Deep drilling and tunnel excavation rely on new rock-breaking technology. Currently, there is a lack of research on the micro mechanism of high-voltage electro-pulse boring (EPB). The design structure of the electrode bit is diverse, and there is still a great room for improving the service life of the electrode bit, the quality of the borehole wall, and the energy loss in the drilling process. Based on this, first, the electrode bits in the EPB system were improved, and the EPB tests was carried out. The three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction cloud graphs of broken granite were obtained, and the drilling with a diameter of 60 mm in granite and red sandstone was actualized. Compared with the drilling effect before improvement, the reliability and the service life of electrode bits and test devices were verified. Second, the high-voltage EPB experiments with different electric parameters were carried out, and the complete drilling with a diameter of 100 mm in red sandstone was realized. Finally, the composition and the microstructure of rock were obtained with Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrometer, scanning electron microscope (SEM), and energy-dispersive spectrometer (EDS) before and after EPB. It was concluded that the prefragmentation could be realized by EPB. The rock mass near the discharge channel underwent an oxidation reaction in addition to physical damage and formed new oxidation products. The EPB experimental study provided practical guidance for the design of the electrical bits and the improvement of the rock-breaking efficiency.


: The quality of a machined surface is becoming further and more significant to satisfy the increasing demands of sophisticated component performance, longevity reliability. The objective of this paper is to analyze the performance of precision turning by means of conventional lathe on Ti6Al4V under dry working conditions. Various parameters that impinge on the machining processes were identified and a consensus was reached regarding its values. The proposed work is to perform machining under the selected levels of conditions and parameters and to estimate the, cutting temperature and surface roughness generated as the result of the machining process. ANOVA is used to find the percentage contribution of each parameter to the surface roughness and cutting temperature.


Neutrinoless double-beta decay searches play a major role in determining the nature of neutrinos, the existence of a lepton violating process, and the effective Majorana neutrino mass. The MAJORANA Collaboration proposes to assemble an array of HPGe detectors to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay in 76Ge. Our proposed method uses the well-established technique of searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay in high purity Ge-diode radiation detectors that play both roles of source and detector. The technique is augmented with recent improvements in signal processing and detector design, and advances in controlling intrinsic and external backgrounds. Initially, MAJORANA aims to construct a prototype module containing 60 kg of Ge detectors to demonstrate the potential of a future 1-tonne experiment. The design and potential reach of this prototype Demonstrator module will be presented. This paper will also discuss detector optimization and low-background requirements, such as material purity, background rejection, and identification of rare backgrounds required to reach the sensitivity goals of the MAJORANA experiment.


Expression of sodium-hydrogen exchanger isoform 3 (NHE3) in the intestinal and renal epithelium plays a critical role in sodium absorption and acid/base homeostasis. To decipher ratNHE3 gene regulation, its cis-acting regulatory elements and associated transcription factors were characterized by transient transfection of Caco-2, IEC-6, Qt6, andDrosophila SL2 cells. Deletion and mutational analyses demonstrated that the atypical TATA box located at bp −26/−31 was not necessary for promoter activity, and that a −20/+8-bp fragment represents a functional initiator. Within the 81-bp upstream region, three Sp transcription factor binding sites were critical because their mutation drastically reduced promoter activity. The roles of Sp1 and Sp3 were further demonstrated by electromobility shift assay and by transactivation of the NHE3 promoter in SL2 cells by forced expression of Sp1 and Sp3. Both of these transcription factors were found to act synergistically with GATA-5 bound to a GATA box in exon 1 (+20/+23 bp). These studies demonstrate that rat NHE3promoter is initiator-driven and controlled mainly by Sp1 and Sp3, which functionally interact with GATA-5. This interaction represents a novel regulatory mechanism, which is likely to participate in a gradient of intestinal gene expression along the crypt-villus axis.


The animated films of Hayao Miyazaki are populated by women, children and men at work. This article argues that the rendering of physical labour has the capacity to (re)connect the body to its broader social collective experience. The late philosopher, Bernard Stiegler, identifies the loss of savoir-faire (know-how) and savoir-vivre (life skills) as a critical deficit to how we live and work today. Miyazaki's animated films provide a platform for potentially regaining savoir-faire and savoir-vivre in their reflexive portrayals of human labour. Every story told by Miyazaki involves scenes where bodies work with tools, with each other, and with machines to perform tasks. The rhythms of the working body speak to the ideals of labour as craft – not as exceptionally skilled expertise, but as an everyday practice – that presents 'an opportunity to "think otherwise"' as proposed by Glenn Adamson in The Crafter Reader (2010: 136). This article examines the performance of manual tasks in three contexts: the physical act of labour, labouring with machines and the animator's labour. The author concludes by making the case that the animator's labour extends to the craft of storytelling and, specifically, that Miyazaki's animations are what Walter Benjamin called Kraftwerk – a 'power work' that re-models the 'folkloric relations of space' (see Esther Leslie's, 'Walter Benjamin, Traces of Craft', 1998: 47) that keeps the human spirit alive.


In virtual reality the body is doomed to immobility, though it is connected to the wonderful world of the screen but it only means a static connectivity, an imprisonment of the physical body behind the screen. The advent of mobile connectivity marked a revolution in communication technology. With the new technologies of smart phones, the image has taken on a new dimension and the space changed from being an enclosed, cocooned space to the actual space of the real. The image that was latent in the virtual and trapped within the boundaries of the catatonic digital stationary of a desktop computer is now loose at large. The flux is so fast and omnipresent that the boundaries between the two entities of the virtual and the actual are blurry and inconsistent to the extent that the individual user of media augmentation cannot distinguish the difference. The latent image of the virtual exploded in the actual augmenting it to become an actual and physical space of hyperactivity and virtual flux. Manipulation of the image is becoming manipulation of life itself and thus the creation of an augmented space in the actual becomes a prerequisite.


Introduction: In adult patients some adhesions between intestinal segments and malignities are common in the ethiology of mechanic intestinal obstruction whereas congenital anomalies are seen rare. In this case report we present a 60-year-old patient presents with mechanical bowel obstruction symptoms and diagnosed as Ladd's bands.
Case presentation: A 60-year-old male applies emergency servise with vomiting and nausea. According to the laboratory and radiological tests the paient was diagnosed as mechanical bowel obstruction and underwent exploratory laparatomy. In exploration Ladd's band was seen and cut for releasing the herniated intestinal segments.
Discussion: Congenital anomalies of intestinal rotation are often seen in infants and children therefore this pathology can be missed in adult patients. We must be aware of these pathologies on the way of diagnosis of the patients with mechanical bowel obstruction.


The precision of Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) data depends mainly on the inherent random range error, which hinders extraction of small details from TLS measurements. New post processing algorithms have been developed that reduce or eliminate the noise and therefore enable modelling details at a smaller scale than one would traditionally expect. The aim of this research is to find the optimum denoising method such that the corrected TLS data provides a reliable estimation of small-scale rock joint roughness. Two wavelet-based denoising methods are considered, namely Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT), in combination with different thresholding procedures. The question is, which technique provides a more accurate roughness estimates considering (i) wavelet transform (SWT or DWT), (ii) thresholding method (fixed-form or penalised low) and (iii) thresholding mode (soft or hard). The performance of denoising methods is tested by two analyses, namely method noise and method sensitivity to noise. The reference data are precise Advanced TOpometric Sensor (ATOS) measurements obtained on 20 × 30 cm rock joint sample, which are for the second analysis corrupted by different levels of noise. With such a controlled noise level experiments it is possible to evaluate the methods' performance for different amounts of noise, which might be present in TLS data. Qualitative visual checks of denoised surfaces and quantitative parameters such as grid height and roughness are considered in a comparative analysis of denoising methods. Results indicate that the preferred method for realistic roughness estimation is DWT with penalised low hard thresholding.


A definitive study of the Ossewabrandwag
The Ossewabrandwag was born out of the euphoria aroused by the 1938 commemoration of the trek, a moment of utopian promise that offered many Afrikaners spiritual and national renewal. South Africa's entry into the war decisively broke Hertzog's 'fusion' government and left the Afrikaner nationalist movement more divided than it had ever been. Far from uniting in the face of Smuts's alleged capitulation to imperialism, radical nationalists found themselves torn between allegiance to the parliamentary National Party, the paramilitary Ossewabrandwag and a host of smaller political bodies ranging from the Nuwe Orde and the Afrikaner Party to the militant fascist shirt movements. The Afrikaner Broederbond, which tried to hold the ring in order to unify the volksbeweging under its own authority, was composed of members whose sympathies reflected - and sometimes amplified - the rivalry between the National Party and the Ossewabrandwag. In the context of this fevered internecine conflict the wartime Smuts government was mostly content to play a watchful role, other than when it felt impelled to arrest and intern OB extremists as a preventative measure.


In mammalian cells, the supply of lipids is co-ordinated with demand through the transcriptional control of genes encoding proteins required for synthesis or uptake. The sterol regulatory element binding proteins (SREBPs) are responsible for increased transcription of these genes when lipid level fall. Mammals have three SREBPs (-1a, -1c and -2), which are the products of two distinct genes. Synthesized as approximately 120 kDa precursors, they are inserted into membranes of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in a hairpin fashion. Both the N-terminal transcription factor domain and the C-terminal regulatory domain face the cytoplasm. These are connected by two transmembrane helices separated by a short loop projecting into the ER lumen. The C-terminal domain of SREBP interacts with the C-terminal domain of SREBP-cleavage-activating protein (SCAP). The N-terminal half of SCAP contains eight transmembrane helices, five of which (helices 2-6) form the sterol-sensing domain. In response to cellular demand for lipid, this complex exits the ER and transits to the Golgi apparatus, where two distinct proteases cleave the SREBP precursor to release the transcriptionally active N-terminus. This process was the first example of regulated intramembrane proteolysis for which the proteases were identified. Recent work has additionally uncovered integral membrane proteins, insig-1 and insig-2, that are required to retain the SREBP-SCAP complex in the ER in the presence of sterols, thus providing a more complete understanding of the control of proteolysis in this complex regulatory pathway.


This paper examines the extent and evolution of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) using panel cointegration approach. For 27 OECD countries, we provide a strong evidence of incomplete ERPT in sample of 27 OECD countries. Both FM-OLS and DOLS estimators show that pass-through elasticity does not exceed 0.70%. When considering individual estimates, we note a cross-country differences in the long run ERPT. We find that inflation regime and exchange rate volatility are potential macroeconomic sources of this long-run heterogeneity. When focusing on the subsample of 12 European Monetary Union (EMU) countries, our results show a steady decline in the degree of ERPT throughout the different exchange rate arrangements: pass-through elasticity was close to unity during the "snake-in-the tunnel" period while it is about 0.50% since the formation of the euro area. The observed decline in ERPT to import prices was synchronous to the shift towards reduced inflation regime.


The work described in this thesis, although primarily concerned with vortex incineration, provides a practical advance in understanding the general field of confined vortex flow. A new approach to a theoretical solution of the aerodynamics of confined vortex flow, based upon classical mathematical solutions of vortices, has been developed. This has been verified and further refined, partly by means of previous work in the field of confined vortex flow, but mostly by the experimental investigations during this study, carried out on a wide range of vortex chambers. The equations developed are, [mathematical equation] which gives in dimensionless terms the transverse velocity (v) as a function of the radius (r) and a constant (a) which is determined by the radius of the peak velocity (r). The constants (m,n,X) are theoretically derived to be (m=2,n=1,X=1.2564), but experimentally values of (m=3,n=[3/4],X=2.3367) were found to be a more accurate reflection of the measured data. Experimentally the radius at peak velocity(r) was found to correspond to the radius of the chamber exit. It is then shown how the equations can be reduced to yield the two part fixed/free transverse velocity solutions of previous workers, and how in contrast to this solution, the previous work fails to define the critical region of peak velocity which occurs at the interface of the fixed and free vortex type flow. From this experimental work it has been possible to quantify the effect that the geometric and operational parameters of the vortex chamber have on the resultant confined vortex flow generated within these chambers. The work is based on the primary geometric and operational data of vortex chambers, carried out over a wide range of absolute values of this data so that the results can be generalised, in contrast to those of previous workers. These experimental results have been combined with the theoretical solution to yield a refined yet concise solution of confined vortex flow, which enables the accurate prediction of the velocity profiles within any arbitrary vortex chamber based solely on that chamber's geometry. It has also been shown how a knowledge of the velocity pattern within the chamber may be used to predict the path and combustion rate of both liquid and solid fuels injected into a vortex chamber, by the solution of the equations governing both the motion and the combustion of the particle. These equations are presented in detail and a computer program for their solution is given. The results of simulations of a real vortex incinerator operating with various fuels are given in graphical and tabular form and their implications discussed. Brief details are also given of the succesful design and operation of an innovative commercial silicate processor, based upon a vortex combustion chamber, for which the computer program and indeed the whole work of this thesis was employed. The subsequent success of this processor shows that the work has passed a critical test of its validity and has already been of condsiderable commercial use.


Almost all the branches of Indology, history, culture, art, philosophy, poetics and aesthetics have become richer by the touch of his creative and sharp intellect. The scope and scale of his output have no doubt been encyclopedic, but the word 'encyclopedic' does not say all about the nature of his works. Several minds expressed in several themes make an encyclopedia; in the case of Prof. Pande, however, there is no mistaking the same mind expressing itself in the several themes he takes up. Extraordinary range and diversity are not the most important aspects of his contributions; more significant is the basically unified outlook or vision that he brings to bear upon the diverse fields of his studies. Most of Pandeji's works despite covering various areas seem to be parts of a larger whole. And from that point of view, he may be regarded as a system builder. This raises him to the rank of a thinker, a philosopher with a certain point of view besides that of a great scholar. The present collection of essays will serve as a reasonable introduction to Prof. Pande's interest and expertise and will provide useful insights into his mind and thoughts. The range and depth of Prof. Pande's scholarship reflected in a variety of works covering widely diverse fields are truly remarkable. The present volume, we hope, will offer a fair glimpse of the wide reach of his interest and the value of his works.


Background
Hip microinstability remains poorly-defined but increasingly diagnosed in the setting of borderline dysplasia (LCEA 20-25°), soft tissue laxity, or following unrepaired arthroscopic capsulotomy. While hip microinstability is com-monly treated with arthroscopic capsular plication with short-term outcomes reported, this procedure has been performed open for some time. The purpose of current study was to assess the durability of outcomes of combined arthroscopy and open capsular plication in treating symptomatic hip microinstability at mid-term follow-up.

Methods
We retrospectively identified hips that underwent combined hip arthroscopy and open capsular plication for symptomatic microinstability between 2008 and 2013. Hips with excessive femoral anteversion (femoral version >35°) or classic acetabular dysplasia (LCEA <20°) were treated with bony reorientation and were not included in the current study. Patient reported outcomes scores were collected preoperatively and at a minimum five year follow-up. Hips that required reoperation or did not meet criteria for minimally clinically important difference (MCID, ≥8 increase in mHHS) or patient acceptable symptom scores (PASS, mHHS) were considered failures.

Results
A total of 27 hips met criteria for inclusion and follow-up was obtained for 22 hips (81.5%) at a mean of 7.1 years. All patients were female with a mean age of 25.9 years and 7 (32%) hips had previous surgery. Patients undergoing the combined procedure improved from a mean baseline mHHS of 55.3±13 to a mean follow-up mHHS of 74.5±20.9 (p<0.001). At midterm follow-up, 54.5% of hips met criteria for PASS and 68.2% of hips met criteria for MCID, with 72.7% of hips meeting criteria for either MCID or PASS. Overall, 10 hips (45%) were considered failures with 6 hips (27%) requiring reoperation and an additional 4 hips (18%) with clinical failure. Hips without previous surgery had a failure rate of 33.3% (5/15) while 71.4% (5/7) of those with previous surgery failed (P=.09).

Conclusion
Our study demonstrates a high (45%) rate of reoperations and persistent symptoms in hips with microinstability treated with combined arthroscopy and open capsular plication. Further mid- and long-term studies evaluating soft tissue plication are needed, as well as comparisons with bony procedures in the setting of microinstability are needed.Level of Evidence: III.


Macroeconomists increasingly use external sources of exogenous variation for causal inference. However, unless such external instruments (proxies) capture the underlying shock without measurement error, existing methods are silent on the importance of that shock for macroeconomic fluctuations. We show that, in a general moving-average model with external instruments, variance decompositions for the instrumented shock are interval-identified, with informative bounds. Various additional restrictions guarantee point identification of both variance and historical decompositions. Unlike structural vector autoregression analysis, our methods do not require invertibility. Applied to US data, they give a tight upper bound on the importance of monetary shocks for inflation dynamics.


This paper introduces GUMS, a complete projection model for omnidirectional stereo vision systems. GUMS is based on the existing generalized unified model (GUM), which we extend in order to satisfy a tight relationship among a pair of omnidirectional views for fixed baseline sensors. We exemplify the proposed model's calibration via a single-camera coaxial omnistereo system in a joint bundle-adjusted fashion. We compare our coupled method against the naive approach where the calibration of intrinsic parameters is first performed individually for each omnidirectional view using existing monocular implementations, to then solve for the extrinsic parameters as an additional step that has no effect on the intrinsic model solutions initially computed. We validate GUMS and its calibration effectiveness using both real and synthetic systems against ground-truth data. Our calibration method proves successful for correcting the unavoidable misalignment present in vertically-configured catadioptric rigs. We also generate 3D point clouds employing the calibrated GUMS systems in order to demonstrate the qualitative outcome of our contribution.


IP spoofing-based flooding attacks are a open and serious security problem on the current Internet. The best current anti-spoofing practices have been implemented long in modern routers. The proposed system detect the spoofing attacks using the spatial correlation of Received Signal Strength (RSS) inherited from wireless nodes. Then it determines the problem of determining the number of attackers as a multiclass detection problem. Clusterbased mechanisms are developed to determine the number of attackers to achieve monotonically increasing deployment incentives for all types of spoofing attacks, and the system design is lightweight and practical.GADE: A Generalized Attack Detection Model (GADE) that can both determine the number of adversaries using cluster analysis methods and detect spoofing attacks grounded on RSS among normal devices and adversaries IDOL: An Integrated Detection and Localization (IDOL) system that can detect both attacks and find the positions of multiple adversaries even when the adversaries vary their transmission power levels.


Abstract The papers in this volume cover a wide range of topics that are central to the exploration and production of hydrocarbons from the Humber Group. The papers fall into two groups - the first seven papers cover regional aspects of hydrocarbon geology and the final eight cover a range of more specific topics that examine ichnofabric, reservoir quality, organic geochemistry and field studies.


Ubiquitous utilization of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has led the governments of various countries to use ICTs in public administration and social welfare initiatives. Direct use of e-governance technology by citizens in developing countries is hindered by lack of training, education and infrastructure. This makes it inevitable to employ intermediary users who can bridge this gap between technology use and beneficiaries. Analyzing the technology adoption behavior of intermediaries could help policy makers and designers of e-governance technologies to create devices, processes and training programs that target the factors that inhibit as well as encourage the use of ICTs among technology users. We study the effect of technology characteristics and users' internal traits on technology satisfaction of intermediaries who are mandated by the government to use android tablets in order to provide efficient services to end-users in the Indian food security supply chain. We further translate the results into tangible recommendations in context of infrastructure, users' traits, business performance, and technology and policy design. The research model proposes that certain technology characteristics (screen design, technology relevance and terminology) and users' internal traits (resistance to change, technology anxiety, trust in internet and result demonstrability) influence their technology satisfaction, either directly or indirectly through UTAUT constructs. Results indicated that resistance to change, technology anxiety, trust in internet, screen design and terminology had an impact on ICT users' technology adoption behavior. Result demonstrability and technology relevance were found to have no effect on technology satisfaction in case of mandatory use.


Witteveen+Bos is an engineering firm that supports Rijkswaterstaat in improving the accessibility and mobility in the Netherlands. With regard to large road infrastructure projects in the Netherlands, it is particularly involved in environmental assessments and the design and planning procedures. The current political and social movement to a smaller government causes severe reduction of budget and capacity for the actual construction and maintenance of the road infrastructure network (Economisch Instituut voor de Bouw, 2012). As a result, the role of Rijkswaterstaat is shifting more and more towards directing the projects. The responsibility of the actual construction and maintenance shifts towards the market parties (Rijkswaterstaat, 2009-a).
To ensure that the design of the contractor matches the expectations and goals, Rijkswaterstaat sets performance requirements for the road infrastructure that has to be designed and build. These are the so called RAMS-requirements which stands for the requirements on Reliability, Availabilty, Maintainability and Safety. For example, Rijkswaterstaat can set the requirement that the road infrastructure must be available for at least 95% of the time. More often, Witteveen+Bos needs to substantiate to Rijkswaterstaat how their design fulfils these performance requirements.
Witteveen+Bos states that especially the requirements on availability raise many questions. A preliminary research of experts from Witteveen+Bos and Rijkswaterstaat shows that availability is a grey area where uncertainty prevails about 1) the definitions, 2) the establishment of the demanded availability percentage and 3) the impact of design choices on the percentage. For example, there appears to be no method to establish the availability percentage, the percentage is set based on the experience of the high-level managers of Rijkswaterstaat. Moreover, the communication between the involved parties in a road infrastructure project appears to cause frustrations on the involvement and responsibilities with regard to availability. Parties may feel that they bear the brunt of the decisions made by their predecessor.
With the growing demand by the Rijkswaterstaat districts to a substantiation of the design on how to fulfil de availability percentage, the need to fully understand availability is big. To ensure that Witteveen+Bos is able to better cope with availability (and its substantiation) in future projects, there is a need to identify both the current and the desired situation with regard to dealing with availability. Thus it can be established how Witteveen+Bos can contribute to cover the difference between the two. The research question therefore is:
"Which improvements can be made by Witteveen+Bos in dealing with availability by covering the difference between the current and the desired situation?"


The recent economic and financial crisis caused a severe blow to the fragile Macedonian economy, halting the positive development trends in the last decade. This, has in turn, intensified the future challenges. The paper intends to analyze the impact of global economic crisis on the Macedonian economy focuses mainly on the macroeconomic level, identifying and analyzing fluctuations of major macroeconomic indicators that reflect the development and macroeconomic balances of the economy, such as GDP, the level of employment, inflation, budget deficit, public debt, etc. Secondary analysis of previous quantitative data and published studies, combined with an own qualitative study in the field, has provided a reliable and convincing basis for analysis. The experiences and lessons taken from the global economic crisis should serve as a basis for changing the current economic model with a new one in order the economy of the country to catch a connection with the intense changes that are expected to occur in the coming period. It is expected that creating new economic model in Republic of Macedonia will result in multiple positive effects that primarily manifested in the increasing number of newly small and medium enterprises, domestic investments, industrial production, GDP, number of new employees and total exports as well as in reduction of the trade deficit in maintaining macroeconomic stability of the country.


The advent of evidence-based medicine (EBM) saw a marked improvement in clinical decision making when compared to the "this is what works best in my experience" approach, which preceded it. Aside from the fact that there is goodquality
evidence available for only a fraction of treatments, a limitation of EBM is that it focuses primarily on identifying the best treatment of a disease and does not allow for differences in patients' goals, priorities, and expectations or how they cope with their illness. This biomedical focus of EBM is particularly problematic for patients with chronic, incurable illnesses (which include many cancers), for whom a person-centered approach is superior. This article explores
what it means to take a person centered approach to oncology and palliative care. In particular, the ambiguity of the term "personalized medicine" in oncology is considered, and seen to be represent a narrow version of "personalized"—in the sense of personalized car number plates and monogrammed shirts—not personalized in the sense of the treatment reflecting
the patient's values, goals, and expectations for care. Furthermore, taking a person-centered approach is an active process that does not equate with acquiescing to whatever the patient requests. As an example, in the emotional, high stakes decision to transition from cancer treatment to palliative care/ hospice or not, patients may reject hospice even when it's in their best interests
(i.e., hospice enrolment). A person-centered physician will understand this situation and attempt to advise the patient to choosing the initially disliked option that may be ultimately the right choice.


Nucleotide and inferred amino acid sequences from two nuclear protein-encoding genes, elongation factor- l a and RNA polymerase 11, were obtained from 34 myriapods and 14 other arthropods to determine phylogenetic relationships among and within the myriapod classes. Phylogenetic analyses using maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood methods recovered all three represented myriapod classes (Chilopoda, Diplopoda, Symphyla) and all multiply sampled chilopod and diplopod orders, often with high node support. In contrast, relationships between classes and between orders were recovered less consistently and node support was typically lower. The temporal structure of phylogenetic diversification in Myriapoda may explain this apparent pattern of the phylogenetic recovery.


Staphylococcus aureus is an opportunistic human and animals' pathogen that is found passively colonizing a large percentage of the population primarily on the skin or mammary glands in cows. As the capacity of a given S. aureus strain to cause infection varies among strains and is determined by the presence or absence of a large number of virulence-associated genes, some of which are encoded by phages. In order to determine the abundance and characterize the diversity of S. aureus strains which caused mastitis in cows in various provinces in Baghdad city, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect the presence of S. aureus phage-type specific DNA which carry genes coding for diverse virulence factors such as Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL), enterotoxins and exfoliative toxins. Staphylococcus aureus used in this study was isolated from mastitic cow milk grew on blood agar and methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were selected as indicator strains to investigate the presence of phage segments. The isolates of wild lytic phages from the transient stocks were propagated with the corresponding host clinical MRSA isolates using the plate method. Plates were incubated overnight at 37 ̊C and plaque morphology and growth characteristics were recorded. Genomic DNA from isolated S. aureus phage was extracted and phage segments were investigated. The results showed that the phage content virulence factors in S. aureus isolates were enterotoxin A, enterotoxin P, and exfoliative toxin A, toxic shock syndrome toxin-1, lipase. But Panton-Valentine leukocidin gene failed to amplify among strains and the diversity of it in Baghdad city is relatively high. The current study concluded that there is role of bacteriophages in changing ecology and virulence of S.aureus.


With the rise of energy prices and the development of carbon markets, energy efficiency and carbon emissions are two key decision variables for industrial actors. Those two variables are closely related, but the following question remains open: does better efficiency systematically implies less carbon emissions? This is not a general rule: if we consider for instance, a nuclear power plant, it has a low carbon footprint but can be poorly efficient. The future development of Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) technology will break even more this correlation. Thus, carbon management and energy efficiency management are different business models. The goal of this study is to evaluate the arbitrage between carbon and energy efficiency management for industrial actors. The study relies on the TIAM-FR model, which is a 15-region world version of the MARKAL/TIMES model family. It is a bottom-up E3 (Energy – Environment – Economy) model which optimizes energy systems under constraints by using a partial equilibrium. This model is used for mid-term to long-term (e.g. 2050 time horizon) energy and carbon prospective. In order to compare energy efficiency and carbon policies, we implemented an extension which gives access to the primary equivalent and carbon content of each energy vector (and their evolution through time for each region). Questions about the different primary energy definitions and the counting of carbon emissions are also discussed. Primary equivalent and carbon content of commodities will depend on various scenarios (climate policies, processes availability, costs of technologies, demands, etc). Those results allow us to assess the arbitrage between energy efficiency and carbon management. What are the conditions to turn an efficiency-driven business to a carbon-driven business?


The crack propagation law of 2.25Cr-1Mo steel with notched cylinder was researched under high temperature low cycle fatigue. The crack propagation life was viewed by fatigue experiment and the equivalent stress-strain on the crack tip was calculated by the ANSYS. The equivalent J-integral range which was computed by equivalent elastic and plastic strain ranges were employed to denote the fatigue crack propagation rate. The results showed that crack propagation law of this material under complex stress state can be characterized by equivalent J-integral ranges and the relation between da/dN and ΔJf is not influenced by the type of notch and the load strain range.


A novel multimodal biosensor based on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology is presented. In the sensor, electrons and holes are simultaneously handled as signal electrical charges. We call this technique the hole and electron accumulation technique (HEAT). The HEAT sensor maps two phenomena (i.e., ion concentration and light power) perfectly at the same time using the same pixel. This paper describes the sensing mechanism and basic characteristics of the HEAT sensor. In addition, we successfully demonstrate a multimodal sensor for the simultaneous sensing of pH (power of hydrogen or proton concentration) and light power.


Maltese is a separate language resulting from the interaction and fusion of North-African Arabic Siculo-Italian, covering two different cultural strata. The Arabic element in Maltese very often corresponds to the Anglo-Saxon in English, while the Romance loans correspond to the Norman-French element. Also as in English, the primitive linguistic stratum is confined mainly to the description of the obvious facts of Nature and the Individual's reactions to them while the abstract and progressive vocabulary of the intelligentsia belongs to later times. The result of this fusion is a mixed grammar and vocabulary as we shall show when studying the structure of spoken Maltese. In order to be able to distinguish the two elements, we have established a series of descriptive criteria that together make possible a detailed phonological analysis of the language. The thesis begins with a description of Maltese sounds, followed by Phonology, where these criteria are based on a study of the Vowels, their quantity, position and sequences; the semi vowel, the diphthongs, their position, stress, the consonants, their sequences including initial groups in phonological junction (zero vowel). In Morphology the words are studied as patterns, with particular attention to the formal arrangement of the consonants and the correlative vowels which are described in their various semantic changes with lists of examples from spoken and archaic Maltese. In both parts the two elements have been treated separately but under Semitic Maltese are treated those words which have been assimilated partially or completely to a Semitic pattern. Words which have not been so assimilated are of course treated under the head of Romance Maltese.


Monitoring the quality and availability of public and municipal services is a very important stage in the development of the whole system of public services in the Russian Federation. The article considers modern methods of the organization of monitoring public services as a process of interaction between the consumer and the bodies of public administration in the RF and abroad, along with the theoretical approaches to the problem of public services quality. It describes some special features of presenting results of the analysis of the public services system in Russia on the example of monitoring conducted by experts of the Institute of Public and Municipal Administration, Scientific Research University, Higher School of Economics, in 2010. A set of criteria for a periodical selection of public administration services in the next monitoring researches was formulated. The main criteria for services are: mass character, social significance, economic feasibility, the multiplicity of channels, necessity to organize a cross-agency collaboration to provide these services. The value of monitoring is determined by the possibility to reveal problems and give recommendation on solving them at all stages of providing services -from coming up with the initiative to obtaining the result. Results of the monitoring of public services in Russia, presented in the form of the services management profile, enable the federal and municipal bodies of power to see the whole picture of providing services and assess their effectiveness. The indicators of public services quality used in the monitoring - the time of getting services, comfort, the level of satisfaction with the result, were approved of by the supreme bodies of power and have become the basis for the formation of the system development policy. In conclusion the article suggests some trends for further improvement of public services provision in the Russian Federation.


Comparisons between the phenomenon of
immigration in France and Great Britain
are often hindered by hackneyed
stereotypes. Yet there have been a
number of similarities and even perfect
correspondences between the two
countries, notably a discounted example
directly linked with the issue of heritage. In
the late 1970s and the early 1980s, both
countries witnessed a flurry of newspapers
published by minority groups, which
relished in the creative radicalism of the
leftwing/pro-immigration policy in the
wake of 1968. Race Today in Brixton and
Sans Frontiere in Barbes have occupied
relatively marginal, precarious positions
within their respective national cultures,
but could both claim a certain degree of
credit for the change in social attitudes in
the long-term. These newspapers bore the
hallmark of the dominant ideologies in
their respective New Left circles: activism
centred on the idea of "race" in Great
Britain, as opposed to the universalist "no
borders" theme
characteristic of the French leftwing post-
1968. Their content nonetheless shares
common points at the crossroads between
politics and culture, with a fertile blend of
"firstgeneration" and "second-generation"
militantism. Both newspapers contributed
to transmitting the heritage of immigration
and the "memory of the people", according
to a regular column in Sans Frontiere. On
both sides, contributors continued to
broadcast the heritage of immigration in
the mainstream national media after the
two newspapers ceased to exist. A
potential mutual contact point did indeed
exist at the time, since Race Today
became interested in the March for
Equality in 1983 and the Talbot strike in
1984, thereby forging links with certain
strands of the emerging "Beur"
movements in addition to the International
Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World
Books in London. However, the pages of
3 / 6
Race Today do not contain any reference
to Sans Frontiere. This article will attempt
to explain this paradox. What were the
successes and failures of transmitting
immigrant heritage between generations,
between minority and majority
communities and either side of the
Channel? Are there any differences in the
way each newspaper has been preserved
for posterity?


Are all entrepreneurs poor? Do all entrepreneurs see a lack of credit as their main constraint? Is poverty reduction the main objective of all microfinance institutions? Does lending methodology affect outreach? Can financially sustainable microfinance institutions (MFIs) reach the poorest of the poor? Do MFIs only reach petty traders? Do MFIs reach poor and remote areas? This article is structured around a discussion of common beliefs and assumptions regarding poor people and microfinance programmes. It reveals that many microentrepreneurs in Latin America are not poor, and many microfinance institutions lend mainly to non-poor clients. The microfinance industry consists of various market niches, with different services and varied objectives, and this diversity is necessary for achieving poverty reduction overall.


Drawing on theories of nationalism and interstate rivalry, the thesis develops a newtheory of nationalistic rivalry, i.e., a specific type of rivalry where dispute-prone states perceive each other as threatening and competing enemies due to a nationalist issue. Building on original data of nationalistic-rivalry dyads from 1946-2001, the thesis examines the validity of nationalistic rivalry theory through the combination of large-N statistical analysis and small-N case studies. It finds that nationalistic rivalry significantly increases the probability of revisionist foreign policy, and thwarts the effect of well-known conflict-mitigating factors.
The literature has found that nationalism is a major cause of conflict. However, it is little known whether nationalism in the context of interstate politics increases revisionist state behavior specifically. While revisionist states have often been nationalistic (e.g., Imperial Japan or Milosevic Serbia), nationalism is not always revisionistic (e.g., the UK at the time of the Falklands War). What conditions cause nationalism to be a force of revisionist behavior?
The thesis answers this question by explaining how nationalist politics could lead the state specifically to revisionist behavior. The major findings of the thesis are: (1) an ethnically heterogeneous society, political instability, and incongruence between ethnonational and state boundaries raise the likelihood of nationalistic rivalry; (2) nationalistic rivalry disproportionately increases revisionist behavior through the nationalist mobilization of society, in contrast to other rivalries and non-rivalries; (3) nationalism motivated by transborder ethnic groups is more revisionist-prone than nationalism framed by territorial statehood, only in dyads where the former targets the latter; (4) nuclear deterrence does not reduce the probability of revisionist war within nationalistic rivalry contrary to conventional nuclear deterrence theory; and (5) joint democracy, economic interdependence, and intergovernmental organizations do not decrease revisionist behavior within nationalistic rivalry.


Computational neuroscience is a branch of the neurosciences that attempts to elucidate the principles underlying the operation of neurons with the help of mathematical modeling. In contrast with a number of fields pursuing a tightly related goal, such as machine learning or statistical learning, computational neuroscience emphasizes the realistic description of neuronal function and organization, and therefore requires a collaboration with experimental research in order to design new models and test their predictions. With the growing computational power available in modern computers, the simulation of neuronal networks with realistic numbers of neurons and functional organization is becoming routinely accessible. For the accurate design of such network models, the experimental characterization of neuronal response properties is required to probe the structural layout of biological networks at the single cell level. We develop here a novel method, the dynamic I-V method, that allows for the extraction of cellular response properties, and requires only a small amount of experimental data. Using this technique a simplified model of the neuronal response is obtained that is shown to accurately fit the experimental data. We demonstrate the use of the dynamic I-V method on both cortical pyramidal cells and inhibitory interneurons, and give the distributions of cellular parameters for the studied sample of cells. We also give theoretical results on the spike-triggered average, a quantity that is easily measured experimentally, which relate the neuronal response properties to identifiable features of the spike-triggered average, and can potentially be helpful to extend the dynamic I-V method in order to derive more accurate models. Potential applications and extensions of our results are discussed.


In a recent longitudinal surveillance study in 30 U.S. retail delicatessens, 9.7% of environmental surfaces were positive for Listeria monocytogenes, and we found substantial evidence of persistence. In this study, we aimed to reduce the prevalence and persistence of L. monocytogenes in the retail deli environment by developing and implementing practical and feasible intervention strategies (i.e., sanitation standard operating procedures; SSOPs). These SSOPs were standardized across the 30 delis enrolled in this study. SSOP implementation was verified by systems inherent to each retailer. Each deli also was equipped with ATP monitoring systems to verify effective sanitation. We evaluated intervention strategy efficacy by testing 28 food and nonfood contact surfaces for L. monocytogenes for 6 months in all 30 retail delis. The efficacy of the intervention on the delis compared with preintervention prevalence level was not statistically significant; we found that L. monocytogenes could persist despite implementation of enhanced SSOPs. Systematic and accurate use of ATP monitoring systems varied widely among delis. The findings indicate that intervention strategies in the form of enhanced daily SSOPs were not sufficient to eliminate L. monocytogenes from highly prevalent and persistently contaminated delis and that more aggressive strategies (e.g., deep cleaning or capital investment in redesign or equipment) may be necessary to fully mitigate persistent contamination.


We have studied the structure and vibrational dynamics of Cu3Au(511) using embedded atom method potentials. The relaxation pattern of this surface shows a buckling in all Au-rich chains of about 0.14 Å, which is similar to that found in Cu3Au(100). The relaxation pattern of this surface is qualitatively similar to that of Cu(511), but is more pronounced in Cu3Au(511) and extends deep into the bulk. Our calculations show that the local vibrational properties of this vicinal surface is sensitive to the local atomic environment. Surface Au atoms are responsible for a large softening of the force field at the surface, yielding a substantial shift toward low frequencies of the vibrational densities of states associated with Au surface atoms. As a consequence, the excess local free energy of the Au atoms are about 43 meV/atom at 663 K.


Successful results for patients undergoing neobladder surgery demand meticulous surgical technique, as well as expert nursing management and patient education. Current practice and guidelines developed for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for the nursing management of patients undergoing Studer pouch surgery are delineated.


Abstract Concept-driven sequence stratigraphic models of alluvial-to-coastal-plain successions suggest that fluvial architecture and style should transition from isolated, single-story, channelized sandbodies deposited by single-thread (typically meandering) rivers in mudstone-prone, high-accommodation intervals into densely stacked, amalgamated sandbodies deposited by multiple-thread (typically braided) rivers in low-accommodation intervals. Model predictions of changing fluvial style are tested by comparing the facies character, internal architecture, dimensions, and formative paleohydraulic conditions of representative, major fluvial sandbodies developed at different stratigraphic levels of an alluvial-to-coastal-plain succession developed under a progressively decreasing rate of accommodation creation (Late Cretaceous Blackhawk Formation, Wasatch Plateau, central Utah, USA). The major fluvial sandbodies have a similar facies composition, and consist mainly of cross-bedded, medium-grained sandstone with subordinate mudclast conglomerate, folded sandstone, and inclined sandstones and intercalated siltstones. Facies are arranged within a hierarchy of architectural components. Channel stories (mean width and depth of 90 m and 7.2 m, respectively) represent the migration of a paleochannel segment and adjacent bar, and they are amalgamated laterally into channel belts (mean width and depth of 400 m and 9.2 m, respectively) that in turn are stacked vertically into channel-belt complexes (mean width and depth of 400 m and 20 m, respectively). Channel stories and belts were deposited by a combination of three paleochannel types that occur together in most major sandbodies: (1) single-thread "cut-and-fill" channels; (2) single-thread, laterally accreting channels of low-to-moderate sinuosity; and (3) multiple-thread, wandering-to-braided channels. Estimated paleochannel slopes are uniformly low (< 0.04°), most sandbodies contain sparse, potential marine indicators (e.g., Teredolites-bored logs and tidally modulated? carbonaceous drapes along cross-bed foresets), and paleodischarge estimates imply that multiple-thread channels may have narrowed and branched downstream to form distributary networks. All of these features are consistent with a delta-plain setting. Channel story and belt stacking patterns within each major sandbody (channel-belt complex) are highly non-uniform, such that (1) there are no systematic trends shared by the sandbodies, (2) sandbodies do not result from systematic, short-term changes in accommodation, such as those associated with the incision and fill of coastal incised valleys, and (3) variability within each sandbody is more pronounced than variability between sandbodies. These results suggest that local variations in sediment flux and transport capacity, combined with local avulsion history, were the principal controls on the architecture and dimensions of the major sandbodies. The similarities in architecture between major fluvial sandbodies imply that these controls were not predominantly governed by proximity to the coeval shoreline (c. 40–100 km) or by long-term tectonic subsidence rate (c. 80–700 m/Myr), which controlled creation of accommodation.


Abstract Background Pharmacists play a key role in antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). Consensus-based national AMS competencies for undergraduate healthcare professionals in the UK reflect the increasing emphasis on competency-based healthcare professional education. However, the extent to which these are included within undergraduate pharmacy education programmes in the UK is unknown. Objectives To explore which of the AMS competencies are delivered, including when and at which level, within UK undergraduate MPharm programmes. Methods A cross-sectional online questionnaire captured the level of study of the MPharm programme in which each competency was taught, the method of delivery and assessment of AMS education, and examples of student feedback. Results Ten institutions completed the survey (33% response rate). No institution reported covering all 54 AMS competencies and 5 of these were taught at half or fewer of the institutions. Key gaps were identified around taking samples, communication, outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy and surgical prophylaxis. The minimum time dedicated to AMS teaching differed between institutions (range 9–119 h), teaching was generally through didactic methods, and assessment was generally through knowledge recall and objective structured clinical examinations. Feedback from students suggests they find AMS and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to be complex yet important topics. Conclusions UK schools of pharmacy should utilize the competency framework to identify gaps in their AMS, AMR and infection teaching. To prepare newly qualified pharmacists to be effective at delivering AMS and prescribing antimicrobials, schools of pharmacy should utilize more simulated environments and clinical placements for education and assessment of AMS.


Abstract:The following thirteen theses expose the anthropology of the homo rhetoricus and attempt to outline a new design of philosophy for the 21st century: I. Man is a rhetorical being. - II. The general power of speech exists as a fundamental and universal phenomenon in human life world and is the necessary foundation of all artificial rhetoric. - III. Man as homo rhetoricus is the main object of a fundamental, rhetorical anthropology. - IV. The categories of classical rhetoric have a heuristic function with respect to the anthropology of the homo rhetoricus. - V. The five basic faculties of invention, disposition, elocution, memory and performance form a heuristic pattern for a fundamental, rhetorical conception of spirit (Geist). - VI. The (post-)modern existence of homo rhetoricus is dominated by the figure of irony. - VII. Ironic alterity also designates the culture in the beginning of the 21st century. - VIII. The danger of an unlimited postmodern irony consists of an infinite ironical regress. - IX. Philosophy in general is also a creation of the homo rhetoricus. - X. The rhetorical metacritique of philosophy is directed against classical metaphysics as well as against its antagonist - postmodern deconstruction. - XI. Both—the supposed evidence of dogmatic metaphysics and the neosophistical evidence of non-evidence are contingent. - XII. The rhetorical enlightenment does not aim at a pure postmodern deconstruction of philosophy but consequently reaches forward to its fundamental, rhetorical reconstruction. - XIII. A rhetorically well-informed and enlightened metaphysics represents a new and positive mode of existence of the homo rhetoricus.


ABSTRACT In this paper, we consider the use of permanent implanted magnets inserted into an individual's fingers as a form of human computer interface, the magnets being excited by an external coil. Tests involving amplitude detection, amplitude discrimination, frequency discrimination, temporal discrimination, and temporal gap detection were performed on implanted subjects. As a comparison the same tests were performed on individuals who had identical magnets attached to the outside of their skin. Results indicated that much smaller stimulation currents were required to achieve a sensitivity response in the implanted subjects. It is apparent that different corpuscles are affected by complex signals at different frequencies and this has a considerable effect on the results obtained and hence on the type of stimulation that can best be applied.


In recent times, improvements in imaging technology have made available an incredible array of information in image format. While powerful and sophisticated image processing software tools are available to prepare and analyze the data, these tools are complex and cumbersome, requiring significant expertise to properly operate. Thus, in order to extract (e.g., mine or analyze) useful information from the data, a user (in our case a scientist) often must possess both significant science and image processing expertise. This paper describes the use of artificial intelligence (AI) planning techniques to represent scientific, image processing, and software tool knowledge to automate elements of science data preparation and analysis of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery for planetary geology. In particular, we describe the Automated SAR Image Processing system (ASIP) which is currently in use by the Department of Geology at Arizona State University (ASU) supporting aeolian science analysis of synthetic aperture radar images. ASIP reduces the number of manual inputs in science product generation by 10-fold, decreases the CPU time to produce images by 30%, and allows scientists to directly produce certain science products.


The United States legal profession routinely deals with evidence in and out of courtrooms, but the profession is not evidence-based in a scientific sense. Lawyers, judges, and court administrators make decisions determining the lives of individuals and families by relying on gut intuition and instinct, not on rigorous evidence. Achieving access to justice requires employing a new legal empiricism. It starts with sharply defined research questions that are truly empirical. Disinterested investigators deploy established techniques chosen to fit the nature of those research questions, following established rules of research ethics and research integrity. New legal empiricists will follow the evidence where it leads, even when that is to unpopular conclusions challenging conventional legal thinking and practice.


Various analytical, iterative and rebinning algorithms have been proposed for 3D reconstruction in positron emission tomography. This paper examines execution times of five analytical and rebinning algorithms. Meaningful comparisons are obtained by using similar software modules in all implementations. Reconstruction times are shown to differ by vast amounts: the Favor algorithm of Defrise et al is more than twice as fast as the widely used reprojection algorithm of Kinahan and Rogers; the Fourier rebinning algorithm (Fore) recently developed by Defrise is more than 15 times faster than the reprojection algorithm.


In the last twenty years, studies on cross-cultural pragmatics in general and apology strategiesin specific have focused on western and East-Asian pragmatics. A small volume of researchhas been conducted in investigating speech acts production by Arabic dialect speakers.Therefore, this study investigated apology strategies used by Libyan Arabic speakers using anonline Discourse Completion Task (DCT) questionnaire. The DCT consisted of six situationscovering different social contexts. The survey was written in Libyan Arabic dialect to helpgenerate vernacular speech as much as possible. The participants were 25 Libyan nationals,12 females, and 13 males. Also, to get a deeper understanding of the motivation behind theuse of certain strategies, the researcher interviewed four participants using Libyan Arabicdialect as well. The results revealed a high use of IFID, offer of repair, and explanation.Although this might support the universality of apology strategies, it was clear that culturalnorms and religion determined the choice of apology strategies significantly. This led to thediscovery of new culture specific strategies such as: Reassuring the offended party, Determinism, Invoking God's name , and Calming the hearer. This might suggest thatim/politeness should be evaluated in interaction (Eelen, 2001) and as a form of a social practice (Kadar and Haugh, 2013, p.94). This research gives an insight into (im)politenessstrategies in the Libyan society and it is hoped to contribute to the field of cross-cultural pragmatics.


Continuing controversy over the European Union's entire financial framework for 2007-13 has alarmed the EU's public health community, who consider it a direct threat to implementing effective public health measures across Europe.

The European Commission's ambitious new public health and consumer protection strategy looks set to have its proposed budget almost halved from about €1.8bn (£1.2bn; $2.2bn) to less than €1bn. As a result, it may have to be totally rethought and rewritten. The strategy was drawn up after 18 months intensive consultation with many national and regional health authorities, universities, and citizens and more than 100 non-governmental health organisations.

"To say we are facing a crisis is to put it mildly," said MEP for London John Bowis at a conference in Brussels last week. The conference was convened by European Voice (a weekly newspaper covering European issues) to discuss healthcare policy in Europe and where EU action can "add value."

"There has never been a time of such uncertainty over the budget. Finance ministers must be persuaded that expenditure on …


To investigate the formation mechanism of a physically cross-linked double-network hydrogel and its application as a framework for nanomaterial, in this work, calcium alginate and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) were selected as hydrogel-forming polymers to form a double-network hydrogel utilized as a framework for graphene oxide (GO). The results showed that completely physically cross-linked double-network hydrogels were obtained with good shape-recovery and self-healing properties. Moreover, the first network had a significant influence on the properties of double networks: when calcium alginate acts as the first network, the hydrogels have denser structures, a lower swelling ratio and higher mechanical properties. The GO/double-network composite hydrogel shows a 3D porous network structure with no obvious aggregation of GO nanosheets and an excellent removal rate for methylene blue. The results indicate the potential of the polymer double network utilized as a nanomaterial framework in biomedical and environmental areas.


This paper examines Aquinas's theory of dualist mental causation, that is, his theory of how human beings can efficiently cause changes in their bodies in virtue of two non-physical mental states of theirs, specifically an act of the intellect and an act of the will. It is first shown that Aquinas's hylomorphism does not lie at the heart of this theory. Rather, a relation that he calls "contact of power" (tactus virtutis) does. The remainder of the paper then investigates the nature of this relation. Since Aquinas discusses key marks of it by contrasting it with physical contact, the paper focuses on this contrast. It is argued that, for Aquinas, the human soul stands in a relation of contact of power to the body or, more precisely, a certain part of the body when it causes a change in it and is holenmerically co-located with it.


The paper is focused on the issue of measuring the amount of fuel in the tank of truck, construction and agriculture machine. The gradual expansion of of the share of the biocomponent in diesel fuel results in greater measurement errors via the capacitive probe in the fuel tank. The proposed solution, which uses three electrodes leads to increased accuracy in measuring of the amount of fuel in the tank. According to standard EN 590, the measurement error of the new capacitive probe is only 1.5% when using diesel. The highest measurement error 4% is achieved when using neat rapeseed oil methyl ester. The previous solution of the capacitive probe when using diesel fuel according to EN 590 achieved a measurement error of 2.5%, but it increased significantly with the proportion of rapeseed oil methyl ester up to 70% when using neat rapeseed oil methyl ester. The new capacitive probe concept with two positive electrodes and higher accuracy can be used to evaluate driving style towards economical and environmentally friendly driving. It is also possible to focus on safe driving style of drivers using other operating parameters. The aim of the paper is to compare the capacitive probe with one and two positive electrodes and demonstrate their use in evaluating the driving style of drivers.


OBJECTIVE
Testing the hypothesis that CT airway measurements could be influenced by total lung capacity (TLC), gender and height in normal individuals.

METHODS
In this ethics committee-approved prospective trial, 87 healthy never-smoking volunteers who provided written informed consent were included. From a helical CT scan of the chest, the wall thickness (WT) and the lumen area were twice measured in the third- and fourth-generation airways by three readers using a dedicated software. In addition, the TLC was also measured using CT (TLCCT). The percentage of airway area occupied by the wall (WA%) and the square root of wall area at an internal perimeter of 10 mm (√WAPi10) were calculated. CT airway measurements were compared between genders by using a mixed linear model. The correlations between height, TLCCT and CT airway measurements were tested by using a Pearson correlation analysis. These correlations were arbitrarily considered as significant if there was a significant correlation observed for each of the six measurement sessions.

RESULTS
√WAPi10, WT3rd and WT4th were significantly different between genders. For both genders, there was no significant correlation between any airway measurements and TLCCT. In females only, WT3rd and WT4th were significantly and negatively correlated with height.

CONCLUSION
√WAPi10, WT3rd and WT4th are different in males and females. WT3rd and WT4th are correlated with height in females only but not with TLC or in males. Advances in knowledge: CT airway measurements are influenced by gender and by height in females only but not by TLC. They should be adjusted according to gender and height in females.


CdSe/Cu core/shell nanowires (NWs) are successfully synthesized by a wet chemical method for the first time. By utilizing the solution-liquid-solid (SLS) mechanism, CdSe NWs are fabricated by Bi seeds, which act as catalysts. In the subsequent radial overcoating of the Cu shell on the CdSe NWs, Fe ions have been proven to be an indispensable and efficient catalyzer. The thickness of the Cu shell could be well controlled in the range of 3 to 6 nm by varying the growth temperature (from 300 to 360 °C). Our synthetic strategy pioneers a new possibility for the controlled synthesis of semiconductor-metal heterostructure NWs (especially for II-VI semiconductors), such as CdS/Cu, ZnS/Au, and ZnO/Ag, which had broad application prospects in photoconductors, thin-film transistors, and light-emitting diodes. Theoretically, electrons flow from a higher Fermi-level material to the bottom Fermi-level at the metal-semiconductor heterojunction interface, which aligns the Fermi level and establishes the Schottky barrier. It leads to excess negative charges in metals and excess positive charges in semiconductors. Therefore, those effective electron traps reduce the probability of photogenerated electron-hole pair recombination efficiently, which has been widely applied in solar cells, sensors, photocatalysis, and energy storage. The breakthrough and innovation of this synthesis method have opened up a new synthetic route with a mild reaction environment, low energy consumption, and convenience.


Aim: Coagulation disorders may develop in association with severe acute pancreatitis (AP). Plasma thrombin-antithrombin III complex (TAT) levels are one of the principal markers of coagulation disorder. The purpose of this study was to evaluate TAT and other hemostatic parameters in patients with AP and to examine whether or not these parameters indicate the severity of AP. Method: Forty-six patients with AP (14 severe, 32 non-severe) and a 30-member healthy control group were recruited. The severity of AP was determined using the revised Atlanta classification. ELISA was used to measure patients' plasma TAT levels. Results: The TAT levels of AP patients at presentation were higher than those of the control group (p = 0.005). The plasma TAT levels of patients with severe AP were also significantly higher than those of patients with non-severe AP (p = 0.05) and of the control group (p < 0.001). The general accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of TAT levels in predicting the severity of AP were 77.4, 77.8, and 77.3% respectively. Conclusion: The coagulation cascade was activated in the AP patients in our study, and this was shown to become more pronounced as severity of the disease increased. Plasma TAT levels at the time of presentation in patients with AP can be used as a marker for predicting the severity of the disease.


: Ilebu Prison held the majority of men sentenced for treason in Norway after the Second World War. About one third of all prisoners convicted of treason served their sentence at Ilebu, which was one of the few prisons or camps which had a well organised hospital with a patient registration protocol. The protocols were recently (1995) brought to light; complete case records are stored in the National Archive. We have gone through a number of the case records and compared them with the protocols. The typical patient at Ilebu in 1945 was below 39 years of age, whereas in 1949 those over 40 were in majority. Average age and length of stay increased over the years as the oldest convicts also got the longest sentences. High age and long sentences contributed to increased morbidity, mental and psychosomatic disease as well as functional illness. The most common reason for admission was infectious disease. Ilebu Prison escaped serious epidemics, most likely because of good facilities for isolation as well as vaccination. However, the large number of prisoners suffering from tuberculosis was a cause for concern.


The well-studied benzene dimer radical cation, which is prototypical for this class of species, has been reinvestigated computationally. Thereby it turned out that both the σ-hemibonded and the half-shifted sandwich structures of the benzene dimer cation, which had been independently proposed, represent stationary points on the B2PLYP-D potential energy surfaces. However, these structures belong to distinct electronic states, both of which are associated with potential surfaces that are very flat with regard to rotation of the two benzene rings in an opposite sense relative to each other. The surfaces of these two "electromers" of the benzene dimer cation are separated by only 3-4 kcal mol(-1) and do not intersect along the rotation coordinate, which represents a rather unique electronic structure situation. When moving on either of the two surfaces the title complex is an extremely fluxional species, in spite of its being bound by over 20 kcal mol(-1).


OBJECTIVES
To examine gender difference in trajectories of functional limitations among middle-aged and older adults using a comprehensive set of predictors and method not previously used to examine this topic.

METHOD
Two-part latent curve models were used to analyze data from the Health and Retirement Study. These models differentiate the occurrence of limitations from the number of limitations at both baseline and over time.

RESULTS
Females had 3.70 times greater odds of having any limitations and had 28% more limitations at baseline compared with males, but there was no gender difference in the onset of limitations over time or in the number of limitations over time. Differences in employment status, income, wealth, depressive symptoms, arthritis, cancer, and eyesight partially explained the gender gap.

DISCUSSION
Females are disadvantaged in terms of occurrence and number of limitations at baseline but the gender gap remains stable over time, suggesting differences occur before late-middle and old age. Females' lack of full-time employment, and lower levels of income and wealth translate into worse functional health. It is important to improve the socioeconomic status of females while also addressing the health conditions that contribute to functional limitations for males and females.


Private liability can potentially play a crucial role in protecting critical infrastructure. Traditional liability rules will especially play their deterrent and therefore preventive effect in the case of so-called man-made "technological" disasters. By using a strict liability role and by providing solvency guarantees potential tort-feasors can be provided with incentives to take optimal preventivemeasures.However, the case of nuclear accidents, addressed inmore detail, makes clear that in practice those efficient liability rules that would be needed to generate this preventive effect are often not implemented at the legislative level. The legislator rather imposes financial limits on liability and provides for public funding, thus effectively granting a subsidy to operators. Those type of inefficient rules laid down in international conventions are obviously often the result of interest group politics. As far as natural disasters are concerned liability rules can play less of a role given the fact that those are considered an "act of God". One could then only consider public authority liability.However, this is not often accepted in practice and there may also be theoretical reasons to be careful with the imposition of public authority liability. Public authorities are multitask agents which need a substantial amount of discretion. That explains that many legal systems award (partial) immunity from liability to public authorities. This leads generally to the conclusion that although liability rules can play a role in the protection of critical infrastructure those rules may have important limits as well. As a result the primary instrument to protect critical infrastructure will in practice often be safety regulation rather than liability rules.


It has been revealed that single-pass airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system (ALS) data could provide not only the spatial but also the dynamical information of a scanned scene due to the so-called motion artifact effect. A common strategy for extracting dynamical information from ALS data is established based on analyzing shape deformations of vehicles which have to be extracted in advance. Therefore, vehicle extraction results are directly related to the performance of motion analysis. In this letter, two vehicle extraction methods, namely, grid-cell- and 3-D point-cloud-analysis-based methods, which represent two main streams in LiDAR data processing, are to be evaluated and compared toward influences on the performance of motion analysis. Motion estimation based on the two methods is respectively applied to real ALS data sets. The results show that the 3-D data-based method can yield more accurate and robust dynamical traffic information such as motion state and velocity of vehicles, while the grid-cell-based method can provide more complete information by extracting more stationary vehicles.


In the current paper, three different constitutive models are employed for the analysis of laminar MRF (MagnetoRheological Fluid) flows between two parallel plates. The capability of a recently constructed non-convex constitutive model is compared with those of widely used Bingham model and Herschel-Bulkley model. The comparison among simulated flow velocity distributions and shear stress - shear strain rate characteristics based on different models is presented. It is shown that the non-convex consitutive model outperformance the other two models.


One hundred years ago, the Supreme Court embarked on its first serious consideration of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. In 1919, the Court upheld four federal criminal convictions over First Amendment defenses. Three of the majority opinions were written by Justice Holmes. In the fourth, he offered a classic dissent. Two of the cases, Frohwerk v. United States and Debs v. United States, are of middling significance. The other two, Schenck v. United States and Abrams v. United States, are iconic. From these cases have sprung an expansive and complex jurisprudence of free speech. The author elaborates on these historical cases, and their significance to freedom of speech doctrine and jurisdiction.


This research investigates the viability of gaining insights about the real world through conducting economic experiments in virtual worlds. This paper reviews the relevant metanomics literature, discusses the challenges and benefits of establishing a virtual experimental economics lab, and outlines the major issues associated with applying data collected in virtual worlds to answer questions about real-world behavior. Virtual experimental infrastructure enables a dramatically larger and more diverse sample than typical lab-based experiments studying college students, which can enable a more robust analysis within a given budget. However, while anonymity, variance in perceived social norms, and a low prevailing wage make virtual worlds a compelling place to study social and behavioral research, these features simultaneously limit induction of virtual data to provide insight into similar phenomena outside virtual worlds.


This study was done to determine minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the aqueous extracts of garlic ( Allium sativum ), mint ( Menthe spp.) and onion ( Allium cepa ) in in vitro conditions against the Escherichia coli isolated from broiler chickens. E. coli was isolated from the infected tissues of the chickens which were suspected of Colibacillus infection. In this study, distilled water, phenol phenicol and floxacin antibiotics were used as control. E. coli was sensitive to antibiotics, but distilled water had no inhibitory effect on the activity of E. coli . In this experiment, each of the aqueous extracts was prepared by using distilled water in 6 concentrations: 0.5, 1, 2.5, 5, 10 and 20%, and was poured into the cavities in nutrient agar medium, and then the plates were kept in incubator at 37°C for 24 h. The results indicated that MIC of the garlic aqueous extract was 5%, but E. coli was resistant to the aqueous extracts of onion and mint. Key words : Herbal extracts, garlic, onion, mint, Escherichia coli, broiler chickens, minimum inhibitory concentration, antibacterial effects


Abstract. International migration is changing the social structure and cultural landscape of countries and big cities worldwide, especially in developed countries which are the target of job and asylum seekers. On the other hand, cultural diversity is becoming an important concept from different perspectives, such as boosting innovation and spatial segregation in urban planning and studies. Google point of interest (POI) data, as a commercial type of user-generated spatial data, is a secondary data source that can provide some information on the gender and nationality of reviewers, and this information can be used as a proxy indicator of cultural and background diversity. Yet, the potential application of the Google POI data has not been investigated in urban cultural and diversity measurement. In this study, we used artificial intelligence and text analytics methods through the NamSor API to identify the nationality and gender of Google POI reviewers in the Dublin Metropolitan Area. This study aims to highlight the potential application of spatial user-generated data in cultural mapping. The results are relatively consistent with official data in Ireland. Moreover, the results show that the number of male reviewers may be significantly higher than women reviewers, and this difference might be because of the gender digital divide. Finally, this paper discusses the potential challenges of using Google POI data and the implemented methodology and tools for cultural and diversity mapping and measurement. The proposed data and implemented methods in this study may have implications for other purposes in urban studies as well.


Frequent exposure to social media leads to individuals having negative perceptions about their bodies. There has been limited qualitative literature observing body image with social media. Thus, this study aimed to explore how young women perceived their bodies in relation to the use of social media. Previous literature on these phenomena have been observed using quantitative methodologies. Six women between the ages 18-25 years were recruited through opportunity sampling. Semi-structured interviews were devised and performed to create numerous rich and detailed individual accounts of different perspectives and experiences. The interview was subjected to Braun and Clarke (2006) thematic analysis and four themes were elicited: digital altered images, third person perspective of self-image, positive effects of social media and Kardashian influence. These findings suggested that social media does have an adverse effect on young women's body image and plays a major role in the lives of young women. Limitations of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed in full.


In this introduction, we refl ect on the proliferation of an amorphous desire for the political in the post–Cold War era. Th e desire for the political, we argue, is shaped by two sets of tensions: the desire to criticize power via forms of action conventionally characterized as "politics," but without a clear analysis of how power is organized or exercised; and the desire to overcome the present in the name of an alternative (better) future, but without a clear sense of the form that future might take. We start from the vantage points of critical scholarship that distinguishes itself from the mainstream, and people and places that are geopolitically in Europe, but "not quite" European if viewed in relation to "Europe" as a normative trope.


We describe the first order moduli space of heterotic string theory compactifications which preserve $N=1$ supersymmetry in four dimensions, that is, the infinitesimal parameter space of the Strominger system. We establish that if we promote a connection on $TX$ to a field, the moduli space corresponds to deformations of a holomorphic structure $\bar D$ on a bundle $\cal Q$. The bundle $\cal Q$ is constructed as an extension by the cotangent bundle $T^*X$ of the bundle $E= {\rm End}(V) \oplus {\rm End}(TX) \oplus TX$ with an extension class $\cal H$ which precisely enforces the anomaly cancelation condition. The deformations corresponding to the bundle $E$ are simultaneous deformations of the holomorphic structures on the poly-stable bundles $V$ and $TX$ together with those of the complex structure of $X$. We discuss the fact that the ``moduli'' corresponding to ${\rm End}(TX)$ cannot be physical, but are however needed in our mathematical structure to be able to enforce the anomaly cancelation condition. In the Appendix we comment on the choice of connection on $TX$ which has caused some confusion in the community before. It has been shown by Ivanov and others that this connection should also satisfy the instanton equations, and we give another proof of this fact.


This paper deals with language management within a transnational business network, with a specific focus on the process of noting. In an analysis of one business encounter involving one Japanese and one Australian business representative, language management is found to occur at the grammatical, (non-grammatical) communicative and also sociocultural/socioeconomic levels. Furthermore, the language management involves not just individual acts but also occurs at the level of the speech event, as seen through an analysis of how the participants perceive the function of the encounter and their respective roles vis-a-vis their own institutional networks. The data consists of a video-tape recording in conjunction with follow-up (stimulated recall) interviews with the two participants.


Xenopus laevis frogs have long been widely used as an animal model in research. However, their husbandry has scarcely evolved, although they are prone to environmental stress. Environmental enrichment has been shown to improve animal welfare and adaptation, as well as zootechnical indices, which have become very important in recent years. The aim of this study was to examine the preferences of X. laevis frogs for various elements of environmental enrichment: opaque polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes, artificial plants and clear spaces. A preferential study was conducted in two different tanks, each divided into six parts, where the two enrichment elements were rotated. Ten X. laevis frogs were introduced into each tank, and the number of frogs was counted in each division three times per day for six weeks. The number of frogs in the different spaces and different enrichments was evaluated through a Poisson regression model. Frogs preferred plants to PVC pipes and clear spaces regardless of the position of the enrichment element, time and day. This indicates that artificial plants should be used as the enrichment element rather than the commonly used PVC pipes. In addition, the use of plants facilitates the observation of frogs without disturbing them and reduces the accumulation of detritus, as it occurs inside the pipes.


The local field potentials, i.e., the electrical-potentials of the deep brain stimulations (DBS) and micro electrode signal recordings of STN-neurons adjoining and contiguous DBS leads can vivid to give pragmatic rejoinder or snap therapeutic-surgical STN-DBS. Nevertheless, predictable square (conservative) DBS lead-electrodes amid four cylindrical macro/electrodes (for macrostimulations) likely under-sample the spatial circulation of sinks and sources in a given area of the brain. This study gives the exploration of the power-spectral-density (PSD) and spatial-feature dimensions of LFP-activity in primate subthalamic-nuclei (STN/or s-nuclei) and globus pallidus internus (GPi) by means of unendingly 32embedded-channel directional DBSarray-electrodes. The waveforms of s-nuclei and GPi were acquired as of directional-DBSmicro electrode-arrays in the latent or quiescent state and in a reach-and-retrieval task in twoprimates in adolescent, naïve and immature (raw) animal Parkinson conditions. The potentials of signal acquisitions recordings were evaluated amongst bipolar-pairs of micro electrodes using personage and agglomerative (bunched) electrode configurations, with the latter mimicking the cylindrical macro electrode (for macro stimulations) arrangements/specifications employed in the present current clinical settings of field-potentials signal acquisition. Signal recordings from these DBS-electrodes shown that, β-oscillatory frequency fluctuations have spatial-finger-prints in s-nuclei and GPi, and that these fluctuations were muted when clustering the electrode contacts together to create cylindrical macro electrodes alike in parallel and in European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine ISSN 2515-8260 Volume 07, Issue 01, 202


Distribution Switchgear covers the fundamentals of circuit protection devices used generally for medium voltage power distribution applications. Topics include interruption techniques, fault current calculations, switching transients, and insulation considerations. Breaker types covered in this book are primarily vacuum interrupters, SF 6 switchgear, and oil breakers. The author gives the reader a good understanding of how these devices interrupt fault currents and what practical factors are important, such as contact design or number of finger clusters in connectors. After describing the basics of interruption for each of the devices, the author details important factors needed to determine fault levels for various circuit configurations and the breaker size to protect a given system adequately. Some of these topics include symmetrical and asymmetrical fault current calculations, forces on conductors, contact design, switching transients, and insulation. The chapter on insulation mainly describes how insulation in power distribution equipment fails and also how to calculate the voltage distribution across commonly used composite insulators. Other chapters describe the basics of various breaker-operating mechanisms and protection of various equipment, including cable-connected secondary switchgear and autoreclosers. A chapter on high voltage fuses details fuse timecurrent basics and describes various types of fuses and fuse standards. Final chapters cover type tests, product quality control, cost of ownership, and predictions for future developments in the switchgear industry. The questions at the end of each chapter are geared to be very practical to help the reader understand the key design factors that are important in switchgear. This book shows the basics in switchgear design. Although predominantly focused on vacuum and SF 6 interruption technology, this well-written, easy-to-read text still gives the reader a good foundation on the general principles of medium voltage power interruption. It would be useful for a practicing medium voltage breaker applications engineer who needs working knowledge on the application of medium voltage switchgear. It could also be used as a supplemental test for a course in power engineering.


We have previously shown that patients with nocturnal worsening of asthma (nocturnal asthma) exhibit increased parenchymal inflammation at night. To evaluate the functional significance of this parenchymal inflammation, 10 subjects with nocturnal asthma (NA), four subjects with non-nocturnal asthma (NNA), and four normal control subjects underwent bronchoscopy with measurement of peripheral airways resistance (Rp) at 4:00 P.M. and at 4:00 A.M. Employing a wedged bronchoscope technique, Rp was measured. Flow was stopped, and the pressure reached after 10 s of decay was termed the plateau pressure. The time constant of this decay (tau) was measured, and the peripheral compliance (Cp) was calculated as tau/Rp. The NA group exhibited the highest Rp values at 4:00 P.M. and at 4:00 A.M. as compared with the NNA and control groups, but all groups were significantly different from each other at 4:00 P.M.: NA, 0.113 +/- 0.02 cm H(2)O/ml/min; NNA, 0.033 +/- 0.005 cm H(2)O/ml/min; Control subjects, 0.010 +/- 0.001 cm H(2)O/ ml/min; p = 0.0001; and at 4:00 A.M.: NA, 0.129 +/- 0.023 cm H(2)O/ ml/min; NNA, 0.035 +/- 0.007 cm H(2)O/ml/min; Control subjects, 0.009 +/- 0.002 cm H(2)O/ml/min; p = 0.0003. None of the groups exhibited statistically significant differences in Rp between 4:00 P.M. and 4:00 A.M. The plateau pressure increased significantly from 4:00 P.M. to 4:00 A.M., but only in the NA group (7.7 +/- 0.9 cm H(2)O at 4:00 P.M. versus 16.9 +/- 4.6 cm H(2)O at 4:00 A.M.; p = 0.0004). Cp was decreased in the NA group as compared with the NNA and control groups at both 4:00 P.M. (p = 0.0003) and 4:00 A.M. (p = 0.003). The Rp positively correlated with the residual volume at both 4:00 P.M. (r = 0.71, p = 0.004) and 4:00 A.M. (r = 0.59, p = 0.03). We conclude that the distal lung units, specifically the collateral channels, and may be functionally altered at night in NA.


Cervical cancer is caused by a persistent infection with high-risk types of human papillomaviruses (HPVs), especially HPV16 and HPV18. HPV testing therefore represents an important alternative to standard cytological screening. However, existing HPV tests are often laborious, expensive or time-consuming, and thus novel techniques are developed that would be inexpensive, rapid, easy to perform and could be implemented in low-resource settings. In this work, we show an early application of an electrochemical (EC) assay combined with loop-mediated amplification (LAMP) to determine HPV16 and HPV18 status directly in a clinical material. To demonstrate its potential usefulness, we screened 61 cervical samples for the presence of both genotypes, and compared the results with the gold standard – PCR amplification followed by gel electrophoresis and two commercial HPV tests – COBAS and INNO-LiPA. The best concordance was obtained with the PCR reaction; we obtained high significance (p-value <0.0001) and positive and negative predictive values over 90%. These data indicate that the EC-LAMP assay may serve as an interesting tool for rapid screening of oncogenic HPVs.


This article is an outcome of the research and thorough study toward central issues in developing religious studies on Islamic Colleges in South Sumatra. In the management system and institutional development of Islamic education, the human resources' role plays a vital role in achieving the national Islamic Colleges program in Indonesia. This writing describes a more comprehensive research outcome on various dynamics and academic problems in several Islamic Colleges in the South Sumatra region. Some essential issues such as problems in education and the scientific publication, scientific journal system and resources management, availability on education Infrastructure and facilities, qualified and supporting Islamic books availability, and overall challenges faced by several Islamic Colleges in South Sumatra become the strict attention in this research. Data or information derived in this research through several field studies, both in interview and observation, until collecting various sources through transcript or written document possessed by some Islamic Colleges in the South Sumatra region. This research has delivered recommendations or important input in developing and managing Indonesian Islamic Colleges, Indonesia in general, particularly in South Sumatra.


The article addresses the problem of mosaicing a large volume from a set of small volumes acquired from a 3D ultrasound device. The formation of large volumes is necessary for an ultrasound visual simulator. Trainees using the simulator learn how to identify and diagnose a wide range of medical cases by operating a simulated ultrasound device on a mannequin, without any need for actual patients. The principle of the simulator is simple but apparently effective. In an offline preprocess, a volume buffer is generated from real ultrasound images. Slicing the volume buffer online then generates simulated images. Such images can be generated rapidly, including postprocessing enhancements, and can produce in most cases images indistinguishable from the real ultrasound images. The ultrasonic volume buffer has to be big enough and represent a large portion of the mannequin to permit the bound-free practice of a real-life diagnosis. Contemporary ultrasound devices don't provide the capability of obtaining the entire volume in a single acquisition. This implies that the volume buffer must be reconstructed from several subvolumes obtained from different viewpoints. The registration of monomodal data sets has been extensively investigated in medical applications where atlas data is used. The basic technique of a mosaicing operation aligns and registers two given volumes with a significant overlap into a single volume that smoothly combines the information from both. The type of registration technique that can be appropriately applied directly depends on the type of variation between the two volumes. Thus, designing a registration method requires knowing the type of variation exhibited by ultrasonic volumes.


During the last decade, there is an increasing interest in the development and use of wildflower meadows, as groundcover in landscapes. The establishment of such meadows in archaeological sites could prove beneficial, as the meadows might be better adapted to the landscape and therefore more aesthetically pleasing and less maintenance demanding. Furthermore, the meadow could suppress unwanted weed species that cause various problems to archaeological sites. The aim of the present study was to examine the establishment of two seed mixes for wildflower meadows, for use as groundcover in archaeological sites of Greece. The experiment was conducted at the Agricultural University of Athens. Treatments consisted of two seed mixes in combination with two mowing regimes (mowing, without mowing), in three replications. The seed mixes comprised of herbaceous native species that were recorded in archaeological sites of Greece and were either available in the international market or the Greek market. The mowing treatments were designed to manage the average height of the meadow, as well as suppress weed emergence. Seedling emergence counts revealed that some species established more successfully than other species. The plots that were mowed presented less than 20% weed contamination, while the plots that were not mowed over 85%. Mowing treatments reduced average plot height to 15 cm, while plots that were not mowed had average plot height of over 60 cm. Similarly, the average height per species during the flowering period was reduced in the mowed plots.