Though born in the American South in the mid-1960s, the Black Power movement traveled the world in the years between 1967 and 1972, capturing the imagination of people of color across the Caribbean, Africa, Australasia, Europe, and the Middle East. In Black Power on the Move, Anne-Marie Angelo tells the story of two of the most powerful Black Panther movements outside the United States, showing how a distinctively American movement gave a name to an assertive grassroots internationalist politics in the U.K. and Israel.

In London, Afro-Caribbean, West African, and South Asian people established the British Black Panther Movement in 1968. In Jerusalem, migrants from countries such as Morocco, Iraq, Yemen, and Egypt founded the Israeli Black Panther Party in 1971. In the face of national narratives that insisted that racism was solely an American problem, these groups adapted the Black Panther framework to suit their local struggles, deploying it to characterize everyday experiences of police harassment, unemployment, and poor housing as symptoms of larger structural problems and to envision community programs that might lead to a new social order. Highlighting some common strategies these parties shared, Angelo reveals how, as Black Panthers, people of color from many parts of the world strengthened their communities and provoked resistance to racism's local and imperial formations.


A wide variety of diseases of the oral mucosa may occur in the aged patient. The majority arise primarily in the oral cavity. Some, however, are manifestations of generalized diseases. Based on his dental and medical education and with the help of several good atlases (Strassburg and Knolle, 1968; Pindborg, 1980) and textbooks of oral pathology (Shafer et al., 1974; Lucas, 1976) the dentist should be able to recognize most of the lesions warranting intervention.


The purpose of this paper is to construct and test the feasibility of a monetary conditions index (MCI) for Kenya using 2000 – 2011 time series quarterly data. Empirical results confirm the existence of cointegration between aggregate demand (GDP), the real exchange rate, the short-term interest rate and the claims on private sector. The last three variables are key in the monetary transmission mechanism for Kenya. Their relative strengths proceeds from the exchange rate, credit to private sector and the interest rates respectively. On the use of the monetary conditions index as an indicator, results show that it closely mirrors the movements of the interest rates while also closely tracking changes in the exchange rates. This makes its use in Kenya quite realistic since it would not be a radical departure from the use of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) rate.


This paper discusses the theory and practice of tax design to achieve an efficient and equitable outcome, i.e. in support of inclusive growth. It starts with a discussion of the key principles from tax theory to guide practical tax design. Then, it elaborates on more granular tax policy, discussing key choices in the structure of the personal income tax on labor and capital income, taxes on wealth, the corporate income tax, and consumption taxes. The paper concludes by highlighting the political economy considerations of the issues with concrete recommedtions as to how to implement tax reform. JEL Classification Numbers: H20, H21, H24, H26, D63


The depletion in fossil fuel reserves has instigated the search for renewable sources such as biofuels. Biofuel production provides a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. However, the progression of biofuel industry has been largely affected by several uncertainties including the sustainability of production processes. Finding an economically viable process and the right substrates have been a source of constant debate. Biodiesel production is one such area which is gaining momentum in the last few decades. We are currently investigating cassava wastewater as a substrate and also as a source of oleaginous bacteria. The production of tri-acyl glycerol from mycolic acid containing actinomycetes predominantly Rhodococcus, has been identified as a potential source. These bacteria which are largely ubiquitous provide a significant amount of triglyceride when cultivated under low cost waste. The growth of oleaginous bacteria for the accumulation of triglycerides on low cost and abundant, cassava waste still remains unexplored, especially in Nigeria which is the largest producer of cassava in the world. We started our initial investigations on the cassava waste water sample following culture dependent and independent approach. We prognosticate that the identification of microflora isolated from different stages in the sample will provide a basis for understanding the nature of the substrate and the potential for the synthesis of biodiesel from cassava waste water.


A new strategy to improve the therapeutic utility of redirected T cells for cancer involves the development of novel Ag-specific chimeric receptors capable of stimulating optimal and sustained T cell antitumor activity in vivo. Given that T cells require both primary and costimulatory signals for optimal activation and that many tumors do not express critical costimulatory ligands, modified single-chain Ab receptors have been engineered to codeliver CD28 costimulation. In this study, we have compared the antitumor potency of primary T lymphocytes expressing carcinoembryonic Ag (CEA)-reactive chimeric receptors that incorporate either TCR-zeta or CD28/TCR-zeta signaling. Although both receptor-transduced T cell effector populations demonstrated cytolysis of CEA(+) tumors in vitro, T cells expressing the single-chain variable fragment of Ig (scFv)-CD28-zeta chimera had a far greater capacity to control the growth of CEA(+) xenogeneic and syngeneic colon carcinomas in vivo. The observed enhanced antitumor activity of T cells expressing the scFv-CD28-zeta receptor was critically dependent on perforin and the production of IFN-gamma. Overall, this study has illustrated the ability of a chimeric scFv receptor capable of harnessing the signaling machinery of both TCR-zeta and CD28 to augment T cell immunity against tumors that have lost expression of both MHC/peptide and costimulatory ligands in vivo.


This chapter examines the emergence, expansion, variation, and transformation of the welfare state. It first considers the meaning of the welfare state, before discussing three perspectives that explain the emergence of the welfare state: the functionalist approach, the class mobilization approach, and a literature emphasizing the impact of state institutions and the relative autonomy of bureaucratic elites. It then describes the expansion of the welfare state, taking into account the impact of social democracy, neocorporatism and the international economy, risk redistribution, Christian democracy and Catholic social doctrine, and secular trends. It also explores variations among developed welfare states, as well as the effects of the welfare state, and concludes with an analysis of the challenges and dynamics of contemporary welfare states. The chapter shows that the welfare state is a democratic state that guarantees social protection as a right attached to citizenship.


Following Kimura's neutral theory of molecular evolution [M. Kimura, The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983) (reprinted in 1986)], it has become common to assume that the vast majority of viable mutations of a gene confer little or no functional advantage. Yet, in silico models of protein evolution have shown that mutational robustness of sequences could be selected for, even in the context of neutral evolution. The evolution of a biological population can be seen as a diffusion on the network of viable sequences. This network is called a "neutral network." Depending on the mutation rate mu and the population size N, the biological population can evolve purely randomly (muN<<1) or it can evolve in such a way as to select for sequences of higher mutational robustness (muN>>1). The stringency of the selection depends not only on the product muN but also on the exact topology of the neutral network, the special arrangement of which was named "superfunnel." Even though the relation between mutation rate, population size, and selection was thoroughly investigated, a study of the salient topological features of the superfunnel that could affect the strength of the selection was wanting. This question is addressed in this study. We use two different models of proteins: on lattice and off lattice. We compare neutral networks computed using these models to random networks. From this, we identify two important factors of the topology that determine the stringency of the selection for mutationally robust sequences. First, the presence of highly connected nodes ("hubs") in the network increases the selection for mutationally robust sequences. Second, the stringency of the selection increases when the correlation between a sequence's mutational robustness and its neighbors' increases. The latter finding relates a global characteristic of the neutral network to a local one, which is attainable through experiments or molecular modeling.


This work focuses on the numerical assessment of the accuracy of an adjoint-based gradient in the perspective of variational data assimilation and parameter identification in glaciology. Using noisy synthetic data, we quantify the ability to identify the friction coefficient for such methods with a non-linear friction law. The exact adjoint problem is solved, based on second-order numerical schemes, and a comparison with the so-called "self-adjoint" approximation, neglecting the viscosity dependence on the velocity (leading to an incorrect gradient), common in glaciology, is carried out. For data with a noise of 1%, a lower bound of identifiable wavelengths of 10 ice thicknesses in the friction coefficient is established, when using the exact adjoint method, while the "self-adjoint" method is limited, even for lower noise, to a minimum of 20 ice thickness wavelengths. The second-order exact gradient method therefore provides robustness and reliability for the parameter identification process. In another respect, the derivation of the adjoint model using algorithmic differentiation leads to the formulation of a generalization of the "self-adjoint" approximation towards an incomplete adjoint method , adjustable in precision and computational burden.


Background: This study examined the possibility that apolipoprotein E4 (apoE4), the most prevalent genetic risk factor of Alzheimer's disease, interacts isoform specifically with the transforming growth factor (TGF)-β system. Methods: This was pursued by measurements of the effects of apoE3 and apoE4 on the levels of TGF-β ligands and on activation of the Smad system in brains of human apoE targeted replacement mice, utilizing Western blot. Results: The study revealed that apoE4 reduces, isoform specifically, the levels of TGF-β1, TGF-β2 and TGF-β3 in the septum and of TGF-β3 in the hippocampus. In contrast, the levels and extent of phosphorylation of Smad1, 5 and 8 as well as of Smad2 and Smad3 in these brain areas were not affected by apoE4, suggesting that the apoE4-driven effects on the TGF-β system may be mediated via the Smad-independent non-canonical pathway. Conclusion: The possible role of the TGF-β system in mediating the pathological effects of apoE4 is discussed.


The growing business prosperity in African countries has brought new opportunities for enterprises to carry out transnational operation in Africa; however, it may also be accompanied by some transnational operation risks. Enterprises incorrectly identify and analyze these risks, which brings enterprises great uncertainty and huge losses. So enterprises should establish a transnational operation risk management system as soon as possible to ensure the healthy transnational operation in Africa. Based on the survey of 83 experts at African research and the relevant literatures, this paper puts forward a transitional risk early-warning evaluation index system composed of 8 primary indexes including strategic management risk, operation management risk, human resource risk, marketing risk, supply chain management risk, financial management risk, national political risk and macro environmental risk. This paper also determines the weights of the indexes by AHP method and sets the transitional operation risk early-warning evaluation standards based on advice from experts. Furthermore, this paper takes 259 Zhejiang Africa-related enterprises as samples and assesses the transitional operation risk of them by the system established, finds that human resource risks, financial management risks, national political risks and national macro environmental risks are relatively large. Finally, some suggestions are given.

 Key words: Risk early-warning index system, transitional operation, Africa-related enterprises.


Two centres in the hypothalamus are known to exert control over feeding. Bilateral destruction of the ventromedial centres causes an increased intake of food i.e. hyperphagia, and bilateral destruction of the lateral centres results in no food being eaten i.e. aphagia. At present there is only speculation as to the way in which these neural lesions act. An investigation was undertaken to detect the changes in feeding behaviour which result from lateral lesions being made in the hypothalamus of the rat. Records of feeding behaviour were obtained from a Skinner box system in which rats were motivated by hunger to press a lever. As a result, food was made available to them and the relationship between the total number of lever-presses and the caloric intake in each 24 hour period was derived. Prom these results it was seen that the mean feeding patterns of rats was constant from day to day. After anaesthesia, there was a 40% decrease in both calorie intake and lever-pressing activity. There was a 50% decrease in calorie intake and lever-pressing following a sham operation in which no brain lesion was made. Bilateral lesions in the lateral hypothalamus resulted in complete aphagia for at least three days. During the same period, lever-pressing activity was minimal. This result suggests that the urge to eat was non-existent at that period. During recovery from the lesion operation lever-pressing activity increased significantly in every case, and was presumably due to recovery of the urge to eat. Calorie intake was zero for the first day on which lever-pressing was resumed in each experiment. Thereafter there was a recovery of feeding in some cases while other rats remained aphagic. Lever-pressing was continued throughout that recovery period. Histological examination of the brains of these rats showed that bilateral destruction of a similar area had been achieved in every case. Rats with gastric fistulae implanted were maintained for long periods and trained to feed by autoinjection of diet through the fistula. Intragastric feeding was as efficient as oral feeding in inhibiting gastric "hunger" contractions in rats with fistulae. Sequences of grooming behaviour also followed intragastric feeding but were not seen after lateral lesions were made in the hypothalamus. Intragastric feeding behaviour did not change after rats with fistulae were made aphagic by lateral hypothalamic lesions. Although unable to ingest food orally those rats maintained their intake of food by the direct intragastric route. The implications of those results suggest that the aphagia produced by lateral lesions of the hypothalamus is not primarily due to lack of the desire to eat. Recovery of lever-pressing activity during aphagia suggests that the urge to eat is still present although rats cannot ingest food orally. Rats with gastric fistulae are therefore able to feed by by-passing the oral mechanisms# Further observations suggest that the neural block caused by lateral lesions affects the act of swallowing, rather than the act of mastication. No damage to any discrete nerve pathway could be detected.


Along with the emergence of massive graph-modeled data, it is of great importance to investigate graph similarity joins due to their wide applications for multiple purposes, including data cleaning, and near duplicate detection. This paper considers graph similarity joins with edit distance constraints, which return pairs of graphs such that their edit distances are no larger than a given threshold. Leveraging the MapReduce programming model, we propose MGSJoin, a scalable algorithm following the filtering-verification framework for efficient graph similarity joins. It relies on counting overlapping graph signatures for filtering out nonpromising candidates. With the potential issue of too many key-value pairs in the filtering phase, spectral Bloom filters are introduced to reduce the number of key-value pairs. Furthermore, we integrate the multiway join strategy to boost the verification, where a MapReduce-based method is proposed for GED calculation. The superior efficiency and scalability of the proposed algorithms are demonstrated by extensive experimental results.


Summary: Populations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae NCYC 431, harvested after 16 h incubation from self-induced anaerobic cultures, were more tolerant to the inhibitory effect of ethanol on fermentation rate and viability than organisms harvested from 8 h cultures. Ethanol increased the rate of passive influx of protons into de-energized organisms at a rate which was greater with organisms from 8 h compared with 16 h cultures. Rates of passive influx of protons into spheroplasts were significantly greater than into intact organisms, although culture age did not affect rates of ethanol-induced influx of protons into spheroplasts. Ethanol retarded both the initial net rate of proton efflux and the final extent of acidification produced by suspensions of energized organisms, both effects being more pronounced with organisms from 8 h as compared with 16 h cultures. The magnitude of the proton-motive force (Δp) was decreased by ethanol in both energized and de-energized organisms. Although culture age did not affect the extent of ethanol-induced decrease in Δp in de-energized organisms, in energized organisms harvested from 8 h cultures ethanol produced a significantly greater decrease in Δp as compared with organisms from 16 h cultures. If the ability of ethanol to decrease the Δp value is important in its inhibitory effect on growth, it is suggested that some phenomenon other than proton uncoupling is involved.


This study was designed to determine the optimal maize-based enterprise in soba local government area of Kaduna state, Nigeria. Data were collected from a survey conducted with 200 farmers in eight districts in the local government area. Results of the dominance analysis showed that maize/cowpea enterprise dominated the other enterprises because it had the highest gross margin and lowest total variable cost. The linear programming analysis indicated that a gross margin of N56,920.30 was obtained in the planned farm as against N26,282.00, per hectare of maize/cowpea in the unplanned farm. The study also indicates that Maize/cowpea enterprise was the most competitive enterprise in the study area. Labour and land were the most limiting resources.

 Agro-Science Vol. 6 (2) 2007: pp. 28-32


Release of carbon from thawing permafrost in high northern latitudes is a potential positive feedback in a warming climate, particularly since large quantities of carbon-rich organic matter have been stored in the permafrost soils for many millennia. Thawing of permafrost is expected to make this ancient organic matter bioavailable resulting in increased emissions of greenhouse gases. Thawing of permafrost may also result in increased transport of particulate organic matter through river systems to the ocean, where parts of this organic matter may escape remineralization and will be buried in marine sediments. This process might have accelerated over the past century in a warming Arctic with more frequent thaw slumping and increased river discharge leading to increased mobilization of ancient terrestrial organic matter previously freeze-locked in permafrost.
We therefore studied short sediment cores that were recovered off two of the main branches of the Lena River Delta, receiving the suspended matter transported from the mainly permafrost covered catchment of this great Russian Arctic river. The cores were recovered in 2013 from water depths of approximately 15 m and dated using 210Pbxs and 137Cs. The sediment records cover the past 70 to 120 years. By direct combustion of isolated analytes using an elemental analyser (EA) directly coupled to the accelerator mass spectrometer (MICADAS, Ionplus) via a Gas Interface System, we obtained compound-specific radiocarbon ages for a suite of n-alkanoic acids. We studied C16 to C28 even carbon number n-alkanoic acids, a homologous series containing both aquatic (C16 and C18 n-alkanoic acids) and terrigenous (C26 and C28 n-alkanoic acids) biomarkers. Besides, we analysed biomarker concentrations and the geochemical composition of the sediment.
Our results reveal that throughout the records' length, the age at deposition of the terrigenous biomarkers remained constant, while that of the aquatic biomarker decreased in the most recent decades. We will discuss these findings in context of the increases in Lena River discharge observed since the late 1980ies. The results allow estimation of the rapidly cycling biospheric contribution to each biomarker.


The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate the effects of metacognitive reflective assessment instruction on student achievement in mathematics. The study compared the performance of 141 students who practiced reflective assessment strategies with students who did not. A posttest-only control group design was employed, and results were analyzed by conducting one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and nonparametric procedures. On both a posttest and a retention test, students who practiced reflective strategies performed significantly higher than students who did not use the strategies. A within-subjects ANOVA was also conducted six weeks following the intervention to assess how the factor of time affected retention levels. No significant difference was found between the posttest and retention test results for the experimental groups or the control group.


Blood culture (BC) often fails to detect bloodstream microorganisms in sepsis. However, molecular diagnostics hold great potential. The molecular method PCR/electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (PCR/ESI-MS) can detect DNA from hundreds of different microorganisms in whole blood. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the performance of this method in a multicenter study including 16 teaching hospitals in the United States (n = 13) and Europe (n = 3). ABSTRACT Blood culture (BC) often fails to detect bloodstream microorganisms in sepsis. However, molecular diagnostics hold great potential. The molecular method PCR/electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (PCR/ESI-MS) can detect DNA from hundreds of different microorganisms in whole blood. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the performance of this method in a multicenter study including 16 teaching hospitals in the United States (n = 13) and Europe (n = 3). First, on testing of 2,754 contrived whole blood samples, with or without spiked microorganisms, PCR/ESI-MS produced 99.1% true-positive and 97.2% true-negative results. Second, among 1,460 patients with suspected sepsis (sepsis-2 definition), BC and PCR/ESI-MS on whole blood were positive in 14.6% and 25.6% of cases, respectively, with the following result combinations: BC positive and PCR/ESI-MS negative, 4.3%; BC positive and PCR/ESI-MS positive, 10.3%; BC negative and PCR/ESI-MS positive, 15.3%; and BC negative and PCR/ESI-MS negative, 70.1%. Compared with BC, PCR/ESI-MS showed the following sensitivities (coagulase-negative staphylococci not included): Gram-positive bacteria, 58%; Gram-negative bacteria, 78%; and Candida species, 83%. The specificities were >94% for all individual species. Patients who had received prior antimicrobial medications (n = 603) had significantly higher PCR/ESI-MS positivity rates than patients without prior antimicrobial treatment—31% versus 22% (P < 0.0001)—with pronounced differences for Gram-negative bacteria and Candida species. In conclusion, PCR/ESI-MS showed excellent performance on contrived samples. On clinical samples, it showed high specificities, moderately high sensitivities for Gram-negative bacteria and Candida species, and elevated positivity rates during antimicrobial treatment. These promising results encourage further development of molecular diagnostics to be used with whole blood for detection of bloodstream microorganisms in sepsis.


Mitochondrial calcium (mCa + 2) overload occurs during cold preservation and is an integral part of mitochondrial‐dependent apoptotic pathways. We investigated the role of mCa + 2 overload in cell death following hypothermic storage using HepG2 cells stored in normoxic‐hypothermic (4 °C) or hypoxic (< 0.1% O2)‐hypothermic Belzer storage solution. Cells were stored for 6 h, with or without 10 μM ruthenium red (mCa + 2 uniporter inhibitor) followed by rewarming in oxygenated media at 37 °C. Cytoplasmic cytochrome c levels were studied by Western analysis and by fluorescent microscopy after transfection of cytochrome c‐GFP expression plasmid. Immunofluorescence determined the intracellular, spatio‐temporal distribution of Bax, and TUNEL staining was used to evaluate cell death after 180 min of rewarming. Caspase activation was evaluated using Western analysis and a caspase 3 activity assay. Bax translocation, cytochrome c release, and early rewarming cell death occurred following hypothermic storage and were exacerbated by hypoxia. Caspase 3 activation did not occur following hypothermic storage. Blockade of mCa + 2 uptake prevented Bax translocation, cytochrome c release, and early rewarming cell death. These studies demonstrate that mCa + 2 uptake during hypothermic storage, both hypoxic and normoxic, contributes to early rewarming apoptosis by triggering Bax translocation to mitochondria and cytochrome c release.


Wagner H-J, Kalinowski M, Klose K-J, et al. The use of gadolinium chelates for x-ray digital subtraction angiography. Invest Radiol 2001:36:257–265. rationale and objectives. To evaluate the feasibility and safety of using gadolinium chelates for x-ray digital subtraction angiography (DSA) in patients with contraindications to iodinated contrast material. methods.We performed 30 DSAs in 22 patients (5 females, 17 males; mean age 64.9 years) with contraindications to iodinated contrast media (renal insufficiency:n = 28; hyperthyroidism:n = 1; contrast allergy:n = 2). Gadolinium chelates were administered as 0.5 mol/L solutions (mean volume of gadolinium chelates per patient was 34 ± 19 mL). Gadolinium chelates were the sole contrast agent in 17 examinations, were used in conjunction with carbon dioxide (CO2) in 8 studies, (mean 212 ± 226 mL), and were combined with the restricted use of nonionic iodinated contrast (mean 12.8 ± 4.7 mL) in 6 examinations. We carried out 15 diagnostic angiographies and 15 percutaneous transluminal angioplasties. results.Use of gadolinium chelates allowed us to obtain diagnostic angiographic images in all cases. However, the quality of angiograms was inferior compared with that obtained with iodinated contrast agents and superior compared with CO2 as the contrast material. Adverse events were not noted. Mean serum creatinine was 2.6 ± 1.5 mg/dL before and 2.3 ± 1.0 mg/dL after DSA. No patient developed contrast-induced nephropathy. conclusions.Gadolinium chelates produce an x-ray DSA intermediate in image quality between iodinated contrast and CO2. Digital subtraction angiography with intra-arterial gadolinium chelate administration may offer an alternative to iodinated contrast material in patients with contraindications to iodine.


A case study of the background mathematical skills of a varied group of first year chemistry students (n = 455) is presented. Potential student demographic factors, including school leaver, mature age, non-English speaking background, and pre-requisite or prior assumed mathematical and chemistry knowledge, were examined. The student cohort had a diverse background in mathematical knowledge with only 53% meeting the pre-requisite mathematics admission criteria used in Queensland. A voluntary survey was completed by some students (n = 57) from the total cohort, which identified the individual mathematical background of students, their perception of the importance of mathematical skills in their study and their confidence with mathematics. The survey responses indicated that students generally did not have high confidence with their mathematical skills; especially for those with poorer mathematics backgrounds. Interestingly, all students were in strong agreement regarding the importance of mathematics to their study of chemistry. Correlation of the student mathematics background with a chemistry diagnostic test revealed that prior achievement in mathematics impacted on performance within chemistry. We propose that integration of foundational and enabling mathematical skills with curriculum would build student confidence and is more likely to have success in enabling science students to engage and succeed.


Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) may change both vehicle dynamics and driver behaviour. To study traffic-related impacts of a powertrain-related ADAS for trucks, a simulation-based approach was developed. The paper presents an approach to interconnecting a microscopic traffic simulation model and a vehicle simulation model including modelling of ADAS functionality. Verification tests demonstrate that the approach is practical and that high ADAS penetration rates can be run within reasonable simulation execution times. The verification tests also demonstrate that current truck dynamics modelling in the Aimsun and Vissim traffic simulation models does not capture all relevant aspects of truck driving behaviour and dynamics related to vertical grades.


applications. We now have obtained AM1 efficiency values approaching 25  percent at 200 suns. The basic material's considerations going into high efficiency 1-sun cell design have been  presented  previously.2 In this paper, we  will describe the design criteria and results on high concentration cells. In concentrator cells, the emphasis is on achieving minimal effective series resistance. The ohmic contact has two major effects on the performance of the solar cell; it reduces the photocurrent because of the shadowing effect of the contacts on the incident light, and it introduces a series resistance because the cell current has to flow transversely through the sheet resistance of the surface layer, the contact resistance of the ohmic contact, and the sheet resistance of the metal grid before it is delivered to the load. These two effects represent opposing requirements on the grid design. A detailed analysis investigating the distributed nature of the series resistance is currently underway and the results of this study will be presented. Measurements of cell performance were made in natural sunlight at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's facility at Table Mountain, CA, using a Cassegrain reflecting concentrator3 on an equational mount in the tracking mode. The average insolation during the time of the measurements was %95 mW/cm2. The primary data consisted of IV curves taken at various concentrations. Simultaneously, the cell temperature, controlled by active cooling, was monitored. For the best of these cells, AM1 values of 24.6 percent at 180 suns, and 20.5 percent at 440 suns were obtained.


Summary
As they grow old, most organisms experience progressive physiological deterioration resulting in declining rates of survival and reproduction – a seemingly maladaptive phenomenon known as senescence.
Although senescence is usually defined with respect only to survival and reproduction, a third component of fitness, offspring quality, may also decline with age. Few studies, however, have assessed age-related changes in offspring quality using measures that truly reflect fitness.
In a controlled environment, we tested for age-related declines in three demographic components of fitness (survival, reproduction and offspring quality) in Lemna minor, a small aquatic plant in the subfamily Lemnoideae (the duckweeds) with a short life span and rapid rate of asexual reproduction. Our primary measure of offspring quality, the intrinsic rate of increase, more closely approximates fitness than measures used in previous studies such as size, life span and total reproductive output.
We observed strong age-related declines in all three components of fitness: old plants had lower rates of survival and reproduction, and produced lower-quality offspring than younger plants.
Theoretical and empirical research on the evolutionary biology of senescence should devote more attention to offspring quality. This often unrecognized component of fitness may change with age – as we have shown in L. minor – and may be shaped by, and feed back into, the same evolutionary forces that give rise to senescence.


Indialite or α-cordierite was synthesized by glass crystallization method using mainly talc and kaolin and with small amount of MgO, Al2O3, SiO2 to compensate the chemical formulation of non-stoihiometric compositions of cordierite. (3MgO.1.5Al2O3.5SiO2). B2O3, P2O5 and CaO was also added to decrease the melting and sintering temperature of cordierite. The glasses were pelletized and sintered from 850oC up to 1050oC. Phase compositions of both heat treated glass was quantified by X-ray powder diffraction data by the Rietveld method using TOPAS Ver 3 software. Result shows that about 60wt% of α cordierite has successfully crystallized at 850oC. Beside secondary phases (forsterite) which come from initial raw materials, phases from grinding media were also presents in the sample. The contamination was considered high since it has reacted with existence phases to form a new phase at higher temperature. Without any contamination from grinding it was expected to obtain more than 90wt% α cordierite using the same composition.


People often use superplasticizer and mineral admixtures (such as steel slag, slag, etc.) to increase the density of concrete and improve concrete strength, but don't use coarse aggregate gradding. The paper selects the coarse aggregate of skeleton structure from several grading concept, and uses Uniform Design to test high strength concrete workability, and analyses results. It is shown from the results that the method of Uniform Design can significantly reduce the workload, and concrete mixture slump increases linearly with the water-cement ratio and sand percentage, but decreases linearly with steel slag addition, and the water released from the flocculation of cement by superplasticizer can increase the slump, and most of water plays the role of lubricant before it reacts with cement, and the effect of slump that sand extends coarse aggregate skeleton are greater than that sand surface area increases.


This study contributes to the literature by proposing a new method of complex evaluation of multiple life cycle environmental impacts of different PV technologies based on the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The main advantage of DEA as a non-parametric technique is that it does not require prior knowledge of underlying production functions. An empirical production technology frontier is estimated based on best-practice boundary of the input-output relationship. DEA evaluates comparative or relative efficiency, which means the measurement with reference to some set of units we are comparing with each other. The proposed approach allows to aggregate disparate quantitative estimates of individual negative environmental effects from the literature and special databases in a transparent and easily understandable index or coefficient of ecology efficiency. The evaluation of environmental effects is performed on data from the EcoInvent Database. The results of this study clearly show that from an environmental point of view it is more practical to prefer technologies, which are less resource and energy intensive in manufacturing and upstream activities. As of right now, this requirement is met by thin-film technologies (amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride, and copper-indium-diselenide); however, their ecologic efficiency evaluation may change as we obtain more data on the final stages of the lifecycle for PV modules of various types. Based on results of this study a number of opportunities for improving existing government incentives and rationalizing the design of state programs under elaboration can be identified.


BACKGROUND
In single case observations, tumour remissions after intratumoral injections of mistletoe extracts have been described.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We investigated the antitumour activity of intratumorally (i.t.)-injected lectin-rich mistletoe extract at different dosages and i.t.-injected mistletoe lectin I in comparison to intravenous (i.v.) Gemcitabine and i.t. treatment with placebo in a human pancreatic cancer xenograft.

RESULTS
In a preliminary dose-response experiment, the most marked tumour inhibition was induced when mistletoe extract was given at 8 mg/kg body weight (BW) and mistletoe lectin I at 5.3 microg/kg BW. In a second experiment, bi-weekly i.t. injections of mistletoe extract over 8 weeks resulted in a very high antitumour activity with an optimal T/C value (=median relative tumour volume of the test group vs. the control) of 0.4% combined with 3/8 partial and 3/8 complete remissions. Gemcitabine was less active with 2/8 partial and 1/8 complete remissions and an optimal TIC of 4.6%.

CONCLUSION
I.t.-injected lectin-rich mistletoe extract should be further evaluated in patients with inoperable locally advanced pancreatic cancer.


Despite progresses in climate change science, projections of future sea-level rise remain highly uncertain, especially due to large unknowns in the melting processes affecting the ice-sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Based on climate-models outcomes and the expertise of scientists concerned with these issues, the IPCC provided constraints to the quantiles of sea-level projections. Moreover, additional physical limits to future sea-level rise have been established, although approximately. However, many probability functions can comply with this imprecise knowledge. In this contribution, we provide a framework based on extra-probabilistic theories (namely the possibility theory) to model the uncertainties in sea-level rise projections by 2100 under the RCP 8.5 scenario. The results provide a concise representation of uncertainties in future sea-level rise and of their intrinsically imprecise nature, including a maximum bound of the total uncertainty. Today, coastal impact studies are increasingly moving away from deterministic sea-level projections, which underestimate the expectancy of damages and adaptation needs compared to probabilistic laws. However, we show that the probability functions used so-far have only explored a rather conservative subset of sea-level projections compliant with the IPCC. As a consequence, coastal impact studies relying on these probabilistic sea-level projections are expected to underestimate the possibility of large damages and adaptation needs.


Myocardial involvement during the course of adult Still's disease is very rare. We present a case of a 34-year-old man admitted with fever, tachycardia, weakness and chest discomfort. The electrocardiogram showed non-specific diffuse ST-T changes, troponin level was slightly elevated and echocardiography did not reveal any abnormalities. After ruling out other relevant diseases, the adult Still's disease was diagnosed.


The importance of facilitation versus competition in structuring herbivore species assemblages is a critical issue in theoretical ecology as well as for practical wildlife management. This paper examines the evidence for facilitation and clarifies our understanding in relation to the mechanisms and the spatial and temporal scales where they occur. Evidence for facilitation through stimulation of grass regrowth during the growing season appears stronger than that for increased resource access through removal of obstructing grass structures during the dormant season. Although facilitation may benefit the nutritional gains obtained by certain species in the short term, these benefits do not appear to be translated into the expected population consequences. We suggest this could be due to seasonal tradeoffs between facilitation and competition, as well as to restrictions on the spatial extent of trophic overlap.


X-ray lasers bring us into a new world in photon science by delivering extraordinarily intense beams of x-rays in very short bursts that can be more than ten billion times brighter than pulses from other x-ray sources. These lasers find applications in sciences ranging from astrophysics to structural biology, and could allow us to obtain images of single macromolecules when these are injected into the x-ray beam. A macromolecule injected into vacuum in a microdroplet will be affected by evaporation and by the dynamics of the carrier liquid before being hit by the x-ray pulse. Simulations of neutral and charged water droplets were performed to predict structural changes and changes of temperature due to evaporation. The results are discussed in the aspect of single molecule imaging. Further studies show ionization caused by the intense x-ray radiation. These simulations reveal the development of secondary electron cascades in water. Other studies show the development of these cascades in KI and CsI where experimental data exist. The results are in agreement with observation, and show the temporal, spatial and energetic evolution of secondary electron cascades in the sample. X-ray diffraction is sensitive to structural changes on the length scale of chemical bonds. Using a short infrared pump pulse to trigger structural changes, and a short x-ray pulse for probing it, these changes can be studied with a temporal resolution similar to the pulse lengths. Time resolved diffraction experiments were performed on a phase transition during resolidification of a non-thermally molten InSb crystal. The experiment reveals the dynamics of crystal regrowth. Computer simulations were performed on the infrared laser-induced melting of bulk ice, giving a comprehension of the dynamics and the wavelength dependence of melting. These studies form a basis for planning experiments with x-ray lasers.


A diagnosis of idiopathic anaphylaxis following a detailed clinical assessment remains very challenging for patients and clinicians. Risk reduction strategies such as allergen avoidance are not possible. This study investigated whether the (ISAC) allergen array with 103 allergens would add diagnostic value in patients with idiopathic anaphylaxis. We extended the specific immunoglobulin (Ig)E testing in 110 patients with a diagnosis of idiopathic anaphylaxis from five UK specialist centres using ISAC arrays. These were divided into three groups: score I identified no new allergen sensitization beyond those known by previous assessment, score II identified new sensitizations which were not thought likely to explain the anaphylaxis and score III identified new sensitizations felt to have a high likelihood of being responsible for the anaphylaxis. A proportion (50%) of score III patients underwent clinical reassessment to substantiate the link to anaphylaxis in this group. The results show that 20% of the arrays were classified as score III with a high likelihood of identifying the cause of the anaphylaxis. A wide range of major allergens were identified, the most frequent being omega‐5‐gliadin and shrimp, together accounting for 45% of the previously unrecognized sensitizations. The ISAC array contributed to the diagnosis in 20% of patients with idiopathic anaphylaxis. It may offer additional information where a careful allergy history and follow‐on testing have not revealed the cause of the anaphylaxis.


This study explores whether the soil information contributes additional explanatory power beyond the base premium rate to crop insurance loss. By examining a panel of 697 counties from the Corn Belt states in the U.S. over the period of 2005—2015, we find the loss costs are systematically associated with the National Commodity Crop Productivity Index (NCCPI) conditioning on the county base premium rates, weather conditions, and year fixed effects. The loss cost rises first with NCCPI in lower NCCPI quartiles and then decreases in higher NCCPI quartile. In general, counties with medium NCCPI values are expected to have higher relative loss cost comparing with low and high NCCPI counties. The pattern of NCCPI's effects is robust to different model specifications, heteroskedasticity and spatial correlation of data, as well as subsamples by insured acreage thresholds. The finding of this study presents empirical evidence that there is additional information embodied in soil and spatial variables not captured by the current base premium rates that is correlated with loss experiences. It suggests the potential to incorporate soil and spatial information to improve the crop insurance ratemaking.


The externally prestressed bridge finite element analysis module redeveloped based on ANSYS software is introduced,realizing finite element analysis method for externally prestressed concrete bridge. It is able to build the externally prestressed bridge finite element model, combined with Solid65 and Solid45 simulated concrete, and Link8 or Link10 simulated prestressed tendon. It is also able to bring material and geometric nonlinear effects into the analysis, for analyzing ultimate bearing capacity and local stress characterization of the externally prestressed structure. A bridge model is generated as an example for verifying the application of the module. Based on it, the model then is equipped with different allocation arrangements of internal and external tendons to analyze the mechanical characteristics of externally prestressed concrete bridge. Research is conducted for the effect on ultimate bearing capacity by allocation arrangement of tendons, and providing design suggestion and theoretic basis.


This paper proposes robust regression to solve the problem of outliers in seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models. The authors present an adaptation of S‐estimators to SUR models. S‐estimators are robust, have a high breakdown point and are much more efficient than other robust regression estimators commonly used in practice. Furthermore, modifications to Ruppert's algorithm allow a fast evaluation of them in this context. The classical example of U.S. corporations is revisited, and it appears that the procedure gives an interesting insight into the problem.


Catalysts based on bimetallic nanoparticles have received tremendous scientific and industrial attention and are established as an important class of active catalysts. These catalysts displayed improved catalytic activities compared to their monometallic counterparts for several reactions, which is attributed to their highly modified surface structures (electronic and geometrical) due to the synergic cooperation between the two metals of the bimetallic nanoparticle catalyst. Moreover, such synergic interactions are more prominent in alloy nanoparticle catalysts, where the probability of metal-to-metal interactions is higher in comparison with other systems (such as core–shell nanoparticles). This minireview highlights the recent progress made in the last decade towards the development of activated bimetallic alloy nanoparticle catalysts for C–C coupling reactions, including asymmetric C–C bond coupling reactions. Herein, the influence of the modified electronic structures of the newly formed bimetallic alloy nanoparticle catalysts on their activated catalytic performance is also discussed extensively.


The aim of the study is to characterise hot-rolled and heat-treated plain-C steels (SAE 1020 and 1050) by ultrasonic velocity and attenuation measurements. Various heat treatment procedures were applied by changing the austenitisation temperature and the cooling rate to distinguish the effects of grain size and microstructural phases on ultrasonic properties. Velocities of both longitudinal and transversal waves were measured and backwall echo patterns were obtained for each specimen. The variations in the ultrasonic velocity and attenuation behaviour were discussed considering the microstructural investigations and hardness test results.


The main problem being faced by developing countries including Indonesia is the still high rate of population growth and a lack of balance in the distribution and age structure of the population. Such a condition of the population has made it difficult for businesses to improve and equalize people's welfare. The higher population growth the greater the effort needed to maintain the level of people's welfare. Exclusive breastfeeding in infants will increase uterine involution, thereby reducing complications of the puerperium. This can reduce postnatal morbidity and mortality rates. The pattern of breastfeeding is closely related to the return of fertility which can be measured either by the return of menstruation.
The study  was to analyse the effect of breastfeeding with the return of menstruation in Breast Feeding mothers.
The study began on September 12, 2018 and was completed in October 2018. The researcher first determined the sample to be used as the subject. The sample in this study was breastfeeding mothers of infants aged 6- 12 months as many as 38 respondents in Kunden Blora Urban Village.
There is an effect of breastfeeding with the return of menstruation in nursing mothers. there was the influence of the breastfeeding with the return of menstruation in Breast Feeding mothers with a value of p = 0.000


: Purpose: This paper deals with the increasing work efficiency in the selected company. The literature review contains process improvement approaches in the field of increasing work efficiency. Implementation of lean production has brought continual improvement for manufacturers to remain competitive in the markets. Design/Methodology/Approach: There is a case study and an analysis of the current state of the company that is operating internationally in industrial and professional electronics. Based on a practical application of a lean management method which is called Gemba Walk and the consultation with the employees, the result is the Ishikawa diagram and a priority matrix and evaluation results of these methods. Findings: These results in the work served to suggest improving awareness and the importance of lean management in work environments. The case study is focused on the presentation of the proposed measures, the aim of which is to increase work efficiency and to motivate the employees to work more efficiently. Practical Implications: The individual proposed measures will make it possible to reduce the time spent by the worker in carrying out his work. The work efficiency before and after the implementation of the proposed solutions is also calculated. Originality/Value: The values for the company are the economic assessment of the proposed solutions, their time assessment, comparison of work efficiency, and the benefits of results. Benefits for the selected company are for example increasing the efficiency of work in the cutting room department in the company, minimization of the use of storage means, improving cooperation between picking and shearing, acceleration of the production process and reducing the risk of accidents at work and health problems.


What is distinctive about the economics of wine? Wine's health benefits stir debate, but many appreciate life-enhancing qualities from its production and enjoyment. Few products enjoy such wide distribution, rich history, and interest. This book emphasizes microeconomic principles and related research – drawing upon various fields from international trade to public choice, relating economic reasoning to management. Topics range from economic fundamentals to the challenge of knowing what is in the bottle and the importance of wine as a cultural good.


This thesis investigates the use of profiling as a fraud enforcement instrument in the execution of the 'participation law': the law which regulates the 'bijstand' in the Netherlands, a form of social benefits. Taking a social science approach, we conducted elite interviewing in 13 Dutch municipalities. Fraud enforcement officers were interviewed on the extent to which and the way in which they profile. We found a large amount of profiling instruments that were, have been, or will be used, ranging from the most basic human profiling to very advanced Big Data systems. The way in which these instruments are applied and valued as a tool also greatly differs, though municipalities were unanimous in their disappointment of the tool. With regards to human rights, the most prominent risks were found to be risks of discrimination, privacy, and the right to a fair trial, specifically the principle of innocent until proven guilty.


Organizations have been quick to realize that involving suppliers in new product/process/service development efforts has the potential for significant results. Numerous studies have highlighted the fact that supplier participation in product development projects can help reduce cost, reduce concept to customer development time, improve quality, and provide innovative technologies that can help capture market share. However, not all efforts are successful. Supplier integration is most successful when driven by a formalized process that considers supplier capabilities, level of complexity of the technology, and degree of risk. Leading companies conduct a formal in-depth supplier evaluation and risk assessment prior to supplier involvement on the project team.


Objectives: To retrospectively investigate the impact of supervised daily nasal saline irrigations (NSI) with 0. 9% saline solution in children with a history of recurrent acute otitis media (RAOM). Methods: A retrospective pilot study was planned to evaluate the possible effect of supervised NSI in reducing the number of acute otitis media (AOM) episodes in otitis-prone children aged 1–5 years, compared to children not instructed to correct NSI performance. Results: Analysis was based on the data contained in 173 charts (57.3% males, mean age of 30.9 ± 7.3 months). 52.0% of children had not been instructed to perform NSI, while the remaining (48.0%) patients had received supervised NSI. At the 4-months follow-up visit a significant reduced number of AOM episodes (1.03 ± 0.14 vs. 2.08 ± 0.16; p < 0.001) as well as antibiotic treatments (1.48 ± 0.17 vs. 2.59 ± 0.18; p < 0.001) was documented in children receiving supervised NSI compared to those not instructed for NSI performance. Conclusions: These data suggest that NSI should be considered in the therapeutic management of children with RAOM, and should be routinely prescribed as a daily adjunctive treatment to reduce acute infectious exacerbations in otitis-prone patients. Accurate parents training is crucial in order to improve children compliance and treatment effectiveness.


In this paper we discuss demand management problems in a multi-stage distribution chain. We focus on distribution chains where demand processes have high variability due to a few large customer orders. We give a possible explanation and suggest two simple procedures that help to smooth demand. It is shown that these procedures yield stock reductions of 40%-50% in practical situations. The quantitative results are based on the analysis of the underlying model related to the two procedures proposed, called large order overflow, applicable if the supplying organization executes a multi-stage distribution chain, and delivery splitting, applicable to any situation.


Text detection and recognition from images could have numerous functional applications for document analysis, such as assistance for visually impaired people; recognition of vehicle license plates; evaluation of articles containing tables, street signs, maps, and diagrams; keyword-based image exploration; document retrieval; recognition of parts within industrial automation; content-based extraction; object recognition; address block location; and text-based video indexing. This research exploited the advantages of artificial intelligence (AI) to detect and recognise text from natural images. Machine learning and deep learning were used to accomplish this task.In this research, we conducted an in-depth literature review on the current detection and recognition methods used by researchers to identify the existing challenges, wherein the differences in text resulting from disparity in alignment, style, size, and orientation combined with low image contrast and a complex background make automatic text extraction a considerably challenging and problematic task. Therefore, the state-of-the-art suggested approaches obtain low detection rates (often less than 80%) and recognition rates (often less than 60%). This has led to the development of new approaches. The aim of the study was to develop a robust text detection and recognition method from natural images with high accuracy and recall, which would be used as the target of the experiments. This method could detect all the text in the scene images, despite certain specific features associated with the text pattern. Furthermore, we aimed to find a solution to the two main problems concerning arbitrarily shaped text (horizontal, multi-oriented, and curved text) detection and recognition in a low-resolution scene and with various scales and of different sizes.In this research, we propose a methodology to handle the problem of text detection by using novel combination and selection features to deal with the classification algorithms of the text/non-text regions. The text-region candidates were extracted from the grey-scale images by using the MSER technique. A machine learning-based method was then applied to refine and validate the initial detection. The effectiveness of the features based on the aspect ratio, GLCM, LBP, and HOG descriptors was investigated. The text-region classifiers of MLP, SVM, and RF were trained using selections of these features and their combinations. The publicly available datasets ICDAR 2003 and ICDAR 2011 were used to evaluate the proposed method. This method achieved the state-of-the-art performance by using machine learning methodologies on both databases, and the improvements were significant in terms of Precision, Recall, and F-measure. The F-measure for ICDAR 2003 and ICDAR 2011 was 81% and 84%, respectively. The results showed that the use of a suitable feature combination and selection approach could significantly increase the accuracy of the algorithms.A new dataset has been proposed to fill the gap of character-level annotation and the availability of text in different orientations and of curved text. The proposed dataset was created particularly for deep learning methods which require a massive completed and varying range of training data. The proposed dataset includes 2,100 images annotated at the character and word levels to obtain 38,500 samples of English characters and 12,500 words. Furthermore, an augmentation tool has been proposed to support the proposed dataset. The missing of object detection augmentation tool encroach to proposed tool which has the ability to update the position of bounding boxes after applying transformations on images. This technique helps to increase the number of samples in the dataset and reduce the time of annotations where no annotation is required. The final part of the thesis presents a novel approach for text spotting, which is a new framework for an end-to-end character detection and recognition system designed using an improved SSD convolutional neural network, wherein layers are added to the SSD networks and the aspect ratio of the characters is considered because it is different from that of the other objects. Compared with the other methods considered, the proposed method could detect and recognise characters by training the end-to-end model completely. The performance of the proposed method was better on the proposed dataset; it was 90.34. Furthermore, the F-measure of the method's accuracy on ICDAR 2015, ICDAR 2013, and SVT was 84.5, 91.9, and 54.8, respectively. On ICDAR13, the method achieved the second-best accuracy. The proposed method could spot text in arbitrarily shaped (horizontal, oriented, and curved) scene text.


This paper reviews the Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) studies in Kenya with special interest on the hidden opportunity costs. The paper considered the negative implications to the victims of HWC and explores ways of ensuring full integration of all costs especially in regard to the search for more comprehensive compensation frameworks. One of the specific interests in the paper was to determine whether the hidden costs of HWC in Kenya are well considered in the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act 2013 (WCMA 2013) or whether there is need for a review and amendments. Data for this review was obtained from Google Scholar and Crossref references and citation-enhanced indexing databases. Content analysis from the two databases showed a lot of research interest on the cost of HWC to societies around conservation areas. Further content analysis revealedthat most of the HWC costs estimation studies have mostly concentrated on the visible costs (127 publications and 1507 citations) without serious consideration of the hidden costs (33 publications and 893 citations). As such, more research is required on the hidden costs in order to formulate more effective HWC loss compensation frameworks as a strategy for ensuring sustainable co-existence between society and wildlife.


Numbers convey different meanings when used in different contexts (Wiese, 2003). In a cardinal context, a number will tell us how many entities are in a set and convey quantity meaning. In an ordinal context, a number will refer to the relative position (or rank) of one element within a sequence; non-numerical ordered series (e.g. the letters of the alphabet) can also be used to provide meaningful order information. Because quantity and order are linked up with each other in the cognitive number domain (the larger the quantity a number refers to, the later it is located in the conventional number sequence), the question of whether they rely on some common or distinct underlying mechanism(s) is theoretically relevant and was addressed in the present thesis. Experimental studies showed evidence of both similarities (similar distance and SNARC effects, recruitment of parietal and frontal regions, and conjoint impairment or preservation after brain damage) and dissociations (different developmental course, dissociation after cerebral lesion, and specific behavioural markers) between quantity and order neuro-functional processes. The aim of the present thesis was to clarify the relationship between numerical quantity and order processing and to test the hypothesis that they rely on (at least partially) dissociated mechanisms. We tested this hypothesis in a single case study, an electrophysiological study and in two behavioural experiments. In the neuropsychological study, we reported the case of patient CO, who showed Gerstmann syndrome after bilateral parietal damage and beca...


Planning and scheduling of power system operation for future loads involves extensive studies of reliability analysis and production costing to ensure secure and economical supply of electric energy. Sensitivity analysis plays an important role in fine tuning the operating plans in the presence of various uncertainties. In this paper, the application of a technique known as perturbation analysis (PA) to the generation system reliability analysis using Monte Carlo simulation is presented. Specifically, the PA is used to find the derivatives of some of the reliability indices. Starting with a general introduction of the Monte Carlo simulation, the power system model for the application of PA is described. This is followed by a thorough discussion of the generation and propagation of perturbations to estimate the derivatives during the chronological simulation. A numerical example is presented in which the PA derivative estimates of a 6 unit thermal system are compared to the estimates obtained from analytical methods. >


Abstract : Department of Defense (DoD) and Air Force senior leaders have called for transforming the way the military conducts business. One way to achieve this transformation is by promoting a more entrepreneurial approach. The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent an entrepreneurial mindset exists in DoD organizations and to identify key antecedents and outcomes associated with this mindset. The study participants were seven Air Force organizations, most of which were located on Air Force Bases in the United States. An electronic survey was used to gather data from members of these innovative DoD organizations. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were then used to assess the extent of an entrepreneurial mindset in the sample organizations and to identify key antecedents and outcomes. The results of this study show that a high degree of entrepreneurial mindset exists in the sample organizations and that appropriate use of rewards, management support, a supportive organizational structure, and risk taking and failure tolerance are key antecedents that positively influence this mindset. In addition, results show that an entrepreneurial mindset in these organizations is positively related to increased levels of job satisfaction, perceived organizational contribution, organizational commitment, memory orientation, and overall organizational performance. The results of this study provide senior leaders with a distinct set of factors they can promote and support to influence entrepreneurial behavior in their organizations. Further, the study shows that these factors may lead to positive outcomes that maximize organizational performance. (9 tables, 2 figures, 94 refs.)


1 The effects of polymyxin B at the neuromuscular junction of the frog were studied by conventional electrophysiological and voltage clamp techniques. 2 At a concentration of 2.5 μg/ml polymyxin B produced neuromuscular blockade in 10 to 15 min and endplate potentials (e.p.ps) could be recorded. Resting membrane potential was unaffected. The neuromuscular block was characterized by a depressed e.p.p. quantal content (28 ± 7), which was similar to that determined from endplates exposed to 13 mm magnesium (23 ± 3), and a low e.p.p. quantal size, which was similar to that determined from endplates exposed to 3 μm (+)‐tubocurarine. 3 Polymyxin B (0.25 to 0.75 μg/ml) decreased mean miniature e.p.p. amplitude with little effect on frequency. 4 At a concentration of 5 μg/ml polymyxin B markedly shortened the duration of endplate currents (e.p.cs) and abolished the relationship between holding potential and the time to half‐decay at negative potentials greater than −;60 mV. This action is consistent with block of open acetylcholine activated ionic channels. 5 4‐Aminopyridine (20 μm) antagonized the depressed e.p.p. quantal content produced by polymyxin B but did not alter the shortened e.p.c. duration. 6 It is concluded that polymyxin B decreases quantal release and produces some degree of postjunctional receptor blockade and a marked and persistent blockade of acetylcholine activated channels. The latter action may explain the difficulty of reversal of polymyxin B‐induced neuromuscular blockade and its non‐competitive nature.


An optical wavefront propagating through the atmosphere will be perturbed by local variations in the refractive index of the atmospheric gases. When accumulated over long optical path distances they will impart a spatial and temporally random distortion to the wavefront. These distortions have a characteristic spatially coherence length r0, and an atmospheric decorrelation time τo. In directed energy applications, atmospheric distortions can reduce the peak target energy densities of large diameter laser beams by orders of magnitude. The problem is not solved through the use of larger apertures; once the aperture size increases beyond one or two τ0 the far-field spot remains constant in size. Hence, for large aperture systems, the overall performance is set by the spatial coherence of the atmosphere and not by the systems' exit pupil. An adaptive optics (AO) system can compensate for the degrading effects of the atmosphere and significantly restore diffraction limited performance. A segmented or deformable mirror with appropriate control signals can "pre-distort" the outgoing beam to cancel the atmospheric aberration. To be effective, the system must measure and correct wavefront variations over spatial resolution elements on the order of one ro and generate the compensation in a time less than τo. ITC is currently producing its third generation of segmented mirrors for atmospheric compensation. Advanced systems for short wavelength operation with five hundred segments have been tested and proven as part of integrated adaptive optical systems, see Figure 1. These systems have excellent optical figure, wavefront fitting, and dynamic performance as well as low cost. The segmented mirrors' inherent modularity has eliminated the classic optical fabrication problems associated with large optics. Using TTC's third generation technology it is now practical to produce segmented wavefront correctors with more than 10,000 segments for compensation of short wavelength systems with apertures of 4 m and beyond.


High power pulsed magnetron sputtering (HPPMS) has been employed for the growth of TiOx (x > 1.8) films from a ceramic TiO1.8 target in an Ar-O2 ambient. The film properties have been compared to those deposited by dc magnetron sputtering (dcMS). Both HPPMS and dcMS films exhibit an amorphous structure and are transparent. Furthermore, films grown by HPPMS have improved properties, such as higher density, higher refractive index and smoother film surface, as compared to those deposited by dcMS.


S,S'-diphenylsulfimide, Ph2SNH, 1, is an excellent ligand that readily forms N-bound
complexes with a range of transition metals. Its importance as a ligand is
enhanced by two significant features of the resulting complexes: (1) the strong hydrogen
bonding interactions between the NH unit and the counterions; and (2) the ligand's
ability to stabilise unusual structural combinations. By varying the counterions, the
hydrogen bonding pattern can be changed and this affects the geometry at the metal
centre. The anion also plays an important role in determining the coordination number of the metal.
The hydrogen bonding interactions have been utilised to prepare extended arrays
by the inclusion of appropriate outer sphere, bridging ligands, such as terephthalate and
fumarate into the system. The fixation of atmospheric CO2 has been observed in a
number of systems leading to the formation of both a bicarbonate dimer and a metal-bound
carbonate ligand. These act as hydrogen bonding acceptors to give extended 2-D
networks. [Continues.]


One of the major concerns for the technical implementation of a RUC is the ability to collect the mileage of motorists in a way that preserves and protects individual privacy. With the widespread use of connected devices/smartphones and the growth of connected vehicles and the existence of toll tag readers, it is possible to build and deploy architectures capable of computing advanced fee structures (based upon on mileage, road type, time of day, and speed, among other features) that respect motorist privacy. A possible architecture can rely on the use of virtual trip lines (VTLs) – a technology that dates back to 2007, when the first privacy aware traffic collection apps for smartphones emerged [1]. VTLs are virtual landmarks deployed at specific locations of the transportation network at which charges need to be applied. They can be imagined as virtual screen lines capable of counting cars or motorists (via smartphones, connected devices, or connected vehicles) as they pass, using the underlying mapping system of the connected device. Based on this detection, the connected device can compute a fee onboard, based on the features of the VTLs. This technology has been demonstrated to be privacy preserving and does not require the system to keep track of vehicle location, only the fees incurred. POLICY BRIEF


In reverse engineering, in order to get the entire point data of the object surface, which must be merged from point data cloud obtained from different angles. And in order to acquire exactly merge effect, a method to stick reference points on object surface to acquire base point. Thus, the precision of center extraction of reference point affect the merge result. Firstly a new method to center extraction of reference point is presented based on the characteristics to the images in reverse engineering in this paper. And the new method is that the region recognition algorithm combining to least squares algorithm. Secondly, in order to improve the computational efficiency, the modified sequential algorithm is applied to optimize the region recognition. Lastly, the availability and accuracy to the new method are proved by the experiment.


MOTIVATION
Prediction of protein-protein complexes from the coordinates of their unbound components usually starts by generating many potential predictions from a rigid-body 6D search followed by a second stage that aims to refine such predictions. Here, we present and evaluate a new method to effectively address the complexity and sampling requirements of the initial exhaustive search. In this approach we combine the projection of the interaction terms into 3D grid-based potentials with the efficiency of spherical harmonics approximations to accelerate the search. The binding energy upon complex formation is approximated as a correlation function composed of van der Waals, electrostatics and desolvation potential terms. The interaction-energy minima are identified by a novel, fast and exhaustive rotational docking search combined with a simple translational scanning. Results obtained on standard protein-protein benchmarks demonstrate its general applicability and robustness. The accuracy is comparable to that of existing state-of-the-art initial exhaustive rigid-body docking tools, but achieving superior efficiency. Moreover, a parallel version of the method performs the docking search in just a few minutes, opening new application opportunities in the current 'omics' world.

AVAILABILITY
http://sbg.cib.csic.es/Software/FRODOCK/


Introduction: Rhino-orbito-cerebral mucormycosis has been reported as a sequela after coronavirus disease in immunocompromised patients with poorly controlled diabetes mellitus. Most cases have been identified in India, with only 19 reported elsewhere. Methodology: We herein report the results of clinical, imaging, microbiological, and histopathological studies in an immunocompetent 67-year-old male with rhino-orbital infection by Finegoldia magna and Mucorales molds following severe SARS-CoV-2 disease associated with new-onset decompensated diabetes mellitus. Results: Microbiological and histological studies confirmed the presence of both Mucorales molds and Finegoldia magna , which was successfully treated with antibiotics and a specific anti-fungal agent (Posaconazole). Conclusions: Careful multidisciplinary follow-up of patients treated for severe SARS-CoV-2 disease is necessary for the timely diagnosis of complications such as uncontrolled diabetes mellitus and opportunistic infections.


: Alveolar macrophages recovered from rats exposed to nickel oxide (NiO) showed distinct changes in cell size and presence of viscous substances surrounding the cells. Both alveolar macrophages and lung washout fluid (LWF) exhibited alterations in the cytoplasmic inclusion bodies by the presence of parallel, concentric lamellar structures or formations, osmiophilic inclusions, matrix formations and obvious degenerative changes. In addition, alveolar macrophages showed eccentrically placed nucleus with peripheral chromatinization, elongated outline and cytoplasmic projections of different sizes.


At low temperature, 1-alkoxy-1,3-dienes add to sulfur dioxide activated by a Lewis or protic acid generating zwitterionic intermediates that can be quenched by enoxysilanes. The resulting beta,gamma-unsaturated silyl sulfinates can be desilylated by 1:1 Pd(OAc)(2)/PPh(3) catalyst, liberating the corresponding beta,gamma-unsaturated sulfinic acids that undergo smooth and highly stereoselective retro-ene eliminations of sulfur dioxide. The method has been applied to generate enantiomerically pure polypropionate fragments.


This dissertation deals with geometry instruction in Sweden in the period 1905-1962. The purpose is to investigate textbooks and other literature used by teachers in elementary schools (ES) and lower secondary schools (LSS) – Folkskolan and Realskolan – connection to geometry instruction. Special attention is given to debates about why a course should be taught and how the content should be communicated.In the period 1905-1962, the Swedish school system changed greatly. Moreover, in this period mathematics instruction was reformed in several countries and geometry was a major issue; especially, classical geometry based on the axiomatic method. However, we do not really know how mathematics instruction changed in Sweden. Moreover, in the very few works where the history of mathematics instruction in Sweden is mentioned, the time before 1950 is often described in terms of "traditional", "static" and "isolation".In this dissertation, I show that geometry instruction in Sweden did change in the period 1905-1962: geometry instruction in LSS was debated; the axiomatic method and spatial intuition were major issues. Textbooks for LSS not following Euclid were produced also, but the axiomatic method was kept. By 1930, these alternative textbooks were the most popular.Also the textbooks in ES changed. In the debate about geometry instruction in ES, visualizability was a central concept.Nonetheless, some features did not change. Throughout the period, the rationale for keeping axiomatic geometry in LSS was to provide training in reasoning. An important aspect of the debate on geometry instruction in LSS is that the axiomatic method was the dominating issue; other issues, e.g. heuristics, were not discussed. I argue that a discussion on heuristics would have been relevant considering the final exams in the LSS; in order to succeed, it was more important to be a skilled problem solver than a master of proof.


This article examines how Alain Mabanckou uses sexual allegories in his novel Broken glass (2010) to express (neo)-colonial realities in which Africa is charmed by the West into assuming the role of the sexual subaltern. Mabanckou appears to reinvigorate the sexual allegories of rape and prostitution for expressing the penetrative tendencies of colonialism by affixing their connotations of exploitation to the harsh socio-economic and political realities of (neo)-colonialism, thus creating a motif which is termed in the article as the fetish of colonial gender. Its coalescent value might be of great interest in postcolonial studies since it reveals how neocolonialists ascribe the subaltern's time and space with exploitable sex through the charm of the global economy. The critical discussion is built on textual research methods and it highlights on the fabric that holds the neo-colonial relationship between the West and Africa.


Background: Disadvantageous tendencies bound with a growing distance between the somatic development and motor condition of children and youth raise well understood anxiety, as these phenomena endanger health and fitness of future generations. The aim of this work is to verify if the above-mentioned phenomenon may be referred to youth groups for whom physical activity and motor development are important elements of everyday life. Material/Methods: Between 1983 and 2009 data on a total of 7,663 men and 7,368 women from Poznan AWF (University School of Physical Education) were collected annually at the same time each year. Information was collected on the body height and mass, and the vertical jump test. The maximum anaerobic work was calculated. Results: In both men and women there was a tendency for a negative association between body dimensions and fitness. A correlation analysis revealed a strong relationship between body height and mass, directly proportional tendencies, at p<0.05 significance level, and better performance on the vertical jump test associated with higher maximum anaerobic work. Conclusions: Summing up, it is possible to suppose that along with stabilization of the economic situation of the state one should expect maintaining the progress of the secular trend in the case of somatic features; unfortunately, at the same time we will probably observe a slump in motor development.


This article examines a family of thirteenth-century discant and motets on the tenor LATUS, tracing complex relationships between the various incarnations of its shared musical material: passages of melismatic discant in two- and three-voices, a three-voice Latin conductus motet, a two-voice Latin and French motet, and a three-voice Latin double motet. I query conventional fundamentally linear models of discant-motet interaction, emphasizing the possibility of simultaneously filial and collateral interrelationships between versions: different motet texts can influence each other, while retaining independent connections with an earlier melismatic discant model. This leads to a reevaluation of traditional evolutionary and stylistic perceptions of sub-genres defined within the category of motet. The article addresses questions of compositional process, reflecting on the types of creative and scribal activities involved in the formulation of motets.


This paper addresses the throughput maximization problem in wireless mesh networks. For the case of cooperative access points, we present a negotiation-based throughput maximization algorithm which adjusts the operating channel and power level among access points automatically, from a game-theoretical perspective. We show that this algorithm converges to the optimal channel and power assignment which yields the maximum overall throughput with arbitrarily high probability. Moreover, we analyze the scenario where access points belong to different regulation entities and hence non-cooperative. The long- term behavior and corresponding performance are investigated and the analytical results are verified by simulations.


SiCp/Al composite was fabricated by the method of pressureless-infiltration. In atmospheric environment, the atmospheric corrosion behavior of SiCp/Al composites (ZL101+49%SiC+5%Mg) was studied by mass loss, optical microscope (OM), scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), respectivelhy.The results show that the corrosion rate of the SiCp/Al composites increases with increasing of time in atmospheric environment. Pitting corrosion is the main characteristic of SiCp/Al composite, and corrosion area gradually extends around with time increasing. At last, sheet like corrosion substrates distribute in the surface of n the SiCp/Al composites. Amorphous Al2O3 and amorphous AlxSO4yOHz are the main corrosion products.


Training generative adversarial networks (GANs) with limited data is challenging because the discriminator is prone to overfitting. Previously proposed differentiable augmentation demonstrates improved data efficiency of training GANs. However, the augmentation implicitly introduces undesired invariance to augmentation for the discriminator since it ignores the change of semantics in the label space caused by data transformation, which may limit the representation learning ability of the discriminator and ultimately affect the generative modeling performance of the generator. To mitigate the negative impact of invariance while inheriting the benefits of data augmentation, we propose a novel augmentation-aware self-supervised discriminator that predicts the augmentation parameter of the augmented data. Particularly, the prediction targets of real data and generated data are required to be distinguished since they are different during training. We further encourage the generator to adversarially learn from the self-supervised discriminator by generating augmentation-predictable real and not fake data. This formulation connects the learning objective of the generator and the arithmetic $-$ harmonic mean divergence under certain assumptions. We compare our method with state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods using the class-conditional BigGAN and unconditional StyleGAN2 architectures on data-limited CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, FFHQ, LSUN-Cat, and five low-shot datasets. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements of our method over SOTA methods in training data-efficient GANs.


An ASW Advanced Concepts Study (ACS) has been initiated as part of Phase 2 of NATO Study, "Implications of New Technology for Maritime Operations in 2015". In this paper, a method to assess ASW search operations is described for use during the study, which will allow various sensor/platform options to be examined in a consistent manner. The method avoids the necessity to cany out detailed modeling of ASW tactics and threat behavior which is very difficult to predict. It provides a means of examining the synergy between different sensor systems in covering the entire threat submarine operating envelope. It also includes systemlplatform cost benefit analysis and resource optimization using Integer Programming techniques. Presently the algorithms and the computer program that were developed to demonstrate the methodology are being expanded to include several options that are presented in this paper. The enhanced computer program will be used extensively for the analyses required during the ASW Advanced Concepts Study.


Abstract This article compares the philosophy and practice of command in the British and US Armies during the Italian Campaign of 1943–44. It assesses pre-war influences on the command approach adopted by each army, and shows how refinements derived from wartime experience enabled British and American commanders to successfully utilise mission command principles to outfight the German Army in the latter years of World War II. This examination directly challenges the historical consensus that Allied commanders were disadvantaged by an inability to exploit the advantages of mission command, and that the German Army retained superior command practices, despite its other failings, throughout the fighting between 1939 and 1945. These conclusions hold additional relevance to modern military organisations which have emphasised mission command as the optimal solution to effective command in battle since the 1980s, but from an inaccurate understanding of German, British and American command traditions and experience that persists to this day.


Summary: Recent progress in surgical intervention for medically refractory epilepsy has helped to shed light on more complex epileptogenic problems in children and infants. Surgical treatment increasingly is being used in pediatric patients, but the indications for surgery in this age group have not been well defined. The developing child with a seizure disorder has several problems that are different from adults, such as neural plasticity, deleterious effects of seizures on developmental status, and spontaneous resolution of epilepsy. The critical age for irreversible brain dysfunction and the timing of surgery are the main issues for the treatment of children. Thus, earlier surgical intervention is generally recommended to prevent further deterimental seizure effects, but we still do not know the optimal age. Until the establishment of guidelines for pediatric epilepsy surgery, surgical indications should be determined by the prognosis and the presence of a resectable epileptogenic focus, which in turn are based on the localization of the epileptic focus, seizure frequency, severity, and cognitive function of each case, rather than just the patient's age.


Surrealism is a major European movement in the 20th century Avant-Garde and is still influencing current practices. The Surrealists explored the senses, in particular the visual, to discover and exploit images created by word associations and by the echoes and interactions between art and poems. This dissertation focuses on the translation of Surrealist texts, from French into English, incorporating Surrealist practices into the translation process. It involves what I call a 'visual surrealisation' of Surrealism in translation. 'Visual surrealisation' refers to the enhancement of the visual aspect of the Surrealist practice and language, using the Surrealists' own visual practices in translation. This thesis will experiment specifically with practices derived from automatism, bringing to the fore these word associations: contradictions, collage, cadavre exquis and the representation of the body. Automatism was a driving force in Surrealist practice and encouraged impulsive freedom of association. 'Visual surrealisation' has the potential to be extended to the translation of other Avant-Garde texts, which the fifth chapter demonstrates. The creative translation approach developed here involves the question of seeing and reading, the notions of ludicity and constraint in both literature and translation, and lastly translation and the position of the translator. Bassnett, comparing the relationship between author and translator to the relationship between writing and rewriting, criticises the prevailing power of the notion of authorship which restrains the translator's work and creativity. These are new and current issues in translation studies, moving away from the original debate of 'free' versus 'literal' translations, and from the idea that translation is derivative. The experiments with visual forms provide the opportunity to consider the appropriate use of the senses in translation, which are yet another emerging area in the field. This project suggests that the translator's engagement in the process of 'surrealising' both Surrealist texts and non Surrealist texts contributes to our understanding of the nature of literary translation and the emerging debates on the subject.


Edith Wharton has been persistently framed as an author detached from the 'modern' twentieth century literary world she inhabited. Intellectually compromised by critical conceptions of her as the "last Victorian", and Henry James's "heiress", Wharton's attentiveness to modernism's fractured worldview and her original employment of literary form to redress this perspective have been largely overlooked. This thesis seeks to re-evaluate Wharton's 'old-fashioned' authorial persona. Instead of reading her commitment to a past perspective as evidence of her literary obsolescence, this thesis argues that her adherence to a bygone worldview serves as a means of managing the disorientation and disorder of the modern, incomprehensible present. Following Wharton's evolving conception of stylised aesthetic form across pre-war and post-war worlds, I suggest that Wharton's literature evidences a tension between two opposing literary aspirations. On the one hand, her texts reveal a desire to abandon aesthetic enclosures and realise an unbounded, authentic interior reality. Yet on the other hand, Wharton's works underscore the poignant sense of fulfillment acquired within a life bound by such aesthetic architecture. Chapter One outlines Wharton's critical stance in relation to both realism and modernism. It discusses the way in which the outbreak of the Great War motivated Wharton's implementation of a critical 'interior architecture', in which a modernist interiority is held in play alongside an encompassing realist reality. Chapter Two assesses the stunted nature of stylised aesthetic forms in the pre-war world as evinced in The House of Mirth (1905). There, Wharton demonstrates how a lack of grounding in reality renders such aesthetics devoid of an internal anchorage that clarifies their purposeful relation to the world around them. Vacant of real-world relation, such forms abstract, disintegrating into formlessness. In Chapter Three, I reveal how Wharton moves from scorning to celebrating the artificial nature of aesthetic form in the wake of the Great War. In The Age of Innocence (1920), aesthetic forms deemed arbitrary and artificial in The House of Mirth are reevaluated and revealed as possessing an invisible, intrinsic real-world purpose. From denying realism, stylised aesthetics are redeemed in their attempt to frame individuals in relation to a formless world. Though such forms are inherently fictitious, Wharton asserts that their provision of an illusion of structure aids in the preservation of interpersonal and intergenerational connection. These forms thus cultivate an interior architecture within which society can shelter against an intrinsically unstable reality.


A gold-bearing ore from the San Salvador vein, Capillitas mine, Argentina, was exposed to an enriched, iron- and sulfur-oxidizing bacterial consortium for two months in an experimental system that represented an oxidized, acid-leached weathering environment. Within this laboratory model, the dissolution of metal sulfide minerals by the bacterial consortium liberated gold grains that floated on water. Surficial crevices on grains contained detrital material associated with μ m-scale, gold-rich bacteriomorphic structures interpreted to be relics of gold dissolution. The presence of nanophase gold particles, i.e., colloids and octahedral platelets, was attributed to gold reprecipitation. These secondary gold structures suggest that gold dissolution/reprecipitation, i.e., cycling, was occurring concurrently with the bacterially catalyzed dissolution of metal sulfides. The flake-like morphology and small size of gold grains, i.e., high surface area to volume ratio increased by μ m-scale surface dissolution textures, would have enhanced their propensity to float. The liberation of buoyant gold grains and secondary gold particles could contribute to rapid gold mobility and dispersion in natural environments.


This work presents the results of a research aiming to analyze the presence of the four cardinal points of the cyberspace (hypertextuality, multimedia, interactivity and updating) in the Spanish political parties' websites. These parameters determine the effectiveness of the communication in a web space, and until what extent political formations use them to connect with their audiences in the digital environment. To achieve this goal, an analysis of the content of the websites of the political groups with parliamentary representation has been carried out. The results confirm the absence of tools and resources related to these characteristics in the web spaces under study. The use of hypertext, beyond its simpler structure, and the use of multimedia elements is scarce. The possibilities of interaction between different users and political parties are minimal. The information published and the level of updating of the contents is insufficient. The conclusions allow us to affirm that there is a lack of exploitation of the possibilities offered by the web to promote communication and interaction with users by different political groups.


The present paper introduces new sign tests for testing for conditionally symmetric martingale-difference assumptions as well as for testing that conditional distributions of two (arbitrary) martingale-difference sequences are the same. Our analysis is based on the results that demonstrate that randomization over zero values of three-valued random variables in a conditionally symmetric martingale-difference sequence produces a stream of i.i.d. symmetric Bernoulli random variables and thus reduces the problem of estimating the critical values of the tests to computing the quantiles or moments of Binomial or normal distributions. The same is the case for randomization over ties in sign tests for equality of conditional distributions of two martingale-difference sequences. The paper also provides sharp bounds on the expected payoffs and fair prices of European call options and a wide range of path-dependent contingent claims in the trinomial financial market model in which, as is well-known, calculation of derivative prices on the base of no-arbitrage arguments is impossible. These applications show, in particular, that the expected payoff of a European call option in the trinomial model with log-returns forming a martingale-difference sequence is bounded from above by the expected payoff of a call option written on a stock with i.i.d. symmetric two-valued log-returns and, thus, reduce the problem of derivative pricing in the trinomial model with dependence to the i.i.d. binomial case. Furthermore, we show that the expected payoff of a European call option in the multiperiod trinomial option pricing model is dominated by the expected payoff of a call option in the two-period model with a log-normal asset price. These results thus allow one to reduce the problem of pricing options in the trinomial model to the case of two periods and the standard assumption of normal log-returns. We also obtain bounds on the possible fair prices of call options in the (incomplete) trinomial model in terms of the parameters of the asset's distribution. Sharp bounds completely similar to those for European call options also hold for many other contingent claims in the trinomial option pricing model, including those with an arbitrary convex increasing function as well as path-dependent ones, in particular, Asian options written on averages of the underlying asset's prices.