-long annuity equates to a net present value loss of approximately 20'000 SFR (20'000 US$) for the average retiree. Using administrative data and correcting for anticipation effects, we show that due to the change in policy there was an approximately 8 percentage point change in the share of men choosing to annuitize their savings. We also show that the estimated responsiveness of
the cash-out decision to variations in a utility based measure for the annuity value is comparable to results of previous studies, which employed completely different sources of variation in the annuity's value.


The RFID Handbook provides an overview of RFID technology, its associated security and privacy risks, and recommended practices that will enable organizations to realize productivity improvements while also protecting sensitive information and the privacy of individuals. Expert contributors present a host of applications including RFID enabled automated receiving, triage with RFID for massive incidents, RFID and NFC in relation to mobile phones, and RFID technologies for communication robots and a privacy preserving video surveillance system. The unprecedented coverage also includes detailed descriptions of adaptive splitting protocols as well as tree-based and probabilistic anti-collision protocols.


ICTs have contributed a lot in the strategic and operations management of financial institutions all over the world. Today, ICT is employed in all the departments of most financial institutions such as operations, customer services, marketing, administration, human resource, procurement, accounting, financial management, etc. The general consensus among various academicians is that ICTs have improved the processes of operations and management. It has also played significant roles in strategic and operational management and also determined the marketing mix, strategic decisions, ownerships, management and partnerships such as alliances and mergers. This study investigated the role of ICTs in the strategic and operational management of financial institutions using a qualitative research method involving the interview of top managements and operational staffs of four selected banks in the United Kingdom and Nigeria. Findings revealed that ICTs have indeed contributed a lot in improving the functioning of all departments of the selected banks such as marketing, operations, HR, finance, call centers, customer services, etc. The benefits gained by the various banks after the implementation of ICTs include better online and offline support for their customers, ROI justification, profitable sales volume, reduction of queues in the banking halls, and very interactive websites. There are however, many departments and other functional areas where ICTs have not been fully utilized. Moreover, many financial institutions have not fully adopted and applied ICT to all functional areas. The study recommends that these can be resolved through proper training, i.e. the provision of ICT related training to employees with respect to the strategic and operational management of the banks as well as exploration of the importance of the recruitment of external consultants who are specialized in their respective fields to render solid supports.


Objectives: This study aimed to assess the prevalence of cardiac manifestations and their short-term outcome in patients with Kawasaki disease (KD) in an Indian population. Methods: This single-center prospective study enrolled a total of 56 consecutive patients with classic and incomplete KD. Six months and 1-year clinical outcomes were analyzed. Results: Fifty-six consecutive patients were enrolled in the study and followed up for 1 year. About 87% completed 6 months follow-up. A diagnosis of complete KD was made in 41 (73%) patients and incomplete KD in 15 (27%). Cardiac manifestations were present in 25% of patients with KD. Coronary involvement was observed in 11 (20%) patients by either Japanese Ministry of Health Criteria or a z score of ≥2.5. Nonpurulent conjunctivitis was significantly higher among children with cardiac involvement (79% vs. 43% P = 0.04). The mean value of erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) was significantly higher among patients with cardiac involvement (101.92 ± 22 vs. 74.26 ± 28.6; P = 0.002). An ESR value of >100 mm/hr was predictive of cardiac involvement (P = 0.03). The mean serum glutamic-pyruvic transaminase value was higher among those with cardiac involvement (P = 0.008). Coronary dilatation got resolved in 3 months in 73% of patients. Valvular regurgitations, aortic root involvement, and depressed left ventricular myocardial function were not observed in the population studied. Conclusions: Cardiac manifestations were present in 25% of patients with KD, 20% of children had coronary involvement in the form of an aneurysm, or ectasia. About 73% of patients with coronary dilatation got resolved in 3 months. Significant valvular heart diseases, aortic root involvement, and myocardial contractile dysfunction were not seen in the studied population with KD.


The purpose of this paper is to reflect on what appears to be the relatively under-used methodologies associated with oral history – principally the interview as a primary source of data – in the writing of sports history. The observation is acknowledged as one made from a UK perspective, not least on account of the authors' status as monolingual researchers, albeit from the different but culturally diverse nations of England and Scotland. The points of reference within this article are, therefore, necessarily drawn from works published in English, and the substantive oral history case studies are mostly sampled from those researched in the UK to date, chosen because they are either groundbreaking or illustrative of the opportunities, methodological challenges and politics that have come to be associated not only with the method itself, but the discipline of sports history. This paper will, therefore, firstly outline the development of oral history. Secondly, it will discuss the ways in which it has been applied within British sports history and, finally propose opportunities it presents for the future development of the discipline and those historians researching sport.


In this paper, multi-antenna transceiver for zero-padded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system is designed at mmWave by integrating full-duplex unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) into the terrestrial cellular networks. Assuming that there exist no direct communication links between the ground base station (GBS) and the mobile users due to unexpected blockages from high storied buildings in urban area, the UAV applies decode-and-forward cooperative strategy on the received OFDM signals transmitted from GBS and re-transmits to the ground mobile users and passive eavesdropper. In this proposed system, intertwining logistic map (ILM)-cosine transform aided encryption algorithm combined with artificial noise enhancing physical layer security (PLS) is introduced. Also walsh-hadamard transform technique integrated with QR-decomposition based zero forcing (ZF) block diagonalization (QR-ZF-BD) precoding for multi-user interference reduction and non-iterative clipping and filtering technique for peak to average power ratio (PAPR) reduction are utilized. In addition, Low density parity check (LDPC) and repeat and accumulate (RA) channel coding with cholesky decomposition based ZF and minimum mean square error signal detection schemes for improved bit error rate (BER) are also introduced. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system in terms of PLS for color image transmission at high order digital modulation (16-PSK and 16-QAM). At the complementary cumulative distribution function of probability level 1-6%, the estimated PAPR is found to have value of 6 dB.The three users achieve BER $= 1\times {10}^{-4}$ at signal-to-noise ratio of 1.5 dB, 4 dB and 6 dB under RA channel coding and 16-QAM digital modulation.


Relationships between risk measures and imprecise probability theory have received relatively limited attention in the literature. This paper contributes to filling this gap as far as Dutch risk measures are concerned. Using imprecise previsions as a starting point, a novel generalized family of Dutch risk measures is introduced, its properties with respect to several alternative consistency notions are analyzed and its advantageous features discussed. Any such measure corresponds to an imprecise prevision correcting a first-approach uncertainty measure, while preserving its consistency properties in several cases, ranging from coherence to a weak generalization of the concept of capacity. Further, it is shown that the proposed family of measures has a practical significance in the application context of insurance pricing, since, unlike the original formulation, it may ensure a risk loading to each risk taker and is even compatible with the practice of double loading in premium policies.


Rats were exposed to osmotic stress either acutely, over periods of 1 or 4 h, or chronically, over several days. In acute experiments, hyposmolality was induced by intraperitoneal infusion of dilute glucose or mannitol solutions, whereas hyperosmolality was induced by use of sodium chloride, concentrated glucose or mannitol solutions, or urea. Chronic hypernatremia was induced by daily administration of sodium chloride to water-deprived animals; chronic hyponatremia was induced by daily injection of antidiuretic hormone supplemented with glucose. Animals were made hyperglycemic using streptozotocin or uremic by ureteral ligation. Where appropriate, animals were anesthetized with thiobutabarbital (Inaktin) or ether. In acute experiments, analysis of the composition of the cardiac ventricle, diaphragm, liver, and renal cortex showed no evidence of cell volume regulatory processes involving transmembrane movement of potassium ions. There was a small but significant increase in free amino acids [measured as ninhydrin-positive substance (NPS)] in cardiac muscle exposed to hypertonic solutions of sodium chloride and glucose but not when plasma osmolality was raised using mannitol. In cerebral cortical tissue, after 4 h of exposure to acute hypertonicity by infusion of sodium chloride or glucose, there was a significant increase in tissue potassium content and a slight increase in NPS content. In chronic experiments, tissue analysis revealed good evidence for cellular volume readjustment only in cerebral cortex and heart. In the cortex, levels of free amino acids, principally taurine and glutamate (plus glutamine), showed large increases during hypernatremia and hyperglycemia and corresponding decreases during hyposmolality. In heart the principal amino acid present was taurine, and it, together with aspartate and glutamate (plus glutamine), showed large changes under osmotic stress. Other tissues analyzed showed only small changes in composition.


A spectral absorption of the ferrous ion in fluxing was investigated in this paper due to the significant effect of ferrous ion on the quality of hot-dip galvanizing production. Based on analysis of spectrophotometry, an automatic detection equipment of ferrous ions is developed according to its special characteristics. On-line measuring of ferrous ion in fluxing of the hot-dip galvanizing is realized by the micro-pump and the equipment. Results show that the lowest limit to be detected is 0.1 g/L, measuring errors are less than 0.05 g/L, the linear equations of the absorption and concentration of the ferrous ions shows a good correlation coefficient which is 0.99995 when the ferrous ions concentration is between 0.1g/L and 10g/L in fluxing.


We sketch how the $R^*$-operation can be used to compute the pole terms of
Feynman diagrams. As an example, we briefly discuss the computatation of the
Higgs decay to gluons. Next, we illustrate how
\MSbar{} counterterms can be obtained with the $R^*$-operation.
Finally, we describe how the UV counterterm of any $L$-loop Feynman
diagram with arbitrary local operators can be computed from
$L-1$-loop massless propagator diagrams.


The effect of potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, and ozone in combination with citric, lactic, and acetic acids on the microbial population of seasoned table olives of the olive 'Aloreña' cultivar was studied in both fresh (FF) and stored fruits (SF). The inactivation/growth curves were modeled and the biological parameters estimated, with yeast used as the target microorganism. Regardless of the acid added, potassium sorbate showed a general inactivation effect on yeasts in the products prepared from both FF and SE Sodium benzoate had a rapid inactivation effect with FF, but with SF, it was effective only in the presence of acetic acid. A strain of Issatchenkia occidentalis was found that was resistant to the combination of this preservative with citric or lactic acids. In FF, ozone showed an initial marked inhibition against yeasts, but later, yeasts were again able to grow. In SF, ozone was a strong inactivating agent when it replaced any of the traditional preservatives. Lactic acid bacteria were always absent in products prepared from FF, and apparently were not affected by the different preservative agents in those prepared from SF. The behavior of yeasts and lactic acid bacteria populations in commercial products were similar to those found in experimental treatments.


We demonstrate tunable dispersion slope compensation using broadband nonchannelized third-order chirped fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) for 40-Gb/s wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) systems. The slope is tuned by stretching as it has a third-order time delay variation with wavelength, and thus a second-order dispersion-wavelength curve. Calculation results include the examples of the slope tuning in addition to the interchannel dispersion differences and the slope tuning ranges with respect to the wavelength in a single grating. To verify the functionality of the third-order grating, we prepare a third-order grating with a dispersion variation of up to 400 ps/nm over the 3.5-nm usable bandwidth, and a dispersion slope tuning range of /spl sim/65 ps/nm/sup 2/ is achieved. For 40-Gb/s systems, two new gratings are designed and inversely cascaded to eliminate the inherent errors originating from the deleterious higher-order dispersion components in a single grating. The slope tuning range is -20 to +20 ps/nm/sup 2/ over the 5-nm usable bandwidth. A /spl sim/10-dB power penalty improvement is achieved and the BER floor is eliminated for the worst-case channel after transmission through a 170-km link using dispersion shifted fiber (DSF) with a 4/spl times/40-Gb/s RZ data stream.


We report modelling follow-up of recently discovered gravitational-lens candidates in the Canada France Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey. Lens modelling was done by a small group of specially interested volunteers from the SpaceWarps citizen-science community who originally found the candidate lenses. Models are categorized according to seven diagnostics indicating (a) the image morphology and how clear or indistinct it is, (b) whether the mass map and synthetic lensed image appear to be plausible, and (c) how the lens-model mass compares with the stellar mass and the abundance-matched halo mass. The lensing masses range from ~10 11 to > 10 13 M ⊙ . Preliminary estimates of the stellar masses show a smaller spread in stellar mass (except for two lenses): a factor of a few below or above ~10 11 M ⊙ . Therefore, we expect the stellar-to-total mass fraction to decline sharply as lensing mass increases. The most massive system with a convincing model is J1434+522 (SW 05). The two low-mass outliers are J0206-095 (SW 19) and J2217+015 (SW 42); if these two are indeed lenses, they probe an interesting regime of very low star formation efficiency. Some improvements to the modelling software (SpaghettiLens), and discussion of strategies regarding scaling to future surveys with more and frequent discoveries, are included.


The heritability of schizophrenia and most personality traits has been well established, but the role of personality in susceptibility to schizophrenia remains uncertain. The aim of this study was to test for an association between personality traits and Neurological Soft Signs (NSS), a well-known biological marker of schizophrenia, in non-psychotic relatives of patients with schizophrenia. For this purpose, we evaluated the NSS scale and personality measured by the Temperament and Character inventory (TCI-R) in three groups of subjects: 29 patients with schizophrenia, 24 unaffected relatives and 37 controls. The results showed that patients with schizophrenia were more asocial (higher harm avoidance and lower reward dependence), more perseverative (higher persistence), and more schizotypal (lower self-directedness and cooperativeness, higher self-transcendence). The unaffected relatives showed higher harm avoidance, lower self-directedness and cooperativeness than the healthy controls. Higher NSS scores and sub-scores were found in patients and non-psychotic relatives compared with the controls. Among all the patients, total NSS scores were positively correlated with harm avoidance but negatively correlated with novelty seeking and persistence. Total NSS were also correlated with low scores on self-directedness and cooperativeness, which are indicators of personality disorder. Our results show that susceptibility to NSS and to schizophrenia are both related to individual differences in the temperament and character features in non-psychotic relatives of patients with schizophrenia. High harm avoidance, low persistence, low self-directedness and low cooperativeness contribute to both the risk of NSS and schizophrenia. These findings highlight the value of using both assessments to study high risk populations.


The immune response in open water swimmers during training and long-distance swims (LDS) as well as their resistance to respiratory illnesses has not been investigated. The immune, metabolic and hematological response was determined in experimental and control groups of swimmers (7 and 8 athletes, respectively) during 6 months of training, as well as in the experimental group during each one of three LDS (>6 h) carried out during this training period. At the end of six months of training, the average pre-exercise levels of serum IgG, IgA, IgM and salivary IgA, decreased significantly: 48, 34, 64 and 45%, respectively. The average serum antibodies levels did not change during the first LDS, and increased significantly between the second and fourth hours of the other two swims. Salivary IgA decreased drastically in the first two hours (80%) of all swims. LDS carried out during training in open waters significantly suppressed pre-exercise serum and salivary antibody levels, although these changes did not affect the resistance of the swimmers to respiratory illnesses. The adaptation of the immune response was expressed in a significant increase of antibodies during consequent LDS.


A slug of air-saturated distilled water was circulated for 317 hours at a velocity of 15 feet per second in an AISI 347 stainless-steel toroid with a wall temperature of 500 F and a 30 F difference in temperature between the hot and cold sections. The depth of corrosion layer was 0.001 inch (0.028 in./yr) in the hot sector and 0.0007 inch (0.019 in./yr) in the cold sector; no mass transfer was observed. The results of gas,water,and X-ray diffraction analyses are given together with photomicrographs of sections taken from the hot and cold sections of the specimen.


Purpose
The following paper is a "Q&A interview" conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry PhD and innovator regarding her pioneering efforts and the challenges of bringing a technological invention to market. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach
The interviewee is Dr Maja Matarić, Chan Soon-Shiong Distinguished Professor in the Computer Science Department, Neuroscience Program, and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California, founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (RASC), co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab and Vice Dean for Research in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. In this interview, Matarić shares her personal and business perspectives on socially assistive robotics.

Findings
Matarić received her PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT in 1994, MS in Computer Science from MIT in 1990 and BS in Computer Science from the University of Kansas in 1987. Inspired by the vast potential for affordable human-centered technologies, she went on to found and direct the Interaction Lab, initially at Brandeis University and then at the University of Southern California. Her lab works on developing human–robot non-physical interaction algorithms for supporting desirable behavior change; she has worked with a variety of beneficiary user populations, including children with autism, elderly with Alzheimer's, stroke survivors and teens at risk for Type 2 diabetes, among others.

Originality/value
Matarić is a pioneer of the field of socially assistive robotics (SAR) with the goal of improving user health and wellness, communication, learning and autonomy. SAR uses interdisciplinary methods from computer science and engineering as well as cognitive science, social science and human studies evaluation, to endow robots with the ability to assist in mitigating critical societal problems that require sustained personalized support to supplement the efforts of parents, caregivers, clinicians and educators. Matarić is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the IEEE and AAAI, recipient of the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM), the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for Innovation, Okawa Foundation Award, NSF Career Award, the MIT TR35 Innovation Award, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award and has received many other awards and honors. She was featured in the science documentary movie "Me & Isaac Newton", in The New Yorker ("Robots that Care" by Jerome Groopman, 2009), Popular Science ("The New Face of Autism Therapy", 2010), the IEEE Spectrum ("Caregiver Robots", 2010), and is one of the LA Times Magazine 2010 Visionaries. Matarić is the author of a popular introductory robotics textbook, "The Robotics Primer" (MIT Press 2007), an associate editor of three major journals and has published extensively.


Simple Summary Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) are rare malignant tumors associated with poor outcomes and high local recurrence rates. Current tools available to the STS surgeon for intraoperative and definitive margin assessment include intraoperative frozen section and permanent pathology, respectively. Indocyanine green (ICG) is a historically safe fluorophore dye that has demonstrated efficacy for intraoperative margin assessment in both breast and gastrointestinal cancers. This study presents an ongoing, prospective, non-randomized clinical study implementing ICG intraoperative margin assessment in patients with confirmed or suspected STS. Eighteen STS cases have been enrolled at the time of this writing. ICG margins were found to match permanent pathology margins in 56% (10/18) of patients, with 22% sensitivity and 89% specificity. ICG may be promising for STS intraoperative margin assessment, although larger sample sizes are necessary to better quantify optimal dosage, timing, the effect of histological subtype, and the ultimate capacity of this technology to decrease STS local recurrence. Abstract Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) are rare malignant tumors often associated with poor outcomes and high local recurrence rates. Current tools for intraoperative and definitive margin assessment include intraoperative frozen section and permanent pathology, respectively. Indocyanine green dye (ICG) is a historically safe fluorophore dye that has demonstrated efficacy for intraoperative margin assessment in the surgical management of both breast and gastrointestinal cancers. The utility of ICG in the surgical management of sarcoma surgery has primarily been studied in pre-clinical mouse models and warrants further investigation as a potential adjunct to achieving negative margins. This study is a prospective, non-randomized clinical study conducted on patients with confirmed or suspected STS. Patients younger than 18 years, with a prior adverse reaction to iodine or fluorescein, or with renal disease were excluded from the study. Intravenous ICG was infused approximately three hours prior to surgery at a dosage of 2.0–2.5 mg/kg, and following tumor resection, the excised tumor and tumor bed were imaged for fluorescence intensity. When scanning the tumor bed, a threshold of 77% calibrated to the region of maximum intensity in the resected tumor was defined as a positive ICG margin, according to published protocols from the breast cancer literature. ICG results were then compared with the surgeon's clinical impression of margin status and permanent pathology results. Out of 26 subjects recruited for the original study, 18 soft tissue sarcomas (STS) were included for analysis. Three subjects were excluded for having bone sarcomas, and five subjects were excluded due to final pathology, which was ultimately inconsistent with sarcoma. The average age of patients was 64.1 years old (range: 28–83), with an average ICG dose of 201.8 mg. In 56% (10/18) of patients, ICG margins were consistent with the permanent pathology margins, with 89% specificity. The use of ICG as an intraoperative adjunct to obtaining negative margins in soft tissue sarcoma surgery is promising. However, studies with larger sample sizes are warranted to further delineate the accuracy, optimal dosage, timing, and types of sarcoma in which this diagnostic tool may be most useful.


The crude extract of Azadirachta indica was used in the corrosion inhibition study of aluminium metal coupons in 1.85 M hydrochloric acid environment by gasometric technique. The coupons were immersed in test solutions of uninhibited 1.85 M HCl and those containing extract concentrations of 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% (v/v) at room temperature. The rate of the reaction was captured by monitoring the volume of hydrogen gas evolved as a result of the interaction. The inhibition efficiency of the extracts and the adsorption isotherm of the process were calculated using Frumkin, Freundlich, Langmuir and Temkin adsorption theories and the surface morphology studied using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). It was observed that the plant extract retarded the acid induced corrosion of aluminium and the volume of hydrogen gas evolved reduced with increasing extract concentration. The adsorption studies revealed that Langmuir isotherm is the best model for the adsorption of Azadirachta indica (R2 = 0.999) on aluminium surface. This implied that the Azadirachta indica extracts with aluminium metal undergoes chemisorption


The introduction of fish for stoking purpose is a common operation to manage fisheries. This may cause ecological and sanitary risks to native aquatic biodiversity especially in fishless Alpine lakes. In these ecosystems, fish have been introduced by anglers for ages. Europe imposes strictly controls on aquaculture facilities that breed fish for stoking purpose only for viral disease but not for bacterial or parasitic ones. Moreover, the role of alien fish as carriers of pathogens is poorly studied. For these reasons, we performed two fish sampling campaigns in two Italian Alpine lakes (Dimon Lake and Balma Lake) to have qualitative information about alien fish populations and to perform a bacteriological survey on captured fish. In Dimon Lake we captured individuals of Cottus gobio and of Phoxinus phoxinus, while only individuals of Salvelinus fontinalis were sampled in Balma Lake. We isolated Aeromonas sobria and Plesiomonas shigelloides in Dimon Lake, which are bacteria widespread in aquatic environment. In Balma Lake, one fish was positive for Yersinia ruckeri, a primary pathogen present in aquaculture facilities that reared salmonids. Our study show how alien species may introduce bacteria that could be more virulent for native aquatic fauna or even pathogenic bacteria.


The purpose of a wireless sensor network (WSN) is to provide the users with access to the information of interest from data gathered by spatially distributed sensors. Generally the users require only certain aggregate functions of this distributed data. Computation of this aggregate data under the end-to-end information flow paradigm by communicating all the relevant data to a central collector node is a highly inefficient solution for this purpose. An alternative proposition is to perform in-network computation. This, however, raises questions such as: what is the optimal way to compute an aggregate function from a set of statistically correlated values stored in different nodes, what is the security of such aggregation as the results sent by a compromised or faulty node in the network can adversely affect the accuracy of the computed result. In this paper, we have presented an energy-efficient aggregation algorithm for WSNs that is secure and robust against malicious insider attack by any compromised or faulty node in the network. In contrast to the traditional snapshot aggregation approach in WSNs, a node in the proposed algorithm instead of unicasting its sensed information to its parent node, broadcasts its estimate to all its neighbors. This makes the system more fault-tolerant and increase the information availability in the network. The simulations conducted on the proposed algorithm have produced results that demonstrate its effectiveness.


Empirical study of "twin deficits" for the case of Senegal. This article is concerned with the verification of the Ricardian neutrality hypothesis in Sénégal, by the existence or not of the phenomenon of "twin deficits". The objective of this work was to study the correlation between the budget deficit and the current account deficit. The review of the theoretical literature focuses on Ricardian and conventional (classical and Keynesian) equivalence approaches dealing with the effects of public debt on the real economy. The review of the empirical literature made it possible to review certain applications by country or panel data to confirm or refute the hypothesis of neutrality by verifying the existence or not of the phenomenon of twin deficits. Thus, the methodological approach that we adopted is the cointegration test of the two variables through the use of the error correction model (ERM) according to the method of Engle and Granger (1987). Our results indicate an absence of cointegration between the budget deficit and current account balance variables and therefore an equilibrium relationship over the period studied, between these two variables, hence acceptance of the Ricardian Equivalence Proposal for the period 1991–2020. Also, this result is identified with the verification of the Ricardian Equivalence Proposal (PER) for Sénégal.


Multipath transport provides higher usable bandwidth for a session. It has also been shown to provide load balancing and error resilience for end-to-end multimedia sessions. Two key issues in the use of multiple paths are 1) how to minimize the end-to-end delay, which now includes the delay along the paths and the resequencing delay at the receiver, and 2) how to select paths. This paper presents an analytical framework for the optimal partitioning of real-time multimedia traffic that minimizes the total end-to-end delay. Specifically, it formulates optimal traffic partitioning as a constrained optimization problem using deterministic network calculus and derives its closed-form solution. Compared with previous work, the proposed scheme is simpler to implement and enforce. This analysis also greatly simplifies the solution to the path selection problem as compared to previous efforts. Analytical results show that for a given flow and a set of paths, a minimal subset can be chosen to achieve the minimum end-to-end delay with O(N) time, where N is the number of available paths. The selected path set is optimal in the sense that adding any rejected path to the set will only increase the end-to-end delay.


Background: Single-cell analysis of the transcriptional heterogeneity of circulating tumor cells have the prospect of better understanding the biology of these cells and their involvement in the metastatic process. In addition, such analyses may reveal new knowledge about the mechanisms leading to chemotherapy resistance and tumor progression in pancreatic cancer patients. Methods: Single circulating tumor cells were enriched from blood samples (n = 50) from patients with advanced pancreatic cancer using our previously established negative depletion strategy MINDEC, and detected by immuno-fluorescence microscopy. The single cells were isolated by micromanipulation, reverse transcribed, pre-amplified, and analyzed using single cell multiplex mRNA profiling to reveal transcriptional heterogeneity. Results: Circulating tumor cells were detected in 29 (58%) of the examined blood samples. A total of 48 potential circulating tumor cells were isolated, in which 17 cells had detectable mRNA levels and were identified as circulating tumor cells by expression of epithelial (KRT8, KRT19, EPCAM, E-Cadherin) or mesenchymal (Vimentin, N-Cadherin, ZEB1) markers. These pancreatic circulating tumor cells were revealed to heterogeneously express the examined transcripts, and also showed aberrant expression of cancer stem cell (CD24, CD44, ALDH1A1) markers and the extracellular matrix marker SPARC. Hierarchical clustering and principal component analyses revealed epithelial-like and mesenchymal-like circulating tumor cell subpopulations, which were distinct from white blood cells and cancer cell line cells. Further analyses of the transcript SPARC suggested a relation to epithelial-mesenchymal transition in pancreatic circulating tumor cells. Conclusion: The analysis of single pancreatic circulating tumor cells defines distinct subpopulations and reveals aberrant expression of transcripts relevant for the dissemination of circulating tumor cells to distant sites. Citation Format: Morten Lapin, Kjersti Tjensvoll, Satu Oltedal, Milind Javle, Rune Smaaland, Bjornar Gilje, Oddmund Nordgard. Single-cell mRNA profiling reveal transcriptional heterogeneity among pancreatic circulating tumor cells [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-252. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-LB-252


Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results are presented for synthetic turbulence generation by a proposed statistically targeted forcing (STF) method. The new method seeks to introduce a fluctuating velocity field with a distribution of first and second moments that approximate a user-specified target mean velocity and Reynolds stress tensor, by incorporating deterministic time-dependent forcing terms into the momentum equation for the resolved flow. The STF method is formulated to extend the applicability of previously documented methods and provide flexibility in regions where synthetic turbulence needs to be generated or sustained, for use in engineering level large-eddy and hybrid large-eddy/Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes CFD simulations. The objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of the proposed STF method in LES simulations of isotropic and anisotropic homogeneous turbulent flow test cases. Results are interrogated and compared to target statistical velocity and turbulent stress distributions and evaluated in terms of energy spectra. Analysis of the influence of STF model parameters, mesh resolution, and LES subgrid stress model on the results is investigated. Results show that the new method can successfully reproduce desired statistical distributions in a homogeneous turbulent flow.


The scope of this paper is to examine the improvement from laser welding by an innovative beam wobbling head towards the welding of tailored blanks parts, widely used in automotive to develop different stiffness aluminum components. For this purpose, butt joints and overlapping joints were produced from sheets made out of two industrial grades, i.e. AA-6082 T6 and AA-5754 H111 of different thickness. The technique was evaluated both with and without the use of a filler wire (AA-5556). The qualification of the welding process encompassed Non Destructive Testing (NDT) and mechanical testing. The results indicate that butt joints tend to fail within the base material (BM) of sheet with smaller thickness. On the contrary, the shear tests on lap joints highlighted a rupture mode occurring in the heat affected zone (HAZ) of the thin sheet. Remarkably, the wobbling process generally allows avoiding porosity when combined with an optimized set of welding parameters. Yet, a residual porosity was always detected in lap joints, varying with the size of the fused zone.


Certain learners are less sensitive to learning environments and can always learn, while others are more sensitive to variations in learning environments and may fail to learn (Cronbach & Snow, 1977). We refer to the former as high learners and the latter as low learners. One important goal of any learning environment is to bring students up to the same level of mastery. We showed that an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) teaching a domain-independent problem-solving strategy indeed closed the gap between high and low learners, not only in the domain where it was taught (probability) but also in a second domain where it was not taught (physics). The strategy includes two main components: one is solving problems via backward chaining (BC) from goals to givens, called the BC strategy, and the other is drawing students' attention to the characteristics of each individual domain principle, called the principle-emphasis skill. Evidence suggests that the low learners transferred the principle-emphasis skill to physics while the high learners seemingly already had such skill and thus mainly transferred the other skill, the BC strategy. Surprisingly, the low learners learned just as effectively as the high learners in physics. We concluded that the effective element of transfer seemed not to be the BC strategy, but the principle-emphasis skill.


Exploring eye tracking in the context of spatial information, a key consideration is gazebased interaction. Geographic gaze-based recommender systems, for example, aim to provide an appropriate response to the user's gaze in geographic contexts, e.g., when looking at a particular location in physical or virtual space, on the screen or in 3D. Analysis of the viewer's gaze beyond fixation detection is required to infer the viewer's desire for information. Several approaches to developing an interest metric have been investigated. I will briefly review some advanced techniques for 3D gaze analysis, past interest metric efforts, and more recent developments of interaction styles. Brief Biography Dr. Duchowski is a professor of Computer Science at Clemson University. He received his baccalaureate (1990) from Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada, and doctorate (1997) from Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, both in Computer Science. His research and teaching interests include visual attention and perception, eye tracking, computer vision, and computer graphics. He joined the School of Computing faculty at Clemson in January, 1998. He has since produced a corpus of publications and a textbook related to eye tracking research, and has delivered courses and seminars on the subject at international conferences. He directs Clemson's eye tracking laboratory, and teaches a regular course on eye tracking methodology attracting students from a variety of disciplines across campus.


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In this paper, we focus on the fate of nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) in source-separated urine. Fresh mixed urine of pH 6.7 was diluted with different factors and stored openly and closed respectively. With pH increasing concentration of total phosphate (TP), total nitrogen (TN), ammonia nitrogen(NH3-N) and dissolved phosphate(PO43-) were measured to understand the fate of N and P in urine. Because of volatilization and precipitation, concentration of NH4+-N and PO43- in the urine stored closed was higher than them of stored openly with the equal dilution. Under same storing conditions, the higher dilution factor, the higher concentration of NH4+-N. When stored openly the pH of the samples increasing due to urea-hydrolysis resulted in precipitation which consumed N and P, and could be promoted by dilution with tap water containing hardness ions. Because of a few of hardness ions in the urine and tap water, the amount of precipitations containing calcium, magnesium, N and P in the urine sludge of every sample were not high enough to be detected by XRD. Although more flushing water would caused more precipitation, which is also helpful for nutrient recycling, using of large deal of tap water is not economic and environmentally friendly.


The significance of the banking sector in the Republic of Serbia has grown over the last 20 years, as a result of a huge increase of market importance and, consequently, deregulation in this and other sectors. Deregulation and liberalization processes are followed by the processes of integration (mergers and acquisitions) of banks. The banking sector in the Republic of Serbia is characterized by a relatively large number of banks. Competition in general, and especially in the banking sector, is complicated and difficult to measure, for which there are no generally accepted and best indicators. Using the Concentration Ratio index (CR) and Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI), the author tries to determine the degree of concentration, for the purpose of evaluation the competition in the banking sector of the Republic of Serbia. The degree of concentration was checked on the basis of the financial statements of banks in the Republic of Serbia in the period 2008-2017. The results of the research will point to the current state and the best perspectives for creating and developing competitive conditions in the banking sector of the Republic of Serbia.


This investigation has examined the feasibility of fabricating near-net shape components containing TiNi shape memory constituents by combining the attributes of ultrasonic consolidation and reaction heat treatment. An optimization design of experiment was conducted to determine the ultrasonic consolidation control parameters, e.g., sonotrode rotational velocity, amplitude and normal force, which would result in the maximum weld quality as defined by the linear weld density. Subsequent thermal treatment of the consolidated compact resulted in the formation of a graded Ti-TiNi-Ni microstructure.


Males of insects and ticks influenced the physiology of reproduction of mated females with the secretes of accessory sexual glands (aD) much more than was supposed in the past. The monocoitic behaviour of the females of some species of insects is caused by various secretions (e.g. Matrone in mosquitoes, monogamic factors in the house fly, sexpeptides in Drosophila). Furthermore the preoviposition period is shortened by these secretions whereas the productivity is increased. The food uptake and the autogeny were influenced as well. Besides this other patterns of behaviour changed (e. g. flight activity). Because of their simple structure, the accessory glands are suitable for biochemical investigations. However, in most cases the physiological functions are unknown.--The present knowledge on the functions of the accessory glands is reviewed with special regard to the modes of action of secretions of the accessory glands.


A conceptual vehicle design enabling fast outer solar system travel was produced predicated on a small aspect ratio spherical torus nuclear fusion reactor. Analysis revealed that the vehicle could deliver a 108 mt crew habitat payload to Saturn rendezvous in 204 days, with an initial mass in low Earth orbit of 1630 mt. Engineering conceptual design, analysis, and assessment were performed on all major systems including nuclear fusion reactor, magnetic nozzle, power conversion, fast wave plasma heating, fuel pellet injector, startup/re-start fission reactor and battery, and other systems. Detailed fusion reactor design included analysis of plasma characteristics, power balance and utilization, first wall, toroidal field coils, heat transfer, and neutron/X-ray radiation.


Analogical reasoning is the process of discovering and mapping correspondences from a target subject to a base subject. As the most well-known computational method of analogical reasoning, Structure-Mapping Theory (SMT) abstracts both target and base subjects into relational graphs and forms the cognitive process of analogical reasoning by finding a corresponding subgraph (i.e., correspondence) in the target graph that is aligned with the base graph. However, incorporating deep learning for SMT is still under-explored due to several obstacles: 1) the combinatorial complexity of searching for the correspondence in the target graph; 2) the correspondence mining is restricted by various cognitive theory-driven constraints. To address both challenges, we propose a novel framework for Analogical Reasoning (DeepGAR) that identifies the correspondence between source and target domains by assuring cognitive theory-driven constraints. Specifically, we design a geometric constraint embedding space to induce subgraph relation from node embeddings for efficient subgraph search. Furthermore, we develop novel learning and optimization strategies that could end-to-end identify correspondences that are strictly consistent with constraints driven by the cognitive theory. Extensive experiments are conducted on synthetic and real-world datasets to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DeepGAR over existing methods. The code and data are available at: https://github.com/triplej0079/DeepGAR.


This working paper reflects the authors' involvement with a civic engagement project funded by the University of East London's (UEL) Institute for Civic Engagement. It was a collaborative initiative between the Centre for Social Justice and Change, School of Social Sciences, and UEL's Sustainability Research Institute. The initiative commenced in November 2015 and was completed in July 2016.
The civic engagement project is part of an ongoing sustainable living project in Beckton. Situated in the hinterland of UEL's Docklands campus in the London Borough of Newham this initiative provided an opportunity to work with communities local to UEL.
Our involvement in a civic engagement initiative raised issues about what our role as students representing a University might involve, how we may contribute rather than replicate or duplicate ongoing local activities, and what additional skills we could bring to make a positive contribution.
Our project was about taking practical actions; by completing a communal garden in a local park and distributing water-saving devices to enable households to reduce their expenditure and contribute towards sustainable living. Research findings informed these practical actions and we were able to use our knowledge concerning environmental sustainability and research in discussions with residents and local agencies. Our experience also raised issues about how best to do research that can be used to inform and facilitate social action. This is particularly challenging in local communities which are ethnically diverse and culturally fragmented.
This working paper describes our experiences and reflections.


This study establishes factors that contribute to poor ART adherence. It was done at Jwaneng Mine Hospital MASA Clinic in Botswana. A qualitative study was done using a structured questionnaire which included open and close-ended questions. A total of 36 people (17 male and 19 female) who are HIV positive and on ART participated in the study. Participants were aged 21 years and above. Data was analysed using qualitative method. Frequencies were used for analysis of closeended questions. Themes were identified in open-ended questions. The responses given by the patients gave an insight on factors that may be contributing to poor ART adherence among patients at Jwaneng Mine hospital MASA Clinic although the study population was too small to make definite conclusions. In this study it was revealed that the following factors may play a role in poor ART adherence: Transport issues, Forgetfulness and long waiting hours. The main finding in this research was that many factors thought to be contributing to poor adherence do not seem to have influence on ART adherence but the fact of the matter is general ART adherence of patients at Jwaneng Mine Hospital is low. To enhance good adherence, it is of paramount importance that ART be rolled-out even to the lowest level health facilities, more nurses should be trained on prescribing and dispensing of ART, and patients should be given at least two months supply of ART. Lastly, it would be of importance to conduct a similar type of study in the future on a larger scale to verify the results of this study.


This work focuses on automatically analyzing a speaker's sentiment in online videos containing movie reviews. In addition to textual information, this approach considers adding audio features as typically used in speech-based emotion recognition as well as video features encoding valuable valence information conveyed by the speaker. Experimental results indicate that training on written movie reviews is a promising alternative to exclusively using (spoken) in-domain data for building a system that analyzes spoken movie review videos, and that language-independent audio-visual analysis can compete with linguistic analysis.


Cytomegalovirus disease is an opportunistic infection that is seen in patients with inmunodeficiencies. The group most commonly affected are AIDS and transplanted patients. Only a few cases of cytomegalovirus disease in non-immunocompromised patients have been reported. In localized disease, the gastrointestinal tract is the most frequently affected. We report two cases of acute abdomen caused by cytomegalovirus enteritis and colitis (histopathological diagnosis) without any underlying immune disorder. The role that the cytomegalovirus infection might play in the development of the clinical manifestations in these two cases is discussed. Without an established immunodeficiency we must be careful to attribute to cytomegalovirus infection the direct responsibility of the lesions. In the reported cases, the existence of intestinal ischemia is more than just a clinical hypothesis and pathological examination is inconclusive. The absence of an immunocompromised state, the presentation as an acute abdomen and the clinical course forwards intestinal occlusion in the first case are not characteristic of cytomegalovirus enteritis and colitis. We conclude that the two reported cases are in fact an ischemic enteritis upon which cytomegalovirus enteritis and colitis was superimposed, an association that has not been reported before.


The experiments discussed here were performed to determine whether radiators having similar cooling properties offer less resistance when incorporated into the fuselage, than when the hitherto customary arrangement is employed, with the radiator in the free air current more or less independent of the fuselage. The experiments indicated that the quantity of air flowing through the radiator is greatest when the fuselage and the radiator are separate. However, separate radiators cause more air resistance. When the radiator is incorporated into the fuselage, it is only possible to obtain a quantity equal to that which flows through the radiator in the free air current if the lateral outlet vents are widened or the quantity of air in increased by some special means, such as fans. Whether it is possible, in practice, to obtain the necessary cooling effect in this way, together with reduced resistance of the fuselage, is not decided here, since it is a question of construction.


The current study aimed to analyze prevailing notions and understanding of Madrassahs' heads, teachers, and students about on-going teaching practices of Sustainable Development Values (SDVs). It was done by analyzing the expectation and prevalence of teaching practices of SDVs. Diversified methods' approach was considered best appropriate, using an amalgamation of two methods known as qualitative and quantitative approaches. The population was all administrators, teachers, and students enrolled in Shahadat-ul-Alia and Shahadat-ul-Almia of the Madrassahs of the Punjab, Pakistan. The multistage sampling technique was used for the selection of the respondents. Three instruments were used: first and second instruments were self-developed questionnaires, consisting of 17 items both for teachers and students used to collect quantitative data. The third instrument which was a viable method known as interview schedule was used to gather qualitative data to triangulate the results obtained from the quantitative data. Moreover, it has been deducted from the given study that heads of departments, mentors, and learners of the Madrassahs consist of unanimous views that the expectations for teaching SDVs are significantly greater than the prevailing teaching practices of SDVs. It leads to the conclusion that there is a more need for teaching Sustainable Development Values to the Madrassah students.


N. Diulgheroff (1901, Kyustendil - 1982, Turin) was an active participant in the Turin futurists group in the decade from 1928 to 1938.
Throughout his artistic career, Diulgheroff's paintings, collages and drawings went hand in hand with his architectural projects, interior designs, design of everyday life objects, and advertisements. Diulgheroff considered the pragmatics of the object environment together with the autonomy of the picture. The abstract structures in his paintings and collages turn into design and architectural solutions.
At this unique moment and in this milieu, when the machine world, having enchanted the futurists with unseen perception of speed, light feelings and viewpoints, established a new layout of human everyday life, but the mass industrial production still did not totally dominate the object world, one can find the individual manifestation of N. Diulgheroff's artistic view. In the hybrid version between the machine and craftsman's production the artist has realized as a public value the individual consumption and the personal choice, something that he has insisted on in his articles, full of enthusiasm by the new calling of the human in the machine era.
After the WWII Diulgheroff continued to present himself as a futurist. The technical progress created monstrous killing machines, but the artist restrained his interest to the positive experience and accomplishments of the man in cosmic space. His vision of progress could not come up with the political implications. Diulgheroff strived at isolating and preserving the positive experience from his futurist decade before the WWII – experience, which is still valuable today.


1. Non-native insects pose threats to forest health and often spread via stratified dispersal in which long-distance jumps cause elevated rates of range expansion. Quantifying patterns and developing models of spread are central to understanding drivers of invasion and forecasting future invasions. 2. We investigated the utility of models for characterizing and predicting spread of emerald ash borer (EAB), quantified temporal dynamics of spread and identified correlates of county-level invasion risk. 3. We estimated rates and frequency of EAB spread and length of long-distance jumps throughout the contiguous USA from 1997 to 2018 and compared observed patterns with model predictions. A time-to-event model was then developed at the county level to assess the influence of habitat characteristics and propagule pressure on invasion risk. The final model was used to forecast invasion risk across the contiguous USA. 4. Range expansion by EAB accorded well with model predictions. Following the initial establishment phase, range expansion rates were biphasic, shifting to a faster, linear pattern around 2002 and then declining from 2015 onwards. From 2003 onwards, EAB invaded 6-134 new counties per year, including a mean of 14 discrete jumps per year averaging 93 ± 7 SE km. 5. Risk of spread was positively associated with proximity to previously invaded areas, human population density and densities of ash and non-ash trees in rural forests but negatively associated with temperature. 6. Synthesis and applications. At the regional level, the invasion by emerald ash borer appears to be entering the saturation phase, indicating that most high-risk counties in the eastern USA have been invaded. Even though spread has recently slowed, counties in close proximity to invaded areas and that have high densities of humans and trees are at the greatest risk of becoming invaded. Taken together, our findings provide insight into historical and future dynamics of range expansion by emerald ash borer, which can be used to guide risk assessments for potential invaders capable of frequent long-distance dispersal.


Pigtails, the jumper wires used to terminate wire shields, are used extensively in military applications. The work presented in this paper shows that shielded wires with pigtail terminations are as susceptible to external electromagnetic (EM) coupling as unshielded wires when radiated in the 200-1200 MHz frequency range. EM coupling onto wires can lead to electromagnetic interference (EMI) in electronic systems.<<ETX>>


ABSTRACT This article uses a case study of the reception of popular South Korean films in China to investigate aspects of proactive participation in the Chinese social mediasphere. Based on the big data collected from the popular Douban online review platform, the authors provide an in-depth investigation of the characteristics of online opinion leaders and leadership. First, we statistically analyze user-generated content-related features for both leader and non-leader groups. In addition, we employ a Bayesian optimization-based imbalanced learning algorithm to identify characteristics of the minority opinion leaders. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is evaluated based on 17,786 reviews collected from 35 popular films covering a variety of genres, and the proposed algorithm is shown to perform accurately by identifying opinion leaders, compared to other state-of-the-art approaches. Our study also reveals some major features associated with opinion leaders, such as vocabulary, viewing habits, and friendship networks. Finally, we show how these elements are contributing to new understandings of the rapidly transforming digital domain of Chinese social media and the roles of such platforms.


Background and Objective: Due to the effect of garlic on immune system and a relationship between immune responses and pregnancy outcome, we designed this study to evaluate the effect of immunomodulator fraction of garlic (R10) on main parameters in pregnancy period. Materials and Methods: One week after mating of 30 female BALB/c mice, they were divided into four groups: one group received R10 fraction for one week, one group received R10 fraction for two weeks and their corresponding control groups. Intraperitoneal injection of 0.2 mg/kg of the fraction continued until 18th days of pregnancy. During this time, blood pressure was measured and their urine for protein and creatinnine assay and serum for uric acid assay were collected. Results: Injection of 0.2 mg/kg of R10 fraction for two weeks significantly increased systolic blood pressure, declined urine protein and protein to craetinene ratio in non-pregnant mice. No significant difference was observed regarding urine creatinine between the groups. In both groups (i.e. pregnant and non-pregnant), serum level of uric acid increased as compared to control group. Conclusion: Garlic isolated R10 fraction which was used at a higher dose in this study compared to its immunostimulatory dose increased blood pressure and uric acid. Since this may cause preeclampsia, it is suggested to have precaution for use of high dose garlic and R10 fraction in pregnancy period and more study are warranted on pregnancy in human and animal models.


This paper empirically investigates the relation between vertical integration and video game performance in the U.S. video game industry. For this purpose, we use a widely used data set from NPD on video game montly sales from October 2000 to October 2007. We complement these data with handly collected information on video game developers for all games in the sample and the timing of all mergers and acquisitions during that period. By doing this, we are able to separate vertically integrated games from those that are just exclusive to a platform First, we show that vertically integrated games produce higher revenues, sell more units and sell at higher prices than independent games. Second, we explore the causal effect of vertical integration and find that, for the average integrated game, most of the difference in performance comes from better release period and marketing strategies that soften competition. By default, vertical integration does not seem to have an effect on the quality of video game production. We also find that exclusivity is associated with lower demand.


Background: Amelogenesis Imperfecta (AI) is an inherited dental condition affecting enamel, which can result in significant tooth discolouration and enamel breakdown, requiring lifelong dental care. The possible impact of this condition on children and young adults is not known. Aims and Objectives: The aim of the study was to explore the impact of AI on children and young adults through in-depth interviewing and subsequent Framework Analysis. The information derived from this was then used to construct a questionnaire. Methods: This research comprised of two parts, combining qualitative and quantitative methodology, in order to develop a questionnaire to distribute to a large cohort of AI patients. The first part involved semi-structured in-depth interviews with 7 AI patients and common themes and concepts were then identified using Framework Analysis. The second part of the study was the development of a questionnaire based on the themes and subthemes identified from part one of the research. This questionnaire was then distributed to 61 AI patients mixed between three cohorts of AI patients: pre, mid, and post-treatment. Results: Children and adolescents with AI exhibited concerns regarding the aesthetics and function of their dentition. Patients also expressed a high level of concern regarding comments by other people and self consciousness associated with this. A small number of AI patients highlighted the effect of their dental treatment and health on their personal life. Conclusion: The results indicate that there are marked impacts on children and young adults as a result of AI. These include aesthetics, function, and psycho-social aspects.


The LOFAR radio telescope measures the radio emission from extensive air showers with
unprecedented precision. In the dense core individual air showers are detected by hundreds of
dipole antennas. By fitting the complex radiation pattern to Monte Carlo radio simulation codes
we obtain measurements of the atmospheric depth of the shower maximum Xmax with a precision of $<20$ g/cm$^2$. This quantity is sensitive to the mass composition of cosmic rays.

We discuss the first mass composition results of LOFAR and the improvements that are currently being made to enhance the accuracy of future analysis. Firstly, a more realistic treatment of the atmosphere will decrease the systematic uncertainties due to the atmosphere. Secondly, a series of upgrades to the LOFAR system will lead to increased effective area, duty cycle, and the possibility to extend the composition analysis down to the energy of 10$^{16.5}$ eV.


Although bovine respiratory disease complex (BRDC) is common in post-weaning cattle, BRDC prediction models are seldom analyzed. The objectives of this study were to assess the ability to predict cumulative cohort-level BRDC morbidity using on-arrival risk factors and to evaluate whether or not adding BRDC risk classification and daily BRDC morbidity and mortality data to the models enhanced their predictive ability. Retrospective cohort-level and individual animal health data were used to create mixed negative binomial regression (MNBR) models for predicting cumulative risk of BRDC morbidity. Logistic regression models were used to illustrate that the percentage of correctly (within |5%| of actual) classified cohorts increased across days, but the effect of day was modified by arrival weight, arrival month, and feedlot. Cattle arriving in April had the highest (77%) number of lots correctly classified at arrival and cattle arriving in December had the lowest (28%). Classification accuracy at arrival varied according to initial weight, ranging from 17% (< 182 kg) to 91% (> 409 kg). Predictive accuracy of the models improved from 64% at arrival to 74% at 8 days on feed (DOF) when risk code was known compared to 56% accuracy at arrival and 69% at 8 DOF when risk classification was not known. The results of this study demonstrate how the predictive ability of models can be improved by utilizing more refined data on the prior history of cohorts, thus making these models more useful to operators of commercial feedlots.


Background: Hypertension is very common in patients with end-stage renal disease and accelerates cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The most important factor in achieving normal blood pressure in these patients is reaching dry weight. Sodium and extracellular fl uid balance play a vital role in this regard. Considering the lack of consensus about the effi cacy of stepwise sodium profi le and individualized dialysate sodium, this study aimed to determine the superior method for blood pressure control in hemodialysis patients. Materials and Methods: In a quasi-experimental study, patients satisfying the inclusion criteria were enrolled through convenience sampling. The patients were randomly assigned to two groups of stepwise sodium profi le and individualized dialysate sodium. Information record form was used for data collection. Data were analyzed with paired and independent t-test and descriptive statistics using SPSS for Windows 20.0. Results: Patients in the two groups were similar in qualitative and quantitative background variables. While systolic blood pressure signifi cantly decreased following hemodialysis with individualized dialysate sodium (P < 0.001), there was no signifi cant difference between preand post-dialysis systolic blood pressure values using stepwise sodium profi le (P = 0.060). Individualized dialysate sodium caused greater change in the mean systolic blood pressure than stepwise sodium profi le did (P = 0.040). Preand post-dialysis diastolic blood pressure values showed signifi cant differences in both groups (P < 0.001 using individualized dialysate sodium and P = 0.009 using stepwise sodium profi le). However, the mean changes in diastolic blood pressure of the two groups were not signifi cantly different (P = 0.295). Conclusions: We found no signifi cant difference in interdialytic weight gain and blood pressure control by the two methods. The change in systolic blood pressure was lower in the stepwise profi le method than in the individualized dialysate sodium method, and this method did not cause interdialytic hypertension. So, by adjusting the dialysis solution with regard to plasma sodium levels, lead to more blood pressure control. Meanwhile, the two groups were not signifi cantly different in the mean changes of diastolic blood pressure.


The Alberta SuperNet was built to bring broadband connectivity to every school, hospital, library and provincial government office in Alberta (a large province in Canada with an area of 255,285 square miles). The supposed benefits of high-speed access have led to calls for strategic public investment on both the supply and demand sides. The provincial government, through Alberta Education, initiated a number of interventions to help make broadband technology more useful and accessible to Alberta schools and to promote use of the new technology. To investigate the perceived efficacy and awareness of these initiatives, a survey of school officials was conducted in the spring of 2005. The survey was designed to assess the interest, awareness and planned use of high-speed networking initiatives by school officials. The results of the survey show that principals place relatively high levels of importance upon these initiatives but their level of awareness of, and especially their utilization of the initiatives was much lower. There were small but significant differences among principals from large versus small schools and between principals from rural versus urban school. The paper concludes with recommendations for policy makers and administrators challenged with creating effective interventions using broadband


In the world of global politics, talk is cheap. States sign negotiated agreements, but a treaty without an enforcement mechanism is considered weak, because states are not expected to adhere to commitments whose materiality is merely that of ink and paper. To verify the terms of state commitments to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 1970, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear safeguards inspectors place tamper-evident seals in nuclear facilities. While seals appear to work simply as a binary signal, their meanings are multivalent. This article draws on fieldwork at the IAEA, and on broken seals in Iran between 2004 and 2006 that escalated into an international crisis, to examine the relationship between the material properties of the seal and its signifying potentialities. Bringing the perspective of semiotic ontology to the question of materiality, this essay argues that seals constitute a semiotic infrastructure of nuclear governance that materializes international law.


Abstract Success with in vitro fertilization (IVF) using inbred strains of mice varies considerably and appears to be related to the proportion of motile spermatozoa present in epididymal sperm samples of different strains. In this study, motile spermatozoa were separated from the original samples using a column of Sephadex G25. IVF rates were compared between separated and nonseparated samples of epididymal spermatozoa before and after cryopreservation. Oocytes and spermatozoa were obtained from FVB, DBA/2, C57BL/6J, and BALB/c inbred mice; and from F1 (C57BL/6J ;ts DBA/2) hybrid mice, and isogenic gametes were used for IVF. These strains of mice were chosen because of their common use in transgenesis and mutagenesis studies. Dulbecco PBS was used for sperm separation on Sephadex, 18% raffinose, and 3% skim milk for cryopreservation; T6 medium for IVF; and mKSOMAA for embryo culture. There was a marked improvement in the rate of fertilization using fresh spermatozoa after motile spermatozoa were separated in C57BL/6J and BALB/c strains (92% vs. 58%, 79% vs. 44%) but no differences were found in fertilization rates between separated and nonseparated spermatozoa in F1, FVB, and DBA/2 strains (99% vs. 83%, 95% vs. 93%, 86% vs. 87%, respectively). After cryopreservation, higher rates of fertilization were obtained with separated motile samples in all strains; the greatest improvements were obtained with spermatozoa from C57BL/6J and BALB/c strains (40% vs. 16% and 51% vs. 14% for separated and nonseparated spermatozoa, respectively). No differences were found between the proportions of 14.5-day fetuses developing from embryos derived from separated and nonseparated spermatozoa with or without cryopreservation (33% to 46%). In conclusion, the fertility of frozen-thawed mouse epididymal spermatozoa improves significantly when highly motile populations of spermatozoa are separated for freezing.


. In the framework of polysymplectic Hamiltonian formalism, degenerate Lagrangian field systems are described as multi-Hamiltonian systems with Lagrangian constraints. The physically relevant case of degenerate quadratic Lagrangians is analyzed in detail, and the Koszul–Tate resolution of Lagrangian constraints is constructed in an explicit form. The particular case of Hamiltonian mechanics with time-dependent constraints is studied.


Abstract The classic n-queens problem asks for placements of just n mutually non-attacking queens on an n × n board. By adding enough pawns, we can arrange to fill roughly one-quarter of the board with mutually non-attacking queens. How many pawns do we need? We discuss that question for square boards as well as rectangular m × n boards.


INTRODUCTION
Medical education is essential in strengthening the rural medical workforce globally. Immersive medical education in rural communities guided by good role models and rural-specific curricula promotes rural recruitment of recent graduates. While curricula can be rurally oriented, the mechanism of action is unclear. Comparing different programmes, this study examined medical students' perceptions of rural and remote practice and how these perceptions influence students' intentions to practice rurally.

METHODS
The University of St Andrews has two medical programmes: BSc Medicine and graduate-entry MBChB (ScotGEM). Commissioned to address Scotland's rural generalist crisis, ScotGEM employs high quality role modelling, alongside 40-week immersive rural longitudinal integrated clerkships. This cross-sectional study utilised semi-structured interviews with 10 St Andrews students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate-entry medical programmes. We deductively applied Feldman and Ng's 'Careers: Embeddedness, Mobility, and Success' theoretical framework to examine rural medicine perceptions in medical students exposed to different programmes.

RESULTS
Structural themes included geographically isolated physicians and patients. Organisational themes included limited staff support in rural practices and perceived inequitable resource allocation between rural and urban communities. Occupational themes included the recognition of rural clinical generalists. Personal themes included the perception of tight-knit rural communities. Medical students' experiences (educational, personal, or working) most profoundly shaped their perceptions.

DISCUSSION
Medical students' perceptions align with professionals' reasons for career embeddedness. Perceptions unique to rurally interested medical students included isolation, the need for rural clinical generalists, uncertainty in rural medicine, and tight-knit rural communities. Educational experience mechanisms, including exposure to telemedicine, GP role-modelling, methods on overcoming uncertainty, and codesigned medical education programmes, explain perceptions.


Abstract This account aims to give a description of the usefulness of diaryliodonium salts in organic chemistry, including their synthesis and applications in the presence and absence of transition-metal catalysts. Herein, we briefly summarize the structural properties and reactivity of diaryliodonium salts. We describe several applications of these hypervalent reagents including metal-free arylations of C-, O-, N- and S-nucleophiles. The synthesis and functionalization of aromatic and heteroaromatic systems via copper- and palladium-catalyzed transformations are also discussed in this account. 1 Introduction 2 Structural Properties and Reactivity 3 Applications of Diaryliodonium Salts in Organic Syntheses 3.1 Transition-Metal-Free Arylations of Heteroatom and Carbon Nucleophiles 3.1.1 Arylation of Oxygen Nucleophiles 126.96.36.199 Arylation of (Hetero)aromatic Alcohols 184.108.40.206 Arylation of Aliphatic Alcohols 188.8.131.52 Arylation of Acids 3.1.2 Arylation of Nitrogen Nucleophiles 188.8.131.52 N-Arylation of Amines and Amides 188.8.131.52 N-Arylation of Heterocycles 3.1.3 Arylation of Sulfur Nucleophiles 3.1.4 Arylation of Inorganic Anions 3.1.5 Arylation of Carbon Nucleophiles 184.108.40.206 Electron-Rich Heterocycles 126.96.36.199 Arylation of Carbonyl and Nitro Compounds 3.2 Synthesis and Functionalization of Aromatic and Heteroaromatic Molecules with Diaryliodonium Salts in the Presence of Copper and Palladium Catalysts 3.2.1 C–H Functionalizations by Copper-Catalyzed C–H Arylations 3.2.2 Copper-Catalyzed Cyclization of Unsaturated Compounds with Diaryliodonium Salts 3.2.3 Palladium-Catalyzed Arylations 22.214.171.124 Electrophilic Palladation and Arylation 184.108.40.206 Directing-Group-Assisted C–H Bond Activation and Arylation 4 Conclusion


The cross-entropy (CE) method is simple and versatile technique for optimization, based on Kullback-Leibler (or cross-entropy) minimization. The method can be applied to a wide range of optimization tasks, including continuous, discrete, mixed and constrained optimization problems. The new package CEoptim provides the R implementation of the CE method for optimization. We describe the general CE methodology for optimization and well as some useful modifications. The usage and efficacy of CEoptim is demonstrated through a variety of optimization examples, including model fitting, combinatorial optimization, and maximum likelihood estimation.


The chronology of extension of the continental crust in western Turkey has been the subject of major controversies. We suggest that these difficulties have arisen in part because of past misuse of dating evidence; and in part because the assumption often made, that deposition of major terrestrial sedimentary sequences implies crustal extension to create the necessary accommodation space, is incorrect. We report evidence that the present phase of extension began in the Denizli region at ~ 7 Ma, around the start of the Messinian stage of the Late Miocene. This timing matches the estimated start of right-lateral slip on the North Anatolian Fault Zone, and corresponds to a substantial increase in the dimensions of the Aegean extensional province to roughly its present size: beforehand, between ~ 12 Ma and ~ 7 Ma, extension seems to have only occurred in the central part of this modern province. In some localities, terrestrial sedimentation that began before this start of extension continued into this extensional phase, both within and outside normal fault zones. However, in other localities within the hanging-walls of normal faults, the start of extension marked the end of sedimentation. Relationships between sedimentation and crustal extension in this region are thus not straightforward, and a simple correlation should therefore not be assumed in structural interpretations. During the time-scale of this phase of extension, the Denizli region has also experienced major vertical crustal motions that are unrelated to this extension. The northern part of this region, in the relatively arid interior of western Turkey, has uplifted by ~ 400 m since the Middle Pliocene, whereas its southern part, closer to the Mediterranean Sea and with a much wetter climate, has uplifted by ~ 1,200 m since the Early Miocene, by up to ~ 900 m since the Middle Pliocene, and by an estimated ~ 300 m since the Early Pleistocene. This regional uplift, superimposed on the local effects of active normal faulting, is interpreted as a consequence of lateral variations in rates of erosion. A reliable chronology for this phase of extension in western Turkey, in relation to changes in the geometry of motions of adjoining plates and Late Cenozoic environmental change, is now in place.


Both the underlying cause and resulting consequence of many cardiovascular diseases is the permanent loss of contractile cardiac myocytes (CMs). Because the vertebrate heart has no innate ability to regenerate, the response to disease stimuli is limited to hypertrophy, an initial response to preserve cardiac function. However, sustained hypertrophy can turn the growth response of myocytes to one of cell death leading to pathological ventricular remodeling and decreased cardiac function. In this study, we are interested in identifying novel therapeutic gene targets that play a role in cardiac hypertrophic progression. To identify differentially expressed genes in hypertrophy, we utilized trans-aortic constriction (TAC) to induce hypertrophy in mice and performed whole transcriptome profiling on isolated CMs and compared to wild-type adult and embryonic CMs. Globally, the correlation coefficients between adult or TAC CM samples ranged from 0.955 to 0.991, suggesting limited early response of CMs in hearts subjected to TAC. However, pathway and ontology analysis revealed that embryonic CMs are far different from both adult and TAC in global gene expression profile. Through bioinformatic analysis, we identified a panel of 12 genes that are differentially expressed between TAC and adult CMs. Pathway and ontology analysis implicated the genes to participate in either oxidative stress pathways or cardiac remodeling processes. Selective validation of the gene panel revealed MMP23 to have increased expression in an in vitro model of HF and in patients with end-stage heart failure (HF) suggesting a previously undescribed link to human HF disease progression. Together, this work identifies individual genes that contribute to pathological hypertrophy and can serve as novel targets for HF interventional therapies.


Improving economic viability of Indian agriculture is contingent upon agrienvironmental sustainability (AES). For agriculture, environment acts as a sink of pollution load as well as inputs for production. Objective assessment of environmental impacts of Indian agriculture and impacts of polluted environment on agriculture are crucial for AES. The costs of polluted environment on agriculture will be borne by farmers in terms of loss of productivity and quality of farm produces. Comprehensive assessment of economic costs of environment on Indian agriculture is lacking. On the other hand, unless internalize environmental impacts of agriculture will be borne by the society - in terms of depletion and degradation of water resources, land degradation and emissions of GHGs. Environmental impact of agriculture will be largely borne by vulnerable sections of the society who cannot afford to adopt pollution aversion practices (or technologies) to avoid health hazards. Moreover, marginal and small farmers may also not be able to mitigate the impact of polluted environment on their farmland by adopting various coping mechanism (pollution averting behavior). Therefore agri-envirionmental sustainability of Indian agriculture is important for wellbeing of Indian farmers. In the absence of system of integrated environment and economic accounting (SEEA) in India, present paper builds a comprehensive agri-environmental sustainability index (AESI) based on 40 indicators to assess the potential (possible) impact of agriculture on environment. The study captures both spatial and temporal aspects of AES by covering 17 general category states for the period 1990-91 to 2013-14. The study comes out policy suggestions which could be useful to adopt sustainable agricultural practices.


Of all feasible designs, some are "better" than others. If this is assumed as true, then there must be some quality that the better designs have more of than the lees desirable ones do. This quality must be expressed as a computable function of the design variables, and it can consider optimizing to obtain a "best" design. The function with respect to which the design is optimized is called the objective function. In some design situations, there may appear to be two or more quantities which should be objective functions. The goal of the kinematics synthesis of the linkages is to establish the kinematics dimensions of the component elements provided that some conditions are imposed regarding movements of some points or elements. As a rule, only conditions about the positions of the points or elements are imposed. In the other words, only the transmission functions of the positions are used to write the synthesis equations. The solving of the kinematics synthesis problems is reduced to the solving of some nonlinear equation systems. As a result, the problems of the kinematics synthesis of linkages do not have the unique solutions. Only in some very simples particular cases the system of synthesis equations is linear and problem has a single solution. In the optimum synthesis of the gripper mechanisms, the objective function may express the positioning precision of the work pieces, the magnitude of the driving force, the domain of the stable fastening of the work pieces etc. In the work, some considerations about the optimum synthesis of the two fingered self centering grippers are shown.


Abstract This research was conducted on the high-quality agricultural land between the towns of Lapseki and Umurbey in the Canakkale region of Turkey, where total agricultural land covers 353,589 ha. Soil samples, representing a total area of 6610 ha, where mostly cherry, peach, sour cherry, kiwi and vegetables are grown, were taken within the depths of 0–30 and 30–60cm. Soil samples were collected from 123 different points in the sampled area. Two samples were taken at every point, making a total of 246 soil samples, which were analysed to determine their physical and chemical properties. The results show the productivity characteristics of these agricultural soils. The results indicate that the soils are highly calcareous, with high pH, low levels of organic matter and phosphorous, and very rich in potassium. The sampled soils are deficient in zinc and iron (approximately 70% of the samples), manganese (50–55% of the samples), but have an excess copper content (approximately 95% of the samples).


We consider the problem of learning representations of relational data in spaces of constant sectional curvature, i.e., Euclidean, Hyperbolic, and Spherical space. In this context, we explore how to identify a suitable embedding curvature for a given relational dataset. For this task, we investigate the use of a scalable heuristic based on local graph neighborhoods and evaluate it on classic benchmark graphs.


Here are narratives and other works that describe events beginning with the Constitutional Convention through the Civil War.for the A303 History class


One hundred beef carcasses were selected at three packing plants and were used to determine the relationship between glycolytic potential (GP) and dark, firm, and dry (DFD) beef and to determine the effects of DFD status and GP on cooked beef palatability. Eight individual muscles were excised from one hindquarter of each carcass at d 7 postmortem: longissimus lumborum, psoas major, gluteus medius, tensor fasciae latae, rectus femoris, semimembranosus, biceps femoris, and semitendinosus. Ultimate pH, colorimeter readings, and Warner-Bratzler shear force were determined for all eight muscles at d 7 postmortem. A nine-member trained sensory panel evaluated cooked longissimus lumborum, gluteus medius, and semimembranosus steaks. Traits determined solely for the longissimus lumborum were GP (2 x [glycogen + glucose + glucose-6-phosphate] + lactate) and ether-extractable fat. A curvilinear relationship existed between GP and ultimate pH within the longissimus muscle. There appeared to be a GP threshold at approximately 100 micromol/g, below which lower GP was associated with higher ultimate pH and above which GP had no effect on ultimate pH. The greatest pH and muscle color differences between normal and DFD carcasses were observed in the longissimus lumborum, gluteus medius, semimembranosus, and semitendinosus muscles. Cooked longissimus from DFD carcasses had higher shear force values (46% greater) and more shear force variation (2.3 times greater variation) than those from normal carcasses. Dark cutting carcasses also had higher shear force values for gluteus medius (33% greater) and semimembranosus (36% greater) than normal carcasses. Sensory panel tenderness of longissimus, gluteus medius, and semimembranosus was lower for DFD carcasses than for normal carcasses. Longissimus and gluteus medius flavor desirability scores were lower for DFD than for normal carcasses. Steaks from DFD carcasses had more off-flavor comments than steaks from normal carcasses, specifically more "peanutty," "sour," and "bitter" flavors. The DFD effect of higher shear force values was approximately five times greater (+3.11 kg vs +0.63 kg) for carcasses with "slight" marbling scores than for carcasses with "small" marbling scores. In general, higher GP was associated with increased tenderness, even among normal carcasses. In conclusion, low GP was associated with DFD beef and resulted in substantially less-palatable cooked steaks.


The reconstruction of seismic images of the medium from crosswell travel-time data is a typical example of the ill-posed inverse problem. In order to obtain a stable solution and to replace an ill-posed problem by a well-posed one, a stabilizing functional (stabilizer) has to be introduced. The role of this functional is to select the desired stable solution from a class of solutions with specific physical and/or geometrical properties. One of these properties is the existence of sharp boundaries separating rocks with different petrophysical parameters, e.g., oil- and water-saturated reservoirs. In this paper, we develop a new tomographic method based on application of a minimum support stabilizer to the crosswell travel-time inverse problem. This stabilizer makes it possible to produce clear and focused images of geological targets with sharp boundaries. We demonstrate that the minimum support stabilizer allows a correct recovery of not only the shape but also the velocity value of the target. We also point out that this stabilizer provides good results even with a low ray density, when the traditional minimum norm stabilizer fails.


The migration of expelled hydrocarbon from source rock into unconventional tight reservoirs is subject to different pore-scale fluid transport mechanisms as opposed to the conventional counterparts and therefore plays a crucial role in controlling the hydrocarbon distribution and accumulation in the former. One of the different mechanisms is related to the formation of a more viscous boundary layer (BL) of brine, i.e., wetting phase fluid on pore surfaces, giving rise to the so-called BL effect. In this work, a two-phase pore network model (PNM) that considers this BL effect is developed to study the influences of pore-scale characteristics on the oil migration process, manifested through the BL effect in tight-sandstone media. Good agreements are reached between experimentally derived relative permeability curves and predicted ones, by applying this model to the pore-network networks extracted from the same samples. Then, this validated model was used to evaluate the impacts of the following factors on the oil migration process: pore radius, coordination number, aspect ratio, brine viscosity, and wettability. The results show that all factors can influence the oil migration process but at different magnitudes. The applicability and significance of the developed tight oil migration PNM are discussed in this work.


The coating thickness is an important factor to evaluate the coating quality and determining the properties of the hot-dip aluminizing (HDA) coating. In the present work, a hot dipping pure aluminum (99%) on stainless steel (AISI 303) rods was carried out for different diameters of rods (8, 10 and 12 mm) and different lengths (250 and 500 mm) at different aluminizing conditions of temperature and time. The dipping temperature was set to 700, 740, 780, 820 and 860 (cid:1320) .The dipping time was set to 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 minutes. A response surface methodology (RSM) using a central composite rotatable design (CCD) for a 2³ factorial, with 5 central points and α = ±2 approach, based on the experimental data, was used to obtain the optimum model to get the best thickness of coating and the best conditions of dipping. A 2 nd polynomial model was obtained with a confiding percentage of 95%. Analysis of the experiments using RSM indicated that 807 (cid:1320) and 3min are optimum dipping conditions for hot-dip aluminizing process with corresponding thickness of coating layers of 134 μm to Al layer, 62.9 μm to intermetallic compound (IMC) layer and 197 μm to total coating layer.


Implantable neural probes represent one the most revolutionary technology of the last years, having experienced a large growth because of the wide range of applications in which they can be adopted, spacing from the treatment of neurological disease to the Internet of Things. They aim to record or stimulate the neurons activity using thin needles to be implanted into the brain cortex, with a depth and location depending on the particular device purposes. The biggest challenge for a more massive use of human machine interfaces for biomedical applications is related to the capability of developing small devices with a high density of recording/stimulation sites, able to last long in a biological medium. That happens because unconventional materials for microfabrication processes have to be used, even if micromachining is not well developed for such materials. Thus, it is the case of stainless steel used to give robustness and flexibility to devices substrates, as well as Parylene C to ensure biocompatibility and good insulation performance: both of them have been adopted to realize the devices used in this thesis work. After the fabrication process, some customization procedures need to be adopted to improve quality of the surfaces. Electropolishing and electroetching are two valide candidates for this purpose: the procedures have been implemented to get hybrid flexible/stiff devices with smooth edges, reducing the possibility to damage the recording sites or changing the electrical insulator properties. In terms of packaging, correctly interfacing the device with the electrical setup for the recording operation could be challenging due the fragility of the device itself. This operation needs to be customized in such a way that the mechanical stress for the device is minimized, without losing in signal quality, in terms of parasitics and yield of the packaging procedure. Adhesive flip chip bonding and Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) connectors have been used to obtain this result, by interfacing the probe back-end with customized flexible Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs). Then, each device needs to be electrically characterized, to ensure good performance before the in-vivo implantation or to modify the fabrication process if major problems are encountered during the result analysis. Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) is the technique adopted in this thesis work to analyze both the response of one single recording site and the crosstalk effects between two traces. The implemented setup uses a PCB board to switch between all the probe channels, resulting in an automatic routine that makes the process fast and increases reliability. Another important aspect of implantable devices characterization is the estimation of the mean time to failure after the insertion in a biological tissue. The device aging has been artificially carried on and the probe electrical properties have been analyzed over time starting from different aging conditions. Finally, the last step of the characterization is to test how each recording site responds to an electrical stimulus that emulates the neuron activity, before performing the in-vivo characterization directly on animals brain.


In view of the problems of the computer aided design in the abrasive tool manufacturers, the manufacturing process flow of the resin-bonded diamond abrasive tool and the related factors affecting the quality were analyzed. The principle of CAD technology based on quality control was proposed. The key technologies of the abrasive tool CAD system based on quality control were put forward, including the computer aided formula design, the process flow design based on the parametric templates, the quality control technology based on the parameter constraints, etc. Based on these, the resin-bonded diamond abrasive tool CAD system based on quality control was developed. The development environment and implementation methods of the system were proposed.