Texture evolution during recrystallization and grain growth was examined for a Ni3Al/Ni two-phase single crystal (binary Ni-18 at.% Al) 83% cold-rolled, then compared with that for a Ni3Al single-phase single crystal (Ni-24 at.% Al). The cold-rolled single crystal had a sharp {110}<001> (Goss) texture. When it was recrystallized at 873K, the texture changed into a complicated one consisting of several components. Most of them had a special rotation relationship to the original Goss texture, i.e. 40˚ about <111>, which special relationship was similarly observed in the single-phase case. The 40˚<111> texture became shaper with no quantitative change as the grain growth proceeded. This high stability of the recrystallized texture contrasted with the single-phase case in which the authors previously found that the texture returned to the original Goss texture. The difference was discussed based on the orientation analysis by an electron backscattered diffraction method.


The purpose of this article is to present a novel method for combining bibliometrics and scenario technique for the sake of conducting technology foresight. First, we derive an eight-step scenario approach and add the identification of emerging technologies as well as their respective effects on each scenario. Second, we illustrate this combined method in the field of personalized medicine (PM). Existing literature on method combination often focuses singular challenges and benefits associated with the scenario technique. In this paper, however, we integrate the results of a bibliometric analysis at each step of the scenario technique. Herein, we refer mainly to the co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling network. Third, we describe the findings of our case study for every step of the application of the scenario technique. In doing so, we offer practical guidelines for applying this novel combined method in other contexts. The overall benefit of the method combination is the integration of scientifically based information that exceeds the knowledge bases of the scenario team and other experts. Most notably, the examination of vast amounts of technology-specific information facilitates the identification of emerging technologies. Moreover, the combined method allows for a more precise projection of future states when narrowing the scenario funnel. Using this eight-step scenario approach, we build three scenarios for the field of PM, discuss Paper 1: Combining the scenario technique with bibliometrics for technology foresight 24 disruptive events, and identify and integrate emerging technologies into each scenario. Finally, we explore strategic decisions for various stakeholders in the PM field. Paper 1: Combining the scenario technique with bibliometrics for technology foresight 25


Sodium deficient nickel–manganese oxides NaxNi0.5Mn0.5O2 with a layered structure are of interest since they are capable of participating in reactions of intercalation of Li+ and exchange of Na+ with Li+. Taking into account the intercalation properties of these oxides, we provide new data on the direct use of NaxNi0.5Mn0.5O2 as low-cost electrode materials in lithium ion batteries instead of lithium analogues. Sodium deficient nickel–manganese oxides NaxNi0.5Mn0.5O2 are prepared at 700 °C from freeze-dried acetate precursors. The structure of NaxNi0.5Mn0.5O2 is analyzed by means of powder X-ray diffraction, SAED and HRTEM. The oxidation states of nickel and manganese ions are determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy (EPR). Model lithium cells are used to monitor the lithium intercalation into NaxNi0.5Mn0.5O2. The surface and composition stability of NaxNi0.5Mn0.5O2 during the electrochemical reaction is monitored by using ex situ XPS and LA-ICPMS. Layered oxides NaxNi0.5Mn0.5O2 exhibit a P3-type of structure, in which the solubility of sodium is limited between 0.5 and 0.75. At 700 °C, NaxNi0.5Mn0.5O2 consists of thin well-crystallized nanoparticles; some of the particles have sizes higher than 100 nm, displaying a trigonal superstructure. For all oxides, manganese ions occur in the oxidation state of +4, while the oxidation state of nickel ions is higher than +2 and depends on the sodium content. The electrochemical reaction occurs within two potential ranges at 3.1 and 3.8 V due to the redox manganese and nickel couples, respectively. During the first discharge, Li+ intercalation and Li+/Na+ exchange reactions take place, while the consecutive charge process includes mainly Li+ and Na+ deintercalation. As a result, all oxides manifest a reversible capacity of about 120–130 mA h g−1, corresponding to 0.5–0.6 moles of Li+. The formation of surface layers in the course of the electrochemical reaction is also discussed.


Introduction The TIOSPIR™ trial showed similar safety and exacerbation efficacy profiles for tiotropium Respimat® and HandiHaler® in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We present here the results for patients who were naïve to anticholinergic treatment at baseline. Methods TIOSPIR™ (n = 17,135), a 2–3 year, randomised, double-blind, parallel-group, event-driven trial, compared safety and efficacy of once-daily tiotropium Respimat® 5 and 2.5 µg with HandiHaler® 18 µg in patients with COPD. Primary endpoints were time to death (noninferiority of Respimat® 5 or 2.5 μg versus HandiHaler®) and time to first COPD exacerbation (superiority of Respimat® 5 μg versus HandiHaler®). Safety, including cardiovascular safety, was assessed. Results Overall, 6966 patients from TIOSPIR™, naïve to anticholinergic treatment at baseline, were randomised and treated (n = 2345, n = 2312 and n = 2309 for tiotropium Respimat® 2.5 and 5 µg and HandiHaler® 18 µg). There was similar risk of death (vital status follow up) (measured as time to death) for the Respimat® groups versus HandiHaler® (Respimat® 5 µg: hazard ratio [HR], 0.93; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.75–1.17; Respimat® 2.5 µg: HR, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.84–1.30) with similar results for the on-treatment sensitivity analysis (Respimat® 5 µg: HR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.71–1.17; Respimat® 2.5 µg: HR, 1.11; 95% CI, 0.87–1.40). Risk of exacerbation was also similar for the Respimat® groups versus HandiHaler® (measured as time to first exacerbation) (Respimat® 5 µg: HR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.90–1.08; Respimat® 2.5 µg: HR, 1.04; 95% CI, 0.95–1.14). Risk of major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE) or fatal MACE were similar for the Respimat® groups versus HandiHaler® (MACE: Respimat® 5 µg: HR, 1.20; 95% CI, 0.88–1.63; Respimat® 2.5 µg: HR, 1.11; 95% CI, 0.81–1.51; fatal MACE: Respimat® 5 µg: HR, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.75–1.71, Respimat® 2.5 µg: HR, 1.12; 95% CI, 0.75–1.69). Conclusions Analogous to the global analysis, patients naïve to anticholinergic treatment and treated with tiotropium Respimat® 2.5 or 5 µg or HandiHaler® in the TIOSPIR™ trial exhibited similar safety and exacerbation efficacy profiles.


Context. We study the peculiar interacting galaxy system of VCC 1249/M 49 located in the core of the Virgo B subcluster. Owing to a recent interaction between the dwarf galaxy VCC 1249 and the halo gas of the elliptical galaxy M 49, neutral hydrogen has been displaced from the interstellar medium of this dwarf into the Virgo intracluster medium. Observations also reveal multiple compact star-forming regions (aka H  II regions) that are embedded in this H  I cloud, with a projected separation up to 13 kpc from VCC 1249 in the northwest direction.
Aims. Motivated by recent near-ultraviolet imaging from the GALEX Ultraviolet Virgo Cluster Survey (GUViCS) of the VCC 1249/M 49 system that shows significant ongoing/recent star formation in the compact regions, we aim to constrain the origin of these outlying H  II regions with a multi-wavelength approach.
Methods. Using deep optical (u,g,i,z) imaging from the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS) and new Hα imaging obtained at the San Pedro Martir observatory together with Keck long-slit spectroscopy, we characterize the star formation rates, ages, and metallicity of VCC 1249 and its outlying compact regions. Moreover, we analyze the color and luminosity profile of the galaxy to investigate its recent interaction with M 49.
Results. Our new observations indicate that VCC 1249 underwent a recent interaction with M 49 in which both ram-pressure stripping and tidal interaction occured. The joint action of the two mechanisms led to the removal of the H  I gas from the interstellar medium of VCC 1249, while the gravitational tides triggered the stellar tail and counter-tail of VCC 1249. Our stellar population synthesis analysis reveals that the star formation in this galaxy was truncated around 200 Myr ago and that the outlying H  II regions were born in situ ≈10 Myr ago out of pre-enriched gas removed from the dwarf galaxy. These observations also reveal that interactions between central and satellite galaxies similar to those between VCC 1249/M 49 may be an effective way of dispersing metals into the halos of massive galaxies.


The need for a preliminary assessment of the clustering tendency or clusterability of massive data sets is known. A good clusterability detection method should serve to innuence a decision as to whether to cluster at all, as well as provide useful seed input to a chosen clustering algorithm. We present a framework for the deenition of the clusterability of a data set from a distance-based perspective. We discuss a graph-based system for detecting clusterability and generating seed information including an estimate of the value of k { the number of clusters in the data set, an input parameter to many distance-based clustering methods. The output of our method is tunable to accommodate a wide variety of clustering methods. We have conducted a number of experiments using our methodology with stock market data and with the well-known BIRCH data sets, in two as well as higher dimensions. Based on our experiments and results we nd that our methodology can serve as the basis for much future work in this area. We report our results and discuss promising future directions.


The idea of tracking one spacecraft from another grew out of some tracking studies performed early in the Apollo programme (1962-3). The main practical advantage of such a technique is that (a) contact time with a low orbiting spacecraft can be increased considerably (approximately 50 min v. 5 min for a single ground station); (b) the number of ground stations can be reduced; (c) the dependency on stations on foreign soil can almost be eliminated; and (d) detailed studies of spacecraft motions due to small variations in the Earth's gravity field (anomalies) may be detectable. This paper describes specifically two satellite-to-satellite tracking (s. s. t.) tests, namely (a) the ATS-6/Geos-3 and (b) the ATS-6/Apollo-Soyuz experiment and some of the results obtained. The main purpose of these two experiments was first to track via ATS-6 the Geos-3 as well as the Apollo-Soyuz and to use these tracking data to determine (a) both orbits, that is, ATS-6, Geos-3 and/or the Apollo-Soyuz orbits at the same time; (b) each of these orbits alone, and (c) test the ATS-6/Geos-3 and /or Apollo-Soyuz s. s. t. link to study local gravity anomalies; and, second, to test communications, command and data transmission from the ground via ATS-6 to these spacecraft and back again to the ground (Rosman, N. G.). Most of the interesting data obtained to date originate from the Apollo-Soyuz geodynamics experiment. Thus, it will be discussed in some detail. Gravity anomalies of say 3-5 mGal (3-5 × 10-5 m s-2) or larger having wavelength of 500-1000 km on the Earth's surface are important for studies of the upper layers of the earth. Such anomalies were actually 'seen' for the first time from space as signatures in the form of very small variation (order of ~ 1 to 2 cm/s) in the range rate between ATS-6, Geos-3 and Apollo-Soyuz. Since the measured range noise turned out to be only 0.03- 0.05 cm/s on the average, these signatures were detected with an excellent signal-to-noise ratio. Orbit determination examples using s. s. t. data from ATS-6 and Geos-3 are also discussed in detail together with errors associated with the orbits of Geos-3. Further, signature studies and gravity anomaly detections with s. s. t. data will be shown and discussed in detail.


This research is in direct relation to the accompanied thesis proposal conducted within the Department of Architecture by author, Michael Phaff, under the guidance of thesis Advisor, Marietta Monaghan. Upon examining local problems with urban fabric, a site and a cause to resolve has been identified. Examining the urban disconnect and architecturally related history and projects, this capstone addresses a condition not yet publicly identified of the site, sound quality of the pedestrian experience in a high traffic environment. Studies show increased health problems of residents living in close proximity to high traffic environments. The goal of this research is to determine the best design parameters of a sounding device through the exploration of acoustics and harmonics to impact the experience of the pedestrian in an inhospitable urban environment. The research will aid in determining whether the work of Helmholtz could become an architectural expression. Upon conclusion, a sounding vessel in the form of piping will provide the most interactive experience for the pedestrian. Piping captures sound and transports the sound waves in an auditory experience over larger distances as the frequencies separate into their distinct characteristics. Additionally, piping with open ends and punctures, has the opportunity to create sounds. Architectural expression can be observed with the multi-utilization of structure and the sonorous bodies performing multiple functions together.


Introduction: Plasma volume (PV) changes in response to physical activity, possibly as a consequence of adrenergic activation. We estimated changes in PV in response to common exercise modalities; cycling and running as well as adrenaline infusion and control at rest. Methods: On separate days, forty circulatory healthy subjects [aged 60 years (range: 42–75)] with knee osteoarthritis underwent moderate-high intensity cycling, running, and intravenous adrenaline infusion to mimic the circulatory response to exercise. Blood samples were obtained from peripheral veins taken at several pre-defined time points before, during, and after the interventions. PV changes were estimated using venous hemoglobin and the derived hematocrit. The temporal associations between PV and selected biomarkers were explored. Results: Changes in PV were observed during all four interventions, and the response to cycling and running was similar. Compared to rest, PV decreased by -14.3% (95% CI: -10.0 to -18.7) after cycling, -13.9% (95% CI: -10.9 to -17.0) after running, and -7.8% (95% CI: -4.2 to -11.5) after adrenaline infusion. Conclusion: PV decreased in response to moderate-high intensity running and cycling. Adrenaline infusion mimicked the PV change observed during exercise, suggesting a separate influence of autonomic control on blood volume homeostasis. In perspective, a temporal association between PV and biomarker dynamics suggests that consideration of PV changes could be relevant when reporting plasma/serum constituents measured during exercise, but more research is needed to confirm this.


In a B2C e-commerce environment, home delivery service refers to delivering goods from an e-retailer's storage point to a customer's home. High rate of failed delivery due to the customer's absence causes significant loss of logistics efficiency. This paper aims to study innovative solutions to the problem, such as data-related techniques. This paper proposes a methodological approach to use customer-related data to optimize home delivery. The idea is to estimate the attendance probability of a customer via mining his electricity consumption data, in order to improve the success rate of delivery and optimize transportation. Computational experiments reveal that the proposed approach could reduce the total distance from 3% to 20%, and theoretically increase the success rate around 18%-26%. Being an experimental study, this paper demonstrates the effectiveness of data-related techniques or data-based solutions in home delivery problem, and provides a methodological approach to this line of research.


Abstract. During a joint campaign in January 2009, the Rayleigh/Mie/Raman (RMR) lidar and the sodium lidar at the ALOMAR Observatory (69° N, 16° E) in Northern Norway were operated simultaneously for more than 40 h, collecting data for wind measurements in the middle atmosphere from 30 up to 110 km altitude. As both lidars share the same receiving telescopes, the upper altitude range of the RMR lidar and the lower altitude range of the sodium lidar overlap in the altitude region of ≈80–85 km. For this overlap region we are thus able to present the first simultaneous wind measurements derived from two different lidar instruments. The comparison of winds derived by RMR and sodium lidar is excellent for long integration times of 10 h as well as shorter ones of 1 h. Combination of data from both lidars allows identifying wavy structures between 30 and 110 km altitude, whose amplitudes increase with height. We have also performed vertical wind measurements and measurements of the same horizontal wind component using two independent lasers and telescopes of the RMR lidar and show how to use this data to calibrate and validate the wind retrieval. For the latter configuration we found a good agreement of the results but also identified inhomogeneities in the horizontal wind at about 55 km altitude of up to 20 ms−1 for an integration time of nearly 4 h. Such small-scale inhomogeneities in the horizontal wind field are an essential challenge when comparing data from different instruments.


It is becoming increasingly evident that our understanding of the geological conditions in the shallow subsurface is limited. This is especially apparent in large cities and areas covered by lakes where underground infrastructure such as tunnels, subways and train stations have to be constantly developed or expanded to facilitate the daily life and transportation. The degree to which we can understand geological conditions such as these also has great economical and environmental effects for mine planning. What makes these environments similar and challenging targets for geophysical investigations are the various sources of noise and restriction (both in time and space), which require the equipment to be versatile and to produce minimal disruption as well as fast to set up and pack. Direct observations of the subsurface are cumbersome, expensive and sometimes impossible. However, if properly designed and implemented, geophysical methods are capable of imaging detailed subsurface structures and can successfully be used to provide crucial information for site characterizations, infrastructure planning, brown- and near-field exploration and mine planning. To illustrate the potential of geophysical methods in these environments, I will show prototype seismic and EM instrumentation and their applications that are especially geared for noisy environments and areas where high-resolution images of the subsurface are needed. The presentation will be supported by several examples from these two areas.


Orthotopic liver transplantation has become the preferred treatment for a variety of end-stage liver disease. As competency and survival rates increase, so does increasing demand, which puts greater strain on a static donor pool. This increases pressure to accept more marginal grafts, e.g. non-heart-beating and steatotic donors. However, graft dysfunction post-transplantation contributes considerably to postoperative morbidity and mortality. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1HNMR) spectroscopy is a powerful technique to explore the biochemical composition of biological fluids; it is rapid, non-invasive, nondestructive and it can detect metabolites at millimolar concentrations. In this study, 1HNMR assessed the changes in bile composition during liver ischaemia/reperfusion. The primary hypothesis was that bile composition changes during liver ischaemia reperfusion injury (IRI). The aims were to document these changes, identify biliary markers for liver IRI using 1HNMR, validate these markers using known modulators, determine if the same was true for steatotic livers and attempt to understand the mechanisms by which these changes happen in relation to the redox state of the liver. Materials and methods: A rabbit model of hepatic lobar IRI was used. In most experiments 3 groups were used (n=6): Sham group (laparotomy alone), I/R group (1hr ischaemia and 6hrs reperfusion), and a modulation group similar to I/R with the addition of N-acetylcysteine (I/R+NAC: 150mg/kg of NAC) and glycine (I/R+glycine: 5mg/kg glycine). Steatosis was induced by feeding with a 2% cholesterol diet for 8 weeks. Experiments were repeated on steatotic animals with Sham, I/R, I/R+NAC and IPC+I/R (5min ischaemia followed by 10min of reperfusion before prolonged ischaemia was induced) groups. The following parameters were measured: portal blood flow, bile flow (BF) and bile 1HNMR spectroscopy, hepatic microcirculation, intracellular tissue oxygenation, serum ALT, AST and ICG clearance were measured at 1, 2, 5 and 7 hours following reperfusion. Results: Bile spectroscopy demonstrated significant changes in bile composition following I/R and alterations with NAC, glycine and IPC. These changes are evident despite a constant post-reperfusion rate of BF. They were also present in steatotic livers, and were modulated by NAC and IPC. In experiment 1: BF, COX and biliary acetate decreased following I/R while AST, ALT, biliary PC and lactate increased along with PMN accumulation in sinusoids, KC hypertrophy, necrosis and apoptosis in normal livers. In experiment 2: BF, COX and biliary acetate decreased following I/R while ALT, PC, conjugated bile acids and lactate increased in the I/R group in normal livers. NAC administration attenuated the increase in ALT and lactate following I/R in the NAC+I/R group compared to the I/R group. Changes in conjugated bile acids seem to reflect changes in BF. In experiment 3: I/R+glycine was associated with increased BF, bile acid, acetate, pyruvate, glucose, acetoacetate, and decreased bile lactate and PC levels in normal livers. In experiment 4: NAC administration in steatotic livers reduced the extent of IRI, increased portal blood flow and liver parenchymal perfusion. NAC increased BF, biliary acetate and pyruvate and reduced acute liver injury, ALT and biliary PC. In experiment 5: IPC protected the steatotic liver from IRI and maintained hepatic oxygenation, tissue perfusion and mitochondrial redox state. COX activity was decreased by IRI in the fatty liver, but can was protected by IPC. Conclusions: This thesis has demonstrated changes in bile composition during warm normal liver I/R and its modulation with NAC and glycine. It has also demonstrated changes in bile composition during warm steatotic liver I/R and its modulation with NAC and IPC. It has noted several metabolites that are consistently changed, as well as the bile redox ratio of metabolites that provides a clearer indication of liver redox state than individual metabolites.


PURPOSE
We evaluated the 12-month followup outcome of the Macroplastique (Uroplasty, Minneapolis, Minnesota) implantation system for the treatment of stress urinary incontinence caused by intrinsic sphincter deficiency using objective and subjective measures, including quality of life impact.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A total of 21 consecutive women with a mean age of 47.4 years and a mean body mass index of 25.65 kg./m.2 in whom intrinsic sphincter deficiency was urodynamically diagnosed were enrolled in the study. Patients were preoperatively assessed by physical examination, quality of life questionnaire, Stamey grading of incontinence, pad use, pad weight test and urodynamic testing. Patients underwent periurethral injection under local anesthesia with the Macroplastique implantation system. The mean volume of silicone elastomers injected was 6.3 ml.

RESULTS
As assessed by the King health questionnaire, patient quality of life improved in all domains and in most lower urinary tract symptoms. Patient satisfaction and subjective surgeon evaluation were assessed by Stamey incontinence grading. From patient point of view 12 (57.1%) considered themselves cured, 4 (19%) were improved and 5 (23.8%) had failure. According to subjective surgeon grading 8 patients (38.1%) were considered cured 6 (28.6%) were improved and 7 (33.3%) had failure. Pad use decreased from a mean of 4.38 to 1.29 units daily. According to the pad weight test 13 patients (62%) were dry, 4 (19%) were improved and 4 (19%) had failure. Urodynamic testing demonstrated that 8 patients (40%) were dry and 1 (5%) was improved.

CONCLUSIONS
The Macroplastique implantation system proved to have an acceptable outcome for patient and surgeon. The procedure can be done with local anesthesia and without cystoscopic guidance.


This paper analyzes the geometrical and mechanical characteristics of balance springs, which have the most important influence on the oscillation rate of the balance wheel and, consequently, the most decisive effects on the timekeeper's accuracy. These characteristics are obtained by a set of SolidWorks simulations of static structural studies based on the finite element model, which are performed and accomplished in a specific and original way. Our study demonstrates that the position of the balance spring center of mass and its momentum of inertia are not constant but depend on the angular displacement of the spring collet end. It also shows that the torque spring rate (the spring stiffness) varies as a function of angular displacement during the balanced spring twist. All results are presented numerically and graphically by a set of diagrams and can contribute to the better understanding of the balance spring geometrical and mechanical features and, therefore, be applied for improving a timepiece's accuracy. Moreover, the method of simulation study disclosed and explained in this paper provides general suggestions and guidance for similar studies. The accuracy of the presented results, as well as the validity of the complete simulation-based method, is proven by the experimentally determined relationship between balance spring restoring torque, stiffness, and spring angular displacement.


The objective of the present work is to simulate surface roughness in Computer Numerical Controlled (CNC) machine by Fuzzy Modeling of AISI 1045 Steel. To develop the fuzzy model; cutting depth, feed rate and speed are taken as input process parameters. The predicted results are compared with reliable set of experimental data for the validation of fuzzy model. Based upon reliable set of experimental data by Response Surface Methodology twenty fuzzy controlled rules using triangular membership function are constructed. By intelligent model based design and control of CNC process parameters, we can enhance the product quality, decrease the product cost and maintain the competitive position of steel.


The highlighting of multiple pollutions and chemical accidents, together with the growing strength of social demand for the development of activities that are more in tune with sustainable development principles, is orienting the chemistry sector towards new practices and products in the last two decades. In particular, new products and processes are being developed within this sector that are designed according to sustainable principles (the 12 principles of green chemistry) and based on renewable bio-resources. It is what we call "Doubly Green Chemistry" (2GC) (Nieddu et al., 2010). This paper aims to investigate the existence of a convergence or divergence of the technical-scientific components of the new sectoral system of innovation (SSI) of Doubly Green Chemistry. Our theoretical framework relates to current "sustainability transition management" (Grin et al., 2010). We conduct this study on two levels within this sector: academic and industrial development. Our investigations have led us to the conclusion that there is in fact sustainable support for the diversity of technological pathways developed for this sector.


How much does rationality constrain what we should believe on the basis of our evidence? According to this book, not very much. For most people and most bodies of evidence, there is a wide range of beliefs that rationality permits them to have in response to that evidence. The argument, which takes inspiration from William James' ideas in 'The Will to Believe', proceeds from two premises. The first is a theory about the basis of epistemic rationality. It's called epistemic utility theory, and it says that what it is epistemically rational for you to believe is what it would be rational for you to choose if you were given the chance to pick your beliefs and, when picking them, you were to care only about their epistemic value. So, to say which beliefs are permitted, we must say how to measure epistemic value, and which decision rule to use when picking your beliefs. The second premise is a claim about attitudes to epistemic risk, and it says that rationality permits many different such attitudes. These attitudes can show up in epistemic utility theory in two ways: in the way you measure epistemic value; and in the decision rule you use to pick beliefs. This book explores the latter. The result is permissivism about epistemic rationality: different attitudes to epistemic risk lead to different choices of prior beliefs; given most bodies of evidence, different priors lead to different posteriors; and even once we fix your attitudes to epistemic risk, if they are at all risk-inclined, there is a range of different priors and therefore different posteriors they permit.


Largely overlooked until the 1970s, sexual harassment in the workplace is now internationally condemned as a form of sex discrimination and a violation of human rights. More than 75 countries have legislation prohibiting workplace sexual harassment. Legislation varies by country and includes protection against workplace sexual harassment under both civil and criminal law. Like workers at risk of injury or death, those at risk of sexual harassment receive a pay premium. Organizations have prohibited sexual harassment and have established complaint procedures. eLeVATor PiTcH


background Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common cancer in the United States. Therefore, prospective assessment of dermatologists' acumen in diagnosing BCC is important but, unfortunately, is lacking. objective We sought to determine the positive predictive value (PPV) for clinically diagnosing BCC based on how confident the physician is of the diagnosis. We also sought to determine which clinical and historical factors most influence a dermatologist's perception that a tumor is a BCC and to determine which factors are correlated with a lesion being a BCC. methods Dermatology attending faculty at the University of Miami performing biopsies on their patients in whom BCC was a consideration were asked to complete a questionnaire. They recorded how confident they were of their clinical diagnosis of BCC. They also recorded various clinical and historical factors about the patients and the lesions biopsied. results The PPV for clinically diagnosing BCC when the clinician was most confident was 80%. Age (> 64 years) and the presence of pigmentation, telangiectasias, and a pearly border were statistically associated with a greater confidence level and a histologic diagnosis of BCC. Sunscreen use was associated with fewer diagnoses of BCCs. conclusion This is the first study to determine a relevant PPV for the clinical diagnosis of BCC because the PPV was based on clinical confidence level. These results highlight the role of diagnostic biopsies, could improve patient referral, and may help increase the PPV in the future.


In this work, we introduce a new architecture to address the Visual Question Answering problem, an open field of research in the NLP and Vision community.

In the last few years, with the advent of Deep Learning and the exponential growth of computing power, researches came up with brilliant solutions to tackle the problem.

However, most of the related work share a standard limitation: the number of possible answers is usually restricted to a limited set of candidates, limiting the power of such models.

In this work, we describe a new architecture that employs new state-of-the-art language models, such as the Transformer, to generate open-ended answers. In the end, our contribution to the scientific community lies in a new approach that allows VQA systems to generate unconstrained answers.

First, we introduce the necessary background as well as the most critical computational models to deal with text and images. Ultimately, we show that our architecture compares well with other VQA models, setting a new baseline for future work.


How immigrants and their descendents fare in the host society and in particular in the labor market is a very important question. While differences among ethnicities have been found to be marked and persistent within many host countries, and while the labor market consequences of diversity have been recognized, they have not been sufficiently examined. This volume contains fresh knowledge to help better understand the complex relationship between ethnic or minority groups, the role of ethnic identity and their disparate economic performance; 12 papers that individually and collectively go to the heart of this question. Offering a new paradigm, they tackle and interlink four important themes of immigrants' integration: ethnic identity, citizenship, interethnic marriages, and immigrant entrepreneurship. These papers offer insights and answers to challenging questions for six different immigration countries while they study countless different ethnic and immigrant groups. It is the aim of this volume to bring the role of ethnic identity in the forefront of scientific and political discussion and provide a link among these themes, anticipating new trends and directions in this area. An anthology of these questions is: Does ethnic identity affect the employment and earnings of immigrant groups and in what way? Does dual nationality affect assimilation? To what extent do social interactions determine the employment outcomes of ethnic minorities? Why do Mexican-Americans exhibit low self-employment rates? Which are the factors that influence the composition of the workforce in terms of ethnic-background? Do interethnic marriages influence transitions into and out of ethnic self-employment? And, are interethnic marriages a guarantee to high human capital achievement of their offsprings?


BACKGROUND: it is widely known that infertility and its treatment have a negative impact on patients´ well-being, yet not much is known about patients´ satisfaction with the quality of reproductive care.
PURPOSE: to assess the quality of life (QoL) of patients receiving medical care under the Chilean public health system.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: the FertiQoL international questionnaire was applied to 260 patients (both sexes) referred from rural and urban areas to undergo in vitro fertilization at a major university public hospital. FertiQol evaluates QoL as a product of psychosocial well-being and treatment experience. Demographic and reproductive data were collected.
RESULTS: QoL due to treatment factors was significantly lower than psychosocial well-being. Couples from lower-density areas showed markedly worse medical satisfaction than patients treated in Chile´s capital. No effects on QoL were observed as a function of age, education, or type of infertility. QoL was mostly affected by duration of infertility (inverse association) and geographical zone. Marital satisfaction was the component that most contributed to personal well-being.
CONCLUSIONS: QoL decreased more due to extrinsic factors, particularly lack of access to reproductive care, poor organization of medical services, and deficient clinical interaction, than due to psychosocial distress. These findings call for a revision of the delivery of public fertility care to satisfy patients´ needs and improve their QoL.


Centrifugal compressors are power machineries used widely. Fully understanding of the complex three-dimensional flow field is very important to design higher pressure ratio, higher efficiency centrifugal compressor. In this paper, time marching method is adopted to solve the three-dimensional viscous N-S equations under the relative coordinate system. The internal flow field of the "full controllable vortex" high speed centrifugal impeller is analyzed and the medial velocity vector distribution and the development of the velocity of each section in the impeller are showed. From the figures, it can be seen that the "wake" phenomenon, such as Ecckart described, caused by the curvature, Coriolis force and the boundary layer is exist


A pronounced cycle of car sales in the 1950s is explained in terms of styling competition and consumer preferences. An oligopolistic industry concentrated on non-price competition, and responded to perceived consumer demand for styling and status, with an accelerated product cycle. Demand was shifting from higher price-and-status models, to the feature-loaded high end of low-price models. This suggests a consumer preference for sensual gratification rather than status. But feature competition was eventually constrained by the physical limitations of car size and power, which created a competitive impasse. Upwards feature drift also opened up a gap at the bottom of market. This gap was invaded by imports. Consumer feature fatigue was expressed in buyers strike in 1958, but Detroit responded nimbly with the new compacts in 1959. There is also evidence that rapid depreciation of new cars, explained by Akerlof in terms of a market for lemons is also found in used cars sold by dealers, and is likely to represent the value of dealer distribution and warranty services.


Spiking neural P systems are a new computing model incorporating the ideas of spiking neurons into membrane computing. It has been shown that they have powerful computational capability and potential capability in solving computationally hard problems. The paper describes the implementation of signed integer arithmetic operations on spiking neural P system with the inputs and outputs encoded as appropriate sequences of spikes. The present work may be considered as the basis for more complex applications, maybe for constructing computer chips or for solving general mathematical problems.


NuScale is a small nuclear reactor that relies on natural circulation. Its modular production and inherent safety can not only be used to generate electricity in some remote areas, but also provide energy for water desalination and regional heating. However, the dynamic characteristics of the NuScale are different from those of the traditional PWRs because of its passive characteristic. Therefore, it is necessary to study and analyze the system dynamic characteristics of NuScale.
 The NuScale PWR model is established based on MATLAB&Simulink. It includes point-reactor kinetics model with six groups delayed neutrons, coolant system and steam generator system. The model is established based on the conservation equations of mass, energy and momentum. And the correctness of the model is verified by the comparison between the steady-state calculation results and the design parameters. Transient calculation results are verified by mechanism analysis.
 To evaluate the dynamic characteristics of NuScale, the sine function changes with different frequencies in reactor reactivity and feedwater mass flow rate are introduced. The amplitude and phase responses of reactor power, secondary loop steam pressure, secondary loop mass flow rate, secondary loop steam temperature, and coolant average temperature are recorded. Then the Bode plot can be drawn with amplitude and phase responses in different frequencies. To evaluate the NuScale dynamic characteristics, frequency domain analysis is performed.


The photochemistry of [CpRu(CO)2]2 in P(OMe)3/CH2Cl2 solution has been studied using picosecond time-resolved infrared (TRIR) spectroscopy. Photolysis at 400 nm leads to the formation of 17-electron CpRu(CO)2(•) radicals, which react on the picosecond time scale to form 19-electron CpRu(CO)2P(OMe)3(•) adducts. The TRIR spectra of this adduct display an unusually low CO stretching frequency for the antisymmetric CO stretching mode, suggesting that one carbonyl ligand adopts a bent configuration to avoid a 19-electron count at the metal center. This spectral assignment is supported by analogous experiments on [CpFe(CO)2]2 in the same solvent, combined with DFT studies on the structures of the 19-electron adducts. The DFT results predict a bent CO ligand in CpRu(CO)2P(OMe)3(•), whereas approximately linear Fe-C-O bond angles are predicted for CpFe(CO)2P(OMe)3(•). The observation of a bent CO ligand in the 19-electron ruthenium adduct is a surprising result, and it provides new insight into the solution-phase behavior of 19-electron complexes. TRIR spectra were also collected for [CpRu(CO)2]2 in neat CH2Cl2, and it is interesting to note that no singly bridged [CpRu(CO)]2(μ-CO) photoproduct was observed to form following 400- or 267-nm excitation, despite previous observations of this species on longer time scales.


Introduction Occupational dermatitis among cement workers is a major occupational health concern and skin contact with cement has been associated with contact dermatitis, which ranges from cement burns to cumulative irritant contact dermatitis. The objective of this study was to investigate the prevalence and severity of occupational cement contact dermatitis amongst cement workers in Nepal which is the first of its kind. Methods This was a cross sectional descriptive study conducted amongst the workers in construction sites and hardware shops within the Kathmandu valley. A structured questionnaire was used to collect the demographic data and work-related activities of those cement workers. A complete skin examination was conducted and skin manifestations were assessed by a dermatologist. The data collected was compiled and appropriate statistical tools were used to find out the significance of variables. Result Out of the 377 workers screened 164 (43.50%) had hand contact dermatitis. There were males 148 (90.2%) and females16 (9.8%) and the age ranged from 15–51 years (mean 27.41±7.68 years).The duration of the disease ranged from 1–360 months (median36months (IQR=60).The most common site of lesion was palms (62.8%) followed by tip of the fingers in 39.0% patients and the most common morphology of the lesion was erythema seen in 59.1% followed by scaling seen in 51.8% patients. Discussion Contact and irritant hand eczema amongst cement workers in Nepal has a considerable morbidity. Identification of these workers with adequate treatment, test of the suspected allergens and counselling could further help the workers. This study helped us to assess the magnitude of the problem and since it is a cross sectional survey, further research can be planned to see the allergens amongst the persons suspicious of contact dermatitis amongst the cement workers.


An assessment of the employment of mercenaries in Afghanistan gives mixed results. U.S. armed forces appear to have been happy with the Afghan Security Forces and ad hoc militias and only replaced them because of political reasons or because they felt that they were no longer needed. By contrast, the work of private security companies seems to have satisfied few. While in the short term no practical alternative to their use existed, it is not obvious that this option saves any money to the governments involved in the medium and long-term. Moreover, private security contractors are not subject to the control of military authorities, nor to military discipline. Their record of abusive behavior is indisputable and probably played a significant role in alienating the Afghan public. Unless much changes, the potential of private security companies in peacekeeping does not appear to be a bright one.


Exclusively for TheHearingJournal.com JUly 2013 A bomb is exploding, the Humvee is shaking, the radio is blasting, and an officer is listing coordinates over the loudspeaker. Military personnel listen to, transcribe, and respond to audio traffic over numerous channels during their operations. They have to discern and prioritize a barrage of critical information amidst extreme surroundings, which can prove a difficult task. A team of researchers from Defense Research and Development Canada (DRDC), an agency of Canada's Department of National Defense, investigated whether adding a visual signal like a text to an audio message could help the situation. Sharon Abel, PhD, a DRDC defense scientist, presented their findings at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics in Montreal last month. She and her team found that substituting audio messages over the loudspeakers with visual or audiovisual messages resulted in an improvement in speech understanding from 71 percent to 96 percent. "In military operations, it's critical that messages be monitored, encoded, responded to, and relayed accurately [and] in a timely manner to ensure situational awareness, personal safety, and mission success," Dr. Abel said in a statement. "Our findings suggest that the use of the visual system is a viable supplement for communication in cases of auditory overload or degraded listening." Researchers conducted two experiments in a mock-up of a military land vehicle to test the value of adding a visual signal to an audio message. First, the team evaluated the benefit of using visual prompts to direct the listener's attention to an audio channel delivering an important message. Participants were played numerous messages in their right and left earphones and over the loudspeakers. The messages were accompanied by different variables, including a backdrop of quiet, vehicle sounds, or babble noise that modeled surrounding conversations, with or without visual cues. Second, they investigated the advantages of texting as a supplement to an audio message by having participants engage in two tasks simultaneously. As participants listened to pairs of phrases in their right and left earphones, they had to determine the accuracy of simple math calculations played over a loudspeaker, as a text message, or through both routes. "Participants had no difficulty responding to messages presented over the headset, although there was a right ear advantage," Dr. Abel said. "We discovered that messages presented over a loudspeaker in noise were more difficult to understand, but a visual cue directing attention and text messaging resulted in significant improvements in performance." Samira Anderson, PhD, AuD, assistant professor in the Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences at the University of Maryland, said the study makes sense: when people are exposed to multiple messages, they need a way to make the most important ones stick out. The brain identifies an incoming auditory signal as an auditory object so that when a person hears a sound, he or she recognizes what it is, Dr. Anderson said in a phone interview. "Therefore, when a person is receiving and being subjected to competing messages, it's hard for the brain to decide what it wants to pay attention to." A parallel can be made to watching a movie with captions, where the addition of text can improve a person's understanding of the situation, she added. "The findings show the importance of sensory integration in making sense of the world," Dr. Anderson said. "The results also speak to the importance of combining several of a person's senses. Usually when we evaluate a sensory system we only evaluate one, but that's not how real life works. People hear and see things together in order to make sense of them." Samira Anderson


Antibodies specific for antigenic peptides bound to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules are valuable tools for studies of antigen presentation. Such T-cell receptor (TCR)-like antibodies may also have therapeutic potential in human disease due to their ability to target disease-associated antigens with high specificity. We previously generated celiac disease (CeD) relevant TCR-like antibodies that recognize the prevalent gluten epitope DQ2.5-glia-α1a in complex with HLA-DQ2.5. Here, we report on second-generation high-affinity antibodies towards this epitope as well as a panel of novel TCR-like antibodies to another immunodominant gliadin epitope, DQ2.5-glia-α2. The strategy for affinity engineering was based on Rosetta modeling combined with pIX phage display and is applicable to similar protein engineering efforts. We isolated picomolar affinity binders and validated them in Fab and IgG format. Flow cytometry experiments with CeD biopsy material confirm the unique disease specificity of these TCR-like antibodies and reinforce the notion that B cells and plasma cells have a dominant role in gluten antigen presentation in the inflamed CeD gut. Further, the lead candidate 3.C11 potently inhibited CD4+ T-cell activation and proliferation in vitro in an HLA and epitope specific manner, pointing to a potential for targeted disease interception without compromising systemic immunity. Significance Statement Consumption of gluten-containing food drives celiac disease in genetically predisposed individuals. The underlying disease mechanism is not fully understood, but it is strictly dependent on activation of pathogenic T cells. We have engineered high-affinity human antibodies recognizing the T-cell target HLA-DQ2.5 in complex with gluten epitopes and studied cell-specific antigen presentation in patients, which shows that plasma cells and not dendritic cells dominate the inflamed tissue. The only available treatment is lifelong adherence to a gluten-free diet, which is difficult and not effective in all cases. We show that at least one of our antibodies can specifically inhibit activation of pathogenic T-cells in vitro and therefore shows promise for therapy.


Model-based systems engineering provides a soft, manageable, and query-able representation of product design and lifecycle. However, at the same time, it creates a discontinuous space of data that does not integrate, constantly becomes outdated, and has to be upgraded as tools evolve. Models that are not maintained become legacy, and then become obsolete and useless. We look at how ontologies that follow the semantic web technology for data representation can create interoperability among the modeling tools, support model reuse, and fight the aging and obsolescence of models.


There is a variation in the pharmacokinetics of TNF inhibitors. Measurement of drug levels may help to identify patients in whom treatment can be optimised. Various factors influence the pharmacokinetics of TNF inhibitors; one of the most important factors is immunogenicity. There is inter-patient variation in the TNF inhibitor dose needed to achieve clinical effectiveness, as well as variation in the dose needed to maintain clinical effectiveness. Immunosuppressive co-medication plays an important role in the optimisation of TNF inhibitor therapy via an effect on inflammation and immunogenicity


According to exiting literature, most change programs fail to manage and/or meet the expectations of stakeholders; leading to the failure of larger strategic organisational and transformational initiatives. Undoubtedly, change management necessitates introspective planning and responsive implementation but a failure to acknowledge and manage the external stakeholder environment will undermine these efforts. This article presents some practical frameworks for managing the delivery of change that were used collectively in different situations and contributed to the successful implementation of change programs. It does not recommend any specific approach to yield successful outcomes, but it considers a range of approaches for practitioners to take into account to assure seamless integration of programs with the formulation of overall strategy and implementation planning. Understanding the components of each program is asserted to support organisations to better understand the people and non-technology dimensions of their projects and the need to ensure effective, consultative communications to gain and maintain support for the program of change.


THE modern aeroplane is constructed largely from sheet metal. As such, the most important production problems are those of sheet metal forming, and assembling. Production is here considered as not only the act of forming and assembling the required number of parts, but also the making of forming tools, and all processing of parts such as heat‐treating. Only that phase of the above concept of production which deals with the tooling for production and the forming and heat‐treating will be considered here. The design of the aircraft parts will also be discussed somewhat, for it is obvious that the design of the part (designed shape and materials used) frequently determines whether the part can or cannot be readily made.


In this study we have attempted, in collaboration with an agrifood company, to compare and contrast the responses of consumers and professionals to the same set of situations raising ethical questions, in order to highlight the differences and the similarities of viewpoint between these two groups of stakeholders. In order to do this, we constructed multi-stakeholder scenarios comprising a description of the situation and the various possible approaches to managing the situation. We constructed two scenarios, dealing with the origin of the gelatin used in the company's products and the company's product information on livestock feed (GMO, genetically modified organisms). This allowed us to: - study the extent of the professionals' ethical perceptions and the possible compromises between ethical values and business interests in the decision-making process. - compare and contrast the ethical perceptions of consumers and professionals. In the first part we discuss the exploratory phase which enabled us to construct the scenarios. In the second part we compare the ethical value of the decisions suggested for each scenario according to consumers and professionals and the probability of adopting the various decisions according to professionals. The third part compares consumers' and professionals' responses on the matching of each decision to consumer expectations and on the decision which would appear to them to be ideal. If there is a convergence between consumers and professionals in relation to the ethical classification of the various decisions, we can note, however, that consumers' expectations with regard to ethics are little understood by professionals. This study leads to a better understanding of the significance of considerations of an ethical nature in consumer perceptions and allows them to be compared and contrasted with the ethical judgments of professionals. It gives professionals a better insight into consumer expectations on sensitive issues and highlights certain differences between consumer expectations and managers' suggestions.


Objectives: To demonstrate the feasibility and acceptability of a brief mindfulness-based intervention taught by physicians for patients with opioid addiction and to determine if the intervention reduces likelihood of relapse or treatment failure within 6 months. Design: A prospective, feasibility, single-group, cohort pilot study. Setting: A Family Medicine teaching clinic serving a mixed urban and rural population in Bangor, Maine. Subjects: Adult patients initiating outpatient treatment for opioid addiction with buprenorphine (N = 40). Interventions: Study physicians conducted a 10- to 12-min education session for all patients starting treatment during the enrollment period, including a 5-min mindfulness exercise. Enrolled subjects received an MP3 player loaded with six mindfulness audio exercises (5-19 min) and were instructed to practice at least 5 min daily and record their practice in a logbook. Outcome measures: Acceptability and subjective usefulness to recovery were evaluated at 2, 4, and 6 months of follow-up, with qualitative analysis of themes in recorded poststudy interviews. Logbook entries and tablet-based surveys provided data on home mindfulness practice, classified as "high" or "low." Relapse or treatment failure was documented. Results: Feasibility and acceptability were demonstrated with 82% enrollment and 100%, 97%, and 90% completion of follow-up visits at 2, 4, and 6 months, respectively, among those still in treatment. Sustained positive impressions of the intervention and exercises remained at 6 months. Relapse or treatment failure was reduced in the "high" practice uptake group compared with "low" practice uptake (11% vs. 42%, p = 0.033). Conclusions: In contrast to more intensive 8-week models of meditation training, this study demonstrates that even a brief single training session can induce sustained home meditation practice that subjectively helped patients in recovery for opioid addiction and was associated with lower risk of relapse. Brief mindfulness-based interventions may be useful to increase access to mindfulness training in this population.


OBJECTIVE
To determine if chronic cerebral venous insufficiency exists in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) using ultrasonography and 4-dimensional color Doppler ultrasonography examination and unverified criteria proposed by Zamboni et al.

DESIGN
Patients with MS and clinically isolated syndrome were matched by age and sex with subjects with migraine or no neurological disease. All subjects underwent gray-scale, color, and spectral Doppler ultrasonography examination of the internal jugular veins (IJVs), vertebral veins, and deep cerebral veins for stenosis, absence of signal, and reflux.

SETTING
Academic MS center.

PATIENTS
All patients with MS fulfilled revised McDonald criteria for the diagnosis of MS. Patients with clinically isolated syndrome exhibited a typical transient focal neurological deficit and had magnetic resonance imaging lesions typical of MS. Control subjects were recruited from the VA migraine clinic or staff.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Five parameters of venous outflow used by Zamboni et al were examined: (1) IJV or vertebral vein reflux, (2) deep cerebral vein reflux, (3) IJV stenosis, (4) absence of flow in IJVs or vertebral veins, and (5) change in cross-sectional area of the IJV with postural change.

RESULTS
There was no significant difference in the number and type of venous outflow abnormalities in patients with MS compared with controls.

CONCLUSION
This study does not support the theory that chronic cerebral venous insufficiency exists in MS.


Rational theories of diagnostic reasoning assume that the reasoner's goal is to infer the conditional probability of a cause given an effect from the available data. Typically, diagnostic reasoning is modeled within a statistical inference framework, with Bayes' rule applied to the obtained covariation information serving as the normative standard. This chapter analyzes diagnostic reasoning from the perspective of causal induction, using the framework of causal Bayes net theory to instantiate different accounts of rational diagnostic reasoning. These approaches elucidate the relevant kinds of inputs, computations, and outputs by differentiating between parametric causal models and observable contingency information. A particularly interesting feature of these accounts is that they can include predictions that systematically deviate from the traditional, purely statistical norm. The analyses highlight key issues for constructing a rational theory of diagnostic reasoning and the experimental study of human rationality.


Abstract : This report is an examination of the accuracy of expendable bathythermograph (XBT) system temperature profiles. It covers a suite of studies on 1961 460-m and 26 1830-m XBT profiles collected between 1971 and 1975. The samples show that many visually acceptable but actually erroneous measurements are being transmitted to the Fleet Numerical Weather Center (FNWC), which results in inaccuracies of acoustic predictions based on these measurements.


Aims: The study aimed to evaluate associations of preoperative total testosterone (TT) with the risk of aggressive prostate cancer (PCA). Materials & methods: From 2014 to 2018, basal TT levels were measured in 726 consecutive PCA patients. Patients were classified according to the International Society of Urologic Pathology (ISUP) system. Aggressive PCA was defined by the detection of ISUP > 2 in the surgical specimen. The logistic regression model evaluated the association of TT and other clinical factors with aggressive PCA. Results: On univariate analysis, there was a significant association of basal TT with the risk of aggressive PCA as well as age, prostate-specific antigen (PSA), percentage of biopsy positive cores (BPC), tumor clinical stage (cT), and biopsy ISUP grade groups. On multivariate analysis, two models were considered. The first (model I) excluded biopsy ISUP grading groups and the second (model II) included biopsy ISUP grade groups. Multivariate model I, revealed TT as well as all other variables, was an independent predictor of the risk of aggressive disease [odds ratio (OR) = 1.585; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.113–2.256; p = 0.011]. Elevated basal PSA greater than 20 µg/dl was associated with the risk of aggressive PCA. Multivariate model II revealed that basal TT levels maintain a positive association between aggressive PCA, whereas age, BPC, and clinical stage cT3 lost significance. In the final adjusted model, the level of risk of TT did not change from univariate analysis (OR = 1.525; 95% CI: 1.035–2.245; p = 0.011). Conclusion: Elevated preoperative TT levels are associated with the risk of aggressive PCA in the surgical specimen. TT may identify patients who are at risk of aggressive PCA in the low and intermediate European Association of Urology (EAU) risk classes.


Plectranthus edulis (Lamiaceae) is one of the economically important tuber crops of the genus Plectranthus. It is grown in mid and high altitude areas in parts of Ethiopia. The structure of this plant and its development in time has not been described in detail. Two similar experiments were carried out at Awassa and Wondogenet (Southern Ethiopia) with two cultivars (Lofuwa and Chankua) and 20 harvest dates [from 14 to 280 days after planting (DAP)]. The plants were grown from seed tuber pieces and attained a maximum height of about 1.5 m. Plants produced main stems and primary, secondary and tertiary branches, with primary and secondary branches and their leaves constituting the main part of the canopy. Plant components were the seed tuber pieces, sprouts, main stems, branches, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, roots, stolons and tubers. Five, partly overlapping, ontogenetic vegetative phases were observed during one crop cycle: emergence, canopy development, stolon initiation and development, tuber initiation and growth, and a phase of canopy senescence. Stolons were formed on main stems and primary branches and originated below ground or above ground (aerial stolons). Aerial stolons were initiated later than below-ground stolons and were much longer (up to 2.5 m). Tubers usually were produced as a swelling on the tip of the stolon and sometimes as a swelling of the middle part of stolons. Tubers were stem tubers with pairs of ''eyes'' (compound buds) being arranged in the same decussate pattern as the axillary buds on stolons and stems. Tubers of cv. Lofuwa were up to 25 cm in length, those of cv. Chankua up to 20 cm, and both with a diameter of about 2 cm. The tubers in the middle of the stolon were longer than the ones at the tip. After tuber initiation, the total number of tubers increased almost linearly during 12 to 14 weeks, and maximum numbers of tubers were attained around 238 DAP, at crop senescence. Also, the number of smaller tubers (< 10 or 20 g) increased until 238 DAP. In the period of tuber initiation, the average weight per tuber increased up to 20 to 25 g per tuber. The increase in tuber fresh weight with time was therefore realized by an increase in both tuber number and in average weight per tuber. After crop maturity, farmers keep the tubers unharvested in the soil until they need them. This practice dramatically reduces tuber yield and number, because decreases of 36 to 59% were found in total tuber fresh weight and of 18 to 48% in number of tubers when tubers were kept in the soil in the 6 weeks period between 238 and 280 DAP.


Abstract:It is widely believed that meritocratic employment practices reduce gender inequality by limiting managers' reliance on nonmerit factors, such as biases. An emerging stream of research, however, questions the belief, arguing that meritocratic practices often fail to reduce inequality and may paradoxically increase it. Despite these opposing predictions, we still lack convincing empirical findings to adjudicate between them. Typically relying on data from a single organization or industry, most previous studies suffer from limited generalizability and cannot properly account for the large variation in the implementation of merit-based reward systems across organizations, let alone identify the origins of the variation. We attempt to overcome the limitations by constructing large-scale linked employer–employee data and by investigating the impact of merit-based systems on different components of compensation. Analyzing our panel data on 400 large Japanese companies and 400,000 employees of these companies over 12 years, we found evidence in support of the meritocracy paradox. The gender gap in bonus pay was greater, not smaller, in workplaces with a merit-based system compared to workplaces without it. But this paradoxical expansion of the gender gap was observed only in bonus pay but not in total compensation. We further found that a transition to merit-based systems has varying impacts on different employee groups; it widened the gender pay gap for young workers but reduced the gap for managers. Our research contributes to understanding gender inequality in times of shifting employment relations and the rise of meritocracy.


Supply Chain (SC) integration has been a long-standing issue. With the advent of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and its influence on inter-organisational relations, SC integration is again highly relevant. This study explores the conditions for SC integration from deploying BIM and SC management (SCM) philosophy. A set of topics from literature, pertinent to BIM and SCM are confronted with the experiences of experts from the industry during a workshop. The bottom-up BIM initiatives and relational management were deemed more decisive than adhering to top-down BIM policies and operational SCM for managing actors and information and inciting SC integration.


A binary ensemble classification method that sequentially processes the data collected from multiple decision agents in the presence of parameter uncertainties is proposed. Agents are assumed to form correlated groups whose decisions are modeled as multivariate Bernoulli random vectors. The prior probabilities of the binary hypotheses and the corresponding probabilities of the outcomes under each hypothesis are treated as unknown deterministic parameters. Cappé's online Expectation-Maximization algorithm is employed to estimate the parameter values, which are then fed into the ensemble classifier. The proposed technique is shown the reduce the computational complexity while delivering performance close to its offline counterpart, which requires multiple passes over the data. Numerical examples are presented to corroborate the results.


The Jews of Iraq constituted one of the oldest and most deeply rooted Jewish communities in the world. But in the early 1950s most of them left for Israel, under circumstances that remain the subject of heated controversy. "Iraqi Jews: A History of Mass Exodus" examines the critical years of the late 1940s - after the establishment of the state of Israel - when deep rifts began to appear in Iraqi society, and the sad sequence of events that finally led to the mass exodus of Jews in the 1950s. An honest, impartial and well-documented account of a formerly well-integrated and vibrant community, "Iraqi Jews: A History" is a landmark in the political and social history of the Middle East.


Background - Long-term regular follow-up and high retention are the anticipated outcomes for the wellness and longevity of HIV/AIDS patients on antiretroviral treatment. However, these anticipated outcomes are marred by patient loss to follow-up (LTFU) which is currently exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. This study aims to determine the prevalence and potential risk factors to LTFU among HIV/AIDS patients on ART at two rural district hospitals in South Africa.Methods— This is a retrogressive observational study whereby a cohort of HIV/AIDS patients was retrospectively followed from 2010 to 2017 until loss to follow-up occurred or until the end of the observation period at Carolina and Embhuleni hospitals. An institutional based retrospective cohort study was undertaken among children, adolescents and adults living with HIV/AIDS and attending ART clinic between January 1, 2010 and June 30, 2017. Loss to follow up was defined as not taking an ART refill for a period of 90 days or longer from the last attendance for refill and not yet classified as 'dead' or 'transferred-out' patient. Patient information was obtained from the routine hospitals' records, and the data were analysed using Generalized gamma distribution to identify the predictors of loss to follow up among HIV/AIDS patients while Kaplan-Meier model was used to estimate and compare the LTFU survival probabilities of heterogenous groups among the patients.Results— Of the 357 patients, 60.5% were female. The mean (SD) age of the cohort was 36.2 (14.1), 15.4 (3.5), and 5.1 (3.5) years for adults, adolescents, and children, respectively. From 357 HIV/AIDS patients, 93 (26.05%) were lost to follow-up. Empirical results show that the Weibull distribution gives the best fit to the data. The Weibull model determined the Factors associated with significant risk factors to patient loss to follow up as: regimen EFV+D4T+3TC [HR: 2.0 CI;(1.3–3.1)], regimen EFV+AZT+3TC [HR: 2.9 CI;(1.3–6.4)], regimen EFV+3TC+TDF [HR: 10.0 CI;(3.9–25.9)], regimen NVP+3TC+TDF [HR: 10.6 CI;(1.8–62.4)], follow up CD4 [HR: 1.0 CI;(1.0–1.0)], log(follow up viral load) [HR: 0.8 CI;(0.7–0.9)], marital status (married) [HR: 0.4 CI;(0.3–0.8)], marital status (cohabitation) [HR: 0.6 CI;(0.3–0.9)], ART adherence (fair) [HR: 2.4 CI;(1.3–3.4)], ART adherence (good) [HR: 4.6 CI;(2.2–9.5)] and age [HR: 1.02 CI;(1.0–1.04)]. Discussion— Effective control and tracing measures in the at-risk population and in defaulters need to be stepped up especially during this COVID-19 period, to improve retention in hospitals. There is also need for careful adherence counseling and assessment of medication supplies.Conclusion— LTFU is more pronounced among females and is highest among adolescents. Patients with increased risk for LTFU were consistent with ART regimens, viral load, age, CD4 count, adherence and marital status.


While deep neural networks have been shown to perform remarkably well in many machine learning tasks, labeling a large amount of ground truth data for supervised training is usually very costly to scale. Therefore, learning robust representations with unlabeled data is critical in relieving human effort and vital for many downstream tasks. Recent advances in unsupervised and self-supervised learning approaches for visual data have benefited greatly from domain knowledge. Here we are interested in a more generic unsupervised learning framework that can be easily generalized to other domains. In this paper, we propose to learn data representations with a novel type of denoising autoencoder, where the noisy input data is generated by corrupting latent clean data in the gradient domain. This can be naturally generalized to span multiple scales with a Laplacian pyramid representation of the input data. In this way, the agent learns more robust representations that exploit the underlying data structures across multiple scales. Experiments on several visual benchmarks demonstrate that better representations can be learned with the proposed approach, compared to its counterpart with single-scale corruption and other approaches. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that the learned representations perform well when transferring to other downstream vision tasks.


The sub-atmospheric ignition performance of an SPP (Stratified Partially Premixed) injector and combustor is investigated experimentally on the high-altitude test facility. In order to explore the influence of sub-atmospheric pressure on reignition performance and flame propagation mode, experiments are conducted under different pressures ranging from 19 kPa to 101 kPa. The inlet temperature and pressure drop of the injector (ΔPsw/P3t) are kept constant at 303 K and 3% respectively. The transparent quartz window mounted on the sidewall of the model combustor provides optical access of flame signals. Ignition fuel-air ratio (FAR) under different inlet pressures are experimentally acquired. The spark ignition processes, including the formation of flame kernel, the flame development and stabilization are recorded by a high-speed camera at a rate of 5kHz. Experimental results indicate that the minimum ignition FAR grows rapidly as the inlet air pressure decreases. An algorithm is developed to track the trajectory of flame kernels within 25ms following the spark during its breakup and motion processes. Results show that the calculated trajectory provides a clear description of the flame evolution process. Under different inlet air pressures, the propagation trajectories of flame kernels share similarities in initial phase. It is pivotal for a successful ignition that the initial flame kernel keeps enough intensity and moves into CTRZ (Center-Toroidal Recirculation Zone) along radial direction. Finally, the time-averaged non-reacting flow field under inlet pressure of 54kPa and fuel mass flow of 8kg/h is simulated. The effects of flow structure and fuel spatial distribution on kernel propagation and flame evolution are analyzed.


A powerful method to measure the mass profile of a galaxy is through the velocities of tracer particles distributed through its halo. Transforming this kind of data accurately to a mass profile M ( r ) ?> , however, is not a trivial problem. In particular, limited or incomplete data may substantially affect the analysis. In this paper we develop a Bayesian method to deal with incomplete data effectively; we have a hybrid-Gibbs sampler that treats the unknown velocity components of tracers as parameters in the model. We explore the effectiveness of our model using simulated data and then apply our method to the Milky Way (MW) using velocity and position data from globular clusters and dwarf galaxies. We find that, in general, missing velocity components have little effect on the total mass estimate. However, the results are quite sensitive to the outer cluster Pal 3. Using a basic Hernquist model with an isotropic velocity dispersion, we obtain credible regions for the cumulative mass profile M ( r ) ?> of the MW and provide estimates for the model parameters with 95% Bayesian credible intervals. The mass contained within 260 kpc is 1.37 × 10 12 ?> M ⊙ ?> , with a 95% credible interval of ( 1.27 , 1.51 ) × 10 12 ?> M ⊙ ?> . The Hernquist parameters for the total mass and scale radius are 1.55 − 0.13 + 0.18 × 10 12 ?> M ⊙ ?> and 16.9 − 4.1 + 4.8 ?> kpc, where the uncertainties span the 95% credible intervals. The code we developed for this work, Galactic Mass Estimator (GME), will be available as an open source package in the R Project for Statistical Computing.


For decades, retirement in the United States has meant a pat on the back, a gold watch, and a dozen or so years of golf, gardening, and increasingly frequent visits to the doctor. But retirees - and therefore retirement - are changing. People are leaving their jobs at younger ages and living longer than ever before. In the process, they're creating a new stage in their lives that finds them in good health and ready for interesting and challenging activities, not for the rocking chair. Sociologists haven't yet come up with a good name for this new life phase - post-career? pre-geezer? - but whatever they call it, it's clear that society needs to make some adjustments for this new class of Americans. "I like to call them 'seasoned' citizens rather than 'senior' citizens," says Phyllis Moen, the college's Ferris Family Professor of Life Course Studies. "They're an entirely new breed of retiree. They're young and healthy and they're not ready for our traditional version of retirement. You can only play so much golf or watch so much television. I think the idea of retirement itself is going to be 'retired.'" Moen, who also is director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center and codirector of the Cornell Applied Gerontology Research Institute, says that because of earlier retirements and increased longevity, Americans can now expect to spend as much as one-third of their lives in the "golden years," with many of those years in good health. The average age at retirement has dropped from 67 in 1950 to 62 today. Nearly 2 million people retire each year and, as the baby boom generation begins to leave the work force, that number will rapidly increase. By the turn of the century as many as 3 million people may retire annually. By 2030 there will be more people in the country over 65 than there are people under 18. "We have a life phase that's never existed before," she says. "For example, when my grandmother was my age, she was an old woman. When my mother was my age, she was healthier than my grandmother had been yet still nowhere near as vigorous and capable as I am. But we're applying the same retirement rules we had for my grandparents to people who are much healthier and more energetic." The concept of retirement is only fifty or so years old. Before the industrialization of America, most people worked until they died or until illness or infirmity forced them to stop. "In the United States, retirement didn't become widespread until the New Deal," says Moen. "Prior to that, only the railroad industry had a retirement program, and that was created because people of a certain age were considered no longer skilled. It was the creation of Social Security and generous corporate pension programs that made retirement both affordable and commonplace." Moen points out that during the sixties, seventies, and early eighties, there was a normative time to retire. For most people, 65 was the magic number. Social Security kicks in fully at that age and many companies had policies for mandatory retirement at 65. "But now there's much wider variation," she says. "It's like other social transitions. People used to marry within a fairly narrow time band and have children at a certain age. Now all types of transitions are occurring all across the board." Moen is in the midst of an ongoing study of retirees and older workers that is providing revealing information about their life quality and how their retirement years might be made more rewarding. The project focuses on a random sample of 762 men and women between the ages of 50 and 72. Respondents are drawn from two Fortune 500 companies, a large utility, two hospitals, and a large university, all in upstate New York. At the time of the first round of interviews, about 60 percent of the respondents had retired and 40 percent were still employed but nearing retirement age. The average age of the retirees was 62 and that of the workers was 56. …


The logarithmic strain is more suitable for analyzing large strain problems because the volume invariability condition in small deformation is equivalent to volume invariability condition in large deformation when using the logarithmic strain. Large simple shear deformation has always been used in the analysis of large strain problems. In this paper, elastic large strain constitutive model was introduced based on the logarithmic strain and large simple shear deformation was analyzed by using the constitutive model given in the paper. The stress responses to large simple shear deformation were derived corresponding to four objective rates of tensors. The results show that normal stresses may maintain good monotonicity, but there exists different levels of oscillation of shear stress corresponding to various objective rates, and there was the most severe oscillation of stress when adopting Jaumann rate. The objective rate should not be the only factor bringing about oscillation of shear stress.


User interface design of nowadays safety-critical human-machine systems has a significant impact on human operator situation awareness (SA). SA is composed of three levels including the perception (level 1), comprehension (level 2) and projection (level 3) of information. A significant part of accidents can be attributed to level 1 error. This means that human operators have problems to satisfy their information demand with supplied information during task performance. While thoroughly checking user interface designs for information gaps is a standard in professional system design it is a time consuming and error prone process. In this paper we introduce an information gap model, which allows investigation of inconsistencies between information supply and demand. We present a method to detect information gaps and assess the fitness between information supply and demand. The method can be executed semi-automatically. We show the method's implementation into an integrated system modelling environment and demonstrate the application with an autopilot component in a course change task on a ship bridge. We performed an expert evaluation with maritime system engineers and a human factors ergonomist to estimate the applicability, benefits and shortcomings of the method. Overall, the evaluation results are promising and warrant further research of the method.


Although the majority of existing License Plate (LP) recognition techniques have significant improvements in accuracy, they are still limited to ideal situations in which training data is correctly annotated with restricted scenarios. Moreover, images or videos are frequently used in monitoring systems that have Low Resolution (LR) quality. In this work, the problem of LP detection in digital images is addressed in the images of a naturalistic environment. Single-stage character segmentation and recognition are combined with adversarial Super-Resolution (SR) approaches to improve the quality of the LP by processing the LR images into High-Resolution (HR) images. This work proposes effective changes to the SRGAN network regarding the number of layers, an activation function, and the appropriate loss regularization using Total Variation (TV) loss. The main paper contribution can be summarized into presenting an end-to-end deep learning framework based on generative adversarial networks (GAN), which is able to generate realistic super-resolution images. Also, proposed adding a TV regularization to the loss function to help the model enhance the resolution of images. The proposed SRGAN can handle tiny $72\times 72$ images of LPs. The paper explores how SRGAN performed over different datasets from many aspects, such as visual analysis, PSNR, SSIM, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The experiments demonstrate that the suggested SRGAN can generate high-resolution images that improve the accuracy of the license plate recognition stage compared to other systems.


This paper (work in progress) investigates how the individual's concern for information privacy affects the adoption of biometric technologies. Biometrics refers to the automated authentication of an individual based on his/her distinguishing characteristics (Bolle et al. 2004). Given the very personal nature of biometric technologies, their adoption may be inhibited by individual's concern for information privacy. This research develops a model of biometrics adoption that integrates information privacy and TAM. This model aims to assist researchers and practitioners in understanding the factors that affect biometrics adoption. To examine the effects of TAM and privacy on intentions to use biometric technology, a pretested instrument will be administered to medical personnel who use finger scanning equipment to retrieve drugs in a hospital.


This talk presents the prospects for determining the nature of neutrinos in the context of a supersymmetric B (cid:0) L extension of the standard model by using dark matter indirect detection signals and bounds on N eff from the cosmic microwave background data. The model contains two new dark matter candidates whose dominant annihilation channels produce more neutrinos than neutralino dark matter in the minimal supersymmetric standard model. The photon and neutrino counts may then be used to discriminate between the two mod-els. If the dark matter comes from the B-L sector, its indirect signals and impact on the cosmic microwave background can shed light on the nature of the neutrinos. When the light neutrinos are of Majorana type, the indirect neutrino signal from the Sun and the galactic center may show a prompt neutrino box-feature, as well as an earlier cut-off in both neutrino and gamma ray energy spectra. When the light neutrinos are of Dirac type, their contribution to the effective number of neutrinos N eff is at a detectable level.


Background & Aims : Shift-to-Shift Handoff is a strong tool for transferring information about patients' status and their caring plans. Any disruption of this process can be a precursor to serious error, poor communication in work environment. Bedside shift-to-shift hand off with patient's cooperation allows the nurses to see and patient, ask questions of the patient and previous nurse and receive instant feedback on questions. This study aimed to determine the impact of bedside nurse-to nurse hand off with patients' cooperation on patients and nurses' satisfaction. Materials & Methods : In this clinical trial, quasi-experimental study in 2015, 90 patients and 12 nurses of Intensive Care Unit of Amir-al-Momenin Hospital affiliated to Golestan University of Medical Sciences were participated. The sampling methods for patients and nurses were census respectively. Patients and nurses' satisfaction before and after the intervention (shift-to-shift hand off with patients partnership), were evaluated by valid and reliable self-designed patients and nurses' satisfaction's questionnaires. Results : The mean and standard deviation of total score of patients' satisfaction before and after the intervention were 59.66±5.64 and 67.06 ± 5.06 respectively (P<0.001). The mean of nurses' satisfaction from 81.66±7.43 (before intervention) increased to 93.08± 59.91 after intervention (P<0.002). In both groups revealed a significant difference. Conclusion : Shift-to-shift hand off with patients' participation increased the patients and nurses' satisfaction.


The downhole method has been widely used to measure in situ shear wave velocity profiles for the seismic response analysis of geotechnical sites. To analyze the downhole data, the direct and interval methods are mostly used in practice. In this study, the modified interval method based on a straight ray path and the inversion method based on Snell's Law ray path were introduced to improve the quality of the wave velocity profiles evaluated by the downhole seismic method. Various synthesized wave velocity profile models were developed to perform the parametric study and the arrival times were determined by a forward modeling scheme based on Snell's Law. By comparing the velocity profiles obtained by four different data reduction methods with actual velocity profiles, the accuracy and limitation of various data reduction methods were assessed. The direct method was difficult for evaluating the detailed velocity profiles, and the interval method was found to provide severe errors, particularly when a stiff layer is located beneath the soft layer. The modified interval method provides reliable results, except when a strong soft-to-stiff contrast exists. Snell's Law ray path method provides the most reliable velocity profiles. Finally, in situ downhole seismic tests were performed at three sites, and the importance of considering the ray path in the data reduction was emphasized by comparing the reduced shear wave velocity profiles with crosshole and standard penetration test results.


Five females of 1 up to 2.5 years old Gray Tree Kangaroo (Dendrologus inustus), 10.83 kg body weight and 72.8 cm body length were dissected, and then the reproductive organ were observed for its morphology, length, and weight using digital camera, tape measured and scale. This study used experimental studies-descriptive case study technique, statistical analytic and correlation displayed in the average value and standard deviation (SD). The length of female D. inustus reproductive organ was 18.88±0.78 cm (left) and 19.00±0.78 cm (right). The length of ovarian was 1 cm (left/right), the weights of left and right of ovarian weight were 0.59±0.85 g (left) and 1 g (right), respectively. Diameter and length of fallopian tube, uterine horn, corpus uteri, and cervical were 0.57±0.01 mm (left) and 0.60±0.01 mm (right) and 3.00 cm (left) and 3.26±0.18 cm (right); 0.54±0.02 mm (left) and 0.56±0.02 mm (right) and 4 cm (left) and 4.8±0.45 cm (right); 1.16±0.09 mm (left) and 1.3±0.12 mm (right) and 1 cm (left/right); 0.3 mm (left/right) and 3 cm (left/right), respectively. Length of vagina and vulva were 4 and 2 cm, respectively. The result showed that shape and model of D. inustus reproductive organs were similar with the mammalian female reproductive organs in general but all of the organs have two sparated parts with different sizes.


This study aims to correlate the abrasive wear performance with mechanical properties, considering AA6063 Al-Mg-Si alloy as the model material. The selected alloy specimens are subjected to artificial ageing at 150 °C for an ageing duration ranging from 1 to 672 h, covering severely under-aged (SUA) to peak-aged (PA) to severely over-aged (SOA) states. Apart from the hardness and tensile properties, two-body abrasive wear properties are also evaluated for differently aged alloys in terms of wear rate, coefficient of friction, and roughness of the abraded surfaces. Furthermore, the generated wear debris, surface, and sub-surface of the abraded specimens are critically examined to reveal the micro-mechanisms of abrasion. The lowest amount of wear rate is observed for a PA alloy with maximum hardness, while the OA alloy exhibits a slightly lower wear rate than the UA alloy at a similar level of hardness. Statistical analyses of wear rate and various mechanical properties of all heat-treated alloys establish a strong negative linear correlation between the wear rate and hardness, yield strength, tensile strength, and strength coefficient; whereas, a positive linear correlation with the strain hardening exponent. Relationships between wear rate and different roughness parameters are also discussed. Under the investigated wear condition, the aged alloys endure significant plastic deformation; micro-plowing, micro-cutting, and delamination are found to be the predominant mechanisms during abrasion.


An innovative magnetic spectrometer has been recently installed at the INFN-LNS laboratory of Catania (Italy). Thanks to a powerful technique of trajectory reconstruction based on differential algebraic algorithms and on the use of a sophisticated focal plane tracker detector, it allows to guarantee good energy, mass and angular resolution in a large solid angle and a broad range of explored momenta. An array of 36 Ne213 liquid scintillators (EDEN) from IN2P3-IPN Orsay (France) laboratory has been installed around the scattering chamber of the spectrometer. In this way it is possible to detect, in coincidence with MAGNEX, the neutrons emerging from the reactions in a broad range of energies and with rather high efficiency. The facility, designed for an open nuclear physics community, makes it possible to face old and new challenges of experimental nuclear physics, often producing data of unprecedented quality. Example of new data are shown as connected to the exploration of multi-neutron transfer reactions induced by O projectiles, charge exchange reactions and nuclear rainbow in heavy ion collision.


The FMP model exemplifies the Keynesian models later criticized by Lucas, Sargent and others as conceptually flawed. For economists in the 1960s such models were "big science", posing organizational as well as theoretical and empirical problems. It was part of an even larger industry in which the messiness for which such models were later criticized was endorsed as providing enabling modelers to be guided by data and as offering the flexibility needed to undertake policy analysis and to analyze the consequences of events. Practices that critics considered fatal weaknesses, such as intercept adjustments or fudging, were what clients were what clients paid for as the macroeconometric modeling industry went private.


The studies performed in the framework of CMTT/2 for the transmission of 4:2:2 video signals through digital networks, have led to the definition of a bitrate reduction algorithm. In order to implement this videoalgorithm on a single board, a considerable effort has been made to develop an ASIC chipset, capable of processing 27 M samples per second (4:2:2 picture). For HDTV signals, the same technique can be used to provide a bitrate reduction from 1.152 Gbit/s to about 120 Mbit/s. This compression algorithm allows the transmission of one HDTV channel with audio and service channels on a 139.264 Mbit/s (or 2*34.368 Mbit/s) G703/G751 link or on an ATM network (155.5 Mbit/s). The authors describe the hardware implementation of the chipset in TV and HDTV codecs; emphasis is put to the features and performances of the equipment.


ABSTRACT A key challenge of democratic societies is to ensure a continuous flow of information between the people and elites in order to secure representation of citizen preferences. While there may be occasions where deviations from citizen preferences are desirable, political systems with a sustained and systematic mismatch between citizen opinion and policy would typically not be considered democratic. Political parties have traditionally acted as key channels of representation helping to transmit citizen preferences to policy-makers. Yet their ability to secure democratic representation has been called into question. The lecture explores the state of democratic representation in Europe by presenting evidence from the GovLis Research Programme 'When does Government Listen to the Public' on the link between public opinion and policy on a large number of policy issues. Beyond parties, it explores a series of alternative channels of citizen representation by considering the ability of political institutions and engagement in civil society associations to strengthen the link between public opinion and policy.


Abstract. Monitoring and surveillance changes around the world need powerful methods, so detection, visualization, and assessment of significant changes are essential for planning and management. Incorporating polarimetric SAR images due to interactions between electromagnetic waves and target and because of the high spatial resolution almost one meter can be used to study changes in the Earth's surface. Full polarized radar images comparing to single polarized radar images use amplitude and phase information of the surface in different available polarization (HH, HV, VH, and VV). This study is based on the decomposition of full polarized airborne UAVSAR images and integration of these features with algebra method involves Image Differencing (ID) and Image Ratio (IR) algorithms with the mathematical nature and distance-based method involves Canberra (CA) and Euclidean (ED) algorithms with measuring distance between corresponding vector and similarity-based method involves Taminoto (TA) and Kulczynski (KU) algorithms with dependence corresponding vector for change detecting purposes on two real PolSAR datasets. Assessment of incorporated methods is implemented using ground truth data and different criteria for evaluating such as overall accuracy (OA), area under ROC curve (AUC) and false alarms rate (FAR). The output results show that ID, IR, and CA have superiority to detect changes comparing to other implemented algorithms. Also, numerical results show that the highest performance in two datasets has OA more than 90%. In other assessment criteria, mention algorithms have low FAR and high AUC value indices to detect changes in PolSAR images.


In the Soviet Union experimental kill trapping (removal trapping) of Eurasian beaver began in 1960 in the Kirov region, and since 1963 the limited kill trapping was also permitted throughout Russia and Belarus. Regular trapping allowed obtaining large amounts of biomaterial, which significantly widened our knowledge on the general population ecology of beavers and on their behaviour during the under-ice period when observation is limited. The current decrease in demand for furs requires the realization of scientifically sound measures for beaver management based on ecological priorities.